Blade Runner the Final Cut

[7/4]

September 30, 2007

A Cult Classic Restored, Again

By FRED KAPLAN

IT’S been 25 years since the release of “Blade Runner,” Ridley Scott’s science fiction cult film turned classic, but only now has his original vision reached the screen.

“Blade Runner: The Final Cut” — as the definitive director’s cut is titled — was scheduled to play at the New York Film Festival Saturday night, opens at the Ziegfeld in New York and the Landmark in Los Angeles on Friday, and comes out in December in a five-disc set with scads of extra features.

An earlier director’s cut played in theaters 15 years ago to great fanfare and is still available on DVD. But the new one is something different: darker, bleaker, more beautifully immersive.

The film, based on Philip K. Dick’s novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,” takes place in Los Angeles in 2019. It follows a cop named Deckard (played by Harrison Ford) who hunts down androids — or, in the film’s jargon, replicants— that have escaped from their slave cells on outer-space colonies and are trying to blend in back on Earth.

What’s hypnotic about the film is its seamless portrait of the future, a sleek retro Deco glossed on neon-laced decay: overcrowded cities roamed by hustlers, strugglers and street gangs mumbling a multicultural argot, the sky lit by giant corporate logos and video billboards hyping exotic getaways on other planets, where most English-speaking white people seem to have fled.

Mr. Scott designed this world in minute detail and shot it at night, from oblique angles, mainly on Warner Brothers’ back lot in Burbank, Calif., pumping in smoke and drizzling in rain.

“I’ve never paid quite so much attention to a movie, ever,” Mr. Scott said in a telephone interview from Washington, where he’s shooting a spy thriller. “But we had to create a world that supported the story’s premise, made it believable. Why do you watch a film seven times? Because somebody’s done it right and transported you to its world.”

He created this world from what he saw around him. “I was spending a lot of time in New York,” he said. “The city back then seemed to be dismantling itself. It was marginally out of control. I’d also shot some commercials in Hong Kong. This was before the skyscrapers. The streets seemed medieval. There were 4,000 junks in the harbor, and the harbor was filthy. You wouldn’t want to fall in; you’d never get out alive. I wanted to film ‘Blade Runner’ in Hong Kong, but couldn’t afford to.

When “Blade Runner” came out in June 1982 it received mixed reviews and lost money. The summer’s big hit was “E. T.,” Steven Spielberg’s tale of a cute alien phoning home from the tidy suburbs. Few wanted to watch a movie that implied the world was about to go drastically downhill.

“Here we are 25 years on,” Mr. Scott said, “and we’re seriously discussing the possibility of the end of this world by the end of the century. This is no longer science fiction.”

The special effects that produced this vision were amazing for their day. Created with miniature models, optics and double exposures, they seemed less artificial than many computer effects of a decade later. But like film stock, they faded with time.

For the new director’s cut, the special-effects footage was digitally scanned at 8,000 lines per frame, four times the resolution of most restorations, and then meticulously retouched. The results look almost 3-D.

The film’s theme of dehumanization has also been sharpened. What has been a matter of speculation and debate is now a certainty: Deckard, the replicant-hunting cop, is himself a replicant. Mr. Scott confirmed this: “Yes, he’s a replicant. He was always a replicant.”

This may disappoint some viewers. Deckard is the film’s one person with a conscience. If he’s a replicant, it means that there are no more decent human beings.

“It’s a pretty dark world,” Mr. Scott acknowledged. “How many decent human beings do you meet these days?”

The clue to Deckard’s true nature comes in a scene that was cut from the original release and only recently unearthed by Charles de Lauzirika, Mr. Scott’s assistant and the restoration’s producer, In the film, Deckard falls in love with Rachael (played by Sean Young), a secretary at the Tyrell Corporation, the conglomerate that makes replicants. She discovers that she’s a replicant too. Her memories of childhood were implanted by Tyrell to make her think she’s human.

In the last scene of Mr. Scott’s version, Deckard leads Rachael out of his apartment. He notices an origami figure of a unicorn on the floor. A fellow cop has often left such figures outside replicants’ rooms. In an earlier scene, Deckard was thinking about a unicorn. Looking at the cutout now, he realizes that the authorities know what’s in his mind, that the unicorn is a planted memory, that he’s a replicant and that he and Rachael are both now on the run. They get into the elevator. The door slams. The end.

