I know there is some discussion of this topic (albeit the UK SE) on the thread for the theatrical re-release of the film, but I didn't want to thread crap. Also, this monumental release probably deserves a thread of its own.

I was set to order - with a gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket - the five disc SE of BLADE RUNNER. However, I'm not THAT crazy about any of the extras and the space it would take up is a definite minus. I don't have a clear understanding of the differences - content wise - between the five disc set and the plain jane four disc set. Could someone explain or point me to a website with that information?

In terms of actual additional DISC content, disc 5 contains a hugely significant supplement: the original Workprint, considered by Bladerunnerologists to be the Ur-text upon which all other variant gospels were derived. It comes with a commentary by Future Noir author Paul M.Sammon.

There's also a featurette on the same disc, entitled "All Our Variant Futures"*, comparing and contrasting all the variant cuts of BR.

If you don't want the needless hassle of the region 1 briefcase and the toys it contains, go for the region 2 tin. (If you absolutely must have NTSC because you can hear PAL speedup, see X-Rays and taste ultra-violet, then there might conceivably be a region 3 edition that dispenses with the fancy Voight-Kampff packaging...I haven't looked myself, but cd-wow might be a good place to start.)


* Edited to remove completely fictitious information.

Thanks, Steve!

Guilty on the first count, at least. Though, admittedly, some stuff I have gotten used to over the years now requires the PAL speed-up (sings along to Theme from The Fall Guy). I've gone for the 5 disc HD-DVD set from Region 1 (in the naff breiefcase) for big screen projection, and also the 4 disc DVD set from Region 1 (hate the PAL audio speed-up!) for more portable viewing extractions. What a double dip they got me for!

I've been working my way through the five-disc set. The deleted scenes section on disc 4 contains some really astonishing material, notably a terrific scene in which Deckard pays a second visit to Holden in the hospital (while Bryant and Gafff watch the conversation on a TV screen), and two alternate takes of the happy ending, one with voiceover, one without, neither containing any mention of Rachael not having a termination date. The non-voiceover version may well be my favorite of any of the film's endings: the final line - Rachael telling Deckard that the two of them are "made for each other" - is wonderfully ambiguous.

I'm glad Sammon is involved. I mean, who better?

There's a very cheeky edit in the featurette entitled Deck-a-Rep. After Ridley Scott proclaims that you must be 'a moron' to not realise that Deckard is a replicant following his discovery of the paper unicorn, it cuts to Frank Darabont being absolutely insistent in his belief that Deckard is not a replicant.

This is indeed, a fantastic set.

Gotta agree with Brad on that 'made for each other' line - all these years of merely assuming that those closing moments of the original cut's finale were designed with re-assurance in mind, and it turns out that a final teasing ambiguity was built in there all the time.

Darabont's right, though, in his assertion that the story falls apart if we explicitly state that Deckard Is A Replicant: what makes the story resonate is the moral role-reversal that takes place between hunter and hunted, with the non-human paradoxically proving the most human in the final analysis. Deckard has no humanity to lose if he's One Of Them from the beginning, so the moral fabric of the piece unravels completely if we go down that route - replaced only with a sort of bleak irony, where formerly we had something much richer.

This would have been much better kept as an enigmatic subtext: but when the director himself comes out and states categorically that Deckard Is A Replicant, all the pleasure of ambiguity is rudely taken away in favour of a cast-iron certainty that's actually a bit rusty round the bottom. As Hampton Fancher states in the Dangerous Days doc, the question is interesting but the answer is stupid. :)

As for the Workprint: very interesting. BR geeks will spend a happy two hours spotting the miniscule editorial variations - the V-K interrogation scene by Deckard of Rachael confusingly contains an overdub of the "spider memories" dialogue from their later conversation in his apartment (maybe it was just used as temp dialogue to bridge the dissolve), and there's a tiny bit less Rutger Hauer in this rough cut - his "So where do we find this...J.F. Sebastian?" line is missing from the end of the scene at Chew's, and his whispered "checkmate" dialogue to JF in the Tyrell elevator is delivered offscreen - so I'm guessing they realised the film needed more of his dynamite presence when fine-tuning later - but the major difference lies in the music score.

