#125. 'Blade Runner' at 40
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This bonus episode marks the 40th anniversary of Blade Runner, and the hosts spend as much time arguing the original against Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 as reviewing the movie itself. Sonny is unequivocal that the original is the superior work of art, singling out Harrison Ford's magnetic screen presence — especially the noodle-stand grin after Edward James Olmos taps him on the shoulder — as a masterclass in old-school movie-star craft; he caught the Final Cut at LA's Arclight back in 2007 and still ranks it above the sequel, even though he also loved 2049 as one of the best films of its year. JVL, who first saw Blade Runner on broadcast TV as a bored kid unfavorably measuring it against Star Wars, floats the provocation (borrowed from John Podhoretz) that 2049 might actually be the better film, though he can't quite commit to it and dings 2049's murky, badly lit climactic underwater sequence. Vic confesses he's never had strong feelings about the original and still struggles to follow its plot, but genuinely likes 2049, and praises Harrison Ford's minimal-but-effective reprise of Deckard, likening Ford's brand of movie stardom to a lesser version of what Chris Pine has today. Along the way they dig into the film's Reagan-era "yellow peril" anxieties about Japan buying up America, JVL's distaste for Ridley Scott's (and George Lucas's) habit of endlessly tinkering with a finished film, and the tangled history of the lost workprint, theatrical cut, director's cut, and final cut. The episode opens with the usual long banter: JVL raves and gripes about his first trip to an AMC Dine-In (stingier seats, dumber pre-ordering rules, no self-serve butter) versus the Alamo Drafthouse he misses since moving to Jersey, plus a detour into New Jersey supermarket snobbery (ShopRite and Acme versus splurge-worthy Whole Foods and the maddeningly overpriced Kings). Vic closes things out by recounting a rewatch of the ultraviolent, prosthetic-breasts-and-all Total Recall with his son, gushing over Paul Verhoeven's remarkable run of RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, and Starship Troopers.
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Good movie!
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Vic00:00:00Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of the Sub-Beacon I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a reminder the Sub-Beacon is now available through Patreon go to subbeacon.com you'll easily find us, please subscribe, tell your friends. So this week we are talking about Blade Runner. It is the I was gonna say the 50th. It's the 40th 40th 40th anniversary. 1982 quite a year in movies. I have I wrote this down. I have nothing to say about this movie. Sorry. I anyway, go ahead Sonny. What's going on here? Blade Runner is a big movie. You guys love it. This is that it was like it. I think JBL hates it.
JVL00:00:54I don't I don't think JBL loves this movie hates the wrong product. It had a huge impact. Before we get into Blade Runner. We were teasing our listeners last week. About Friday. Yes. Last week about your AMC. The high end experience. Yeah, so I love the Alamo. And the Alamo is a restaurant that shows movies. Is there no Alamo in New Jersey? No, no Alamo in New Jersey yet. Yet. But the AMC dine in attempts to get some of that except that it does it in ways which are stupid. So for instance, you have to order all of your food before you enter the theater. Like before you show on your app like on a phone. No, no, if only if only you could order it on your app. Like wait, you gotta wait in line and like talk to some, some, you know, a 16 year old pimple faced kid like this. Simpsons. Oh, sir, we don't have any more of the Tostitos. That's very Jersey to end. So it's a very limited menu. And you order your stuff. And if you order things like popcorn, unlike in a normal AMC where you can control your own butter management on the popcorn here, they're just like, yeah, we'll give you a cup of fake butter that you can pour on yourself and or on yourself until you you go into the show. And that can you get alcohol? I think you can get alcohol. And so they will then bring your food to you once you sit down in the show. But like what? And but you can't reorder. So like, what's the point of that? And they bring you everything at once on the Galmo where you can have your dinner first, and then they'll bring you your popcorn. You can't have a second. You can't have two drinks because they do have to order both drinks ahead of time. And even things like the seats are just like a little bit shittier. Because the so the seats in these seats, the AMC are leather recliners with the red leather ones with the heated seat option, which is very nice to be able to heat the seat up. But on the other hand, they're also like the pitch, you know, airline wise of them. It's like probably five or six inches narrower than than at an Alamo. So you really do feel like that person who's next to you. It's like a little bit closer than you want them to be. And I don't know, like, I just thought to myself, I remember when AMC used to do everything great. Yeah, well, that was it was the the of all the various the best compared to Cineplex, Odeon and General Cinemas and Regal and all the that AMC. Oh, you're gonna find by the way, JVL, there's probably some really interesting other theater chains up in your area. Like I remember