Neither this scene nor any unicorn appeared in the 1982 release. That version ended with Deckard and Rachael escaping, driving through green countryside, Deckard telling us in his Philip Marlowe voice-over — which ran throughout the movie — that he had learned Rachael is a new type of replicant, built to live as long as humans. They smile. The end.

How to explain such a drastic change? The veteran television producers Bud Yorkin and Jerry Perenchio put up one third of the film’s $22 million budget and the completion bond, which stipulated that if the film went over budget they had to pay the overrun but would also take ownership of the movie. The film went $7 million over budget.

Preview screenings were disastrous. Crowds went to see the new Harrison Ford movie, thinking it would be like “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and they were befuddled. Mr. Yorkin and Mr. Perenchio, whose relations with Mr. Scott were always tense, took over.

In some accounts, Mr. Scott was kicked off the picture and had nothing to do with the voice-over or the happy ending. This isn’t quite accurate.

“I was in a minor argument over it for about six hours,” Mr. Scott recalled. “Then I was fully on board.” He had contemplated a voice-over early on, inspired by Martin Sheen’s in “Apocalypse Now.” When the previews bombed, he revived the idea and had his screenwriters, Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, work on it. The new owners discarded that draft and hired Roland Kibbee, a frequent writer for the detective show “Colombo,” to do a rewrite.

Mr. Scott didn’t like the revision, but he edited it into the movie anyway. He also asked Stanley Kubrick for outtakes of rolling countryside that were shot for “The Shining,” and used them as backdrop for the desired happy ending.

“I went along with the idea that we had to do certain things to get audiences interested,” Mr. Scott recalled. “I later realized that once I adopted that line, I was selling my soul to the devil, inch by inch drifting from my original conception.”

“My original concept,” he said, “was almost operatic: the cadences, the deliberate pacing. I mean that in the sense of the best comic strips, the ones that adults read, which are very operatic. ‘Batman’ — you can’t get more operatic than that.”

Afterward, Mr. Scott moved on to other films. In 1989 a Warner Brothers executive, going through the vaults, came across a 70-millimeter print of Mr. Scott’s original cut. In May 1990 the print was lent to a Los Angeles theater showing a festival of 70-millimeter films. Fans lined up around the block. The same thing happened when two art houses screened it in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Sensing a windfall, Warner Brothers announced the release of a director’s cut and brought in Mr. Scott. It was a rush job — much of the deleted footage couldn’t be found — but it was closer to what he had intended.

In 2000 Mr. Scott announced that he was working on a multidisc set that would include a polished director’s cut. But the project collapsed when the Mr. Yorkin and Mr. Perenchio wouldn’t transfer the rights.

This refusal was widely attributed to lingering bitterness. Mr. Yorkin, speaking by telephone from Los Angeles, denied that. “It’s just there was no reason for another release,” he said. “We needed an idea that would make it an event.”

Last year they realized the film’s 25th anniversary was coming up. “That was an idea we could hook it on,” Mr. Yorkin said. A deal was struck with Warner Brothers. The project was revived.

Mr. de Lauzirika plowed through 977 boxes and cans of film, stored mainly in a Burbank warehouse, and found the missing pieces — including the complete unicorn scene — along with several discs’ worth of material for DVD special features. And the technical experts restored the picture to a level of detail that would have been impossible a few years earlier.

“In many ways,” Mr. de Lauzirika said, “the delay actually helped. So all headaches aside, it’s hard to be bitter. I’m actually quite grateful.”

[ejp626]

Dammit not again... Of course I'll buy it. (I even have a good transfer from laserdisc of the original with voice-over.) But there had better not be a 50th Anniversary re-re-release.

[jazzbo]

I HOPE there is a 50th anniversary edition and I hope I'm around to see it.

I posted about this on the dvd thread. . . .Exciting. I've been reading a lot about the making of the film and the writings reference the version mistakenly released to theaters that had some variants, and a documentary about the making of the film, and I was hoping I'd one day get to see those. . . and they'll be in the five disc set. You'll be able to purchase 2, 4 and 5 disc versions of this around Christmas.

[7/4]

For now I think I'll just try to check it out at the Ziegfeld this weekend. I need some time off.

[ejp626]

I HOPE there is a 50th anniversary edition and I hope I'm around to see it.

