The Art and Beauty of Blade Runner (2015)
nappertime.com168 points by cocacola1 20 hours ago
168 points by cocacola1 20 hours ago
I love the film but for a long time I really disliked that Ridley Scott changed the plot.
To me Scott's idea that Deckard is a replicant but doesn't know it is just weak. Even the idea that they would make a replicant hunter that's weaker than the "basic pleasure model" it's designed to hunt doesn't work.
I think Scott shoe-horned his change in after the fact and he's had to keep releasing new edits because it doesn't really fit.
PKD's original plot themes are much richer and deeper:
The purpose of this story as I saw it was that in his job of hunting and killing these replicants, Deckard becomes progressively dehumanized.
At the same time, the replicants are being perceived as becoming more human.
Finally, Deckard must question what he is doing, and really what is the essential difference between him and them? And, to take it one step further, who is he if there is no real difference?
— Philip K. Dick
Absolutely, having Deckard be a "weak" replicant makes no narrative sense, and it also makes no sense thematically. It's about a human hunting machines and finding the humanity in the machines and discovering what humanity is lacking in himself. It's important that the line is blurred, but it's also important that he's not actually a replicant.
If a "person" is not weak, it is easy for "it" to start suspecting that it is a replicant.
> Finally, Deckard must question what he is doing, and really what is the essential difference between him and them? And, to take it one step further, who is he if there is no real difference?
Honestly, that is still what I get from Ridley Scott’s version.
> I think Scott shoe-horned his change in after the fact
The effect used in at least one indoor scene, in which Harrison Food is filmed with his eyes glowing like the other replicants, is an in-camera effect and the decision to use it was made prior to filming.
> At the same time, the replicants are being perceived as becoming more human.
Surely this is what the acknowledged replicants in the film do, particularly Roy Batty when he saves Deckard?
I was a great PKD fan (collected his books), and was a little disappointed when the film first came out, but it does grow on you.
I just want a version that includes the prophet Mercer stuff.
felt like a huge component to drop out.
I've always been annoyed at that too. Considering the role that "empathy" takes in the design of the Voight-Kampff, the story is pushing empathy as being a defining human trait and of course Mercerism is all about using the Empathy Box.
I'm not rah rah AI but this type of thing is what interests me about AI video generation. Adding a scene like this for answering a personal "what if?" is really cool.
I was recently musing in this general direction, too.
The movie business is completely foreign to me, but I wonder if stuff like this would work: copyright owners licensing out their IP for niche studios serving niche audiences — I‘m pretty sure a lot of people would pay good money for a different take on the final GoT season. Or that third season of your favorite show that never came to be. A Thrawn-focused Star Wars trilogy. Various crossovers.
Assumed this would work good enough on a technical level any time soon — could it work in terms of licensing and economics?
> Even the idea that they would make a replicant hunter that's weaker than the "basic pleasure model" it's designed to hunt doesn't work.
I don't disagree with your points, but one explanation is that Deckard was made for the purpose of passing as human and had to be kept ignorant that he was a replicant as that would likely affect his job performance. If he was made stronger than other people, then it would have tipped him off as to his nature.
That does then raise the question of why Tyrell would present Rachael as being his most "human" creation unless he was testing/playing with Deckard to see what happens when replicants start to replicate.
The other thing that always strikes me when rewatching Blade Runner, is just how much time to breathe every little scene is given. Maybe a little too much time in some of the longer director's cuts, but it's a really stark contrast to a lot of lesser films, that try and pack as many story beats as they can into their runtime.
Was the norm in the 70s, and into the early 80s. My memory is that the turning point to quick cuts was after MTV and music videos became popular (1982+). I remember old folks complaining about the “attention span” of young people.
Watching the old movies today, I do think that the 70s films are too slow and 90s+ films too aggressive with cuts. Would be nice to balance, or have important scenes breathe while others get chopped. Most movies are too long these days as well.
The film itself was criticized as “Blade Crawler” back in the day.
I think a lot of the change can be contributed to FX becoming cheaper, easier and better. It created a race to the bottom for the most visually spectacular movie. And when it’s cheaper, you can throw more in at the same budget. Then the next movie has to throw even more in to outdo their predecessor.
Though I’m not disagreeing that culturally we have been on a steep downwards decline with regards to our attention span.
