joe nybala says there have been almost as many different blade runner cuts as
there are meatloaf recipes do you have a preferred cut and why um
so that first uh that first what was called the compromise cut uh the one that showed around the
country in like 92 that's the first alternative blade runner cut i saw and i have great affection
for it it doesn't have vengeance's score uh it's got a totally different title sequence
there's a lot that's different about it in fact i mean where vangelis with one more kiss dear
vangelis wrote um a perfect simulacrum of an ink spots song in the compromise cut it's an
actual ink spot song when deckard's getting the bottle of liquor i think uh instead of
one more kiss dear you're literally hearing i don't want to set the world on fire which
is effectively what one more gesture is um so i have seen every one of the cuts that
was released to theaters because california got them all right like they they showed up here um
and my favorite cut is is ridley scott's most his last one the ultimate director's cut i i love it
i love that cut i love the lack of narration um in fact the lack of narration in ridley
scott's final director's cut made it really clear to me how much we shut our brains off
when someone's talking at us in a movie because i mean just do it as an experiment watch one of
the cityscape sequences with deckard talking and watch it without him talking when he's talking
you're thinking about what he's saying and that is then part of your brain is like processing that
meanwhile there's all this beautiful cityscape stuff going on i just felt like when i watched
i went to the opera house theater when that ridley scott's final director's cut came out
they played it at san francisco opera house theater down at the embarcadero and i went
down and saw it and i remember feeling like i have seen these cityscape sequences hundreds of times
and seeing them in a theater without narration it felt like i was seeing them for the first time
i felt like i was seeing shots from a brand new movie i didn't know that was really cool um
yeah that's my favorite one and
it is still clunky i still think it is a little clunky but then many of my favorite things are
clunky i talk all the time about how much i love uh raymond chandler's work and his plots are
the gears of his plots grind very noisily at times but that turns out not to matter
i mean yeah i mean that that that that scene in which uh blade uh deckard goes to interrogate
the snake salesman it's just it still doesn't work it's still the adr and all that it still
doesn't quite still feels like people are trying to hold this thing together with duct tape and and
you know popsicle sticks and and yet it still totally does work um okay let's see here um
oh yeah uh sorry uh jodi bala also had this second part to his question which is important to answer
2029 notwithstanding is decorative replicant or not deckard is totally a replicant i
we figured it out those so we we um picture me 19 years old in new york city it's 1986 it's 85
86 and new york is lousy with rep house theaters there's the failure and there's the waverly and
there's the 8th street playhouse and opera plaza there's all these different wonderful theaters
and blade runner is playing somewhere like every three months and my best friends davey and lomi
take me to see blade runner and i think early 1986 um and it changes my life and we begin to
debate about it and obsess over it and endlessly discuss it and at some point
as we started discussing it we realized that if tyrell is like the richest guy on earth
and every now and then the thing that is the basis of his wealth which is these artificial humans
if they go wrong from time to time is he really going to go to lapd to m emmett walsh's police
character and be like can you please solve this very complicated problem for rich old me
no not at all there's no reality in which the richest guy on a rapidly declining earth would
would redown to trusting m emmett walsh's captain character just no way he would make his own
he would be building his own infrastructure for taking care of his problems that
that's totally clear to me from a from a world building standpoint but let's talk about the
film language itself you see deckard endure a lot of abuse i've been waiting to do this one
you see deckard endure a lot of abuse throughout the film leon beats him up how long do i live
four years right but i submit you don't see deckard endure a lot of pain in the scene
where leon beats the crap crap out of him i submit you don't see him endure a lot of pain when zora
is beating the crap out of him you see him scared you see him compromise but you don't see him going
there's none of that in fact the first time you see deckard experience pain is when he drives
the nail through his palm to keep his body from deteriorating which is by the way also the first
time excuse me deckard's tying his fingers together it's batty who's driving the nail to
keep his body from deteriorating freudian slip but you see both of those sequences at the same time
so the first time you see deckard experience pain which is after batty's broken his fingers