The first half of the film is pretty much identical to the version(s) we're used to (minus that great Hades-reflected-in-iris closeup FX shot) but by around the mid-point they must have run out of Vangelis music, as there are significant changes from this point onwards. For one thing, there's no Love Theme to accompany Deckard's unconventional romancing of Rachael: a different temp Vangelis cue plays here in its place, and it's fascinating to see how the scene plays without that iconic track. This early version (all-electronic, no sax theme) lacks the dark undercurrent of violence of the final composition, and the scene is weaker because of it.

But once we cut to the chase in the Bradbury Building, Vangelis vanishes completely and it's rather a shock to see the sequence play out with a variety of orchestral library "suspense" pieces - including, of all things, a couple of Jerry Goldsmith's PLANET OF THE APES cues!! Very distracting, and I must admit to finding the final act less than engaging without the brilliant electronic atmospherics of Vangelis. And to end the film without its majestic End Title leaves the finale sorely wanting - the film just sort of stops as the lift door closes on Deckard and Rachael and "THE END" appears on screen (no happy ending mandated at this early stage).

But as disappointing as this rough cut ending is, it's invaluable in illustrating the value of a great music score to the lasting impact and success of a film. (These days, producers would probably insist on a Whitney Houston song to send the audience out on a "high". How many films these days actually roll end credits with a purpose-written instrumental cue playing, let alone as gloriously as BLADE RUNNER's? Film music, like the film poster, is a dying art.) Picture quality on this Workprint is usually pretty good, although as it's derived from a positive print source there are a few contrast and sharpness issues throughout - it's also been zoomed-in slightly (to around 2.20:1), presumably to crop print damage. But the restorationists have certainly worked wonders on it, to judge from the "before" clips.

By the way: in a couple of the featurettes, there's a quick clip of a shot that I don't think has been included in any of the cuts of the film: it's another extreme closeup of an iris, this time belonging to Leon...with Holden reflected in it as he gives him the V-K test. It's pretty great.

That was the major thing I noticed when I saw it years ago too. As you say, a lot of dramatic tension was lost because of it, although I had to think about it to figure out why. There was part of me that wondered if things were edited differently, but the thing that kept bugging me was the score, which I *knew* was different and not in a good way.

By the way, I also completely agree with you about why the idea that Deckard is a replicant completely guts the movie from a moral standpoint. I just ignore Scott's assertions on this score, and I'm grateful for the interpretation advanced here the other day that the unicorn daydream is actually Deckard thinking about what he's seen in Rachel's file.

The more I delve into this wealth of supplements, the more I realise how little I've actually understood about BR this past two decades. (True wisdom, at last.)

Take the unicorn sequence, and the scene that surrounds it, for instance. Deckard sits at the piano, drifting in an out of sleep, studying the array of old photographs arranged in front of the music. Now, I'd always assumed these were Deckard's photos - hey, they're in his apartment, we're given no other information surrounding their paternity, so who else would they belong to? (The deleted scenes montage on disc 4 also includes an additional bit where Deckard actually selects one of the photos, a picture of him and his ex-wife in happier times on a sunlit porch, reinforcing my idea that all the pictures were his - and at the same time, reinforcing his kinship with the replicants, who also dote on their precious collection of photos and the false memories they contain.)

