like i said in another thread. we need some selfless soul (i volunteer, but i really dont care if its me, so long as it gets done) to use the seamless branching function in the DVD standard to produce a bootleg dvd image that contains both the original theatrical version (with voiceover and happy ending) and the directors cut (without voiceover, with cut scenes e.g. unicorn). it can be done, i dont know why someone hasnt already.

It's not about it being "cooler" to like the non-voiceover version, it simply is less invasive to the viewer. A voiceover serves a very trite purpose in that it conveys a message between singular characters and a viewer. In this purpose, it is a thin line between expressive and pushy. Much like Cliff Martinez' comments on his Traffic and Sex, Lies, and Video Tape compositions, it is somehow more soulful to leave the emotional interpretation of a film to the audience's psyche rather than lead the audience to an emotional conclusion via musical motif or other tools of film (such as a voiceover which explicitly conveys a character's emotion).

Ridley Scott, on the director's cut tip, could have taken the European (Director's) Cut of Legend and stuck it inside of a Walrus' ass and waited for it to disipate into nothingness for all I'm concerned, because it is complete suckage.

However, the Bladerunner special edition is the shit.

In my completely humility absent opinion.

I agree, however, I appreciate the cult status section of the argument. I appreciate the acceptance of an underground following, but cinematically, I stick by my intuition, in that I feel that voice overs are a precarious (not inherently aweful by any means) way of expressing character emotion.

I also don't feel that it's implicitly undeniable on Deckard's Replicantism from a neutral viewing standpoint. I think it takes a deep understanding of the story to really even understand the Deckard as a Skin Job theosis in the Director's cut. A less understanded viewer might not make the difinite conclusion that Deckard IS undeniably a Replicant, in fact, a completely versed viewer may still be opposed to the definitive decision that they witnessed Deckard as a Replicant. I may also assert tha one may feel as though Replicant vs. Human on the Deckard front is less important than Human vs. Replicant on the Replicant front, that a replicant is any less human as a human is replicant in the first place, given that it seems as though the definition of 'Retirement' in its entire ethical makeup is at question, mainly in the foredrawn conclusion that Replicants are retired and are not allowed in average society due to character flaws inherently designed into their genetic codes, as a maker of humans has apparently done.

I do not believe that a film can be assertained completely based upon the whole of it's parts in watching it, in that, I don't feel like you need to have an indepth, or any for that matter, understanding of the BOOK Fight Club to get the deepest of cinematic motivations and uasages in the MOVIE Fight Club, as they are separate in media, and from a viewers standpoint comletely irrelevant from one another.

The voiceover was tacked on by the studio, who were nervous. Neither Hampton Fancher (orginal screenwriter) nor David Peoples (rewriter) knew that it was afoot.

The VO bothers me because of several reasons:

a) It explains to us what we are already watching (telling, not showing), which is redundant ("All I could do was sit there and watch him die..."). Good voiceover is used as counterpoint to action, not as a parallel track that reiterates the action.
b) It humanizes Deckard too soon, when we are meant to see him as a burnt-out husk of a man who is later "re-humanized," ironically, by a machine (Rachael).
c) It sounds fucking stupid in places ("Sushi. That's what my ex-wife used to call me.")
d) None of the creators of the film wanted it added.
e) It interrupts the beautiful stillness of the film with blathering nonsense, when silence is called for.
f) It assumes that the audience is too stupid to figure out on their own what they are seeing.

Viva la Director's Cut!

I knew Hampton Fancher pretty well. He was furious at the voiceover and that Michael Deely and Ridley Scott didn't fight against it harder.

The thing with the voiceover in the original version (which I am so happy to have actually found a VHS copy of last year - yay!) is that it meshes perfectly with the film-noir-redux aspect of the film. I suspect that those voiceovers in the forties and fifties might well have had the same origins - bringing the slower viewers up to speed as the plot gets more twisted. At any rate, I loved it at first viewing in '82 and still do, not least becuase of the retro-noir aesthetic over the future-apocalypse concept.

And I have to note in response to someone above who was opining on the degree to which interpretation is left to the viewer - I don't think this is a valid argument. Most of the interpretive questions about Blade Runner - was Decker a replicant etc? were in play well before the Director's Cut surfaced. I could similarly go on at lenght about audience response theory etc and how there is ALWAYS an open-interpretation option, chance to read / view against grain, read between the lines etc... but I'm sure most see where I'm going with it.

Cheers.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby...ic_Gumshoe

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