Popular Communication, 7: 7991, 2009

Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 1540-5702 print / 1540-5710 online
DOI: 10.1080/15405700802659056

All Our Variant Futures: The Many Narratives

of Blade Runner: The Final Cut

1540-5710
1540-5702
HPPC
Popular
Communication
Communication, Vol. 7, No. 2, February 2009: pp. 126

The Many Narratives of Blade Runner: The Final Cut

BROOKER

Will Brooker
Kingston University

This article discusses the 2007 release of Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) as a Five-Disc Collectors
Edition. It explores the changes to the films narrative and characterization implied by the directors
preferred Final Cut, but argues that the 2007 releases most significant aspect is (in contrast to
other franchises like Lucass Star Wars films) its embracing of variant edits, source material, alternate, and deleted scenes as equally valid within canon, and its refusal of hierarchies of meaning that
would privilege one version of the film over another. The article further proposes that this five-disc
package constructs Blade Runner as a fictional world with some parallels to contemporary transmedia
franchises, through which the Final Cut itself, following the model of video games, constitutes
one narrative path among a network of possible alternate routes.

INTRODUCTION: A TWENTY-FIVE YEAR LIFESPAN

It opens, fittingly, with a scene that doesnt exist in any version of Blade Runner. A dark room is
illuminated by a bright beam as a machine whirs and cranks up. Its a clever fake: The shot is of
Rick Deckards apartment lit by a passing vehicles headlights, while the soundtrack is lifted
from a Voight-Kampff interrogation scene far earlier in the film. The connotation, of course, is
cinema; the anticipation of the darkened auditorium, at the moment when celluloid first spools
through the projector and a world comes to life on-screen. But within seconds, the image
distorts, flickers, gets digital hiccups; we catch flashes of cathode-ray red, blue, and green, like
extreme close-ups of a TV screen. The Warner Brothers logo jumps. The soundtrack hisses; the
clear, re-mastered picture becomes grainy as a pirate version. Computer text spells out Los
Angeles <2019> against the clacking soundtrack of an ESPERs zoom. We start to tour the
city in a rapid travelogue: sunset from a tiled chamber of the Tyrell building, the off-world
blimp through the Bradbury buildings roof. Deckards boss Bryant reports Ive got four skinjobs, walking the streets, and his voice echoes over shots of the replicants Leon, Pris, and
Zhora, their images looping and overlapping. A digital readout hammers down from four to one,
reinforcing the count of escapees but contradicting the fact that we only saw three of them. The
screen shutters into black. Theyre either a benefit or a hazard, says Deckard. If theyre a
benefit, its not my problem. The words reverberate, hanging in the air while Leon raises a
Correspondence should be addressed to Will Brooker, Principal Lecturer, Director of Studies, Film and Television,
School of Performance and Screen Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Kingston University, Penrhyn Road,
Kingston upon Thames, KT1 2EE. E-mail: w.brooker@kingston.ac.uk

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pistol, while the ESPER tracks deeper into a photograph with a rattle of machinery and stops
abruptly on the sleeping Zhora, while a close-up of Deckards eyes shows hes already got a
problem.
In its first 30 seconds, the trailer for Blade Runner: The Final Cut (Ridley Scott, 2007) is a
minor masterpiece. It conveys a key issue of the film itself can we trust what we see, hear and
remember? but also reflects on its own nature as a revising of the original, a new version that
takes one of the last great analogue SF films, a convincing future world made entirely from
mattes, stop-motion and sets, and fixes it with digital technology. Most strikingly, it makes a
film from 1982 seem entirely fresh, novel, and exciting.
Following its lackluster critical and commercial reception (see Sammon, 1996, pp. 313337),
Blade Runner could easily have faded and been forgotten by 1986. Its longevity, after that
unpromising start, has been remarkable; and its 25-year lifespan, to date, is due in part to its
doubles, variants, reworkings, and replicant texts (see Gray, 2005, pp. 112, 118), of which this
Final Cut is just the latest.
This article asks what effect the Final Cut has on Blade Runner, a title which has, in the
years since the movies first release in 1982, come to signify far more than just a single film (see
Atkins, 2005, p. 79; Gray, 2005, p. 112). Blade Runner, even disregarding the previous uses
of the term for novels by Alan E. Nourse and William S. Burroughs, connotes a network of
linked texts, a brand for authorized spinoffs (K. W. Jeters novels, Westwoods PC game), and a
range of alternate versions with, to noncognoscenti, cryptic titles (the Directors Cut, the Workprint, the Fairfax Cut, the Broadcast Version, the Dallas and Denver sneaks (see Sammon,
p. 394)). Jonathan Gray refers to Blade Runner not as a mere film but, drawing on Raymond
Williams, a structure of feeling as much as a set location, a series of questions and themes as
much as or more than a collection of answers (Gray, 2005, p. 117). The many texts
sketch out a world, create a mood, and offer an immersive experience.
Gray interviewed fans some three years before the Final Cuts release and found them in a twilight zone, a limbo; they wanted the ultimate version of the film, but they also relished the anticipation at a time when the Blade Runner Special Edition, as it was then termed, remained a
hypothetical concept, an imaginary artifact that could still, in theory, fulfil every requirement on
their wish lists. Moreover, though they wanted answers that would clear up the films mysteries,
they still enjoyed the uncertainty of not knowing for sure. Inconsistencies and continuity errors
between the previous incarnations of Blade Runner had created a number of apertures and
ambiguities, including the number of escaped replicants, which in turn allows speculation that
Deckard was one of the original skin-job gang. While the fans in Grays case study wanted Ridley
Scotts final word on the matter, they were also reluctant to have other possibilities ruled out. They
were caught in a contradiction, looking forward to the authors official interpretation but knowing
this would close the case for them, as amateur detectives, and narrow the film from a rich, complex
world to a single, definitive text. Gray describes an awkward ambivalence whereby some almost
did not want the film to be released, given the closure it would represent (Gray, 2005, p. 122).
I will argue that Blade Runner: The Final Cut, in its five-disc Collectors Edition, manages to
satisfy these two contradictory desires. It does so by offering not just a new, upgraded version of
the film, but a package that, paradoxically, presents this cut as just one part of an archive; rather
than a final word, this is a Blade Runner encyclopedia. Scotts most recent take on the movie is
surrounded by an unprecedented range of alternate versions, deleted scenes, and documentaries;
the collection as a whole is what Blade Runner has become.

