Blade Runner [Blu-ray]

Product Information

Home Entertainment has sent us a brand new trailer for the upcoming 4K Blu-ray release of dierctor Ridley Scott's classic sci-fi thriller Blade Runner, which will be available for purchase on September 5. It sucks you into the scene but never sounds overblown or processed - it just sounds natural and lifelike. I've seen the film at least 50 times over the years (seriously), and was absolutely floored by how many visual elements I'd simply never seen before. The Blu-ray lets that world envelop and encompass you without flaw, without any reminder that you’re just watching a movie.

Put the disc in the player and it autoplays the film and you may have to escape to the main menu to ensure that your audio choice is selected. This would have been the perfect opportunity for some sort of behind the scenes retrospective with cast and crew interviews or even one of the new film's many trailers. In a future of high-tech possibility soured by urban and social decay, Deckard hunts for fugitive, murderous replicates - and is drawn to a mystery woman whose secrets may undermine his soul.But lest purists fear that Warner has overdone it, I was thrilled to see that there is still some legitimate grain to the image, which retains a film-like and natural look entirely appropriate to the vintage of the film. Especially as Ridley Scott claims in a short introductory video that he personally supervised the creation of the 4K HDR master. However, because the 1992 cut was lopped together quickly, the editing was a bit clunky and some visual effects inconsistencies from the original remained.

This time however, I decided to put it aside for a while, let some other movies stun me into insensibility before I started seeing the seams in the technology. trailers for the 1992 "Director's Cut" and the 2007 "Final Cut," and finally an online trailer for the "Dangerous Days" documentary. Like the video, each successive step backwards in the film's version will reveal a little less in the soundtrack department. And since I didn't have it in my sci-fi and fantasy collection, I do it now (along with space odyssey 2001). While the transfer on that 2007 DVD may have finally hit the ‘sliced bread’ benchmark, the limits of the Blu-ray format aren’t tested by this film.It’s been suggested to me by someone who works in the film industry, too, that the film’s negative is unusually thin, and that mistakes were made with the exposure of the original negative - two problems now brought to light as never before by the HDR process. Rest assured, however, that despite any complaints from fans about early cuts of Blade Runner, the film in its original form is still powerful and nothing short of exceptional. I've gotten to see the theatrical, Director's Cut, and the Final Cut in the theater projected from actual film prints. There are no additional bonus features, nor any audio commentaries, although Ridley Scott does offer a new introduction to the disc that provides a short bit of insight on the various versions. The Final Cut' finally corrects all of the messed-up details and other imperfections that have so bothered Scott (and many fans) over the years.