Blade Runner, 1982, dir. Ridley Scott. Heights Theater, Thursday, October 20.

Blade Runner is an amazing movie to watch in a theater with others. That’s just a given.

Janice, Mike and I saw The Final Cut, the one Ridley Scott approved, with the narration removed, the other night at the Heights. I didn’t hate the original narration, but it is an improvement without it. However, why didn’t they remove the information at the start of the film as well? I’d forgotten there’s a legend at the start, explaining about the off-world colonies and the escape. It’s equally as didactic, and everything in it is in the script.

Speaking of that intro, I’m equally stunned that no one has made a shitty origin story or prequel to the Blade Runner films. In the legend, they talk about developing replicants, about the murders and escape from the off-world colony. I mean, they made the shitty, shitty Blade Runner 2049, why not Blade Runner 2016? Blade Runner 1992? Blade Runner 1971?

It’s amazing the length they go to to show Deckard as a fuckup and a creep. He’s actually not very good at his job, being surprised by every one of the replicants, including Rachael in the elevator. The only replicants he kills are the two women, one of whom he shoots in the back as she’s running away, terrified and half naked. When Rachael visits Deckard trying to understand how she’s a replicant, he berates her, then refuses to let her leave and it does seem like she’s coerced into sex and submission. It feels like it’s only the desire to be safe that keeps her with him. Maybe he’s a replicant and she senses that? Then again, she didn’t even know she was one.

For the first time I noticed that outside Deckard’s apartment, there’s a large, red neon flashing RCA logo, which totally overwhelms a blue neon flashing Christian cross. Commerce overwhelming Christianity, as it always does.

Blade Runner is beloved but frequently laughed at (with respect) for its climate–L.A., even before climate change, has never been an endlessly rainy city. Well, global warming may have changed this, and last night I imagined that the world there is even worse as now they’re in a superstorm. Blade Runner predicts the future yet again!