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As Ill go on to suggest, the Final Cut takes an open-minded stance to towards interpretation
of the texts ambiguities inviting dialogue and embracing debate and a permissive approach
toward hierarchical structures of canonical truth. That is, while the Final Cut movie provides
answers, fills gaps, and fixes errors, the Final Cut package presents this closed-case text as just
one artifact in a museum of more or less equally-weighted exhibits. As such, it takes an unusual,
even unique approach to mainstream franchise texts by opting not to privilege the most recent
revision over earlier drafts. The title suggests a single, definitive narrative, but what The Final
Cut as a whole actually offers is a range of possible stories in a rich, diverse world. Ridley
Scotts Final Cut, the film on Disc 1, constitutes one route through that world the definitive
route the director chooses to take but the Final Cut package makes other possible routes fully
visible as alternative options, rather than repressing them out of continuity and writing out of
history: an unusual, even radical move compared to the approaches to canon taken by DC Comics
and Lucasfilm.

THE FINAL CUT: A DIFFERENT DREAM

The 1992 Directors Cut, as Barry Atkins explains, was itself a paradox: This apparently definitive and authorized form actually opened up the film to further readings through its removal of
the singular interpretive narration Deckards voiceover and its reinstitution of what fans
know as the unicorn dream, the key clue to Deckards replicant status when paired with Gaffs
crafting of an origami unicorn at the end of the film that implies Gaffs access to Deckards
thoughts or, rather, his programming. The Directors Cut, Atkins suggests, is a firmly plural
text that resists and opposes any sense of closure toward the singular (Atkins, 2005, p. 80).
On the face of it, the Final Cuts intention is to clean up and close down ambiguities. As
noted above, the films uneven production history, involving numerous plot changes, lastminute makeshift fixes, and reshuffles after the disappointing preview screenings, resulted in a
text of holes, patches, and slippages. Rather than undermining the integrity of the story-world,
though, these moments of not-quite-rightness contribute to the films questioning of memory
and perception, integrating with intentional points of ambiguity. Deliberate seeding of doubt
includes the discrepancy between Leons lines Ill tell you about my mother and Let me tell
you about my mother, when heard live and later, on tape; the brief impression of Rachaels
childhood photograph coming to life, with childrens shouts and the dappled movement of light
and shadow; the unicorn dream, too, seems initially unmotivated and unexplained, like a vision
from an entirely different film, and over almost before its begun.
In this context, minor continuity errors seem to fit the films uncertain mood. In the Directors
Cut, for instance, the Cambodian lady with the electron microscope reads out a different snakescale serial number to the one we see on-screen, Deckards lip movements fail to match his
words when interrogating Abdul Ben-Hassan, and the dove released by Roy Batty soars into an
unfeasibly blue sky. All these moments have been lost in the Final Cut. The dove shot has been
inserted into an elaborate digital shot of night-time urban Los Angeles, dressed with smoke and
neon to match the surrounding city. Harrison Fords son, Ben, delivered the Abdul Ben-Hassan
dialogue as a next-generation Deckard, and his mouth, enhanced with Harrisons scar, was
mapped onto the existing shot. Correcting the serial number to fit the Cambodian ladys line, by
contrast, must have been an easy fix.

