Blade Runner: The Director's Cut

The main difference I noticed is that the Harrison Ford narrative is missing. I actually missed it. I think his commentary is actually quite informative and adds to the movie.

The FX in this movie were cutting edge but now look a bit dated. The sets are still quite impressive. The movie is supposed to occur in the year 2019. That is only 12 years from now. Once again, SciFi is a little too ambitious in it's prediction of the future. In this future envisioned by Philip K. Dick in the novel this is based on named "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", most of humanity has moved off-world and not just populated the moon and Mars but have moved outside this solar system and have spread to other stars.

The dystopia vision of Los Angeles is way off for 2019 but the sets are still quite amazing. Los Angeles is caught in a perma-smog making it seem like night 24 hours per day. It is also almost always raining. The design of Deckard's apartment is highly influenced by the art in Heavy Metal instead of basing it on any realistic type prediction of the future.

Still, the concept that we will create machines that are as human as us but that posses great strength, is an interesting one. We limit their life-spans to 4 years to prevent them from leading any kind of revolution or war upon humanity. This of course makes them very angry so it's no wonder they try their very best to "meet their maker" to extend their lives.

I seem to remember more graphic and violent scenes showing them killing the people they visit but in this version we are left wondering what happened. When the maker is killed, we are not shown the horrible things that happens to him. This leaves it up to our imagination which I liked better.

So in some ways the Director's Cut was an improvement and in other ways I liked the original better.