I posted about this on the dvd thread. . . .Exciting. I've been reading a lot about the making of the film and the writings reference the version mistakenly released to theaters that had some variants, and a documentary about the making of the film, and I was hoping I'd one day get to see those. . . and they'll be in the five disc set. You'll be able to purchase 2, 4 and 5 disc versions of this around Christmas.

I'm a little chuffed that the 5 disk Blu-ray set costs half what the 5 DVD set will cost. I guess they are really trying to get people to buy Blu-ray. But the studio knows what will really sell -- the DVDs so that comes with some fairly cool extras like a unicorn and a toy car. I could probably live with the 4 DVD set (again half what the 5 DVD set costs), but I'll decide in another month or so.

In the same vein, Dark City is supposedly coming out again with a longer version (almost 15 minutes longer) and that would probably be worth getting as well.

[sal]

Can someone please explain to me the differences between the 4 and 5 disc sets besides the packaging and the (significant) price differences??

[Adam]

Can someone please explain to me the differences between the 4 and 5 disc sets besides the packaging and the (significant) price differences??

This lays it out pretty well, taken from Amazon, but really from Warner's Press Release:

Basically you have your choice of three different sets - 2-disc, 4-disc, and 5-disc. The discs are described as follows:

Disc 1 - Ridley Scott's All-New "Final Cut" Version of the film - Restored and remastered with added and extended scenes, added lines, new and cleaner special effects and all new 5.1 Dolby Digital Audio. Also included is commentary by Ridley Scott and a host of others that worked behind the camera.

Disc 2 - Documentary - Dangerous Days: Making of Blade Runner - A feature-length documentary about the film including viewpoints and insights from the cast and crew. Included are details on every stage of production of the film including special effects, casting, and even the film's literary roots and its place in the sci-fi genre.

Disc 3 - 1982 Theatrical Version - The original that contains Deckard's narration and has Deckard and Rachel's (Sean Young) "happy ending" escape scene.

1982 International Version - Also used on U.S. home video, laserdisc and cable releases up to 1992. This version is not rated, and contains some extended action scenes in contrast to the Theatrical Version.

1992 Director's Cut - Omits Deckard's voiceover narration and removes the "happy ending" finale. It adds the famous "unicorn" sequence, which is a vision that Deckard has which suggests that he is also a replicant.

Disc 4 - BONUS Disc "Enhancement Archive" - Eight featurettes, image galleries, radio interview with the author, and screen tests for the part of Rachel.

Disc 5 - Workprint Version - This rare version of the film is considered by some to be the most radically different of all the Blade Runner cuts. It has an altered opening scene, no Deckard narration until the final scenes, no "unicorn" sequence, no Deckard/Rachel "happy ending," altered lines between Rutger Hauer and his creator Tyrell (Joe Turkell), and alternate music.

Also included is commentary by Paul M. Sammon, author of Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner and a featurette - "All Our Variant Futures: From Workprint to Final Cut".

2 Disc Edition : Discs 1-2

4 Disc Edition : Discs 1-4

5 Disc Edition : Discs 1-5

All of the information on the features comes directly from a press release from Warner Home Video.

So in the 5-disc version you don't get the Workprint, and I think you don't get the "briefcase" with other little trinkets in it.

[sal]

Thanks Adam!! Appreciate it.

Given the fact that the 4 disc set is only $10 or so more than the 2 disc set, I'll probably spring for that one. I've never seen the theatrical edition, and it also includes the Director's Cut, which is the only version I know and enjoy.

[ejp626]

I think I probably could live with the 4 disc version, but I wonder what the odds are that Netflix would someday get the 5 DVD version so I could rent just the Workprint version.

[RDK]

Don't know if it's the same "workprint version" or not, but my wife, back in the day, saw an advance screening of a "rough cut" that she says was filled with temp music and missing scene cards and was quite a bit different from the released version. I'm very curious to know if this will be the same thing.

[BruceH]

I can't wait for the revised, corrected final cut.

[RDK]

I can't wait for the revised, corrected final cut.

And following that, the "I-Changed-My-Mind-Again-This-is-the-For-Real-Final-Cut" version due out in 2012.