being up in Jersey and and we went to one that was like, Oh, I can't remember. Uh, Cineapolis, I think. Anyway, the point is, I will probably still go back to this because it's the closest I can get to, to an Alamo. But it is how was the audience? How was the audience at your theater? In terms of behavior? Oh, it's fine. I mean, you know, but they don't tell you not to use your phones. And so I'm sure people were you knew that one of the things that this gets right is that the stadium seating is so staggered that you really can't see anybody else except for the person. Okay, on either side. Yeah. And so if you can, if you can make sure that you don't have some mouth breathing idiot sitting next to you, then you're you're basically fine, I guess. Did you did you have a mouth breathing idiot sitting next? I had a person I a person I did not know sitting on one side of me and then my my lovely mother in law sitting on the other side. And you know, I was not happy to have a person sitting next to me who I did not know. Did she have anybody on her? She did. So you couldn't just pull the switcheroo? Sit her next to the stranger? No. Sit her next to the mouth breather. He would never do that. I had one quick Jersey question for you JVL that we can get on to Blade Runner, which is what's your supermarket up there? ShopRite? Boy, I went to one today for the first time. Acme. Oh, wow. I have close by to me. I have Acme, a Whole Foods, a Wegmans and this place Kings. And I gotta say I am a big spender when it comes to supermarkets. I can rationalize anything. I go into a Whole Foods and it's like I'm in heaven. If the bottle of milk at Whole Foods that comes in the glass container from the cows that practice yoga, if that is $9, then I will tell you that it's worth it. Like Buffalo Trace, there's actual blade of grass in the milk. But there is a place, the closest place to us is a supermarket called Kings, which sells heard of Kings, basically everything that they sell at a place like a ShopRite or an Acme, but at double the price. And so like the same little container of yo play yogurt that at Acme or ShopRite is 59 cents is $1.20 at Kings. And that I cannot abide. No, it makes me feel like a weirdo cheapskate. But where I will go and pay out the ass for frou frou. Yeah, I will not pay double for the same shit that I get at any normal plebeian supermarket. I've said this before. I've said this before. I don't mind paying more for more and less for less, but I do mind paying more for less. Yeah, there you go. Okay, Sonny Blade Runner. Talk to us.
Sonny00:06:43So we're talking about Blade Runner because it's the 40th anniversary of Blade Runner. And I feel like this is going to be one of those episodes where I'm just like, Hey, you know what else is great about this movie? It's the set design. I like the set design. What did you see this movie? Well, I have seen I mean, I've seen numerous cuts. And did you like it the first time you saw it? Well, I remember I remember the first time I saw it. I watched I watched the director's cut on VHS. So it was without the it was without the voiceover. Wow. And I was totally lost because I was I don't know. I was like, 13 or 14 or whatever. I was like, I don't understand what's happening in this movie, really. And then I think I then I think I saw the original cut with the voiceover narration. I was like, Oh, this makes more sense now. Even if like the the, you know, the the ending narration is like dumb and bad, which it is. And even if Harrison Ford is doing this kind of very bored, reading it as like, annoyedly as possible to like signal his displeasure with what the studio is forcing him to do, which I've always thought is kind of funny. Like I've never actually I've never actually been a the voiceover is terrible. It shouldn't have been in the movie because it is a noir. Yeah. And noirs frequently have voiceovers kind of explaining what the classic detective is doing. It's never it's never really bothered me that much. The version the version I watched this week to prep was the final cut, which I saw for the first time in I want to say either 2007 or 2008. They released it in theaters. And this is the first time I'd ever gone to an Arclight theater with like the the, you know, the assigned seating was first time I'd ever been in a theater with assigned seating. It was the first time I'd been to an Arclight. I saw it out in L.A. I was out in L.A. reporting a story. And this was back when I was at the Weekly Standard. And I had like an extra I had like a spare afternoon. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to go. I am going to go to the Arclight. And watch Blade. What's playing? Oh, Blade Runner Final Cut. I'll go see that. So I saw it on the big screen. It was it was great to see on the big screen in the delightful Arclight. It wasn't the center cinema dome. It was a different Arclight. But I quite liked it. No, I love this movie. And I just it is. There are so many great things about it. But the thing that jumped out at me this time was. It is it's it's it's easy to forget how good Harrison Ford is in roles like this. Sure. Like where he is just like we don't have we really don't have a lot of guys like him anymore who are just like kind of magnetic on the screen all the time. And there's this there's just this one shot. It's early on when he's at the noodle place, you know, and he and he gets tapped on the shoulder by the, you know, by Edward James Olmos. And, you know, he's like, come