While Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic Blade Runner has numerous different cuts, the Theatrical Cut was altered pretty substantially by each revision. Blade Runner was originally released in 1982. An adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Blade Runner was a sci-fi noir mashup that served as director Ridley Scott’s followup to his smash hit Alien. Like Alien, Blade Runner fused sci-fi tropes with another, darker genre to tell a story of a bleak future where nothing is as it seems. Unlike Alien, Blade Runner was not a success upon release. Instead, Scott’s sophomore effort took years to find fans after a financially disastrous original release.
The original Theatrical Cut of Blade Runner was rejected by audiences and left critics bemused. Although studio executives meddled with Scott’s vision to make Blade Runner‘s complex plot easier to follow, their alterations arguably made the movie more confusing. As such, Blade Runner was considered a misguided folly for some time. However, like the frosty reviews received by director Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining upon its initial release, the critical consensus around Blade Runner changed considerably as time wore on. Soon, Blade Runner was considered a misunderstood masterpiece. Within a decade, Scott had the backing necessary to release the first of many, many new cuts of Blade Runner between 1990 and 2007.
6 The International Cut Amped Up Blade Runner’s Gore
The first “new” cut of Blade Runner that viewers saw wasn’t really new at all and certainly was not recut by Scott. However, the International Cut was still a little closer to the director’s original vision. Released to international audiences, Blade Runner’s International Cut reinstated some of the movie’s most violent scenes. Blade Runner’s scene of Roy Batty injuring himself was reinstated as were a few other moments of gore, but the rest of the International Cut stayed true to the Theatrical Cut. The International Cut kept Harrison Ford’s narration as Deckard. This was a potentially clarifying detail that Scott wanted to cut, but the studio insisted on re-recording.
5 The International Cut Kept The Theatrical Cut’s Ending
The International Cut also kept the Theatrical Cut’s questionable happy ending. Tacked on at the insistence of studio executives, the Blade Runner Theatrical Cut’s ending sees Deckard and Rachael the replicant drive off merrily into the sunset after Roy Batty’s death. Bizarrely, this cheerful coda reused footage from the opening scenes of The Shining to save on costs. The ending also saw Deckard’s narration awkwardly inform viewers that Rachael, unlike other replicants, didn’t have a limited lifespan. This rendered the iconic line “It’s too bad she won’t live—but then again, who does?” meaningless but the new conclusion meant that viewers of the International Cut and Theatrical Cut got a happy ending.
4 The Broadcast Cut Made Blade Runner More Family-Friendly
Another cut of Blade Runner that Scott had no part in, the Broadcast Cut of the movie trimmed its gore, profanity, and adult content down further for broadcast viewing. While the darkest deaths in Blade Runner’s script had already been cut before filming even began, there were still some gruesome moments in the finished film. The Broadcast Cut also made the movie’s story easier to follow, although this involved artlessly cutting out one of its most intriguing ambiguities in the process. In the Broadcast Cut, a teaser explained that Deckard was definitively not a replicant. This massive spoiler inherently limited how viewers could interpret Blade Runner’s theoretically open-ended plot.
3 The Director’s Cut Reinstated Deckard’s Dream Sequence
A decade after Blade Runner’s Theatrical Cut was released, the Director’s Cut hit theaters for the first time. The biggest change in this version of Blade Runner was the removal of Deckard’s narration, as well as the addition of the unicorn dream sequence. The unicorn dream scene sees Deckard dream about encountering the mythical beast while he plays the piano in a forest. While this sequence in and of itself doesn’t seem to have a massive impact on the movie’s plot, the ending of Blade Runner’s Director’s Cut sees Deckard find an origami unicorn left in his apartment. The implication is that Deckard could be a replicant with implanted artificial memories.
2 The Director’s Cut Made Deckard A Replicant (Sort Of)
Since Blade Runner’s unicorn origami was left in the apartment by Edward James Olmos’ Gaff, this implies that Gaff knew about Deckard’s dream. This, in turn, implies that Deckard’s memories aren’t natural or his own. Of course, if Deckard is a replicant, this makes the story of Blade Runner a lot more morally murky. Throughout Blade Runner, viewers follow a character who ruthlessly kills replicants and justifies this through the assumption that they are not sentient beings. The revelation that replicants have emotions and can empathize is one thing, but revealing that Deckard himself is a replicant completely rewrites the movie’s narrative and makes Blade Runner’s main character a tragic figure unbeknownst to himself.
1 The Final Cut Brought Scott’s Blade Runner Vision Together
Released in 2007, The Final Cut was Scott’s definitive version of Blade Runner. This version of the movie reinstated the violent scenes cut from earlier versions of Blade Runner, offered a longer version of the unicorn dream sequence, and featured some additional dialogue recorded for this edition. While Blade Runner’s Final Cut is seen by many viewers as the decisive take on the material, there are not as many differences between the Director’s Cut and the Final Cut as some viewers might anticipate. Adding the violence of the International Cut back in allowed the Final Cut to combine the less censored Blade Runner with the Director’s Cut.
However, the tone of Blade Runner’s Final Cut and Director’s Cut remains pretty similar. In contrast, the Theatrical Cut is a much lighter and more straightforward movie, while the Broadcast Cut is even less ambiguous and lighter again. Ironically, the Broadcast Cut’s attempts to make Blade Runner’s story easier to understand and more family-friendly make it arguably the least popular version of Scott’s movie. The ambiguous, strange story of Dick’s novel does not translate well to a streamlined movie adaptation. This makes the longer, later versions of Blade Runner closer to the tone of the writer’s work than the Theatrical Cut, proving that Scott’s many revisions were worth the effort.