[Jim Alfredson]

And then in 2020, the "Ah fuck it, I'll just re-film the whole thing, with brand new CGI wizardry, mostly to make Harrison Ford look like he's in his late 30s again" super finalized, ultra done cut, with every single frame of footage from all versions fully restored in chronological order of when each scene was shot, including all rejected takes, on five 400 terrabyte medula implant chips, for your immersive viewing experience pleasure.

[BruceH]

And then in 2020, the "Ah fuck it, I'll just re-film the whole thing, with brand new CGI wizardry, mostly to make Harrison Ford look like he's in his late 30s again" super finalized, ultra done cut, with every single frame of footage from all versions fully restored in chronological order of when each scene was shot, including all rejected takes, on five 400 terrabyte medula implant chips, for your immersive viewing experience pleasure.

That'll be the 50th-anniversary edition, in 2032.

[Adam]

And then in 2020, the "Ah fuck it, I'll just re-film the whole thing, with brand new CGI wizardry, mostly to make Harrison Ford look like he's in his late 30s again" super finalized, ultra done cut, with every single frame of footage from all versions fully restored in chronological order of when each scene was shot, including all rejected takes, on five 400 terrabyte medula implant chips, for your immersive viewing experience pleasure.

Actually, I know someone who saw the new version a few days ago at Technicolor, digital projection, with some folks who worked on the effects.

they actually DID film some new material, including (apparently, amazingly) using Harrison Ford's son to stand in for him in a new shot. and the "cleaned up" a lot of effects.

But apparently the unicorn taken originally from "Labyrinth" is still there.

[Jim Alfredson]

I blame George Lucas for opening the door.

[BruceH]

He has a lot to answer for.

[medjuck]

According to my son (who's done a lot of research on this film) there's a disagreement between Scott and the writers as to whether or not Dekker is a replicant.

[rockefeller center]

Deckard is a replicant and should be retired. Period.

[RDK]

According to my son (who's done a lot of research on this film) there's a disagreement between Scott and the writers as to whether or not Dekker is a replicant.

One of the things that makes the film so intersting imo.

[jazzbo]

Well, having read the book about five times before the movie, that never occurred to me.

The new version is supposed to highlight this a bit more than the original. . . .

[BruceH]

In the book, the main character is simply not an android (the term used in the book), period.

Edited October 3, 2007 by BruceH

[Adam]

Deckard is a replicant and should be retired. Period.

In an interview with Scott in the Sunday's LA Times, he says that he's a replicant.

And a lot more...

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca...1,1225728.story

THE DIRECTOR'S CUT

'Blade Runner,' Take 3

It was coolly received in 1982, but Ridley Scott's bleak science fiction film has undergone revisions, and this time he thinks they got it right.

By Geoff Boucher, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 30, 2007

RIDLEY SCOTT was living in London in 1980 but looking for a leading man for his first Hollywood movie. The script was a strange one -- it was a surreal tale adapted from a 1968 novel about murderous artificial people in futuristic Los Angeles -- and Scott didn't have a certain title since he couldn't use the more-than-a-mouthful name of the book: "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Scott did have a star in mind, though: He had seen "Star Wars" and decided that he wanted his star to be the actor who had played that charming scoundrel Han Solo.

"The reaction of one of the producers was: 'Who the hell is Harrison Ford?' One of the reasons I went for Harrison was the fact that I knew that Steven [spielberg] and George [Lucas] were doing this thing called ["Raiders of the Lost Ark"]. It smelled good to me. I simply called up Harrison's agent and said, 'I want to meet Harrison as soon as possible.' Like two days later we met and he turned up with the stubble and the hat and the leather jacket on because he had been shooting. It was like 10 o'clock at night. So my meeting for 'Blade Runner' was with Indiana Jones."

Scott chuckled at the memory, then groaned, reached for a bag of ice and propped his leg up on a chair. The 69-year-old British filmmaker was fresh from knee surgery -- "Too much tennis," he said with a sad shrug -- and at the time was still working on his 19th film, "American Gangster," due in theaters in November. But he was eager to talk about "Blade Runner" and the past because he's getting a rare chance to revisit and reengage both. Scott oversaw a new remastered version of the film that enhances its Vangelis score, adds snap to its visual effects and even includes a bit of new footage, all for the 25th anniversary of the dystopian epic. "Blade Runner: The Final Cut" will be shown for a month at the Landmark Theatre in West L.A. and then will go on sale as a DVD in November.

