Final Cut Vs Blade Runner

Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner is an endlessly fascinating film to dissect. The film while not popular upon it’s initial release has grown a huge following over the years and has captured the minds of filmmakers, students and scholars alike. Even Sir Ridley Scott himself couldn’t stay away from his film as over the last thirty years he has tinkered with and fine tuned his film into what is now known as “The Final Cut”. The 1982 theatrical cut of the film and the subsequent 2007 release of Scott’s “Final Cut” are two very different films that both in their own way explore and conform to many different genres. Blade Runner has been categorized as a multitude of genres: “Blade Runner is not solely a science fiction film; instead it appropriates …show more content…
Susan Doll and Greg Faller points out that one of the key elements of noir is the urban landscape which helps to define the visual style of these films. Doll and Faller further go on to point out that “Noir themes frequently suggest that the characters reside in a hopeless or doomed world predetermined by the past” (91) which is exactly where Scott’s film sets itself. The film takes place in Los Angeles, 2019 a place where humanity has been overtaken by the corporations of the world and the compact landscape has left little room for humanity to grow. The urban landscape has created a disparaging sense of despair and hopelessness that is key to noir. The art direction and sets used to show the future LA as a “high-tech, overpopulated, flame-belching, terminally polluted--the perfect synecdoche for a failed civilization” (Hallam 120). Civilization has taken great strides in technological advancement, but we have clearly lost apart of our humanity in the process. LA is the destination where morals and humanity have been lost to the commercial ridden and dark landscape. One of the most prominent and well known shots of the film is an aerial shot of the city showing a police car fly by a large billboard showing an ad for Coca-Cola. It’s shots like this and the opening shot of the film showing the billowing flames erupting from the industrial ridden Los Angeles. The shot is peppered with …show more content…
Film noir seemingly has a checklist of characters that populate these gritty stories including “an investigator (often a detective), the investigator 's doppleganger (a double representing his dark side), a corrupt authority figure, and women who are either femme fatales or redeemers. The only sense of morality exists within the investigator who attempts to survive in an amoral and unstable society” (Doll and Fuller 91). The film includes all of these character types and yet as a neo noir updates the characters and themes and continues to create new tropes out of the ideals of the film noir. As a noir Deckard is the investigator of the story, hunting down the Replicants for the corrupt and amoral Corporation run by Eldon Tyrell. Roy Batty the leader of the rogue replicants becomes Deckard 's doppelganger which he believes represents the dark side of humanity. Interestingly Batty spares Deckard and in a way reveals to him true humanity which allows Deckard to reflect on his own acts of violence leading the audience to question whether Deckard is the true dark side of humanity. Rachael is another character who fits into the trope of the femme fatale who Deckard never seems to trust because she is a Replicant, but it is clear by the end of the film that she was a false femme fatale as she saves Deckard from a fellow Replicant again changing and updating the tropes of classic film noir. It’s characters