Comparison of Original Blade Runner Film and Director's Cut

Choosing a movie, do you take notice to whether it is a Director's cut, the original version, or simply grab the chosen movie and pop it in taking no notice of which version is in hand? Is there even a difference? Because a director's cut is simply a version of a movie with various cuts made by the director's choosing, if watching both versions of Ridley Scott's, "Blade Runner," the subtle differences in several of the scenes will become apparent, although the scene layout and plot remains the same throughout both versions.

The very first difference is probably the most noticeable and important difference between the two versions of the film: the narration of Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) at various spots throughout the original version. Scott chose to keep this out for a really good reason. Most think that having a narration is simply a way of cheating in your movie. Narration is pretty much saying that the movie sucks, so you it has to have a narrator tell the audience what is going on. Scott wanted his movie to speak for itself, not have a narrator do it. Also, he was probably trying to save his reputation as kind of an abstract guy. The narration tells us many things, such as that Deckard has an ex-wife. Deckard also tells us why he quit being a blade runner, saying that the killing was starting to get to him, but he decided to go back when asked, because he'd rather kill than be a victim. The narration also lets us know for a fact that Deckard has feelings for Rachael (Sean Young). This happens after he kills the exotic dancer. He says something about shooting a lady in the back, and also says how she reminded him of Rachael.

Another difference between the two versions is in the director's cut, when Deckard is playing, or attempting to play the piano. It's a little hard for him to play when he's drunk from drowning his sorrows, and while he is doing this he has a strange dream. The dream starts out in a forest with a beautiful white unicorn running on a path through the trees. The whole dream is in a type of slow-motion, with the unicorn's mane flowing in the air. There is also a brilliant white light shining down through the canopy, which heightens the whiteness of the unicorn. This is a very vivid and detailed dream. The dream also explains the finding of the origami unicorn outside Deckard's door in the end, as well as brings about some questions. In the original version, however, they decided to cut the dream from the film. Deckard plays the piano as he does in the director's cut version, but instead of cutting to the unicorn dream, it cuts to where the director's cut went to after the dream ended. By making this cut from the film, it makes the ending origami unicorn rather insignificant, other than to show that Gaff (Edward James Olmos) was there. In the director's cut, there is a link between the dream and the paper unicorn, one that brings about the question. "Did Gaff know about Deckard's dream, and if he did, how?" This would mean that Deckard's dream was an implant, and mean he is an android. Perhaps Scott put this into the film to make Deckard seem even more like an android. And for some reason, the studio didn't want the viewers to have this connection and be able to have evidence that Deckard might possibly be an android. Perhaps this was because the studios didn't think that the audience would be able to put two and two together, and Scott wanted to make them think.

Scott loves to do things that are going to make Hollywood angry, or things to go against the norm of Hollywood movies. Just like Galagher stated in Bleak Visions: Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, Directors Cut, "Blade Runner which began life as Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was actually a 'militantly anti-establishment literary protest' by a man who hated the very idea of Hollywood". So keeping with his theme of being anti-Hollywood, when Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) went to the Tyrell Corporation to meet with Tyrell (Joe Turkel) about getting his life extended, Scott significantly toned down these scenes in the director's cut version, which is not what Hollywood prefers. When Roy grabs Tyrell's head, you see Roy kiss him and then put his thumbs on Tyrell's eyes. But that is the last shown of Tyrell in this version. The camera flashes back and forth between Roy and the android owl, not showing blood or any other details. All of this is changed from the original version. The kiss from Roy to Tyrell is the same and all, the differences show up when Roy pushes his thumbs into Tyrell's eyes, and blood begins to pour out. The scene flashes back and forth here from Roy to Tyrell's eyes, with more and more blood coming from Tyrell in every scene. The original version probably had all of this blood and gore to please the audience. This is because people like to see what's going on and want some raunchy details to go with what's going on, especially something as rare as an eye gouging. And in Scott's cut version, he didn't think that all of this was necessary. Also, what might have been going on in the original version is that audiences like to have a "bad guy" to hate. The studios show all the blood and guts to have the audience think they know who the "bad guy" is, instead of having to think about who might actually be the real "bad guy". When what Scott was trying to get across is that Tyrell is actually the "bad guy", and he didn't' want to make Roy look so bad, so he left out all the details of the killing.

There are a few other scenes in which Scott chose to leave out some of the violence and gore that was in the original version, one of which is when Pris (Daryl Hannah) is beating up Deckard in J.F. Sebastian's (William Sanderson) building. Everything is identical until the movie gets to where Pris has Deckard between her legs. In the original version, she doesn't just drop him when she is done with the leg torture: she lowers him down to the ground by putting her fingers in his nostrils and stretching them out. In the director's cut she just drops him. Then, after all of that is complete, it is time for Deckard to shoot and kill Pris. In the original, Deckard shoots Pris three times, and it is a very loud and drawn out scene. Scott toned this down in his cut version by having Deckard shoot her only two times and also cutting some of the spasm scenes out to make it not last quite as long. Scott did this here for the same reason he did it in the scene with Roy and Tyrell: he didn't think the blood and violence were needed to get his story across. But again, audiences love things like shootings, so it was in the original release of the film.

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