From 'Blade Crawler' (original cut, 1982) to grand poetic vision (director's cut, 1992)

Rating: 9/10 (28 February 2016)

Ridley Scott's phenomenal feature film debut, The Duellists, was followed by yet another masterpiece, Alien. His third effort, Blade Runner, eventually proved to be an all-time classic, too, but it didn't look like that back in 1982. I saw the original theatrical version back then and I was disappointed. It might have had to do with the fact that at the time I was expecting the magic and excitement of Star Wars (especially from a movie with Harrison Ford in it), and Blade Runner didn't quite measure up to that standard. Another plausible explanation for my then lukewarm response is that I simply found it painfully slow-paced and boring, and the dismal explanatory voice-overs made it virtually impossible to become immersed in the film.
The 1992 director's cut completely changed my mind, partly because I had grown up and got accustomed to art movies by then and partly because it removed the unnecessary voice-overs, which resulted in a film with a totally different feel. The deeply elegiac story about the true meaning of humanity finally matched the gorgeous visual feast.
Viewed strictly in its later incarnations (the director's cut and the 2007 'final cut' which is basically the same as the 1992 version with only minor alterations), Blade Runner is one of the greatest 'pure' SF films (not mixed with action/adventure or other genres) that has a solid place alongside such milestones as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Solaris (1972) or A.I. (1999).