Blade Runner Deleted Scenes

The new collector's edition includes about 30 minutes or so of footage that was shot but dropped from the final film for various reasons. Other than the infamous "Holden and the Hospital" scene, none of this new cutting room floor footage has ever been seen by anybody, at least not to my knowledge.

Much of these new scenes are awesome, too, although many of them include more bad Harrison Ford voiceover work. Here is a list of some of my favorites, and some that stand out for one reason or another.


--Holden and the Hospital. This scene, where Deckard visits a fellow Blade Runner (Holden) who is being kept alive in an iron lung (he was critically injured at the beginning of the film by one of the fugitive replicants), has actually been floating around the Internet for years now, and I'm sure any hardcore BR fan has seen it myriad times. It essentially consists of Holden yelling at Deckard, and exists merely to move the plot along, so I can see why it was cut, though the design is, naturally, very well done. You can see the whole thing here.

--1187 Hunterwasser. When I saw this listed amongst the deleted scenes, I freaked out. I had read interviews with Brion James (he plays Leon, a bad replicant) in which the actor revealed that an alternate take had been planned for the scene in which Deckard and Gaff inspect Leon's apartment (where Deckard finds the snake scale). In this deleted take, it reveals, after Deckard and Gaff leave the apartment, that Leon had been hanging from the ceiling in the bathtub the entire time that the two Blade Runners were there. The concept sounded awesome, but apparently it hadn't been shot.

Wrong. It was shot and it's included here. It also has a completely different reveal of Gaff's little origami boner man that works way better, at least artistically. As Gaff and Deckard are getting ready to leave, you can see Gaff playing around with something in his hands. As the two leave, he sets it down, but we never see exactly what it is. Then Leon comes down from the bathtub and notices the little item Gaff left, which is revealed to be the little stick figure that represents Deckard's apparent, um, overexcitement with his work. It's a great scene.

--ESPER. The "ESPER" scene is slightly different, and starts out with Deckard ruminating over a photo of his estranged wife, who has apparently left him to go live off-world with some rich snob. It's the only mention anywhere of Deckard having a wife, and sort of builds on the idea that all the well-off people left Earth to live lives of luxury on colonies on other planets.

--Deckard Washes Up. This is only notable because it made me want to throw up. During the scene after Rachel saves Deckard, as Deckard is washing his face in the sink, we get a closeup of him pulling a big, bloody chunk of crap out of his nose, something I think we can all agree was thankfully left out of any prints of the film.

--Deckard/Rachel Love Scene. This scene is way more erotic than what we see in the movie, and Sean Young goes topless in a couple of shots. For you voyeurs, you can find it here.

--Metaphysics. A great scene in which Deckard is again in the hospital talking to Holden, but unbeknownst to both of them, they are being watched on a monitor by Gaff and Bryant. You can see it here. "I spit on metaphysics, Sir."

--Tyrell's Fate. My personal favorite, it shows Roy Batty and J.F. Sebastian as they are ascending the Tyrell building in an elevator, and getting past Tyrell's security protocol. After Batty kills Tyrell and Sebastian, he returns to the elevator, clutching Sebastian's coat. When the elevator stops again for a security check, a (creepy) female voice comes on and requests a clearance. Upon hearing the voice, Batty shouts, "Mom?", illustrating his deterioration into child-like status upon the killing of his "father" Tyrell. Rutger Hauer's performance in this scene is typically brilliant, and it's one I wish they had included in the final print.

Other deleted scenes flesh out the narrative a little more, give some background to the four replicants (including references to Batty's fighting near the Tanhauser Gate), and reveal that Batty and Leon killed Chew by sticking him in a freezer with no clothes on. A different version of the VK test on Rachel reveals that Deckard ran more questions than necessary on her simply to humor Tyrell, only to find out that she was, indeed, a replicant. There are also two versions of the "upbeat" ending, including one where Rachel tells Deckard she thinks they were "made for each other." Ho ho.

All in all, it's a pretty amazing collection of footage, and it's by far my favorite part of the new disc set.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut (2007)

It seems like I've been waiting my whole life for this. Ridley Scott's sci-fi masterpiece Blade Runner is probably my favorite film of all time. It's an amazing visual accomplishment, probably the most amazing film just to look at, with fire-breathing smokestacks and monolithic super-skyscrapers forming a lurid vision of a future metropolis where manufactured replicants show more emotion than the world's human inhabitants.

Unfortunately, until two months ago, the only print of Blade Runner readily available was a crappy snapcover Warner Brothers DVD version of the Director's Cut that included a terrible scene-select menu and offered no special features or anything else of note. Seeing as how BR has an incredibly colorful (and contentious) behind-the-scenes story and like a billion different versions, this pallid representation was totally unacceptable. The only thing we BR devotees could do was plug our noses and go read Paul M. Sammon's exhaustive making-of book, Future Noir, for the gazillionth time.

Enter December 2007, as the release of Ridley Scott's Final Cut gave all of us dateless Blade Runner nerds a reason to squeal with joy. This new five-disc collector's edition provided us with everything that we needed: all four previous versions of the film; a brand, spanking new documentary detailing the film's creation; an incredible collection of never-before-seen deleted scenes, and just an assload of general BR-related extra junk. I got the Final Cut for Christmas but only this past week have I been able to finally dive in and watch it. It's certainly been worth the wait.