So imagine my confusion when, in THE FINAL CUT's second commentary track, Katherine Haber states that these old photos in fact belong to Rachael - presumably Deckard has requested them from Tyrell, to better comprehend his quarry. So when Deckard's daydream at the piano segues into the unicorn sequence, Deckard is possibly recollecting another of Rachael's Tyrell memory implants, rather than his own. Hence, the sequence no longer stands as irrefutable "proof" of Deckard's status as Replicant (as Ridley Scott maintains). This unusual reading is actually voiced by BR fan Frank Darabont in one of the featurettes on disc 4 (as Brad notes above), an opinion which I dismissed at first as far-fetched and not supported by my (then-erroneous) understanding of the material. But supported by Haber's testimony, Darabont's argument is actually quite persuasive: the unicorn, being a "classic" female dream archetype, is far more likely to be a memory of Rachael's than Deckard's*, so Gaff's final gift of the origami unicorn outside Deckard's apartment does not, as conventional wisdom has it, signify that Deckard is a replicant but is simply Gaff's personal message to Rick: go for it, take her, escape with my blessing. (Kind of the way we were invited to read the origami unicorn in the original theatrical cut: Gaff was here, and he let her live. A small moment of humanity from an unexpected source.) I find this an increasingly attractive alternate hypothesis...

And still the subject of photographs in BR continues to confuse me. Take the Esper sequence: Deckard puts the 3D photo he found amongst Leon's belongings into the machine and zooms in, finding a man's forearm ("Hello, Roy," he murmurs only in the Workprint) and then, a sleeping woman ("Zhora or Pris?" he wonders aloud in the Workprint - you can see his lips still move in the other versions, although his dialogue was removed). But aren't the photos the replicants treasure all artificial constructs, provided by the Tyrell Corp to reinforce their false memory implants? If Leon has a snapshot of Batty and Zhora in his belongings, doesn't that muddy the waters a bit, since this would then be a "true" memory? (And why carry a snap of them anyway, if the people themselves are right there beside you all the time?) Maybe that's Tyrell's stratagy, though: to mix together the real and unreal memories, so the replicants are unable to make the distinction between them and so are impelled to accept the false implants. All memories, to the replicants, are intensely valuable and the subject of great obsession (except perhaps to Roy, who seems to regard Leon's concern over the recovery of his snaps with cool amusement), so perhaps they would be driven to supplement their own store of false memories (and the fake photos that reinforce them) with new ones, with photographic evidence to "prove" them. They're inherently insecure beings, so any sort of existential reassurance they can give themselves is eagerly seized upon. Even though they know they are artificial creations, their memories are all they have...

Sorry for that hugely digressive ramble, but this is really a great, great film. Ideas pour out of it like a waterfall.

* Of course, Deckard can be forced to "remember" anything his Tyrell memory implants dictate, since as an artificial contsruct he's not bound by the traditional mandates of male/female dream patterns. So the argument isn't watertight.

** Weirdly, although this is the basic premise of the original Philip K.Dick novel, Scott claimed at the time that this was "too esoteric" a notion to be explored in the film...even though that's the (to me) inescapable interpretation one comes away with from all versions of BR. Deckard is dehumanised by the hunt, even as his prey embrace their humanity ever more tightly. Perhaps Sir Rid doesn't understand the film as well as the fans...

By the way, mention must be made of the hilarious double-act provided by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples on the second commentary track of THE FINAL CUT; it sounds like outtakes from the Matthau-Burns routines in Neil Simon's THE SUNSHINE BOYS. :P

HF: I'm Hampton Fancher, one of the writers.
DP: I'm David Peoples, a writer they brought in to tidy up the mess Hampton Fancher left.

As they argue back and forth good-naturedly about who wrote what and when, Peoples finally cries "Hampton, you can't even remember your own script!!" Well worth a listen.

Steve Guariento's domination of this thread (and his fascinating insights) have prompted an image in my own mind of him locked away in a shaft-lit apartment, obsessing over a HD 3D image scan of every single moment of the entire 5 disc Blade Runner set, whereupon he will eventually come to the realisation that he is a replicant whose previous Mobius posts are merely memory implants inserted by forum moderators.

Steve:

The "bush outside your window, orange body green legs" line is still audible in the release version(s) of BLADE RUNNER during Rachel's test, however it's pretty low in the mix, almost subliminal. I'm guessing the temp mix on the WP simply has the line louder.

I can't friggin' wait for this set to arrive in my mailbox!

