Blade Runner: The Unofficial White Dragon Cut
whitedragoncut.com
whitedragoncut.com
According to Poul Sammon’s book ‘Future Noir’, some changes were made at the editing stage of the film’s production. Among them are the following three points––where the flow of the movie was changed dramatically.
1 From Zhora’s retirement to Deckard and Rachel’s love scene
2 From Deckard and Rachel’s love scene to Sebastian’s apartment
3 Deckard and Roy’s chase scene
I found a trailer that explains what it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FA2uT2gvaM
Apparently it includes a ton of delete scenes plus more fan made scenes from the original script? Maybe someone could explain further.
Are there other movies which have provoked such a wild sub-culture of the "definitive cut" which embraces the producer's true intentions? The Justice League Snyder cut is the only other thing that comes to mind.
I don't blame you if you watch this movie and are left wondering what all the fuss is about.
It's sort of like the LOTR novels, the original Star Wars movies, or maybe even the original Alien movie. Or listening to the Beatles or Nirvana. They were the progenitors of absolutely zillions of derivative works, to the point where Blade Runner's "neon noir cyberscape" aesthetic and LOTR's "humans n' orcs n' elves n' wizards" dynamic have utterly saturated and permeated our cultural landscape.
So if you experience these things in reverse chronological order, once you get back to the "originals" it's understandable if you wonder what the fuss is all about.
For those who did experience things in roughly chronological order, there's a real thrill and nostalgia attached to these utterly game-changing works. And obviously there are lots of other folks who enjoy that kind of uh, cultural spelunking or whatever we want to call it. There's a lot of fun to be had if you enjoy exploring art that way.
On the other hand... there's no reason to do it that way either. Don't listen to any stupid old nerd who tells you that you have to love Blade Runner or some other retro-ass thing.
If everybody just worshipped the past we'd never come up with anything new.
I love the anime regardless. Just insane animation and yeah, the "vibe."
The whole thing felt disturbing and shocking in just the right way, and i totally believe that this “vibe” is still the same today.
Really the main mindblowing thing to me was the level of execution w.r.t. the designs and the animation itself. When you look at the credits for Akira, it is not an exaggeration to say that nearly every animation studio in Japan contributed to it, at more-or-less the crest of the Japanese "bubble economy" when the country was flowing with loads of capital. I remember pausing a bunch of scenes and just gawking at them frame by frame.
It was wild to see all of that, in a 2hr animated movie, aimed at adults.
It was infuriating as well, because the American animation industry was turning out almost exclusively kids' garbage in the decades leading up to 1993. I felt like our country was really wasting the medium. Although, happily, I think we really turned it around. Pixar lead the way IMO.
More recently, fan made cuts have been surfacing for some TV and anime series, especially long-running ones with known pacing issues. For instance, the popularity of Netflix's One Piece live action adaptation has led to an influx of people watching the original anime through a project that gets rid of all the fillers and content not present in the manga [2].
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/oct/27/the-bigger-l...
As time goes on audiences become much more sophisticated but they retain the nostalgia of the past and remain unable to differentiate between nostalgia and modern standards. If blade runner was released nowadays it would probably be pretty bad.
The snyder cut is just low brow stuff. The DC cinematic universe is even more cheese than marvel. People liked the snyder cut because they just really wanted to like it. It's like a beacon of hope for a crap franchise. When you invest that much energy hoping for something (even though the snyder cut was only slightly better but overall still crappy) people have to make themselves love it.
Every time I watch something like the more recent 2049 BR or Dune films, I’m struck by how empty and boring it all feels. Everything today is too polished, too streamlined. It’s not organic or natural feeling at all.
Here are two clips to compare. The more recent film is typical of movies today: too digital, too clean, not enough movement or energy.
Original Blade Runner: https://youtu.be/vbRRL7S2Tg0?si=gwMJvEr8fj11vUkU
There's a lot of time between 1980 and now, but I think The Fifth Element (1997) maybe a useful data point when it comes to little details in sci-fi.
For example, when Dallas is at home having a cigarette, and the "filter" portion is bigger than the rest of it.
It's essentially cinematic brutalism, which I think is perfect for stories like blade runner and Dune. The intimating and oppressive environments do a great job visually communicating the dystopian societies to the viewer.
I do notice that high-resolution, high-framerate digital images have to work a lot harder than film to look realistic. I'm not sure this is a fair comparison.
Although I'm a fan of the voiceover version, so I also expected, "Sushi. Cold fish. That's what my wife used to call me."
So partial credit for me.
Let's say you never watched either movie and you were born in the 2000s.
2049 is obviously the superior movie.
Likely you were around when the original blade runner came out so your bias is already set.
I frankly find the idea that nostalgia is warping your perception of reality to be funny; aren't your tastes doing the same, and what about your whole brain ?
We are talking about a cultural entity, it's not like if we had the ability to talk without any bias.
It could be my perception is warped. All humans are biased and delusional but those who can't admit their bias are more biased then those who can.
>I frankly find the idea that nostalgia is warping your perception of reality to be funny; aren't your tastes doing the same, and what about your whole brain ?
Just talk to a bunch of young people. You realize a ton of zoomers don't give a shit about star wars? They really don't get it at all. Millennials all generally get why it's big.