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Further, even more minor glitches have been cleaned up: A shot of Roy Batty clenching his
seized-up fist, originally filmed for the Bradbury Building showdown but inserted far earlier in
the film, has been color-corrected to suit the surrounding footage; and a now 60-something
Joanna Cassidy was filmed again in 2007 gamely going through the motions, and miming going
through the plate glass, of Zhoras death scene so that her face and hair could replace the stuntwoman and ginger wig of the earlier versions.
On one level, these changes are fully understandable and justifiable cosmetic tweaks using
digital technology to improve inconsistencies and blend the edges, smoothing over hasty effects
work from the early 1980s. The correction of Deckards lip-sync is, arguably, of the same order
as the removal of the cables that visibly lifted some of the Spinners in the earlier cuts, but its
overall effect is to remove doubt, making the world of Blade Runner a little more solid and trustworthy, rather than (fittingly) uncertain. A minor adjustment to Bryants dialogue sends more
significant ripples throughout the text. Off-screen, with the shot on Deckards reaction, he now
explains that two of the six escaped replicants got fried running through an electrical field at the
Tyrell Corporation, leaving the four we encounter during the film. In all previous versions, only
one of the escapees died at Tyrell. The error results, again, from multiple story drafts and midproduction decisions: the replicant crew originally comprised Batty, Pris, Zhora, Leon, Mary,
and Hodge. Marys role was cast then cut, leaving a space for fans to speculate that Deckard was
the final team-member (see Sammon, p. 55). This hole has been closed.
Disregarding additions so minor that they seem to have no real consequence it adds little
to the story that we now know Leon worked as an ammunition loader, that we see two go-go
girls dancing outside Taffy Lewis club, or that we hear Battys whispering call Sebastian,
come after the murder of Tyrell the Final Cut makes two further, more significant revisions
to the films previous incarnations.
First, it decides among the choices offered by versions of Blade Runner in terms of their
graphic content: censored for broadcast, toned down for American theatrical release, or left
uncut for international audiences and domestic laser disc (Sammon, pp. 404-450). The decision
is for increased, explicit violence in the replicants gouging of Tyrells eyes and, later, Deckards
nose; but Ridley Scott also chooses his final word from a choice between fucker and father
and takes the clean option. Batty now addresses Tyrell as a patriarchal creator I want more
life, Father rather than spitting an obscenity in his face. Once more, while a choice clearly
had to be made, the implication of a final cut is that the alternative is closed down and ruled
out of continuity: that Batty never called his maker a fucker.
The second change is to the unicorn dream, and it alters the scene in that the word dream is
no longer appropriate. The unicorn is now a vision, appearing to Deckard with his eyes open,
though they flicker closed beforehand, perhaps indicating a transition to half-awake reverie.
Notably, the Directors Cut introduces and dismisses the unicorn not through cuts but dissolves,
a familiar indicator of dream sequences (the ethereal vocal chorus, rising on the soundtrack,
makes the transition even more clear).
In the 2007 reworking, Deckard glances left and down, at the piano or the sheet music, then
gazes dumbly ahead. His drift into fantasy is marked by a hint of animal breathing, which firms
up into a soundtrack of trotting hooves and snorts, far less delicate than the awed vocals of the
Directors Cut. It is only the conventions of continuity editing that encourage us to link Deckards
gaze through a straight cut to the unicorn, which clearly appears in an entirely distinct physical
space, tinted blue-green rather than in the warm browns of the apartment, and seems to have

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wandered in from an entirely different genre. In a sequence unique to this version, Scott cuts
back from the unicorn to Deckards face, which twitches and nods a little before we cut for a
second time to the unicorn. Man and mythical beast are more clearly linked here by a process of
looking the power of continuity editing leading us to understand that, against all logic, the
unicorn is seen from Deckards point of view but this is balanced by the loss of a moment
unique to the Directors Cut, where Deckard, during the dissolve, shakes his head in an echo of
the unicorns movement.
One interesting side-effect of the 2007 cut, while its tendency is to clean up ambiguities and
close down multiple choices, is its addition to the body of variant Blade Runner footage through
this reworking of the unicorn scene, not just in its editing but in its introduction of new material. The second shot discussed above is identical to that of the Directors Cut, but our first
glimpse of the unicorn, stepping from behind a tree at long distance, was never seen in previous
versions. Although Blade Runner has for many years been an umbrella for various cuts (original,
Workprint, international) and various related intertexts, the unicorn dream has never before
been a multivalent term. Now, fans and scholars will have to specify a version of the dream by
its date: the 1992 dissolves, or the 2007 vision.