Vincent

"I want more life, Harbour!

I'd always assumed that the explanation was a little more simple than that.

Yes, the replicants have photographs which reinforce false memories, thus being precious to them, but that photo clearly seems to be one which Leon shot himself. Due to his relationship with his "false" photographed memories, he's following that example and creating new memories by taking new photographs in the present.

Isn't that sort of the reason why most of us take snapshots? We relate to photos from our past which reinforce and inform our memories so it's important to us to keep snapping photographs in our present, everyday life.

I don't see it so much as part of Tyrell's masterplan so much as simple (or complicated), sentimental humanity manifesting itself in a replicant.

Sounds right to me.

I really miss this sort of narrative opacity in high profile genre filmmaking. There's something about the cloudy intentions and under-defined plot points in things like Carpenter's THE THING or THE EXORCIST that allow them to flower in memory, and keep the viewer coming back to try to close hands around the experience. Hell, ALIEN is beautifully intangible in this regard.

It's certainly the x factor missing in Scott's subsequent work. As his films have gotten tidier, they've become less interesting.

The Nexus 6 doesn't have false memories, Tyrell explained that Rachel was an experiment, possibly a prototype. Roy and the others are all at least several years old, and are clearly aware that they are replicants.

The reason why Leon has and takes photos is precisely because he has no false memories to fall back on. He takes photos of and treasures even the most mundane moments of his life because he doesn't have any other memories, false or otherwise.

William of Occam strikes again. :)

Yeah, all these explanations voiced above sound plausible. (Try keeping your own thoughts straight after spending a week locked inside a room with fifteen hours of BR supplements rattling around inside your skull.) Maybe it's because I don't take snaps myself - never have, never will: I much prefer my own fuzzy memory implants to the "accountant's truth" (thanks Werner) of the photograph - that I found it hard to comprehend Leon's actions.

Eh, I'm probably just nearing the end of my 4-year lifespan.

I've watched things you people wouldn't believe...

Yea Best Buy! It looks like they're offereing the FIVE DISC set without the briefcase and other "goodies". You can get it for $54.99, about the same as the breifcase set on AMAZON, but you won't have those storage problems!

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?sk...t&cp=1&id=20605

Probably would have clarified things if the film ended with Dekker and Rachel in a diner eating onion rings.

"You probably don't even hear it when it happens. Who does?"

Here is a detailed breakdown of everything new in the film:

http://sffmedia.com/content/view/156/1/

In the UK, HMV are selling the five-disc set for £23 (approximately $46).

I think the packaging of the 5 discs without the briefcase is the same as how they're packaged within it. Seems if it costs the same, and the discs will sit on your shelf the same, you might as well as get the rest of the swag.

Been comparing some prices. I'm not sure why the the 5 disc only sets on HD-DVD and BR only cost around $30 while the SD version costs $55 and up but I'm guessing it's to help promote the HD formats. Frustrating though for those of us who are waiting to see who wins the war.

AMAZON - $54.99 (5-Disc SD Edition - SUITCASE EDITION!)

DVD EMPIRE - $62.35 (5-Disc SD Edition - SUITCASE EDITION!)

DVD PLANET - $63.72 (Non-suitcase version pictured but details list SUITCASE)

WAL-MART - $57.87 (5-Disc SD Edition DISCS ONLY - NO SUITCASE)

BEST BUY - $54.99 (5-Disc SD Edition DISCS ONLY - NO SUITCASE)

DEEP DISCOUNT - $53.99 (5-Disc SD Edition DISCS ONLY - NO SUITCASE)

BLADE RUNNER TRILOGY - CD SOUNDTRACK AMAZON - $23.99

I picked up the 4-disc set at Kim's this week. Generally, I'm just blown away by it. This is a set that just gives and gives to Blade Runner fans. The alternate takes and outtakes viewed in the documentary features are restored to glittering perfection, giving BR fans a surreal window into their favorite universe... as if it was a living, breathing reality exisiting seperate from any mere movie. Plus, there's all those fascinating production stories, perhaps well-known lore to the hardcore fans but new to me: Zhora's snake dance was gonna be claymation?!? Daryl Hannah's fist going through that truck window was not intentional! (She shows off the 25 yr old scar.)