Ok, though we were discussing scene length, as measured by the stopwatch, not specific content.
It’s all correlates to the same outcome
Runtime = scene length * content
I completely agree regarding modern movies.
I recently watched the Borderlands movie and while it had its obvious faults, the biggest flaw in my opinion was the jarring pace that one scene would switch into the next. That movie had a short runtime so could easily have been extended to let each scene breathe a little more and I think that alone would have drawn people in the world building a lot better.
I do think with SciFi, the world-building aspect needs to be front and centre, otherwise it’s impossible to switch off the “well that couldn’t happen in real life” part of your brain.
Another annoying one is lazy and simplistic morality, which just ruins the story. Arcane had huge potential, great pacing, interesting characters, but failed on that front.
While this is true, there is a limit where they're just painfully slow. Vanishing Point and 2001 come to mind.
Most new sci-fi/action movies are like that. Ones that cater to younger viewers are so bad I've had to walk out of movie theaters because I felt my senses were under assault. Fortunately there are traditional directors like Villeneuve.
It's not just sci-fi/action. There have been many articles written about the increase in edit cadence in all movies. One of the biggest comments about older films is how "slow" movies were.
One of the examples I've seen goes something like: Wide shot of bank of elevators. Man walks up to elevator to push the button. Cut to close up of dial showing which floor the elevator is on showing the indicator moving back to first floor. A ding is heard indicating the elevator has arrived. Cut to wide shot showing doors opening, people exiting, man entering elevator. Cut to interior of elevator to see man choose floor and doors close. Now, you see the man walk to the elevator bank, hit the button, and then cut to the doors opening as man exits.
I rarely watch movies, I had to leave Elvis for this exact reason. It was relentless.
Let me share this "fake" trailer i made for obscure polish movie that's heavily inspired by Blade Runner visuals - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxfTouivTBY
It's called O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization (1985).
Another thing that might amuse Blade Runner nerds is my attempt at recreating Blimp advertisement video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK1LJKtHj6Y
Of the sci-fi genre for me it will always be #1. The whole thing is just perfect, there's no other movie that comes close to the world that is envisioned in Blade Runner.
Same. The atmosphere it creates is still unmatched.
I wish I hadn’t watched BR2049. Felt like a cheap parody, from the torrents of water falling on the windows, to the fake light effects, to the cartoonish villain who of course had to butcher a human-looking replicant while monologuing in order to get a proper introduction.
Terminator #1 and #2 are probably more realistic though, despite the time travel.
But nowhere close to the emotional impact.
People usually do not remember what happened turn by turn but they do remember what it made them feel.
Funnily enough, in the movie, the humans have little no feelings but the androids do -- and that is the central question that the movie made me consider -- what makes us human.
I am ofcourse biased because Blade Runner (original) is not only on my top 5 scifi movie list but also on my top 5 movie list. So much so that I am reluctant to watch 2049.
I most liked that just before his death Roy crafted some poetry. Creating Art? Isn't that what it means to be human?
To me, the whole point of Batty's final scene is his empathy. PKD made a big point of empathy being the defining quality of humans and even the Voight-Kampff test relies on it.
> But nowhere close to the emotional impact
It may be trite but “Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can, too.” gets me every single time
I think Blade Runner and Alien helped destroy mainstream science fiction.
Before Blade Runner almost anything could be science fiction. After Blade Runner science fiction meant detective noir with #tech_upgrade - clones, memory implants, dystopia. Or it was US truckers and/or the military fighting nasty aliens in spaaaaaaace. (Star Wars and its magic space knights was always more fantasy with a science fiction stage set.)
Blade Runner did it far better than the others, but then we had decades of mostly mediocre book knock-offs, especially in the UK. (Gibson gets a pass for taking the new trope even further by being a brilliant stylist, mixing in some tech orientalism, and inventing cyberspace.)
It's a stunning, iconic masterpiece of a movie with an unfortunate chilling cultural effect.
And ironically the Philip K Dick original was... very different.
>(Gibson gets a pass for taking the new trope even further by being a brilliant stylist, mixing in some tech orientalism, and inventing cyberspace.)
Gibson was also writing in that vein long before the release of Neuromancer, which repurposes some themes, plotlines, and even characters from his earlier short stories. And my understanding is he was working on Neuromancer before Blade Runner was released and without knowledge of it during its production.