The tale of "Blade Runner" is not a sunny one. The version of the film that reached theaters in 1982 (it opened against "E.T.") was weighted down with a somnambulant voice-over narrative and a tacked-on ending that Scott loathed; the set too had been a contentious one, with Ford and Scott locked in a surly struggle. Also, Philip K. Dick, the author of "Do Androids Dream," died just four months before the film reached the screen.

Then, famously, the history of the film took a sharp turn away from ignominy. First, the advent of the home-video era brought the movie to a wider audience, one that was increasingly attuned to the film's cyberpunk visions and its technological concepts.

Then, close to the film's 10th anniversary, a so-called director's cut was given a theatrical run in Los Angeles and broke revival-house records. That version was actually a preview print, as Scott refers to it, which might have been missing the monkey-wrench additions (like that clunky Ford voice-over) but also was missing large chunks of music and a key dream sequence.

This current "Final Cut" version, Scott said, comes closest to what the film could have been and, in his mind, should have been.

"It's quite a thing to come back to this film now, after all this time, after a quarter of a century," said Scott, whose résumé includes "Thelma & Louise," "Gladiator" and "Black Hawk Down."

"This is a film that, in many ways, has echoed throughout popular culture in a very special way."

The film also seems to have been a career landmark for just about everyone involved.

"I was never on another movie set quite like that one," said Daryl Hannah, who portrayed the sexualized android called Pris. "I was very young, and every day it felt the way you fantasize that making a movie would be -- like you're stepping into another world."

Rutger Hauer, the Dutch actor who played the menacing but poetic killer android called Roy Batty, talks about how the movie "captured a vision of the future that to this day holds up. That's quite an achievement. It was a film all of us knew was going to be special. A lot of that is because of Ridley."

Although in hindsight everyone seems to laud Scott's bold film, at the time there was considerable debate on the quality of his anachronistic noir vision. There were critics who were divided on the film, but, before that, there was also the crowd of financial backers and studio executives who felt it was too convoluted and complicated and needed to be dumbed down for audiences.

"I learned a lesson from all of that," Scott said, leaning over again to rub his rebuilt knee. "I learned to stand my ground. I was stubborn, but I learned I should have been more stubborn."

Future visionWATCHING "Blade Runner: The Final Cut," anyone who lives in Los Angeles today would be struck by how prescient the film was about the direction of society and culture. To Edward James Olmos, the film, set in 2019, amounted to a crystal ball in many of its details.

"What you see now is how unique this image of Los Angeles is and, in hindsight, how correctly it predicted so much, such as the mix of urban Latino and Asian cultural influences in the city," said Olmos, who portrayed a taciturn cop in the movie. "About the only thing in the film we haven't gotten yet is those flying cars."

L.A. today perhaps isn't quite the blow-torch skyline and acid-rain megalopolis of "Blade Runner," but the film certainly created standard images and codified themes for several generations of science fiction films. It's hard to watch such movies as "The Matrix," "The Terminator," "The Fifth Element" or "Minority Report" (which was also based on Dick's writing) and not see links to "Blade Runner." MTV, cyber-punk fashion, graphic novels and even some architecture have pulled elements from the visual accomplishments of "Blade Runner."

From the novel by Dick, the film took its core plot of a bounty hunter on grim, dying Earth chasing down androids who have a pre-set "death date." For the film, these hunters were called "blade runners" (a name that came from an unrelated William S. Burroughs novel; producer Michael Deeley and Scott just liked the sound of it) and the androids were called "replicants." That term came from screenwriter David Peoples' daughter, who was studying biology at the time and offered the term. "We were going to call them humanoids," Scott said, "but that sounded pretty good, so we used it instead."

What may be most unusual about the film is how many of the key components came from the actors involved. One example: Hauer, concerned that his death scene was too protracted, jotted down a few lines about the nature of death, and that became his soliloquy during the powerful rooftop scene in which his character dies in a downpour.

"He wrote these lines, they were like Shelley," Scott said with a measure of awe. "He wrote it in his trailer and, like 45 minutes later, we just did it up there on the roof. I always have cast actors who are not afraid to speak up. On 'Blade Runner,' there were some significant contributions."

Maybe none were more significant than the contributions by Olmos. It was his idea that his character talk in "Cityspeak," the hybrid of four languages that shows the polyglot nature of L.A., and it was also his notion to fiddle with a piece of paper and create origami while in the background of one scene.