THE FINAL CUT: THE BLADE RUNNER MUSEUM

Everything points, wrote Barry Atkins, shortly before the Final Cuts release, toward Blade
Runner remaining a multiple and elusive text (Atkins, 2005, p. 80). He quotes from a note
attached to one version of the script, as late as May 2000, to indicate that the film was a text
still accessible to reworking. In this document, screenwriters Hampton Fancher and David
Peoples state that this draft is just one of many. . . there is no definitive draft of Blade Runner
and there never will be. Because its not finished yet (Peoples cited in Atkins, 2005, p. 80).
In isolation, the Final Cut film represents the capture of this long-elusive text, the inking-in of a
single script from a series of pencilled, erased, rewritten drafts; the reification and embalming of a
film that remained, remarkably, alive and vibrant for 25 years into a pretty, polished, digitally
finished but frozen version. If we take the Final Cut as the last word on Blade Runner, then the
multiple options are ruled out, not just from this version but also from the Blade Runner canon, the
mythos, the official history. There were never five replicants loose on the streets; there was never a
voiceover; there was always a unicorn dream, and it happened the way youre seeing now.
This is the approach to rewritten canon taken by two other major producers of popular
science fiction, DC Comics and Lucasfilm. In 1986, DC Comics instigated a radical housecleaning of its characters complex histories as in Blade Runner, partially the result of continuity
slips as, over the decades since World War II, a lackadaisical approach to consistency led to
various contradictions and through a year-long story event called Crisis On Infinite Earths
merged multiple universes of diverse variety together until only one official fictional earth
remained. Key characters were then rebooted from scratch, and their previous histories were
ruled out of existence. Thousands of stories and scores of characters, such as the more colorful
and campy elements of the Batman mythos, were now unmentionable. While the previous, preCrisis histories were still accessible in archive reprints, in terms of official continuity and the
ongoing diegesis they had never happened; it had only always happened the way the reboot of
the late 1980s portrayed it.

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Similarly, George Lucas has reworked details of the Star Wars saga many times; some of the
changes mere cosmetic tweaks on the level of removing cables from Spinners, some of them
wide-reaching in terms of their rewriting of character, and each new version intended not to
supplement but to replace the last. The scene in A New Hope (1977) where Harrison Fords Han
Solo shoots bounty hunter Greedo in cold blood was revised once in 1997 to show his antagonist
firing first, and again in 2005, in a compromise that had both characters shooting at the same
time. Until 2005, the 1997 Special Edition presented the truth; now even that rewrite is
supplanted. The newer version shows not just how it happens now but how it always happened;
and Lucas enforced this official line by opting, until the release of limited edition theatrical
versions during a 10-week window in 2006, not to reproduce the originals on DVD.
A fan who secures the limited edition of the 1977 film will have to rely on a dingy and dull
copy, carelessly transferred, according to one source, from a nonanamorphic 1993 laserdisc
(Dawe, n.p) and presented more as a piece of Lucasfilms junk than a valued historical artifact; a
viewer preferring the 1997 cut can only fall back on a technically inferior VHS, whose quality in
time will erode further until, effectively, all evidence of this version has faded from existence.
Blade Runner: The Final Cut, in its five-disc Collectors Edition form, takes a different
approach. Most obviously, its box-set presents not just Ridley Scotts preferred version, with
digital enhancement and newly instated scenes, but also an archive of previous edits. The collection includes the rarely seen Workprint, first screened at the Dallas/Denver sneak previews in
1982, discovered years later and rescreened at the Fairfax in Los Angeles in 1990 (Sammon,
p. 334), in addition to three further cuts (the original 1982 U.S. and international versions and
the Directors Cut of 1992) and an assortment of deleted and alternate scenes so extensive that it
almost constitutes another film in itself.
As noted above, in satisfying the twin desires for an ultimate edition of Blade Runner, which
to many fans meant an auteurist expression of Ridley Scotts personal vision, uncompromised
by studio interference (see Gray, 2005, pp. 118-121) and for the continued ambiguity and
aperture created by the multiple versions and their inconsistencies, the Final Cut presents a
paradox. Ridley Scott is given the authorial privilege of a newly filmed introduction to each cut,
and the most recent holding pride of place in the box set as the primary disc, uncluttered by
extras is, we are told immediately, his preferred version of the film . . . out of all the versions
of Blade Runner, this is my favorite (The Final Cut, 00.00.07-00.00.30).
However, this privileging of the director as auteur on Disc 1 is tempered by the surrounding material on other discs, just as the Final Cuts status as the last word is compromised by
the provision of four additional cuts and supplementary alternative scenes, in marked contrast
to the Lucasfilm approach of giving only the most recent cut DVD release and phasing out
earlier versions. The documentary on Disc 4, discussing Deckards possible replicant identity,
offers Scotts interpretation but also invites many other readings, including those of Harrison
Ford who played Deckard as a human and maintains this interpretation Joanna Cassidy;
Rutger Hauer; Paul M. Sammon, author of Future Noir; the director Frank Darabont; and
Jovanka Vuckovic, editor of Rue Morgue magazine. Scott may chuckle, If you dont get it,
youre a moron, but many other voices, of comparable cultural status, are placed in dialogue
with his own. The impression is not of a lecture from the authorial pulpit but of the
pleasurable argument of fan forums: Even the documentarys title, Deck-A-Rep, is
borrowed from fandom and, through its inclusion on an official DVD, given the producers
stamp of approval.