Go even further back talk to older people and they like stuff that's ludicrously bad. Hitchcock for example while classic, has not aged well at all. I get scared easily by scary movies and I just laughed at Hitchcock stuff. It was the first of it's time, but story telling like technology has improved.
If you find all of this funny. If you refuse to believe that we all can have our perceptions warped by nostalgia, then I am telling you. The warping of your perception by nostalgia is so strong that you can't even admit that this phenomenon which is so obvious to most people even occurs.
I am not refusing to believe our perceptions can be warped by nostalgia. I said that our perception was warped anyway and I explained why "X is obviously the better movie" is a nonsense sentence.
That's absurd to imply I am nostalgic about a movie made about 20 years before I was born, even I prefer that one to the new one.
I continue to prefer that one over the new one even when I know more people of my age prefer the new one.
When you say "Hitchcock has not adged well at all" (which I disagree), aren't you simply telling that you are unable to enjoy things that are not a part of a current story-telling/technology "trend" ?
I do enjoy old things mainly because it brings some sort of fresh breeze to the current aesthetics of cinema. Old things are new to me.
One of my favorite musical composition of all time was written about 300 year ago; implying by this that my mind is warped by nostalgia and that I'm biased is pure nonsense.
Music has changed, but I reject the idea you implied that this change is an " improvement"; I don't think art is improvable stricto-sensus.
Is The Batman (2022) obviously superior to The Dark Knight?
(I was not alive in the 80s and love both Blade Runners, but would probably give the edge to the original if I had to choose my favorite. I greatly prefer TDK to TB, but that could be influenced by nostalgia)
The gap between 2022 batman and tdk is too small. When star wars came out it was relevant for over a decade.
Additionally it's impossible for things to increase and become "better" forever. In the last two decades we have are heading towards slow downs in improvements. For example Photoreal special effects can't get any better than Photoreal.
You give the edge to the original? Do you like older movies in general? Do you like vinyl records even though Spotify is superior? Then you belong to a segment of the population who hates everything mainstream because it's too popular. The more niche something is the more you like it because you think it makes you unique when I ironically it makes you cliche.
That could be you. Barring that then you just have unique tastes for br. What I talk about is more of a generality here. It doesn't account for deviations too far from the bell curve, unless your goal is to deviate from the bell curve as much as possible. Ironically if that is your goal, as I stated previously, then you're just moving closer to the center as a hipster.
It's fan boyism, brand loyalty.
I find it highly untrue. Except few particular segments general audiences become dumber over the time.
It means growing sophistication of the audience.
I'm not saying their IQ is improving (even though statistically this is true) I'm saying standards are going up. Constantly.
I'm about 40 years old. For all 40 years of my life it's been the same problem. Why are all modern movies shit? In the 80s. Why are all modern movies shit? In the 90s... Same question... In the 2010s... Same chanted cliche mantra.. and now in the 2020s you're saying the same stuff they said was crap in the 80s is now good?
No it's a mirage. It's because all movie makers are in a constant race with audience expectations. New original plot patterns are novel at first, but eventually bore audiences and movie makers have to now improve. They copy a good pattern for a bit for some profit but audiences wise up and start saying what they say every decade. "Modern movies are samey and crap." But really it's getting better.
Take a story like inception. There's nothing like it if you rewind time 30 years back. Inception is a movie of the times a indicator of growing audience sophistication and movie making sophistication.
Even avengers end game is a sign of the times. If that movie and the whole franchise came out in the 60s at the same quality it is now it would have floored everyone and won academy awards across the board for story and effects. However because it came out recently there's a large cohort of people who call marvel stuff cliche and stupid. Why? Because it's not too divergent from the tons of movies that came out at the same time.
Take, everything everywhere all at once. That's another movie about directors forced to push the boundaries of story telling because of huge audience sophistication. Multiverse stuff is the latest trend but eventually that will get bland and you'll hear the same shit from hipsters about how crappy everything is.
Modern movies aren't all crap. It's because the pace of improvement is too slow so and because directors re-use popular story telling devices and plot patterns for about a decade that makes things seem shitty.
And gorgeous... from the peak of optical effects. But effects are not enough to fill a movie unfortunately.
We looked around at night in Downtown in November 2019 and it did rain a bit more than usual that month. ;-)
But you're right, it's slow as hell and thus overall a crappy movie imo.
I hate to say it but I found the original a horrible bore.
The narration is awful. It's unnecessary exposition. The mood and depth of the film without narration is practically unparalleled.
I'm curious what context the narration provides for you because I certainly remember none of it.
The ending is also on a lighter side which matches the sequel. (Yes, I know they just reused The Shining’s intro. Again I don’t care.)
Watching the White Dragon edit and they surprisingly kept it!
Edit: The narration adds a lot of flavor and world building
Admittedly I saw the theatrical one when it came out in the cinema and loved it then, but I was very young. So the narration probably helped me at that age.
Many years later when I saw the Directors Cut I much preferred it. When I watched the theatrical cut again I actively disliked the narration. It didn't leave enough space for the mood and your imagination to develop. But then I tend to like stories that world build through immersion rather than explication.
Wait, the theatrical cut is still on sale?