Empire Australasia — December 2017

BINGEWATCH

Our movie marathon man does

what only a movie marathon man

can: movie marathons

WORDS SIMON CROOK

ILLUSTRATION PETER STRAIN

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN you watch fi ve

versions of Blade Runner, back-to-back? After 10

hours drenched in its oppressive, glittering

retro-future, I’ve lost all sense of reality. It’s been

pissing down outside and on screen all day, I’ve

no idea if it’s London 2017 or LA 2019, and my

mind’s squeezed through an existential mangle.

Ironically, a fi lm about identity has taken 30

years and fi ve cuts to fi nd its true self, but there’s

still one simple question. Is Deckard human? In

other words: is he a replicant or a replican’t?

Ripped from the hands of Ridley Scott, the

studio-edited 1982 US ‘Theatrical Cut’ identifi es

Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard as fl esh and blood

— a dehumanised product of LA’s frigid future.

There’s nothing wrong with this interpretation

— it’s how Philip K. Dick saw Deckard. What

doesn’t work is that clonking voice-over, droned

badly by Ford, some say in the hope it wouldn’t

be used. True, it establishes Deckard as a

cyberpunk Philip Marlowe but, like that hollow

happy ending, Deckard and Sean Young’s Rachel

driving off into the sunset, all it does it snap you

out of its world. Some say the fi nale is all

a Deckard dream but I’m not folding to that

origami. It’s just over-explaining a studio clanger.

Next up: the ‘International Cut’, near-

identical but for three scenes of amped-up

violence snipped by US censors: most notably,

Rutger Hauer’s Roy Batty gouging Tyrell’s (Joe

Turkel) eyes in gloopy detail. Only two viewings

in and I’m already morphing into an Esper

machine — I can practically hear my eyelids click

as they scan for clues. You fi nd them, too. Check

out the hidden unicorn in Sebastian’s apartment

(at 1.07) — a cryptic premonition of cuts to

come. Big-screen purists will hate me for this, but

with a forensic fi nger on the remote, Blade Runner

works way better on the small screen.

This is all going a bit meta. Each cut plays

like an altered memory, and the ‘Workprint’ just

enhances that. Unearthed in the late ’80s, the

test-preview offers a glimpse of Scott’s original

intentions. No happy ending. No voice-over until

the climax. In the Workprint, Roy isn’t shot by

the cops. Under Deckard’s ghoulish gaze, he

withers away on his rooftop death-bed. “I watched

him die all night...” drones Ford. “And he fought

all the way.” It’s by far my favourite ending. Roy

dies a noble death, Deckard shows a rare fl ash of

empathy. But this is no way to experience Blade

Runner — the visuals are muddy from a degraded

print, and the parping temp score (from Jerry

Goldsmith’s Planet Of The Apes) highlights just

how vital Vangelis’ electro soundscape is. But

we’re edging closer to Scott’s vision.

We’re now into the fourth loop and my cortex

is liquidising. It might as well be called ‘Brain

Runner’. Confusingly, 1992’s The Director’s Cut

was approved by Scott, but isn’t actually the

director’s cut — that’ll come later. Finally, though,

in trots the fabled unicorn — fi ve seconds of

footage that fl ip the Blade Runner experience on

its head. Once you accept Deckard’s a replicant

hunting his own kind, a heap of nagging niggles

get resolved. For instance: I’ve always found the

Deckard/Rachael romance illogical, frisson-free

and very creepy. But if they’re both replicants? The

android-gynous connection makes perfect sense.

Edited by Scott for the fi lm’s 25th anniversary,

2007’s The Final Cut is a scrubbed-up version of

The Director’s Cut: unicorn sequence fully restored,

eye-gougings reinstated, Deckard still crap at blade

running and defi nitely-maybe a replicant. Here’s

the thing, though: having inhaled the fi lm fi ve

times, I’ve shifted allegiances. Dullard Deckard

isn’t the fi lm’s emotional core. It’s sad, angry,

fatherless Roy, slowly becoming human, pining for

eternal life, a red giant fading into stardust. In a

movie so blank of feeling, whatever cut you’re

watching, it’s Rutger Hauer’s “tears in rain”

soliloquy that provides the fi lm’s lonely fl icker of

emotion. So powerful, in fact, that I’m left facing a

neck-twisting question: maybe, just maybe, Roy is

the hero and Deckard is the villain. Oh God, oh

God. I’m going to have to watch it again. I’m seeing

things you people wouldn’t believe...

BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT IS OUT NOW

ON 4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY