Tomorrow, Blade Runner: The Final Cut comes out on DVD in all its five-disc glory. In addition to including a few documentaries and special features, the package most substantially includes every official version of Blade Runner that’s ever been made: the workprint version, the theatrical cut, the “director’s” DVD cut which wasn’t really overseen by Ridley Scott at all, and Ridley’s final 2007 cut which, according to him, represents his ultimate vision.

You can check out the differences between the theatrical and “director’s” cuts of Blade Runner here, but what of the Final Cut? What did Ridley Scott change? Did he pull a George Lucas and add ridiculous, unnecessary comic relief, or did he go back and fix some of the plot holes and pacing issues? Well, I saw a screening of the Final Cut in an actual theatre (an experience which, if you haven’t seen this film on a big screen from a digital projector in a darkened auditorium, is an absolute must), and have since compiled the following list of Final Cut changes just in case you wanna know what you’ll be buying come Tuesday. I’m sure I missed a few, but I’m reasonably positive I found most of the differences.

First off, let’s talk generally. On the whole, the Final Cut trims many of the individual shots from the “director’s” cut which went on for far too long because WB had essentially removed all the theatrical voice-over but neglected to trim down the shots. In the original DVD release, Deckard does an awful lot of sitting around and staring without much really going on. Granted, he still does a lot of staring and thinking – the film still has a slow, meditative pace – but the individual shots don’t go on for what seems like an eternity anymore. Generally, the film is a much more well-paced, enjoyable affair thanks to Scott’s cuts.

Now for specifics.

When Bryant and Deckard view the files on the rogue Replicants, a short bit of additional offscreen dialogue from Bryant can be heard once Leon’s file comes up. Bryant basically says that Leon was a labor Replicant who could haul cargo all day long without getting tired, and that “the only way to stop him is to kill him.” Not a big change, but a beneficial one: when Leon ambushes Deckard later on, Deckard’s situation seems much more tense and hopeless given what Bryant has told us about Leon’s physical strength.

A rather amusing dialogue replacement precedes Bryant’s speech about Leon, as well. In the original cuts, Bryant’s count of the Replicants doesn’t add up: he says there were six originally, that one got fried going through Tyrell security, and that the other four are still at large. One Replicant was missing from his explanation, and from the rest of the movie. To fix this problem, Scott simply had M. Emmet Walsh re-do the line so instead of saying “one got fried going through security,” he says “two got fried.” Fans can now stop trying to debate over who the “missing” Replicant is (it ain’t Deckard).

In both the original cuts, a scene where Deckard talks to Hassan, a snake dealer, was so badly ADR-ed it was almost hilarious. For the Final Cut, the dubbing was cleaned up a bit and the scene looks much less laughable.

Right after this scene, before Deckard walks into Taffy Lewis’s nightclub, Ridley Scott added two extra shots: firstly, of a couple of strippers wearing hockey masks dancing around in a cage outside the club, and secondly, of Deckard walking through the crowd and passing a street cop on his way into Taffy’s. I honestly don’t quite understand why these shots are here: the shot of the chicks wearing hockey masks is pretty jarring, if only because of how immediately it makes one think of Jason Voorhees or Casey Jones, and the shot of Deckard walking through the streets really doesn’t have any purpose. It was perfectly fine to cut from the snake dealer’s to Taffy’s in the original cuts – I dunno why Ridley Scott wanted to add these ten seconds worth of extra shots.

A while back, we reported that Joanna Cassidy had shot some new scenes for the Final Cut. As it turns out, however, Cassidy didn’t really shoot anything new – she just shot some footage which was then used for digital face replacement. When Deckard shoots Zhora in the back in the original cuts, you can pretty easily tell that they’re using a stuntwoman when Zhora crashes through the glass. In this new cut, Cassidy’s face has been superimposed over the stuntwoman’s. Cassidy is about 25 years older so the replacement isn’t perfect, but it looks better than the original stuntwoman footage – a first time viewer wouldn’t notice it at all. Zhora’s exotic dance (wherein she “takes zeh plaiesurz from zeh seirpant zat vonce corrupted man”) still takes place entirely offscreen, thankfully.

The infamous unicorn scene is back, but it’s edited into the film differently. In the “director’s” cut DVD, the unicorn shot is totally unbroken, following a long, distant lingering shot of Deckard at his piano. In the new cut, we cut in to a close up of Deckard at the piano, then we cut to a few seconds of the unicorn, then we cut back to Deckard, then the unicorn, then Deckard again. In this new edit of the scene, we can see that Deckard is wide awake, and is consciously thinking about the unicorn rather than dreaming about it as he did in the original director’s cut.

Many of the more obvious changes appear near the end of the film, starting with Roy and Sebastian’s trip to meet Tyrell. In the original cuts, Roy approaches Tyrell and growls, “I want more life…fahcker.” Batty, faced with conflicting feelings toward his creator, phonetically addresses him with a mixture of “father” and “fucker.” It’s pretty unusual to hear, but it’s awfully cool and really damned clever. Unfortunately, the ambiguity of Roy’s line is all but removed in the Final Cut: as he approaches, he simply says, “I want more life…FATHER.” And that’s that. In a sense, I can understand why Scott might have cut “fahcker” – given the ubiquitousness of Meet the Parents, the word might draw a lot of involuntary laughter from new viewers – but I still prefer the line as it was twenty years ago.

Interestingly, two shots which were present in the theatrical cut but not the subsequent “director’s” version have been placed back in for the Final Cut – namely, Tyrell’s death and Roy’s self-mutilation. In the original theatrical cut, we linger upon the scenes of violence for quite a long time: we watch Roy’s thumbs literally enter Tyrell’s eyes, we see blood squirt out of the sockets and run down his cheeks, and we see the completely obliterated, bloody holes once Roy removes his thumbs. When Roy stabs himself in the palm to keep his arm from seizing up, we not only see the nail go in, but we watch it come out the other side, poking through his skin and sending a thin stream of blood down the back of his hand. In the director’s cut, we didn’t see either of these scenes in such violent detail: we cut away from Tyrell’s face before any blood shows, and we only see Roy pushing the nail in without watching it come out the other end. Again, I don’t know why Scott chose to put these shots back in: they’re needlessly horrific, and they aren’t really necessary considering how well the shots worked in the director’s cut. Tyrell’s death is somewhat more disturbing when you see Roy’s thumbs lower onto his eyeballs, and then the camera suddenly cuts away – your mind fills in the details. When we actually see it happening, it’s unsettling, but needlessly so. Also, when Roy pushes the nail through his hand, it looks rather fake as it comes out the other end (in addition to, again, being gruesome and altogether unnecessary).

Here’s a really perplexing change: after Roy kills Tyrell and turns to pursue Sebastian, we suddenly hear some added dialogue from Roy: “Sorry, Sebastian,” he whispers. “…Come!” The added lines essentially imply that Roy is about to kill Sebastian…but why put them in there? In every other cut of the film (including this one), the very next scene involves Bryant telling Deckard that two bodies were found in Tyrell’s loft, the other belonging to one J.F. Sebastian. We already know Roy kills J.F., so why have him tell the audience that? It’s admittedly kind of creepy that he apologizes to him right before chasing after him, however, so perhaps Scott thought a little bit of creepiness was worth the redundancy.

I’m not sure if this short shot was in the theatrical version, but in the Final Cut, just before she lets go of Deckard altogether, Pris puts her fingers in his nose and pulls really hard. Dunno why. Given the fact that she punches him twice, then puts her fingers in his nose, then lets go of him, the added shot kind of screws up the pace of the scene: in the director’s cut, she punches him twice in the face and Deckard falls to the ground – simple, quick, brutal. When she sticks her fingers into his nose, he just sort of flails around for a few seconds before she evidently gets bored and lets him fall to the ground. Kinda awkward.

As far as additions and outright changes go, that’s about all I saw. Almost as interesting, however, is noticing what Scott kept in. In the film’s very last moments, for instance, we still hear Gaff’s valediction  through voice-over (“It’s too bad she won’t live…but then again, who does?”) when Deckard picks up the origami unicorn. This line is really, really redundant considering how short a period of time passes between Gaff originally says the line and the voice-over repeating it (about two minutes of screen time, total). Why Scott would keep such an incredibly unnecessary line in, especially in a cut which seeks to remove the spoon-feeding of information to the audience, is completely beyond me. 

All in all, the Final Cut of Blade Runner is a mixed bag. For every problem it solves, it creates a new one; despite its better pacing, a few of the changed and lengthened scenes are at best pointless, and at worst mildly harmful. Thankfully, the new version of the film is nowhere near as offensively abysmal as George Lucas’s Star Wars rerelease, but the new cut is not perfect. Is the Final Cut the “best” version of Blade Runner? It’s a very, very close call, but I personally prefer the “director’s” cut DVD. Your personal mileage will vary, of course.