I will say I'm reading through his short story compilation Burning Chrome and it is amazing. I don't think he ever matched Neuromancer with his other novels and over time they've just exposed his weaknesses more and more, which is a bummer. But he's absolutely at the top of his game in short stories.
> And ironically the Philip K Dick original was... very different.
True. Ridley Scott and Philip K Dick collaborated very closely to tell it like they wanted it to. Studios liked it ... not so much.
No, Dick did not collaborate with Scott at all. He was not formally involved in the development of the film. He didn't write anything and wasn't given any say.
Dick actually hated the first drafts of the script, which deviated even more from the novel. He was also upset that he was asked to write a new novelization of the script that would essentially replace DADoES in print. He made comments in the press about how Hollywood was ruining his book.
He really only changed his tune after his agent persuaded the producers to invite Dick to the set in 1981. He was basically coddled by Scott and his team (who was told Dick was creating bad publicity and needed to be assuaged) for a whole day, shown around the set and given a rough cut preview that included several major sequences and unfinished VFX by Douglas Trumbull.
After that, he not only spoke highly of the screenplay (which had evolved with the help of David Peoples, though it didn't exactly get more faithful to the novel), he wrote enthusiastically about how the film was going to change the science fiction genre for ever. Unfortunately, he never got to see the finished film.
You are right. I went back and checked on Wikipedia. Now I cannot reconstruct why I believed PKD and Scott collaborated.
Pretty sure Star Wars destroyed mainstream science fiction in film.
>Before Blade Runner almost anything could be science fiction. After Blade Runner science fiction meant detective noir with #tech_upgrade - clones, memory implants, dystopia.
If only.
There are some acting missteps that unfortunately flaw the film for me.
Harrison Ford is not very good in it—perhaps not a great actor generally. His pretending to be a nerd/fan in Zhora's dressing room is too cringey to watch it's so bad… I feel like I'm watching Mickey Rooney playing Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
And the actor that played Leon (Brion James) is also difficult to watch (he was a distraction in The Fifth Element as well).
My only complaints though.
Harrison Ford is not very good in it—perhaps not a great actor generally. His pretending to be a nerd/fan in Zhora's dressing room is too cringey to watch it's so bad…
Harrison Ford is playing Rock Deckard, a detective (not an actor) who hunts down artificial humans. At least to begin with, he and his fellow detectives don't have much respect for the replicants, so he thinks it will be easy to manipulate Zhora and get some information out of her before he kills her.
>His pretending to be a nerd/fan in Zhora's dressing room is too cringey to watch it's so bad
He's not pretending to be a nerd/fan. He's pretending to be a spineless small-time bureucrat doing an inspection that nervous with her.
You're probably right, but it doesn't excuse Ford's hackneyed performance.
But Harrison's Deckard isn't meant to embody that "ethics/work inspector" as a good actor would.
He is meant to portray him as a detective who is not that good with pretending to be someone else would.
Harrison might or might not be a good actor, but Deckard certainly isn't supposed to be a good one.
> Deckard certainly isn't supposed to be a good one.
Why not? He's a seasoned detective with a track record, why's it so hard to believe he picked up some tricks?
It’s just about the only comic relief in the film. Possibly it’s acted that way deliberately.
I thought Brion James was fantastic in The Fifth Element because he's one of the few slapstick outlets. He comes off as sorta military-scary, and ends up frozen like a Looney-Tunes popsicle in the freezer a few minutes later , and dead-pan military is a kind-of-funny partner to Corbin being an outlaw bachelor. He then remains the dead-pan receiver of abuse from the president, etc.
I agree about Harrison Ford, though I don't know who would've done it better at that moment in history.
aside : The Fifth Element is considered to be one of the noisiest distracting sci-fi movies ever, so to hear your main distraction was Brion James made me grin.
Oh, love the energy and pace of The Fifth Element, Brion James was the wrong kind of distraction. :-/
>because he's one of the few slapstick outlets
Huh? Between Kassovitz trying to rob Corbin, the priest's sidekick, the head scientist, the archeologist with "Aziz, light!", the Chris Rock character, Corbins "fake wife" suggestion, the space port ticket counter gags, the president, and several others, the movie hardly has "few" slapstick outlets.