on with me, Deckard Blade Runner. We got to go. And he just has this look on his face where he kind of like tilts his head and goes like does does like the Harrison Ford grin. I can't even like mimic it. And it's just like, oh, he's a perfect movie star. He is just like this is yeah, this is just a movie. Magnetic. There are there are there are there are folks who can do this. And I think we've told the story on on on the show before. I think I've told the story on the show before. But there there's a story that the director of God, I can't even remember what movie it was. There's a director of of something was explaining to her. He like gave Harrison Ford this monologue and Harrison Ford looked at it was like, I'm not I'm not going to read all this. I'm going to do what you want me to do in this page of dialogue with a look. And the director was like, what are you? You can't you just can't you just read the thing is I just I'm going to do it with a look. And he did the look. And the director was like, Oh, fuck, he did it. He did he did the thing. And like, that's what that's what he he's so good. He's so so good. Just have him on screen. And he just carries. Yeah, I just I I love I love watching this movie for all sorts of reasons. I mean, again, I like it is it is it is a fully realized version of a world just that you get you absorb through set design and and kind of how everybody looks and how everything looks and how every building looks. But the whole thing only really works because of Ford as Deckard JVL. Did you what did you see this? And when did you see this movie? I've seen this movie probably 10 times. The first time as a kid. I am positive I fell asleep. Yes. I did you see
JVL00:11:49I'm wondering if you saw it in the theater. I don't think no not in the theater. The first time I saw was at home. It might have been like on broadcast TV. Okay. You know, like the CBS Sunday Night Movie or something. And I mean, for me, Blade Runner is always tied up with any dialogue with Star Wars, which isn't fair to it. No, but because I you know, Star Wars is the first movie that makes me think about movies and makes me fall in love with science fiction. And then Blade Runner is the next science fiction movie. And they both star Harrison Ford that I and they both star Harrison for the night, you know, like I said there, I saw a dozen disposable science fiction movies between the two, you know, like black hole with Maximilian Schell and all that stuff. But but then I saw Blade Runner. It's you know, it's with Harrison Ford. It's sci fi. It's iconic. And like the 10 year old version of me was just like, what's the fucking point? You know, like I like this is this is also science fiction. No, no. Where are the laser swords? Right. Why? Why are the where? Where's his fighter plane?
Vic00:12:58That's that's the 49 year old version of me, by the way.
JVL00:13:02I you know, we have a spaceship to shoot lasers out of.
Vic00:13:06We were talking about I think some of you mentioned like why it didn't you know why it didn't do well. It resonates even though it didn't do well at the box office. Right. Is that what you were saying? And.
Sonny00:13:18Oh, well, I know I tweet. I tweeted something like a very, very tongue in cheek, like Blade Runner turns 40. I say this is a good movie that's influences outlived its paltry initial box office returns. I know this is a controversial hot take, but that's what I think or something like that.
Vic00:13:38I I always think because it's it came out in 82 and for a lot of people, certainly kids, young people having seen. In Harrison Ford and Star Wars, having seen him then again in the Empire Strikes Back in 80, having seen him then just before that in Raiders of the Lost Ark and saying, oh, my gosh, it's Harrison Ford in a space movie. As JVL was talking about in a movie directed by the guy who did Alien. Oh, my gosh, this is going to be.
JVL00:14:09And then like there's one action sequence and it's the end. Yeah, I mean, that's like, you know, Daryl Hannah doesn't even take her shirt off. So she's messed up in that movie.
Vic00:14:20Yeah. So all of that is, you know, there are. I've seen better Sean Young than that, too.
JVL00:14:25Yeah, there are real pleasures to it. And there are things which are great and there are things that I love about it. It's visually spectacular for its time. It is. And but again, it is. I think maybe I'm wrong, but I think it is talking back to Star Wars in its view of what science fiction can and should be, certainly in its view. Of depicting the world of something like the future, right? I mean, Star Wars is a shiny ish sort of world where the technology is fantastic and fun and stuff you want to be a part of. Yeah. Like you want to have a lightsaber. You want to be able to make a jump to light speed. You want the Millennium Falcon. The world of Blade Runner is like, I don't want to go there. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Vic00:15:12There are some conveniences and there are some obviously technological leaps and innovations. But a lot of it remains gritty the way a lot of our world today. You know, if you think about people in the 1950s thought about what the future was like, you know, there'd be parts of this, you know, obviously the world that it's unchanged or worse. And so, you know, in terms of poverty, crime and what have you. Now, this took place in Japan, right? I'm asking this. It's Los Angeles. No, LA. But there was such a Japanese feel to it.
