Switching replicants in the middle of a dystopian dream can get you wet and sometimes scolded, as director Ridley Scott discovered with recent commentary surrounding the release of Blade Runner: The Final Cut. One gets the sense that audiences feel entitled to their initial experiences of a film and they don't take too well to said experiences being tampered with, either through a director who's poised to deliver his vision as he initially intended it, or through state-of-the-art technology that can visually perfect it.
Whether or not you feel that Ridley Scott is pulling a fast one by now claiming that Deckard was always intended to be a replicant, and whether or not that makes you feel differently about the film's narrative thrust, or whether or not that admission adds heft to a project that was already heavily-loaded with gravitas, you can decide for yourself when the five (that's right, count 'em, five)-disc DVD release of Blade Runner: The Final Cut hits the shelves in December. Until then, Ted Greenwald's interview with Ridley Scott for Wired (Issue 15:10) offers keen insight into the director's current stance with some sweet reminisces from the likes of Neil Gaiman, Zack Snyder, Raymond Kelly, J. Craig Venter, Thom Mayne, Ray Kurzweil, Mamoru Oshii, and Moby about what Blade Runner meant to them when they first saw it.
One of my favorite bits, albeit a throwaway without much explanation, is Scott's admission that he consciously chose to go Asian with his futuristic scenario rather than Hispanic. Several Chicano theorists have criticized Scott for what they feel is an inaccurate depiction of the future San Angeles.
Twitch, of course, has been all over this, since Todd Brown's initial announcement back in May, Aardvark's follow-up in July, and Todd's most recent update in August when it was announced the film would screen in Venice. Fred Kaplan at The New York Times covered the Final Cut's late September appearance at The New York Film Festival.
Photo of Ridley Scott courtesy of Robert Maxell and Wired Magazine. Cross-published on Twitch.