Right, they're all over the place. That's just the kind of movie that it is, And to the extent that he serves as one of the distractions, it's complementing the tone and vibe of the movie. Like I wholeheartedly agree that he was a perfect fit for that movie, but not because he was one of a small handful of slapstick elements.
WTF are you talking about?! Brion James was fantastic in Blade Runner!
Yeah, I would go so far as to say highlight of his career. Extremely, extremely good, like can't look away good. I suppose it's all just opinion at some level, but this is sticking out like a sore thumb is perhaps the hardest one to defend that I'm seeing in the whole thread.
I remember so many details of his brief appearances in that movie, but what really stands out are his eyes -- intense, fearful, paranoid, menacing. (Suitable, given that scene where Deckard and Leon extract J. F. Sebastian's name.)
This came up about a month ago when someone posted a link celebrating the title cards in Blade Runner. I responded then the same way I will respond now: it’s not just the amazing visuals, it’s also the amazing auditory experience, an additional creative dimension to transport the audience into a dystopian future.
The audio consists of two parts: the wonderful minimalist score by Vangelis, and sound effects that include distant booms, twinkling computer notes, dripping rain, strange languages, the whoosh of futuristic vehicles, even small details such as the crosswalk warning. Along with the set design, photography, special effects, acting, and other visual elements, the audio effectively immerses viewers into this incredible world and story.
Keep in mind that a typical viewer entering the local cineplex in 1982 to watch Blade Runner might have just stepped out of a Chevy Nova with an 8-track cassette player loaded with Juice Newton and Kool & The Gang. The visuals, the score, the sound effects, and the story would have been completely novel, and totally mind-blowing.
I saw Blade Runner in its first theater run, and I was bored. But it stayed with me, and decided that I had to watch it again. And again and again, and I've now seen in dozens of times over the years. It is one of my favorites, for the completeness of the world, for the visuals, for the music, for the ideas, for the acting, for the little details I keep discovering.
Ridley Scott's idea of the scifi future being as gritty, ugly and dysfunctional as current times led to his creation of his two scifi masterpieces -- Blade Runner and Alien. The sequels have been disappointing, they had to be.
> The sequels have been disappointing, they had to be.
Scott never owned the rights to Blade Runner and wasn't heavily involved in 2049.
It shows. The script. The choice of actors. Clumsy scenes, like the fight scene at the casino with its stiff choreography. The pointless "virtual girlfriend" subplot. The location for the shoots (Hungary IIRC) which really limited the pool of extras - hardly a single Asian person to be seen.
Some of the people who worked on the film tried their best, including the CGI and set designers and the score (by Hans Zimmer) but I could only watch it once from beginning to end in IMAX. The second time at home I had to stop halfway through.
I had modest expectations going in (I mean, how could it possibly compare?). But it was still disappointing. I expected so much better from Denis Villeneuve. Unfortunately, he seems to have veered into big-budget pretentious scifi schlock.
I had to leave the IMAX showing of 2049, it was deafening (and I'm already hard of hearing!) Saw the whole thing in an ordinary non-IMAX theater, which was much more tolerable.
The highlight of my summer was Blade Runner Live At the Acropolis. The movie was shown in the ancient theater with a live orchestra performing Vangelis.
They may have a global tour of it in some places this fall.
Wow... The venue almost adds another layer to the movie. You're watching a 1982 vision of 2019, accompanied by live electronic-orchestral music, inside a theater built a couple thousand years ago...
Also Vangelis was pretty much inspired by Byzantine Greek Music which was inspired by Ancient Greek music which was played in the ancient theater 2 millennia ago.
And behind the screen on the horizon, framed in a stone arch, was the lights of the ongoing Elliniko megatower construction project, which already dwarfs every structure in the country. It was another layer onto what you described.
Oh vow. Now jealous. My highlight that can even dare to come close would be a Roger Waters show.
Would love to experience the three *katsis in such a setting.
I agree. The other week I saw this at a movie theater. I was blown away by the audio experience. So much better than watching it on my subpar home audio.
It was a cool experience to watch this on the big screen.
>audio
It's another of those movies which uses light extremely effectively, also.
In fact I've heard it said that every single shot in Blade Runner carefully deals with light specifically.
Just your description makes me want to watch it again twice, and one of those times is with my eyes closed.