and deckard's uh resetting them and tying them up ah he screams at that same moment batty is
literally stigmatizing himself he's pushing a nail through his palm and could the imagery be any
clearer about his christ-like figure in the film and its connection to deckard because they're both
experiencing a pain with their hands ridley scott is making it really clear the direct connection
between these two characters in my humble opinion so we concluded a long time ago that deckard
was by necessity a replicant and it actually makes the story a much more interesting allegory
about otherness about what it is to be who and what we are about the illusion of self
and about i mean you know it is a it is a religious allegory it's a racial allegory it's
a societal allegory absolutely i think there's tons of wonderful stuff to unpack in blade runner
and it makes it much more interesting if deckard is a replicant he discovers the other in himself
i i like that i like that story that that one resonates with me um elliot thomas wants to
know do you have a favorite prop from 2049 my personally is sapper morton's helmet
i agree sapper morton's helmet is a beauty uh there is a uh replica props forum member whose
name escapes me right now who did a gorgeous build of it 3d printed and assembled it's a
lovely piece and um actually i also feel a real connection with that because when
norm and joey and i visited the set of 2049 in budapest um sapper morton's farm was the
main location we got to kind of wander around without any supervision and it was just awesome um
all those greenhouses were there the tree the white tree held up by cables was all there
uh outdoors we got to wander around all of that so you i really i like i feel like i know that
space um his apartment his house was also there but the interior of his house was shot elsewhere
so they opened the door of the outdoor set and then they showed up on a set that was indoors
um a favorite 2049 prop i love the spinners i really really like the spinners in 2049.
um i love the what do they call the device that he sits in front of to get his recalibration um that
eye that he stares at while he's well he's you know his base levels are being determined whatever
they never really explain it but that's awesome i like that thing but that's not the what is it um
i look i mean the production design and the prop design obviously i got to get up close
and personal with many of these pieces on set it's just lovely in that film and it's highly
consistent uh the hardest kind of prop work to do is when you have to make something that looks like
a genuine product in a future world so harlocker's team when they made those little remotes for uh
uh anna de armas's character um up close this looked every bit like a bang and allison kind
of remote from from the store that probably cost 1500 bucks you know uh but am i forgetting some
specific prop from 2049 that i'm not thinking of um seven more sever morton's whole persuasion the
helmet and the neck brace comes really close to to one of my favorite props as well um
deckard's blaster man it's really hard to undo that one
and and k's blaster i still don't have the case blaster of my dreams where it's got the um
you know the little moving solenoid here and the little jewel light here
um this one has a this one's got great fidelity to the original but it's missing those aspects um
the horse that horse the little horse that that kay's character goes and finds
wrapped in the oil cloth in the furnace uh nica neca the prop company uh made a fantastic replica
of that little horse with the date scribed in its base um it's a terrific piece and
those little things that have got to carry a whole bunch of story with them
somebody carved this somebody carves a date that's like that's where ridley scott's team
excuse me uh denis villeneuve at the same time ridley is one of the producers
that is one of those cases where production just like did exactly the right thing for the right
piece at the right time like that little carved horse so i've got one on myself and i love it i
love it it's very rare that i buy an off-the-shelf prop replica that needs nothing uh and that nika
horse necka horse definitely definitely suffices um oh i'm so sorry no no no it's kaye's coat
that's without a doubt my favorite part of blade runner 2049 is kay's freaking weird-ass
coat with no bilateral symmetry whatsoever i have a fantastic replica that i had made a
couple years ago i should do a show-and-tell and explain to you exactly how it got made yeah that
will be a show-and-tell that i will do thank you for reminding me of that okay thank you guys so
much for watching that entire video if you would like to support tested even further well i'm here
to tell you that you could become a member if you follow the links below you'll see there are
several tiers of membership depending on how much you'd like to pay and how much access you would
like to me and the tested team and membership comes as always with some excellent benefits
including uh questions that i'll answer in live streams the questions have been so amazing and
exclusive videos and exclusive content follow the links below and we will see you next time