"I want more life, father."

Blade Runner: The Final Cut Limited Edition (2007)

LOS ANGELES: NOVEMBER, 2019

The single most important thing a science fiction film can do is create a seamless, believable future world- a contiguous setting that is appropriately high tech, yet plausible. World building is a fine art, a ballet of careful art direction, tasteful costume design, precise expository dialog, and performances grounded in an emotional reality. In all of these respects, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is the most convincingly real vision of the future since 2001: A Space Odyssey and perhaps the single most complete and influential future world ever captured on film. Before Blade Runner, depictions of the future were largely the Utopian progeny of Gene Rodenbery or George Lucas. Man's humanity was never a question. Technology was simply a tool to explore the stars with. Phillip K. Dick was always suspicious- of technology, humanity, even reality itself- and this paranoia informs every aspect of Blade Runner. Before his death in 1981, Dick attended a screening of 10 minutes of footage of the then-unfinished film. Overwhelmed, he was shocked the filmmakers had captured the world exactly as he imagined it in his head.

Swimming through the copious extras on the Blade Runner: The Final Cut Limited Edition set, it would seem that director Scott expended more time and metal energy conceptualizing this film than any other in his career. The sheer number of ideas that populate this world- the spouts of pollution that erupt in the opening "Hades Landscape" sequence, the ethnic makeup of the extras, to the operation of 2019 parking meters- is breathtaking.

Also breathtaking is the breadth of the extras on the set- literally every aspect is covered with a worthy level of obsessive detail. Casting (Dustin Hoffman was seriously considered before Harrison Ford), costuming (Michael Kaplan discusses the pantyhose of the future), and post-production (Hear Harrison stumbling through outtakes of the voice over). Compleitists can rejoice, as the set provides five cuts of the film, the US Theatrical Cut, the slightly more violent European Cut, the long-lost Workprint that got the Blade Runner revival going when it was uncovered in 1990, the much-praised (and re-appraised) Director's Cut and the shinny new Final Cut. Blade Runner's Achilles heel was always it proliferation of cuts. The Final Cut, is not the Lucasized retrofit that many feared, simply a further refinement of the 1992 Director's Cut, with some additional digital spit and polish. Matte lines have been cleaned, Spinner wires painted out. Continuity errors have been tweaked. And the voice over is dead; long live the voice over.

But this, honest-to-god Final Cut is the crown jewel of them all. A worthy retrofit for a classic among classics.

"He say you Blade Runner, Mr. Deckard."

Five discs. Five different versions of the film. Certainly the most lavish DVD presentation a single film has ever received, surpassing even the Criterion Collection Brazil mega-set. Finally, we can lay out all the evidence. All of the cuts of the film. All of the deleted scenes. Voice-over or no voice-over. Unicorn or no unicorn. Replicant or not-a-Replicant.

It's finally time to close the book on Blade Runner and I for one, say, thank god. It's about damn time.

In his worthy and exhaustive book "Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner, " author Paul M. Sammon traces the tortured production of Ridley Scott's film and the genesis of the multitude of versions out there. From the disastrous early screenings in Dallas to the battles over the recording of the much-maligned voice-over, to the creation of the 90's "Director's Cut," Sammon covers it all. We know what the two released version are like. Now we're getting the other half of the story, the raw materials, the DNA of the movie itself. I could care less for the Lucasized new edition. I'm waiting with baited breath for the discarded bits, the deleted scenes, the pops and scratches of the workprint.

The centerpiece of the DVD set is a new "Final Cut" of the film, complete with the usual digital tinkering and newly re-shot footage. On the subject of the endless parade of "Director's Cuts," "Special Editions," and "Unrated Cuts" I am ambivalent, so long as the original, theatrical version- you know, the very film we all fell in love with in the first place- is still readily accessible. Even Darth Stubborn himself, George Lucas, finally listened to the call after years of countless tweaks both great and small to the Star Wars films. The tinkering wasn't the problem, it was the unavailability of the original films. Admittedly, I am a hypocrite when it comes to Blade Runner in this regard: I prefer the widely available 90's Director's Cut, and scarcely miss the relegated-to-VHS Theatrical Version; the Director's Cut is a far superior piece of work, a much better presentation of the film's themes and ideas that the Theatrical Cut.

Now, if we could only get a branching theatrical/director's cut of Conan the Barbarian on the market. Quick, get John Milius on the phone.