The sound is probably why the visuals feel so much larger than the sets actually were
I stepped in to watch it in 1982. Didn't like it much. But rewatching it over the years, it grew on me.
The re-cuts are definitely an improvement on the original theatrical release. It's a matter of taste, but for me Director's Cut is the better.
I wonder if part of that is that Blade Runner doesn't optimize for the first viewing. Once you already know where the plot is going, your attention is free to wander into the production design, sound, background activity
But it does! (Or did)
The first theatrical release had a drab narration by Harrison Ford. At places it makes it sound like a cheap film noir detective story.
The Directors Cut is the unbutchered version.
Maybe 4D chess by Ridley Scott. Most had seen the optimized version first and was prepared for the magic which is the recut version ;-)
I have the opposite feeling with Apocalypse Now. The Redux version killed the pacing and explained too much. The added scenes are by themselves worthwhile (and explains later actions) but makes the complete movie a bit heavy handed.
By comparison Blade Runner feels more ethereal even though the both cover dark subjects of human nature.
> The Directors Cut is the unbutchered version.
The Director's Cut (released in 1992) drops the narration and adds the dream sequence, but despite the name is not entirely approved by Ridley Scott.
The Final Cut (released in 2007) is the only version where Ridley Scott had full final cut approval. It re-masters the audio, fixes some of the effects (replacing faces on stunt doubles, removing wires, etc), and changes a few lines (most notably "I want more life, father" instead of "fucker"). The color is also re-graded.
Some people prefer the Director's Cut over the Final Cut, especially the color grading, although I saw the Final Cut in 35mm when it was released and it looked pretty spectacular. In any event the changes in the Final Cut are nowhere near as egregious as the Star Wars special editions or the AI remasters of James Cameron's films.
Yup. It's one of those weird and rare movies that grows on you the number of times you watch it. I have watched it at different ages. The later I have watched the better it seemed.
The audio was good but after I listened to it many times, I started to dislike it. On the other hand, for instance, the Conan the barbarian main themes I can always listen to numerous times.
I think Blade Runner stands out for the visual effects though. The dystopian future cities were great. It were these effects packed into a storyline why I did not want to watch the "sequel".
Many aspects have already been mentioned, all great in their own right, that lifts the movie into timeless greatness. I'd like to add one more. The stunning beauty and performance of Sean Young.
It’s one of the very few immersive masterpieces where all elements complement each other: script, acting, score, production design, lighting, cinematography. The core vision was so brilliant that even short-sighted studio bosses couldn't destroy it with a butchered edit.
Alien is the same imho, hard to believe two of the most iconic sci fi's were created by the same guy and only 3 years apart.
It's time for a new point and click adventure game.
> The movie even inspired Anders Ramsell to paint 3285 water colour prints, and then turn those into a remarkable short film.
I'm yet to see the movie. Are there any spoilers in this article?
Well, some characters are mentioned and images are shown, so this is a tiny bit of a spoiler. But your trade-off would be "shall I first watch Blade Runner before reading this article"; watch it today. And read the article anyway, as it is not just about Blade Runner but also e. g. Logan’s Run. Now, Logan’s Run is not as good as Blade Runner, but it has some elements that are quite interesting IMO. So it can also be recommended, even though I find it a bit dated now; Blade Runner is not dated though really. Probably one of the most important science fiction movie ever made. The book is also good, but different to the movie; I was disappointed because I found the movie was better, but the book is in many ways much more logical. It kind of explains why there are so few animals and so many artificial animals (even though from a biological point of view this makes no sense, humans are also animals after all), whereas in the movie, it is rarely explained why there are artificial animals. IMO the book was more intrinsically logical, and more desperate e. g. regular humans were drug addicts, that was totally cut in the movie. I still liked the movie more, even though I think the book had a stronger intrinsic logic; but the performance of Rutger Hauer really was epic there. IMO his best performance in his whole career.
The book felt dry and sort of boring to me. Which made me recognize that some movies can actually be better than the books they are based on. Which is not a given.
That being said, there are sequels for the original movie in paperback, which I've found to be very acceptable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_2:_The_Edge_of_Hu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_3:_Replicant_Nigh...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_4:_Eye_and_Talon
Did you know?
