Szklarski- Director's Cut

The Directors Cut shapes the story line into a more apt reflection of the book's lingering cliffhanger of the humanity of Deckard. The most salient meaning of the film is the blurring of the line between androids and humans. Unlike the first realese of the film in 1982, to the director Ridley Scott's dismay, the 1991 version leads the audience to question whether or not Deckard is a replicant. The definition of humanity is not easily stated. The culture of the future city of Los Angeles in the movie structurally defines humanity very different from than the functional definition which is measured by the Voight-Komff test. As Rachel remarks, Deckard has never taken the test himself. It is totally possible that Rachel passes this test with more flying colors than Deckard ever could, provided that Deckard really has been an android all this time. 

Ridley Scott thought it was necessary to change the film. As mentioned in class, he stated what most should consider as the most ginormous spoiler alert of all time in an interview shortly before the movie came out. Clearly his motive in investing so much, financially and temporally, into the film was to make the movie come off showing that Deckard was a replicant, or android, himself all along. Deckard was being forced into false pretenses of his own existence to be able to kill get rid of whatever replicant the humans decided was not longer allowed to exist. If this is the case, then the forced retirement/murder of his own kind appears to be absolutely heinous. Evoking that emotion from the audience leads to the questioning of the self as to if the skewed notion that killing someone/something of a different kind is any more 'ok.' Rachel even asks at one point whether or not Deckard has killed a human. Here, it seems like Scott is actually asking the viewers which is better; android to android death, or human android murder? Another huge hint at this alternate meaning of the film comes in the last scene of the 1991 version of Blade Runner. The unicorn dream and origami unicorn make the decision even harder for the audience. "[This] confusion was exactly what [Scott] hoped to create, and reminded the studio brass that the delicate subtleties which he labored to create would be destroyed by the narration” (Pfeiffer 124).

The essential difference for changing the perception of Deckard in this manner to me is the removal of the voice over. The presence of the voice over evokes a connection between the audience and Deckard. He becomes more human to the audience as they hear his thoughts, no matter how annoyingly and blatantly obvious the script is. Removing the voice over aids in separating the sort of human connection that it created in the original 1982 version. In my mind, the 1991 version is much more effective in eliciting the sorts of moral questions that the book raise, which is ultimately the point of science-fiction. The toying of the empathy of the viewer toward the androids is much more interesting and thought-provoking. The film is supposed to be entertaining. On top of the entertaining and 'happy-ending' rubbish provided from the 1982 version, the Director's Cut offers a version with much more substance.

Emily Szklarski