Hoo: Bladerunner: Let the Voice be Over

            The voiceover track that supplemented Ridley Scott’s 1982 film, Bladerunner, was a very interesting addition to the film as a whole. And by interesting, I definitely do not mean good. The decision to add the voiceover track was made by the producers at Tandem Productions Inc. The reason for this change was the negative audience reaction to the test screenings. “Clearly, the public was expecting another ‘feel good’ space movie with Harrison Ford cracking jokes in between blasting aliens with a ray gun. What they got was an antiseptic, downbeat detective story that apparently would not play in New York or Los Angeles, let alone those all important drive-ins in the Midwest” (Pfeiffer 124). It is understandable that the producers wanted to make as much money as possible, but it came at the cost of the art and visions of Ridley Scott as well as Harrison Ford. Harrison Ford was not particularly pleased with the producers’ decision to make him narrate the voiceovers. Much to Ford’s chagrin, he was contractually obligated to do the narration. Ford went on to state, "When we started shooting it had been tacitly agreed that the version of the film that we had agreed upon was the version without voiceover narration. It was a fucking nightmare. I thought that the film had worked without the narration. But now I was stuck re-creating that narration. And I was obliged to do the voiceovers for people that did not represent the director's interests" (Ford).

            However, it was the folly of the masses that caused the voiceover to be put in place. Perhaps the average American movie viewer is not clever enough to pick up on the subtleties provided in the film. Perhaps the film would have done even worse at the box-office if the narration were not added in post-production. Regardless, the tweaks made by the producers clearly had a negative effect on the film as a piece of art. The incredibly cheesy, poorly written narration does no good to the film. Ford’s attitude towards the narration is made evident in his almost sarcastic monotone. “Confidants of Ford argue that the actor intentionally made a mockery of the narration in the hopes that the studio would find it unusable” (Pfeiffer 124). An even more interesting and hilarious tidbit is that a document recently surfaced that revealed that the producers themselves did not even care for the voiceover:

My attitude towards the voiceover is as follows: if one is not smart enough to pick up on what is going on in the film sans the narration, then, he or she does not deserve to have the thematic messages simply handed to them. I did not find that the narration even helped convey the thematic messages of the film. The voiceover simply stated the obvious with the use of very cheesy diction. The narration at the end of the film sounded like it was read from a fortune cookie. I find that the degradation of a film for the sake of making money can never be justified.