K.W.Jeter was writing Blade Runner 2 in the office next to our small video game company. We were working on the entirely forgettable Dark Fiber title which was only published in Japan for the NEC PC-98.
https://archive.org/details/DarkFiberWindowsMac/(WIN+MAC)%20...
We talked a lot but I resisted asking him to help with the plot of the game. I probably should have!
I found the movie and the book so different in pacing and tone that they are hardly comparable. The book really has the ethical and sociological questions as the meat, and uses the plot simply as a backbone. The movie does the exact opposite, with the plot the driving force and the questions as food for further thought. You can still enjoy the movie without thinking too hard, if you wish, but the book will fall flat without giving it a lot of thought. As an example, the movie completely drops Mercerism, likely because it would be slow and clunky to try and explain it in an action movie. But it is an essential part of the book, without which PKD's explorations of the pain of the conflict between individualism and collectivism would be entirely missed. Similarly with the artificial animals, which are shown only in passing in the movie, but are a central tool in the book to illustrate hypocrisy and jealousy in people trying to grasp at what is "real". The titles of the two works encapsulate this difference of direction perfectly.
It's amazing that Blade Runner looks as good as anything that has come since. And sounds way better.
Genuine craft and human ingenuity can be a wonderful thing. Technology is a force multiplier and it's not always going to lead to better results in lesser hands.
In general there's also a problem that cinematography has gone to hell in filmmaking, because they want to be able to incorporate CGI more (cost) effectively and that means things like proper lighting and color grading is no longer utilized.
My local Regal is playing it on September 12th. Can’t wait to see it again in theaters.
I watched it a week or two ago at my local Picture House (at FACT). Had a great time!
"Click on the picture to enlarge"
"COMPUTER. ENHANCE." WAS RIGHT THERE!
And bothered my engineer-mind because the "enhancements" revealed photographic details that were literally obscured by physical walls in the original photo.
That seemed to be the point though, to highlight some kind of technological advancements of the time. I was always intrigued by it, like it was taken by multiple lenses, so it's essentially a 3d 'image' allowing a certain amount of point of view change.
Clumsy as fuck interface though, I'll grant that.
Look at what you can do now: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:74965693...
The look of Pris is really amazing, for it's nearly timeless. Probably inspired by looks from the early 80s and I know there's a bit of a 80s comeback (at least music-wise) but I really dig it.
Ridley Scott is perhaps not quite as script-centric as Martin Scorsese or able to make a multi-faceted movie like Spielberg or visual effects heavy as George Lucas. However had, Ridley Scott has by far the best visual eye and is also able to draw like a professional designer, which the others can't. I think the best example for this can be seen in both Alien (first one) and Gladiator. In Gladiator he was much more professional from A to Z, but I think the first Alien is even more impressive if you look at it. The camera work is brilliant (Martin also has great camera work in Taxi Driver, but in Alien the effect is IMO much more profound) and the work around for visual problems (depicting the alien without it looking like garbage) was really epic. It is not easily possible to rank directors, but from a visual point of view, Ridley is probably the best individual (visual) artist as such (note: I refer to his abilities, not to the final product, which may not require as much individual artistic prowess, in other words, Martin may not be able to draw something with a pencil, but the end result movie has strong visual effects - see the desert scene in Casino or the "Do I amuse you?" scene in Goodfellas).
Bloody annoying POS. It was nothing like the book.
Star Wars looked just cheap flick for children.
Soviet Solaris (1972) was one and only true Sci-Fi. But Alien (1979) fixed this problem.
I really disliked Blade Runner for a long time because I love the book so much. It wasn't until a humanities class in college that I learned to appreciate Blade Runner separately from the book. Now, instead of hating Blade Runner, I love it, and I hate Blade Runner 2049 instead, because that movie seems to have zero respect for the message of the first movie, and zero respect for the intention of Ridley Scott (it's obvious to me they changed some things just to get Harrison Ford back in the film). I know I am in the minority, but we are a minority that has extremely good and valid reasons for being upset about it.
2049 is a pretty mediocre film that would be forgotten if it didn’t have the BR name.
I like both the 1984 film and the book though, but I primarily like the movie for the cinematography and atmosphere, more than the story, which is more interesting in the book.
Same director (Scott). Why don't you forget it's based on a book and enjoy it on its own merits?
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