Blade Runner Recut with the Sci-Fi Masterpiece’s Unused Original Footage

I recent­ly talked with a friend who’s plan­ning to sched­ule a screen­ing of Blade Run­ner at her film fes­ti­val. We dis­cussed the impor­tant deci­sion that any­one who wants to show Rid­ley Scot­t’s Philip K. Dick-adapt­ing mas­ter­piece faces: which Blade Run­ner? Sev­en dif­fer­ent offi­cial cuts exist: many would instinc­tive­ly choose the 2007 “final cut,” some might pre­fer the 1992 “direc­tor’s cut,” and a curi­ous minor­i­ty might even like to see the cut orig­i­nal­ly released in U.S. the­aters in 1982, fea­tur­ing the Har­ri­son Ford voiceover and hap­py end­ing that fans now con­sid­er ruinous.

But now we have yet anoth­er cut of Blade Run­ner, per­haps the most unusu­al of them all: a “new” ver­sion made out of shots that, even if you’ve seen every offi­cial cut of the film, you may nev­er have seen before. “Some enter­pris­ing souls have com­piled a B‑roll cut of the film, using all of the excised footage that was not incor­po­rat­ed in the pre­vi­ous cuts,” writes Nerdis­t’s Joseph McCabe. “There’s so much here that most Blade Run­ner fans have not seen before that it’s absolute­ly required view­ing. I found it worth watch­ing all forty-five min­utes just to hear Edward James Olmos’ gruff Gaff hilar­i­ous­ly exclaim, ‘I spit on meta­physics!’ ” Not to men­tion all the new views of the pic­ture’s still-strik­ing pro­duc­tion design.

That run­ning time, over an hour short­er than every oth­er cut, effec­tive­ly con­dens­es Blade Run­ner into a short film. It does­n’t play quite like any of the wide­ly seen ver­sions of the film, even though it retains the hat­ed nar­ra­tion and incon­gru­ous Hol­ly­wood end­ing of the Amer­i­can the­atri­cal cut. But the ele­ments that feel clunky, over-explana­to­ry, and audi­ence-dis­trust­ing in a two-hour Blade Run­ner some­how work bet­ter in this briefer ren­di­tion. (Cer­tain­ly Ford’s voiceover, awk­ward though it always sounds, helps this trimmed-down sto­ry cohere.) You haven’t real­ly seen Blade Run­ner, so many who love the movie feel, until you’ve seen every Blade Run­ner — but even now, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of them.

via Nerdist

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Mak­ing Blade Run­ner: See the Orig­i­nal Sketch­book, Sto­ry­boards, On-Set Polaroids & More

The Blade Run­ner Pro­mo­tion­al Film

Blade Run­ner: The Pil­lar of Sci-Fi Cin­e­ma that Siskel, Ebert, and Stu­dio Execs Orig­i­nal­ly Hat­ed

The Blade Run­ner Sketch­book: The Orig­i­nal Art of Syd Mead and Rid­ley Scott Online

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Rid­ley Scott’s Blade Run­ner Made of 12,597 Water­col­or Paint­ings

The City in Cin­e­ma Mini-Doc­u­men­taries Reveal the Los Ange­les of Blade Run­ner, Her, Dri­ve, Repo Man, and More

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.