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The Final Cut documentaries consistently stress collaboration, discussion, and joint authorship. In some cases, the creative moment was so long ago that those involved choose to share the
credit for their inventions. David Peoples recalls a conversation with his daughter in which they
tried to find a replacement for androids, and cant remember which of them first devised the
term replicant (Sacrificial Sheep, 00.03.14); Hampton Fancher isnt sure who came up with
the idea of the replicants glowing eyes, but imagines it must have been Scott (Deck-A-Rep,
00.03.55).
Ridley Scott is given the 30-second introduction to each cut, but other co-creators are celebrated at greater length. Philip K. Dick, whose source novel clashes with Scotts adaptation in
many ways, is the subject of three DVD chapters titled Inception, with Do Androids Dream of
Electric Sheep positioned as a complement to Blade Runner: Two different texts with a shared
DNA that, taken together, offer an overarching view and total artistic vision (Sammon,
Sacrificial Sheep, 00.00.25). Further documentaries recognize the contributions of production
and wardrobe designers, and pay tribute to the late cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth. Again,
the focus here is on teamwork: Cronenweth is remembered for passing his techniques to
newcomers, and footage of Pris created by another lighting cameraman is picked out for its
similarity to the adjacent Cronenweth shots, as a demonstration of collegiality and shared expertise rather than individual distinction (The Light That Burns, 00.13.33).
Finally, consider the connotations of the discs arrangement and labeling in the Final Cut
package. While, as noted, Scotts preferred version takes prime position, the Workprint a
novelty and rarity in a different way also earns the last disc to itself, billed as the first-ever
home video release. The deleted and alternate scenes feature on Disc 4, titled Enhancement
Archive; Disc 3, with the three major cuts, is called merely Archival Versions. Clearly, these
titles were carefully chosen to echo Blade Runner terminology, and their implications, though
no doubt playfully-intended, deserve to be thought through. If the Final Cut on Disc 1 is now
the original, then Disc 3, the archive, provides that 2007 cut with memories of its previous
selves, a little foggier, more muted, and muffled than the crystal clarity of the remastered
version: The sound and picture have degraded slightly over time, losing detail, and the three
earlier incarnations are compressed onto one disc at lower quality, rather than allowed to
luxuriate in a whole disc of their own. All four versions are presented in Dolby 5.1 audio and
anamorphic widescreen, but just as the newest edition tightens and tweaks the picture, correcting tiny mistakes and adjusting the contrast and color balance, so it also takes advantage of
surround sound and the deep bass boost of LFE reinforcement, creating a richer, textured audio
landscape (see Hunt, n.p.). The earlier cuts are, therefore, marginally rougher, flatter, and less
polished, but as legacy editions, their subtly inferior quality in terms of contemporary picture
and audio standards is balanced by their archival value as authentic documents from a specific
historical moment.
Disc 4, in turn, is the enhancement. With its subcategories Inception, Fabrication, and
Longevity, it is clearly positioned as the replicant disc: limited in some ways but also, as the
title makes plain, superior in others. Once more, while the most recent version initially seems to
be given higher status, its context within the five-disc package modifies this position; while
Ridley Scott offers this cut as his own preferred interpretation, the surrounding documentaries,
presumably with his blessing and approval, choose not to give him the last word but rather
present his reading as one of many, in a democratic arena where the meaning of Blade Runner is
jointly shaped and open to debate.

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As such, the Final Cut package further undermines the already tenuous hierarchy between
the primary text of a DVD the feature film and the secondary supplements available on
bonus discs or accessible through menus. Brookey and Westerfelhaus noted in 2002 that DVD
supplementary material such as director commentaries can shape the meaning of a feature film,
highlighting certain interpretations and ruling out others; their study proposes that the DVD
format, with its range of additional material, presents a blurring of the traditional distinction
between primary and secondary texts (2002, p. 39). The self-contained package of the DVD
collapses promotional material, criticism, and interviews what the cultural studies of the
1980s called secondary texts, usually print documents and physically distinct from the primary
medium of TV set or cinema (see Fiske, 1987, p.108) into the product itself so that the previously intertextual relationship between supplement and film becomes intimately intratextual; in
this case, the Final Cut and the alternate footage on the other discs are treated as integral aspects
of a whole, on the same hierarchical level.
THE BLADE RUNNER MULTIVERSE
Rather than weakening Ridley Scotts most recent edit of the film, this refusal of strict hierarchies and rigid canon enhances the Final Cut in a broader, more pluralistic sense: It enriches
Blade Runner as a whole, by presenting it as a body of work whose pleasurable ambiguities
could never be contained in a single text.
In contrast to Lucasfilms approach, the Final Cut box set effectively offers a collection of
alternatives and variants and allows them all a valid position in the canonical hierarchy; the
primary text is supplemented by its memories and its enhancements. We are invited to take our
pick and choose our own preferred text from all those made available. Unlike the scenes and
actors repressed from the Star Wars mythos by each new reworking Sebastian Shaw, for
instance, was digitally replaced by Hayden Christensen for the finale of the 2005 Return of the
Jedi the events of the previous Blade Runner cuts are still allowed to have existed. They are
all allowed to have happened, although the contradictions between them imply various, slightly
different, parallel versions of Los Angeles 2019.
This open-minded acceptance of alternate edits has a transformative effect. It implies that all
the Blade Runner footage across the five discs is valid within continuity; that scenes omitted
from the Final Cut can be seen as parallels to the version of events on Disc 1, and that we can
choose which ones we personally prefer.
This, in turn, constructs Blade Runner as not one story but rather as a story-world made up of
branching, possible narratives; that is, it makes the film into something more like a game.
Specifically, it makes the film something more like the Blade Runner game produced by
Westwood in 1997, which as Susana P. Tosca explains, invites the player to choose possible
options shoot a suspect, talk to a suspect leading to further consequences and in turn to a
range of 13 potential endings, some of which implicate the blade runner protagonist as a replicant (Tosca, 2005, pp. 102103; see also Murray, 1997, pp. 258259, on branching dramas).
Similarly, if we take the four different edits and the alternate scenes on the enhancement
disc, as aspects of a wider whole, the narrative of Blade Runner now includes numerous possible
endings. The Final Cut, the Workprint, and the Directors Cut close as the elevator doors in
Deckards hallway slide shut on his uncertain future with Rachael, but the original (international