Sonny00:15:47right i mean this is well it's very much a a movie that is of a piece with the yellow peril yes kind of idea japanese were taking over i mean you get this you get this in a lot of movies remember we we watched we watched and talked about fatal attraction right there remember there's that scene in fatal attraction where they're doing the uh they go to the the book party and it's like the the sensei's way of life or i don't know it's like it's like that was it's like an advice book but it's but it's like a japanese guy and then like afterwards uh at dinner he and his friend are doing like the japanese oh yeah with each other it's like super problematic um this is all the
JVL00:16:281980s i mean the 1980s america was terrified of japan yeah yeah that's right you know it was toyota nissan taking over dots that's right industry and buying up manhattan real estate and sony buying columbia pictures and yeah so the idea of sony buying at the time was yeah you know we're all gonna work we're all gonna wind up having to learn japanese because we're going to work with the japanese etc etc uh it's really it's a work of philosophy more than science fiction and i i have always been very put off by the multiple i've been put off by multiple versions by ridley scott's continual tinkering with it he's a tink is a tinker and i don't like it in the same way i don't like george lucas's continual tinkering with like at some point of work has to be finished you can't you can't publish war and peace and then go back and in the third edition you know rewrite a couple of paragraphs that you think you didn't
Sonny00:17:30quite get right and re-released it but this movie has a very specific history and it's this isn't like this isn't like uh the counselor where there's a theatrical cut and a director's cut or like kingdom of heaven where there's a theatrical and a director's cut um this movie has a very specific history which is that the the print the like work print the so-called work print had been lost like they they released the film and there was like the film there was the version with the narration and that was it for a long time and then the director's cut was finally uh was like finally rediscovered in the the the early 1990s or mid-1990s and they did a bunch of restoration work on it and they they kind of put it together the the final cut there is a little extra tinkering but that's again because they found they found like the footage with the unicorn which had been lost like that they wanted he wanted to reinsert so like this is one of those movies where i actually don't have a huge problem with the tinkering like i do with star wars which i again i mentioned this but i've been re-watching with my kids and like every time i watch one of the original movies and like a extra animal is walking around in the background i want to throw something at my fucking screen like no boo boo george stop uh but the but the uh but this this was definitely like a process of rediscovery almost i mean it was they were he was putting things back in as he found it that's fair i have less of a problem
JVL00:18:51with that may i uh may i i'm gonna propose something that i don't don't necessarily believe just to get a reaction a provocation denny villeneuve oh yeah runner
Sonny00:19:05greater sign ridley scott's blade runner just this is this is what jpod i think jpod basically said this right that it's a better movie i'm i'm not saying that i'm just i'm i'm offering it for
JVL00:19:15discussion i think i might believe it but i can't be sure or or or at least it's a better piece of story it's hard to say because one of these movies has anna darmas's naked breasts in it and the other doesn't so i don't care that i mean how can you objectively i don't care that she's fake how could
Sonny00:19:32you objectively compare the two uh i there there are things i like oh i don't get me wrong i think i think i had blade runner 2049 as either the first or second best movie released that year i loved it i i think it's fantastic um and it is it is a like you know in a way it is a more uh impressive piece of linear storytelling it tells the story that it is trying to tell better i think than blade runner tells the story it is trying to tell um at the same time it i think it is inferior because it is you know i mean look blade runner is the original and and everything in blade runner 2049 is basically just a reflection of the original and also like the the final sequence of blade runner 2049 is so badly shot like the chase with the cars the flying car no the bit the bit where the bit like in the where where they're in the water remember the ship like the the car like crashes in the water and like i can't make heads or tails of what is happening in that whole sequence um and i yeah or the way handcuffed and then uh yeah i mean i basically can i i understand what's happening i can follow but it is a it is a really poorly lit like confusingly shot sequence um that there's no equivalent to in blade runner uh blade runner has has its own you know kind of pacing issues and there's some you know some some we linger a little bit too long on uh harrison ford sadly drinking and playing the piano and looking at photos and stuff like all right but the uh but be in the mood but that's kind of a slow pace yeah i mean it definitely it has it has some minor it has some minor issues but uh but i i i think it's still the superior
JVL00:21:25cinematic where it's the superior work of art victorino yes change your opinion of blade runner would it change your opinion of this film if i told you that the key to understanding it is that
