” How can it possibly get better?”

“It” refers to 1992’s Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut, which removed elements added to the 1982 theatrical cut under studio pressure and added more subtle touches. With this editing, Blade Runner has taken a deserved place in the minds of many as the greatest science fiction film of all time.

Thus when Blade Runner: The Final Cut appeared at film festivals and in select theatres this year, to mark the film’s 25th Anniversary and make its way onto an elaborate DVD release, it lead to some head-scratching. But fears that director Ridley Scott would pull a George Lucas (endlessly retooling his product) were allayed, since the changes are minor and beneficial. Production goofs are fixed and the violence becomes slightly more explicit.

Rating:

Staring: Harrison Ford, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer, Edward James Olmos, Daryl Hannah

Directed by: Ridley Scott

Written by: Hampton Fanche and David Peoples, from a novel by Phillip K. Dick

The most striking change is the remastered print. The dystopic haze of Los Angeles, 2019, has never looked so crisp. Quarter-century-old special effects and production design are still the equal of today’s genre fare, whether one looks to the city skyline, its densely-packed streets, the 700-story pyramids of the Tyrell Corporation, or the hovering Spinners. Analog technology creates immediacy for viewers (a technique picked up for the new Battlestar Galactica), while contrasting the sophisticated science used to create replicants.

This milieu enhances the story and burns itself into the memory, but the film is a masterpiece because it excels in every respect.

Harrison Ford plays Rick Deckard, a former “Blade Runner” recruited for one last assignment, to “retire” an escaped group of Nexus 6 replicants. Speculation that these artificial humans - manufactured through genetic engineering to perform slave labour - would develop emotional complexes led to a built-in lifespan of four years. But replicants such as Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) and Pris (Daryl Hannah) are hungry for more life. Deckard’s task is complicated by his affection for Rachael (Sean Young), a replicant with implanted memories who becomes aware of her true nature.

Casting is pitch-perfect, as characters that are familiar archetypes on paper become unforgettable presences on screen. Stand-outs among them are Ford as the wryly charming, burnt-out, hard-drinking cop; Edward James Olmos as Gaff, a fellow LAPD assistant with his own Cityspeak dialect and origami calling cards; and Hauer as Aryan superman, whose dying words are the film’s most poignant and quoted.

The story is not difficult to follow (unlike the film noir features from which Blade Runner takes inspiration), though viewers must piece together a larger narrative that explains this dark future from references and clues. Even then many ambiguities remain.

Blade Runner contains few action scenes, Deckard’s run-down of Zhora (Joanna Cassidy) and cat-and-mouse game with Roy Batty the most notable among them. More often there are tense confrontations one would expect to see in a crime thriller. Those expecting something akin to Star Wars or The Matrix will find this piece slow-moving. It is more in the spirit of 2001: A Space Odyssey, though not as ponderous.

The major question Blade Runner poses: ” What is human?” Appearances, emotions, memory, empathy . . . All these qualities are present in replicants, so viewers must decide where the line is drawn. Additional themes seem even more relevant to today’s world than that of 1982: environmental degradation, globalism and corporatism, cloning and genetic engineering.

Sealing the deal is Vangelis’s majestic score. Fresh off the Oscar-winning soundtrack for Chariots of Fire, Vangelis’s Blade Runner cues range from the driving techno of the End Title to the melancholy sax wailing of Love Theme. Other tracks feature Asian and Middle Eastern elements, and there are nods to ’50s American ballads.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut will be showcased on a bevy of DVD releases set for Dec. 22, 2007. It will be a very merry Christmas for the cult film’s audience. For those who might assume Blade Runner is dated or dull, the DVDs provide the chance to embrace Ridley Scott’s masterfully realized world anew.