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and domestic) cuts and the deleted footage extend Deckards narrative outside the city. Here,
too, several possible branching paths are available.
In one variant, restored for the Fabrication chapter of the DVD, a sedan cruises through the
mountains down the old Richter Route. Deckard, wearing a striped sweater, blandly reports,
We were in the clear . . . I told her I loved her. She told me it was the happiest day of her life,
before the shot dissolves and the camera rises away from the escaping couple. This version is so
idealized and implausible that, coupled with Fords uncertain and unconvinced delivery of his
lines, it almost plays like another of Deckards dreams, perhaps a false-memory implant building on his associations of forests with liberation and romance. Terry Gilliams Brazil (1985),
whose very similar penultimate sequence shows the protagonist escaping the city and driving
down a mountain route to a rural idyll, which the final shots reveal is all in his mind while he
remains a captive, provides a framework for this reading. (Brazil, like Blade Runner, was
released with various endings and exists in numerous different cuts; the more pessimistic
Terry Gilliam conclusion and the Love Conquers All edit by Universal Chairman Sid Sheinberg
were both made available on a 1999 version of the DVD.) As a literary precedent, we might
consider John Fowles The French Lieutenants Woman, which offers a happy ending, undercuts
it as a daydream (Fowles, 1967, p. 327) and then presents two equally-weighted alternate
conclusions decided by a flip of the narrators coin (p. 390).
In a second version of Blade Runners final scene, also included in the Fabrication
archive, Rachael turns to Deckard in the car and fires unsettling questions at him while he
drives. Are you and I lovers? Did you know your wife a long time? Deckard smiles when
Rachael tells him, I think this has been the best day of my life, but his grin fades as she
muses coldly, over an eerie Vangelis melody, You know what else I think? You and I were
made for each other. The implication sinks in and Deckard turns from the wheel to stare at
her, but she simply rests her head back on the seat, ignoring him and smiling to herself.
Suddenly the happy ending has become something more sinister. Now Deckard seems to be
driving away from everything he knows, trapped with a replicant who has learned how to
manipulate him just as he previously used her, and finally contemplating the idea that he too
may be one of Tyrells creations.
Even the Blade Runner cuts that end in Deckards hallway, never reaching the mountains,
carry various different connotations. In both the Directors Cut and Final Cut, we have been
privy to the unicorn dream, albeit a slightly different dream in each version, before Deckard
finds Gaffs last origami taunt. In the Workprint, which lacks the unicorn sequence, the origami
remains enigmatic without any obvious reference or explanation. Again, we can consider these
similar but distinct routes through Blade Runner as parallel to the structure of a computer game,
where a player may reach the same ending through different paths. Some trajectories, as detailed
in online walkthroughs, are more direct than others, and may lead to a quick conclusion but
miss out on hidden subtleties of environment and character development.
The alternate and deleted footage provides a host of intriguing background details, filling
gaps between episodes and, much like fan fiction, fleshing out what might have gone on behind
the scenes. One clip reveals that Leon was hiding in the bathroom during Gaff and Deckards
examination of his apartment; another accompanies Deckard to visit Holden in hospital, and yet
another suggests that Gaff and Bryant were watching the two blade runners in the ward, keeping
Deckard and Holden under constant surveillance. These scenes, like the unicorn dream, alter and
arguably enrich our understanding of plot and character Deckard now seems far more a pawn

