Friday, October 6, 2017

'BLADE RUNNER'.....THE ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY FINAL, FINAL, VERY LAST CUT.....(WE THINK)

Blade Runner (1982)   Several years ago, a co-worker gifted us with what you'd call the ultimate "Blade Runner" box set......meant primarily for the ultimate 'Blade Runner' fanboys.....of which, irony of ironies, we are not.

         Inside the damn thing, shaped like a small fake-metallic suitcase, we found multiple DVDs of virtually every cut of the film that ever existed........also a toy flying car for us to play with and a replica of one of Edward James Olmos's little Origami thingies.......truly a fine treasure for the "Blade Runner" aficionados with way, way too much time on their hands......

           For purposes of this post, we'll stick to what's referred to as The Final Cut, the only version fully endorsed by director Ridley Scott himself......

           So this is life in a couple years?  Watching it again, we laughed when we realized it's set in 2019......(Near-Futurism visions are always risky......look what Kubrick thought we'd accomplish in "2001"....he even imagined Pan Am would still be around....)

             But some of it rings true. The rich live in gleaming skyscrapers with polished marble floors....the rest of us patiently wait for a stool to open up at the noodle bar.  A vivid representation of Trump's America......

             To Quote 'Mean Girls'......stop trying to make flying cars happen....Memo to all sci-fi writers and film directors........guys, pay attention to where the technology's really headed......we don't want cars that fly, we want cars that drive without us.........they don't have to float in the air as long we can all sit our asses down in leather seats and let the cars zip us around, parallel park and not hit anybody......

              Are Replicants covered by DACA?   A tricky analogy, but we'll give it a try.  The film's androids are fully assembled, man-made Immigrants, designed to perform all the crappy jobs we don't want to touch. And we sure as hell don't want them sneaking back to Earth, given that they're all sort of like Trump's Fantasy-Mexicans........violent thugs who mean us harm. You could call them the film's twisted version of the Dreamers.....in that they're dreaming of extending their limited life span while the government wants them gone.....

               How has Deckard lived so long uninjured?   We still ponder the same question, all these years later......the film establishes Harrison Ford's Rick Deckard as a world class, legendary hunter/killer of Replicants. We wonder how he's accomplished this when any super-strength Replicant can mop the floor with him......(which happens with great frequency throughout the film)  By 2019, he ought to look like he's gone 20 rounds with Dave Bautista in a steel cage
match.......unless of course.....cue the the overly dramatic Bum-Bum-BUM music......Rick's a machine himself.......(we'll go no farther with that heavily debated topic in order to avoid a roaring migraine....)

              And finally......a farewell tribute to Harrison Ford's maligned voice-overs  A quick break in the rules here, since we promised to only discuss the final cut......and Ford's famously ridiculed pseudo-Noir narration appeared in the theatrical version, demanded by producers nervously worried that nobody knew what the hell was going on the movie.......

               We could think of any number of movies we've suffered through in the last few years that could have used a offscreen narrator to clarify the plot for us.......we particularly mean the ones where the actors mumble/whisper their dialogue to each other in hushed tones....

                And that's as many random thoughts that crossed our mind as we struggled to figure out how the Final Cut DVD fit back into that ungainly 'Blade Runner' Collector's case and how to close the case's cute little latches. 3 stars (***) for the always fascinating film.....2 stars for that damn case, for which we've yet to find a shelf to fit it on......




              

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