I'm going to try to run a week-long series of sorts detailing all the good stuff that's included in the new collector's set, but for today I'm just going to run through the Final Cut itself, and talk about some of the major differences that I thought had the most effect, for better or worse.

For those who have never seen the film, it takes place in Los Angeles, 2019, and stars Harrison Ford as a sort of specialized cop who runs around the city trying to track down four missing, murderous replicants. Replicants are human clones created for slave labor on off-world colonies. If they break ranks or try to flee, they are immediately labeled a danger, and these Blade Runners are sent out to kill them. The problem is that the only way to distinguish them from other humans is by administering a dubious personality test. Naturally, Ford also falls in love with a replicant and this leads to various thematic and plot-related complications.

The history of the film's release is long and complicated, but I'll give you sort of a nutshell version. The original theatrical cut was released in 1982, to mixed critical reviews and a none-too-impressed mainstream audience. While most agreed it was brilliant visually, many thought the plot was murky and the pacing deadly slow. At first, it had a reputation as sort of a flop, but it started to gain more attention upon its VHS release and developed a substantial cult following in subsequent years.

Then, in 1992, Scott went back and made a bunch of changes. He dropped Harrison Ford's awful voiceover narration, replaced the original ending with a new, less cheesy one, and inserted a brand new dream sequence that gave rise to the hackneyed (in my opinion) idea that Deckard himself was a replicant. This version was released as the Director's Cut, and it put BR back on the map, as it was regarded as a huge improvement and has since become the quintessential cut. Chances are that if you've seen the film, you watched the Director's Cut.

The new Final Cut is essentially the same as the DC, only with some footage lifted from other versions inserted here and there. I actually saw it in theaters on Friday, which was pretty awesome, as the film's incredible production design looks amazing on the big screen. Here is a list of some of the new stuff inserted for the Final Cut that I thought had a noticeable impact on the final product.

--Much of the visual design has been digitally retouched, and this is the Final Cut's main asset. If you watch the DC nowadays, it's obvious during some of the scenes (especially the final Roy Batty chase scene) that the cityscapes are just matte paintings inserted in postproduction. Now, though, a lot of these special effects have been cleaned up and it looks great, definitely enhancing the film's overall visual brilliance.

--A lot of the more notorious goofs from the other versions have been fixed in the Final Cut, including (thankfully) the ridiculous stolen shots that comprise Roy Batty's first appearance on screen (in one, you can see a thumb on Batty's shoulder even though he's supposed to be standing by himself in a cramped phone booth). A number of lines have been redubbed to fix continuity errors, several scenes where wires are clearly showing on the flying cars have been fixed, and Joanna Cassidy's face has been digitally re-inserted during her memorable death scene (a bunch of nerds complained loudly about the fact that it was clearly a stunt double in the original versions).

Perhaps the most famous flub in Blade Runner is also fixed. In the previous cuts, Roy Batty, as he is dying at the end, symbolically releases a dove to fly off into a clear blue sky, even though it is clearly night in the movie. Scott has gone back and digitally inserted a new computer-generated night sky background to fit the time of day. Unfortunately, it looks awful and they should have just stuck with the blue sky for symbolic value or something.

--A new, albeit very brief, CGI shot of the unicorn is added to the now-famous dream sequence, for reasons that aren't clear to me. It looks ridiculous.

--A number of rare scenes from both the notorious Workprint edition and the International Cut are included. The stuff from the Workprint (I'll talk about that version later this week) mostly consists of footage from the "Animoid Row"/Zhora scene (including weird go-go dancers wearing hockey masks), and it's fitted seamlessly into the original narrative. It's pretty cool.

The stuff from the International Cut I'm actually very surprised they even included, because most of it is just a bunch of graphic violence that the studio didn't want shown here in the States. The new IC scenes don't add much other than shock value for those who haven't seen them. Most of it is just unneccesary, like an absolutely disgusting shot of Roy Batty sticking a nail through his hand, or when one of the replicants breaks Harrison Ford's nose in decidedly unsanitary fashion. Tyrell's death scene is also hideously violent, taken straight from the IC.

--Maybe it's just me, but it seems like most of the outdoors scenes in the Final Cut have a faint blue tint to them, like they were retouched with a different filter for this new version. It's pretty distracting, and takes away from the visuals, if you ask me, but it probably isn't really too noticeable unless you're a rabid BR dweeb like me.

In all, the Final Cut really doesn't change my opinion of the film in any way. I didn't expect to be blown away by any of the changes, especially since I'd seen most of them in different versions already. A lot of the new stuff is cool, but merely cosmetic. The film's main flaws- confusing story, muddled themes, boring leading man performance- are still there. The story still takes a backseat far away from the visuals, and Harrison Ford's character is still a cipher.

I still love the movie and think it's an amazing technical achievement, but honestly, when I sit down to watch it in the future, I'm probably going to just pop in the Director's Cut again.

Once again, I'm going to try to do a week-long BR fest detailing my experience being bombarded by all the awesome crap in the five-disc collector's edition, so stay tuned. Tomorrow we'll go into the incredible deleted scenes. Until then, though, let's finish with the awesome Final Cut trailer.