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in the game, and Gaff placed as Bryants ambitious protg without directly contradicting
what we see in other versions of the film.
If we accept these scenes as alternate branches from the familiar narrative, they offer revealing
glimpses of the main characters from surprising angles, or show us what they could have been in
a parallel universe of the films production. Roy Batty cowers in a corner of the elevator after
killing Tyrell, replying to the security announcement with a whimpered Ma? Deckards banter
with Holden (locker-room talk about making zig-zag with the tit-job and sticking it into the
one with the snake until Holden blurts youre making me piss, asshole!) coupled with the
alternative takes of Harrison Fords voiceover, suggest a macho, even misogynistic persona.
This alternative-Deckards blustering assurance seems aimed at convincing himself not just
of his masculinity, but of his humanity and his memories. He tells us Zhora is a hot pleasure
model, her psych profile a combination of a porno tape and a very serious traffic accident.
He remarks that he hasnt seen a sequined dress for 20 years, not since my days watching hot
dancers in the fourth sector. When approaching Taffys, he assures us it brought back memories. I was back on the street of bad dreams, doing the toots and belly holes. I was remembering
a whole lot. Interviewing Zhora, he decides to be charming, then chuckles, adding my speciality. The Deckard of this voiceover is determined to show us hes a man, doing a mans job, to
the extent that we sense desperation behind his tough-guy act.
At a further remove, a rediscovered screen test of Nina Axelrod as a blonde Rachael lets us see
the character as she might have looked and acted in a parallel Blade Runner, examining old photographs of Deckard and asking if he cried at his fathers death. This alternate take completes a line
that was never finished in Sean Youngs performance: We finally learn that Rachael cannot rely on
her memory to kiss Deckard. Again, there are established literary precedents for drawing on a earlier, rougher version of a text to provide context for, or even to amend, a later, more polished edit;
for example, the Quarto editions of Shakespeares plays are generally considered less reliable than
the Folios, but also include details that the later versions (sometimes unwisely) corrected or omitted.
The Final Cuts Philip K. Dick documentaries, as noted, discuss the source novel within the
same interpretive framework, whereby the complete text of Blade Runner, with its inherent
enigmas, inconsistencies, and contradictions, is regarded as the sum of its variants and intertexts.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is, according to this open-minded approach to canonical
hierarchy, another alternate but equally valid telling of the tale, a variant which, like the different
edits, shares a genetic code while exhibiting distinct features and personality.
By extension of the same approach, the K. W. Jeter spin-off books, including The Edge of
Human (1995), Replicant Night (1996), and Eye and Talon (2000), can be seen as enriching the
complex, collaborative text of Blade Runner further, resolving the parallel universes of the source
novel and film into a world where both Dicks J.R. Isidore and his analogue in the movie,
J.F. Sebastian, exist as separate characters. The Westwood game suggests a further parallel narrative whereby the player-protagonist, McCoy, investigates animal murders in the same chronological timeframe as the events of the film(s); McCoys route through Los Angeles 2019, like the
deleted footage, takes place in the gaps on the outskirts and behind the scenes of the familiar story.
By the same token, the film Soldier (Paul W. S. Anderson, 1998) written by David Peoples,
billed as a sidequel to Blade Runner, and including references to the battle at Tannhauser Gate
expands and augments this intertextual network in the same way that Foe (1986), Wide Sargasso
Sea (1966), and Wicked (1995) extend the worlds of Robinson Crusoe (1719), Jane Eyre (1847),
and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), respectively (see Dolezel, 1998, pp. 213226), but without

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the issues of canon, copyright, and hierarchy that oblige The Wind Done Gone (2001) to present
itself as an unofficial parody of, rather than official parallel to, Gone With the Wind (1936).
Finally, Edward James Olmos, a key actor in the re-imagined TV series Battlestar Galactica,
forgets himself during the Deck-a-Rep interview and refers to Deckard as a Cylon: robots which, in
the reworked show, are indistinguishable from humans and have infiltrated the protagonists society. His slip reveals the debt that the recent Battlestar Galactica owes to Blade Runner, but also
playfully suggests a connection between the two fictions, implying a transworld multiverse like
that of Alan Moores League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2002), David Thomsons Suspects
(2007), Philip Jose Farmers Wold Newton network (originated in Tarzan Alive, 1972) or
Kim Newmans Anno Dracula (1992) indeed, like crossover slash fiction where the creations
of different authors are brought together into a shared story-space (see Sweeney, 2008).
What does this open embrace of alternate and variant texts into canon do to Blade Runner?
It creates a sense of the text as a living world of narrative possibilities, through which various
routes are possible across various media. By denying Ridley Scotts most recent Final Cut an
absolute status that excludes all other readings, it transforms Blade Runner, in the terms
broader sense, from one story to many, with multiple branches and back-routes, carried by a
cross-media range of texts from films to novels and games.
This approach has transformative implications for the way we regard the various editions
rewrites, alternate footage, deleted scenes, studio edits, spinoffs, and sidequels of a popular text. It
confirms that the final word on Blade Runner, paradoxically, is aperture, not closure; it uses the
authority of an ultimate edition to shrug off authority and dissolve hierarchy. It presents Blade Runner
not as one object but as a collection, and embraces the previous versions most significantly, the
1982 and 1991 editions as alternatives that augment the text as a whole, building it into a more
complex body of material. All the previous drafts are celebrated as part of what Blade Runner now
means: a museum or gallery, a space to inhabit, visit and investigate, rather than a single artifact.
Through its branching paths and passages where these variant texts co-exist in parallel, it
creates a model like DC Comics pre-Crisis universe, where the Flash of Earth-One and EarthTwo occupy alternate worlds separated merely by vibrations. They are worlds where Johnny
Quick, a criminal version of the same character like the blustering, macho Deckard of the
alternate voiceover, in contrast to the quieter, more passive protagonist of the Directors Cut
inhabits the further parallel world of Earth-Three. More broadly, it suggests the abstract possibility of a Star Wars where Han Solo both shoots the bounty hunter Greedo in cold blood and
shoots only when provoked; a paradigm of narrative where the text is enhanced by both consequences being equally possible and held in balance, as in The French Lieutenants Woman.
It suggests an approach to popular fictions that, as in the contemporary Shakespeare editions that
reproduce Folio and Quarto versions of the same play on facing pages, accepts that some stories
may never be contained, in all their ambiguity and complexity, across a single text. There is no
definitive draft of Blade Runner and there never will be. Because its not finished yet.
In some respects, Blade Runner, as a textual concept, now resembles contemporary popular
narratives such as Lost, Heroes, Buffy, Doctor Who, Firefly, and The Matrix, which, in varying
degrees of ambition and experiment, tell their stories across a range of equally-weighted media
including comic books, console games, television shows, and Internet-based ARGs. Unlike more
traditional franchises such as Star Wars, with their strictly regulated hierarchy of canon where any
narrative at a lower level Marvel and Dark Horse comic books, Expanded Universe novels,
radio adaptations is wiped out of continuity if it is contradicted by a higher-level text such as the