But there's something about the Final Cut DVD that I'm not too thrilled about which isn't getting much talk, so I thought I should bring it up here. It's a phenomena I've been seeing in some new movies on DVD that I call "turquoise-vision", where glaring light or its resulting highlights or reflections have a distinct blue-green tone when it was all white light initially. (Dig any of the endless Bourne Ultimatum DVD TV ads for examples.) In The Final Cut, all the rain splashing on cement has blue-green highlights instead of glowing white. The same goes for wet reflections of light on leather jackets, the blimp searchlights streaming into the Bradbury Building, smoke caught in glaring light, and accents of formerly-white light on all sorts of metals, clothes, and actors' faces.

The DVD Beaver comparision linked HERE gives some visual examples, but none of the extreme ones. The review of the Final Cut visual quality also makes note of the blue tones.

I thought I was going crazy or my TV needed repairs, until I checked the older versions of Blade Runner on Disc Three... all have normal levels of blue light. I particularly don't like this new process because it can also affect the white of eyes, teeth, shirts, etc. Once you notice it, the repeated blue-greens can get rather monotonous. I'm disappointed because I don't particularly remember the Final Cut looking like this at the Ziegfeld and I liked the Final Cut version the best. Good news for fans of the older versions, though. All three look damn good.

Anyone else getting the Blues? What was the thinking behind this?

(EDIT: According to a retraction at The Digital Bits, Best Buy is NOT selling a suitcase-less version of the 5-disc set.)

William is right about BEST BUY. Their website page with the $54.99 price now shows the suitcase.

Again, frustrating that HD-DVD or BLU-RAY owners can get the 5-disc set by themselves for only $27.85 while us SD holdouts can only get all 5 with the suitcase.

Thanks for the heads up William.

I am SO glad that I took advantage of that Walmart sale on HD-DVD players a few weeks ago :)

Regarding the "color changes"- I have no issues with these "changes". Remember, the "archival" versions were not put through the same exacting transfer process that the "Final Cut" was, so it's not at all surprising that they look a little different. I don't find any of the color "tinkering" to be problematic at all.

I do agree with other posters that it would have been great if the alternate "We were made for each other" ending had been used. It fits perfectly with the "Is Deckard a Replicant or not?" question, and although it takes place in a "sunny" landscape, isn't overtly happy and optimistic like the saccharine, phony 1982 ending. It still leaves open the question as to how long Rachael will live, and Deckard for that matter depending on whether he's human or not. It's a great, ambiguous ending full of questions, and I think it would work a lot better than just going to credits on the closing elevator doors.

Other than that, the "Final Cut" is easily my favorite version of this great film.

Vincent

I don't want that briefcase, which reminds me of the faux James Bond plastic one I got for Christmas in the 60's! Or was it "The Man From UNCLE?" It fired orange plastic bullets, anyway.

I picked up the 4 Disc edition at Best Buy for $22.99 this morning and the Final Cut is visually and aurally breathtaking on my 40" Sony LCD through an upnconverted Sony DVD player (I can imagine how it looks on a BR or HD disc). Just can't see spending $30.00 dollars more for the work print and the docs on the 5th disc, in addition to the bulkiness of storing it. I'll just rent the 5th disc from Net Flix if they carry it or hope that a friend picks it up.

Anyways, nice to see that the (DVD) technology has finally caught up to the film.



BTW, as previously was mentioned in this thread, Blade Runner Trilogy: 25th Anniversary 3 CD soundtrack is also streeting today. Amazon com lists the following info about the release:

"Blade Runner Trilogy: 25th Anniversary is a 3-CD set which - for the first time - puts all the pieces together, providing the complete music from the film and a lot more besides.

