@bstacey@icosahedron.website
The new video prompted a thought.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6OT77T7YlE
Maybe /Blade Runner/ would have been ... better with a voice-over? Not the one we got, which was clunky and blunt and ... bluntkey ... I can definitely --- do --- words! But the basic idea of a narrator in noir, that certainly fits. What if the actor were actually awake, and the writer wasn't filled with loathing? Take a movie like Aronofsky's π, where the narration fits with the visuals and forms a vital part of the organic whole. Words can heighten the subtlety, create contrast and irony where there was only imagery.
I guess I've found /Blade Runner/ to be a collection of great scenes and moments that somehow become less than the sum of their parts.
YouTube
Weighing the Value of Director's Cuts | Scanline... Kubrick cut the expository narration written for /2001/ down to nothing, but he had Alex de Large narrate through /A Clockwork Orange/, and /Dr. Strangelove/ begins with an almost newsreelish or documentarian voice-over guy, striking a cadence that makes the opening of the film feel that bit more like it could be an official DoD production.
"In order to guard against surprise nuclear attack, America's Strategic Air Command maintains a large force of B-52 bombers airborne 24 hours a day. Each B-52 can deliver a nuclear bombload of 50 megatons, equal to 16 times the total explosive force of all the bombs and shells used by all the armies in World War Two. Based in America, the Airborne alert force is deployed from the Persian Gulf to the Arctic Ocean, but they have one geographical factor in common --- they are all two hours from their targets inside Russia."
there's an Electric Sheep radio play floating around YouTube, which basically throws it back to the source material
So you'll notice some very obviously different things, like Deckard being an audibly much older guy than the Harrison Ford we see on screen, and some plot bits that you may or may not care for
I like it, and I think a narrator Deckard works, but in the context of a pure noir like Electric Sheep, instead of the more sci fi vibe of the movie Blade Runner
I was listening to this one, its fun just to compare it to the movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhNSR0WaYzc
YouTube
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Blade Runner) Adaptation