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films themselves, many modern fictions make no such hierarchical distinction between media. The
Buffy and Firefly comic book series authored by Joss Whedon hold the same status as the television series, the Matrix videogame fills gaps between episodes of the film trilogy, and the Lost and
Heroes ARGs provide canonical information before it is revealed on the show. The distinctions
between primary text and spinoff between television show and Web site, like those between
DVD film and supplementary material are increasingly becoming eroded.
Rather than single narratives, these are franchises; the producers of Lost and Heroes are not
merely concerned with telling a story, but creating a world, a diegesis, a brand that spills across
multiple platforms and involves an ensemble cast, each with his or her own through-line. As
Henry Jenkins notes, the corporate approach to creating successful popular fiction has explicitly
shifted from narrative to world-building, the manufacture of a fictional space as a richly
detailed playground which can support multiple stories and characters across multiple media
(Jenkins, 2006, p. 114). The viewers relationship with these world-texts has also shifted. When
we search the universe of Heroes or Lost through websites, mobile phones and real-world artefacts, or create the links between Matrix films by picking a path through the PlayStation game,
we become a participant, an explorer, sometimes when receiving e-mails from on-screen
heroes even feeling like a minor character. The word viewers still comes most easily to
hand; but terms like visitors, investigators, occasionally players, might give a more accurate sense of the way fans engage with these fictional worlds.
Blade Runner, in its current state as story-world, has reached a similar stage of development
through an entirely different process of evolution. A new franchise like Heroes is created not as a
single plotline, but a diegesis where many stories can be told across multiple platforms, from its
inception. Blade Runner began in 1982 as an older kind of text a film adaption of a novel and
expanded, partly through accident and circumstance, partly through artistic or commercial decision, into a cross-platform phenomenon. Of the multiple texts that now make up the world of Blade
Runner, many were there since its inception the various edits with their overlaps, ambiguities,
and contradictions; the earlier scripts; the unused scenes and storyboards; the gaps and conflicts
between screenplay and novel but some, such as the Westwood game and the Jeter novels, have
clustered around the central concept during the last 25 years, like retrofitted additions to its architecture. Like other franchises from this pre-transmedia period, such as the Star Wars saga and the
DC universe, the Blade Runner brand has built up over time, spreading through spinoffs across
other media forms into an expansive, rich, and detailed fictional space where various stories can be
told before, after, and in parallel to the tale of Rick Deckard, Rachael, and Roy Batty.
Yet Blade Runner is messier and more fascinating than the DC and Lucasfilm franchises, which
have tended (with exceptions) to conflate, repress, and retcon any retellings of its main characters
narratives into a single continuity. It also transcends the boundaries of contemporary transmedia
fictions such as Heroes, which construct a single, slick, and coherent world rather than an overlapping set of alternates collaged from rough cuts, first drafts, dead ends, and forgotten leads.
By including the erasures and reworkings of Deckards story through various editions, and
presenting them all as potentially valid, the Final Cut celebrates what Blade Runner has become
over the last 25 years: an unruly multiverse, a map of possible routes, a network of alternatives
rather than a single narrative. And in tracing paths through this network, the Blade Runner fan
who clicks through menus, freeze-frames details, and rewinds to check dialogue perhaps
pleasurably echoing Deckards examination of photographs and recordings becomes a detective, a participant in the fiction; a member of the Blade Runner partnership.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This is itself the fifth cut of All Our Variant Futures and co-exists with other, slightly different
versions of the article that bear the same name. While for me it is shadowed and echoed by
longer, shorter, and otherwise alternate versions, I am very grateful to the editors of Popular
Communication and to the anonymous readers of this article for helping me shape the material
into what, for now, is its final form.
AFTERWORD
This is itself the sixth cut of All Our Variant Futures, and co-exists with other, slightly different versions of the article. While this published version bears my name, the article above was
subject to various alterations by the editors of this journal. It is not, therefore, the authors cut.

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