"CD 1 features the original and remastered soundtrack as it first appeared in 1994, twelve years after the film was released. The second CD contains all the remaining music from the film that did not appear on the original 1994 soundtrack, plus two bonus tracks ('One Alone' and 'Desolation Path'). None of this material has been released before. The third and final disc will be of real interest to Vangelis fans, as it contains an entire album of newly written material composed by Vangelis to mark the 25th anniversary of Blade Runner. The music is strong and flowing, and retains the dark, atmospheric sense of the original score. There are some intriguing spoken word contributions too, from Ridley Scott, Roman Polanski, Oliver Stone and a host of distinguished actors, personalities and world dignitaries."

I've had the 3-disc CD release for around a week now and, although I'm delighted to own it, it's something of a mixed bag. CD1 is, of course, just the same old 1994 CD soundtrack release again - so anyone hoping that the dialogue snippets might have been removed this time around, to present Vangelis' music in its pure and heavenly state, is going to be disappointed. CD2 is really the lure to BR fans: 44 minutes of additional score, again mixed together in a continuous suite (but without those pesky dialogue intrusions, thankfully) - and as a bonus final track, we DO get the "Tears in Rain" cue presented sans Roy Batty poem. Beautiful stuff. It's worth picking up the set simply for the second disc alone (assuming BR fans already own the original CD release).

CD3 is where things start to get problematic. Yes, it's 45 minutes or so of new BR-inspired material; so what's the catch? Two words: jazz saxophone. At least three cues that would otherwise have played out perfectly well are contaminated with unnecessary sax doodlings*, and others compound the situation by venturing boldly yet unwisely into the realm of World Music [shudder]: two of my least favourite forms of musical expression. Throughout this third disc, Vangelis reworks some of the more familiar BR leitmotifs (the Main Title, Rachel's Song, One More Kiss Dear are all chopped about and repurposed) into newer compositions, none of which really hold a candle to the original score but are a pleasant enough footnote to obsessives such as myself; a handful are very good. The "spoken word" contributions are mixed in with the music as if they were dialogue clips from another alternate-world BR movie, and are mostly inaudible (at least, to me) - occasionally, you'll hear a voice and think "hmm, that sounds a bit like Ridley Scott"...but then it's gone. I've listened to the CD three times now, and have only had to skip over 2 of the tracks due to unwarranted sax intrusion, so have no actual problem recommending the CD set.

But Vangelis fans will still need to hang onto their Blade Runner bootlegs, as there are still tracks on there not present on this new soundtrack collection...

* The original Love Theme was the acceptable face of 80s sax, a mostly horrendous trend that still gives me nightmares even today.

And completists shoudn't forget Gary Numan's THE FURY album/CALL OUT THE DOGS single that samples Blade Runner to death.

Victor

I'll see your Gary Numan and raise you a Cosmic Baby. (And throw in the BR-sampling FSOL's "My Kingdom" too because I love it)

Picked up the 4-disc SD set from Best Buy today for $22.99. All of the copies of the 4-discer on the shelves had stickers on the shrinkwrap detailing the inclusion of the "Final Cut" and "three theatrical release versions", however, about half of them also included a line that said "Plus, Rare Workprint Version" -- alas there was no surprise bonus 5th disc in my set. I'm assuming they just mis-stickered some of the units but will be more than happy to send my proof of purchase to Warners when they decide to make good on that "advertised" bonus work print disc. ;)

My 4 Disc copy included the rare "work print."



Spoilers



... April fools! :lol:

Would have been nice though.

Got the four-disc set yesterday via Amazon. Very happy to see that the first three discs (the FINAL CUT, the three other theatrical versions and the documentary disc) are all subtitled in English!

Unfortunately, the fourth disc - with the "deleted/alternate scenes" that plays pretty much like another version of the movie - isn't captioned or subtitled at all. Considering there's a nice, fat intro that warns viewers about poor audio in some of the clips, you would have thought captioning/subtitling would be a must there.

Drats. Ah well, the rest will be great to go through and worth the $22 I paid.