"I really was trying to find a way to blend into the background and not do anything but also not look like I wasn't doing anything; it's difficult to do that, you don't want to distract from the action in the scene, but you also don't want to look artificially still," Olmos said. "You need to be like a tree in the wind."

The casual creation of fidgeting became a key part of the film; the origami, linchpin symbols in the film. The paper unicorn shaped by Olmos' character, for instance, telegraphs to the audience a huge plot point: that Ford's character, Deckard, is himself an android.

"It all fit together perfectly, but that shows how confident Ridley is on the set and how he is constantly working toward the place the story should go and how open he is even while filming," Olmos said. "It's a true talent, and he has that confidence to embrace the art around him."

Still, the embraces during the making of "Blade Runner" were sometimes more like a wrestling match than a hug-fest. "Yes, there was a lot of passion and conflict, it's true," said Sean Young, who portrayed Rachael. "But I think that's because there were things worth fighting for."

Scott, who had already directed "Alien," had come to the project after a stellar career making television commercials (a few years later, he would make the celebrated "1984" ad for Macintosh) and right after walking away from an aborted attempt to bring the Frank Herbert novel "Dune" to the screen. Scott's older brother had just died unexpectedly, and the director hoped that in making his first film in America he might distract himself from the grief. "I wanted to make a movie," Scott said, "where I walked through the gates at Warner Bros., the ones I had only seen in Cary Grant movies and old horror movies."

That sort of carefree daydream soon gave way to sour complications. There were several versions of the script, and the first writer, Hampton Fancher, quit after Peoples was brought in to rework the story. Much has been made too of the squabbles between Scott and Ford.

"No, we're fine," Scott said. "Actually, I got on all right with him at the time, but it was such a difficult film to convey that I got tired of explaining it . . . and Harrison tends to be a person who keeps himself to himself, particularly in those days, and if that happens with an actor, then so do I."

Scott paused and then grinned mischievously. "And generally speaking, I actually think the movie was one of the better things he's done. Hee hee."

Even with Ford as reluctant star (he was the lone notable absence when "Blade Runner: The Final Cut" made its premiere at the Venice Film Festival a few weeks ago), the resonance of "Blade Runner" is unmistakable now. For one thing, it propelled the late Dick to the status of Hollywood concept machine; there have been eight other films based on his writings and three more are in the hopper. None of them, though, has matched "Blade Runner" and its mix of Philip Marlowe and fire-pit future tech.

Scott, meanwhile, has not revisited science fiction. "I suppose I haven't found a future that is as interesting as that future."

[rockefeller center]

Funny review from amaz.com:

By Happy Camper (Baltimore, Maryland USA)

I have seen both the original cut and the final cut on the big screen. The first Blade Runner left me feeling elated, entertained and full of inspiration. This tired retread left me feeling disgusted and flat.

Why disgusted? In the first Blade Runner we witness the snapping of an important man's neck. The one scene in the whole movie that I could have done without, but it didn't ruin the movie for me! At least it was an instant death. This time in the film, for some godforsaken reason, the director had the replicant's kill by pushing people's eyeballs into their brains. It's horrifically shown once and implied twice. Now what possibly does that add to the movie? Is society becoming so sick that Hollywood thinks that's entertainment? Are we so desensitized that gruesome violence no longer revolts? All it did was turn the bad guys (replicants) into monsters. One is left without an once of sympathy for them unlike in the original Blade Runner.

Why flat? Well the speech at the end of the film by the dying replicant leader now rings quite hollow. Who gives a hoot what wonders he's seen. Just hurry up and die so you don't kill anymore decent people. While those replicant designers were short sighted and a certainly terribly naive, does that warrant a death sentence? The replicants are like spoiled children: If I don't get my way, I'm gonna throw a tantrum! In this case if you don't "fix me" I'm gonna push your eyeballs back into your brain! The other reason it left me flat was the "boy meets girl ending" is so trite! At least the original Blade Runner had what I would consider a passionate ending by a being that does not torture its victims.

Too bad Hollywood doesn't pay its writers better, instead of forcing them to go on strike. Maybe then we would have some really daring sci-fi film making instead of this tripe!

[B. Clugston]

I wonder when they'll remake this starring Will Smith...