Cacique-Borja, Oversimplified

Oversimplified

 

 

The 1991 film was a bad example of “American” movies. While Hollywood’s signature films require happy endings, there has to be something else to the movie in order for it to be a successful blockbuster. The 1991 film felt, for lack of a better word, dumbed down. The placement of the voice over was more annoying than helpful and the movie could have been more faithful to the book. In comparison to the 1991 film, the Director’s cut had some crucial cuts that were made explicitly to improve the quality of the movie. The major quality improvement was the omission of the voice over by Harrison Ford. The omission allowed the audience to make their own interpretation of what was happening in the film which also engaged the audience more.

The second improvement was the addition of an 11 second segment of a unicorn running through a forest. The unicorn was the visual representation of one of the book’s main points, the value of “real” animals. Throughout the movie it’s hinted and talked about the high price of “real” animals but it’s never explicitly explained why the prices are so high. Thus the unicorn is able to pull all those thoughts together to show that the “real” animals don’t particularly exist anymore but they are dreamed about just like a unicorn is.

The last main change between the 1991 and the Director’s cut was the last scene. The Director’s cut omitted the most of the country side shot while the 1991 showed Deckard and Racheal head into uncertainty in a car along a beautiful country road. Ridley Scott must have omitted that scene because the book did not have a happy ending. The book left the reader in an uncertain phase where nobody knew if Deckard was happy accepting androids and electrical animals as beings. The ending of 1991 was not true to the book which must have received a lot of criticism by the fans of Dick’s novel.

In my opinion the Director’s cut was a better movie because it didn’t try to over emphasize the importance of Rick Deckard’s feelings. At the same time I only saw the Director’s cut as a first draft to a movie that could have been a lot better. Scott was able to compress a lot of themes into either one character or short scenes but Mercerism and Friendly should have not been taken out of the equation. Blade Runner is a Lord of the Rings type of movie because the book demands obscene amounts of time to develop the plot correctly. I think the 1991 version should be completely erased from everybody’s memories and have the Director’s Cut be the baseline.

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