Vic00:21:40it's multiverse oh now i'll never would that make it better for you i'll never watch it ever again i i did like i know he's looking through the photos what as he's looking through the photos
Sonny00:21:53he's realizing that one version of him is real and one version is a replicant i um i did because
Vic00:22:00how i didn't have very strong feelings about the first blade runner i want to like it uh but because i know all the cool kids do but i really did like blade runner it 2049 although i still have to i still have to struggle to get what happened did you watch that with michael not the first time and we watched only part of it the second time you know what i watched well we'll get to it i'm sure it's fine just remind me at the at the end when we're done with this uh um what did you think though about in in in the sequel the content i always find this interesting when they bring somebody back for the continuity of character and can they pull it off like they get back into the mindset of who deckard was uh what did you think of harrison ford in the
Sonny00:22:46sequel was did it work i think he's great i think he's perfectly used too i think having him barely
Vic00:22:54be in it is yeah is the right thing and it was still basically the same guy like they can you
JVL00:23:00know i think it's interesting harrison ford ever given a bad performance he's been in bad movies he's been in bad movies bad movies yeah but i mean just off the top of my head this is a guy who's career includes uh star wars raiders the fugitive jack ryan the jack ryan movies i mean he and these are just like taking off the very top yeah movies that are compulsively watchable right before you even get to like you know the great stuff my god yeah they just don't make movie stars like the thing i've said this before on the show the closest thing we have to him is chris pine i think chris pine is the same kind of movie star just not at the magnitude he's not as good as as
Sonny00:23:52ford is he doesn't have his he hasn't done as good of a job of picking yeah that's right well that's that's also true um well what i what do you want to say before we go to yes uh you know
Vic00:24:05what you know another uh speaking of philip k dick uh i thought it was uh i said oh let's i watched a movie with my son uh the other night you know now that is you know summer is going well let's watch a movie uh total recall the original with all three night yes that's with all three so that's 1992 things i forgot one is the ultimate first of all sharon stone is really great in that movie does she get total recall too yeah you know what she teases you she teases you because she lies down and then
Sonny00:24:40go ahead the bit where she's in her workout outfit and she's like let you tie me up oh that part no
Vic00:24:47i was gonna say the beginning when he wakes up from his nightmare which is you know that he had already had the implant of the the memory of having been in mars and she says well i'll take your mind off and she lays back she lays down on bed and then and then she like teases him because she's wearing this teddy and then they cut uh from there to the after scene and i think what happened was it said turn the camera off and then they just did it you know because it's arnold uh and and then uh and then the other thing is the ultra violence of this movie i forget how that's like a plus plus plus plus i mean okay two things stood out one when he breaks out of his chair they strap him down at the end and he uses it as to impale a guy with his wrist and it's like it goes through the guy's head okay that's i was like wow that's impressive and then the other thing is the escalator scene and remember it so he some poor guy in the front a civilian gets shot and yes sonny remembers and he uses him as a human shield to take the bullets you know it's not going the bullets are not going through him so he's using it and then there's it's not
Sonny00:26:04it's also not a bad guy it's not it's not like a it's not like a villain some poor guy dude
Vic00:26:10on the escalator and then there are bad guys behind him so then he turns around and then he uses him again as a shield and then and then he uses him and he throws him at is he still is he
Sonny00:26:22still alive the whole time i forget is he like oh yeah well yes yeah there's a little bit of that
Vic00:26:26and i don't know if it's just the reflex of the dead body and then he uses the dead body throws it at the bad guys and then the last thing paul from paul verhoeven right and then the last thing you see is them stomp over the body like oh let me get through this
Sonny00:26:40really the the the the his run of uh of robocop total recall basic instinct same villain incredibly violent yes oh yeah uh and uh and starship troopers like that four move those four movies in 10 years or whatever are like it's like it's like peck and pot yeah no it was the the
Vic00:27:05range of violence afterwards of course and kate goes oh i i haven't seen i haven't seen this movie because you know she usually screens like she'll give a thumbs up or thumbs down and i said well there was a little bit there's some violence and i said but and there was also nudity but it was you know like the woman was an alien i said yes it was also not human nudity three brush three breasts and they were prosthetic it was prosthetic so it's okay yeah i'm sure it's
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