By Drew Dietsch
| Published
When we talk about some of the biggest failures in movie history, there are usually two kinds of films at the center of that discussion: truly terrible flicks that deserved to be rejected by audiences and misunderstood movies that simply didn’t hit at the right time.
Some of those in the second category end up being seen as legitimate masterpieces after they’ve escaped the need to make their money back. And that’s what we’re looking at today, a sci-fi masterwork that didn’t make its budget back at the box office and got mixed reactions from critics. And today, it’s considered a cornerstone of the genre.
Blade Runner Origins
Based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by iconic author Philip K. Dick, Blade Runner is the story of Rick Deckard, a retired police agent who specializes in hunting down replicants. Replicants are artificially created humans manufactured for manual labor. Deckard is brought back into the job by his old boss and tracks down a number of fugitive replicants while also falling in love with a woman, Rachel, who happens to be a replicant herself.
Now, just to cover my bases on anything I’m going to say, let the record show I think Blade Runner is great. But it’s not hard to see why it took so long for most people to see it that way, and why some viewers will never be able to see it that way.
Why Blade Runner Failed For Audiences
The detective story at the heart of Blade Runner is the first thing to key into when talking about why the movie didn’t work for most audiences. Though Deckard is doing the expected detecting, the audience is also following the rebel replicants. So, there is very little of a real mystery feel to this part of the film. It’s not really a mystery story at all in this regard, so the pacing of Deckard’s investigation can make audiences feel the movie is sluggish.
Another major component to Blade Runner is director Ridley Scott’s big picture vision of the future and all the artists he employed to help shape that vision. Even the biggest Blade Runner detractors can admit that the production design and execution of the film is astonishing.
However, it makes Blade Runner into more of a moody art piece than an exciting sci-fi blockbuster. That’s the kind of vibe that is pretty much guaranteed to only work for a select audience.
Blade Runner Gets Messed With By Producers
Then, there’s what actually happened to Blade Runner on its way to the editing bay. Certain producers were nervous about the film making sense to audiences. So, against the will of Ridley Scott and the other main creatives behind the picture, an inner monologue voiceover was created for Deckard. Granted, this isn’t out of place for the film noir inspirations behind Blade Runner, but it was a decision that even Harrison Ford felt pretty weird about when it happened. And while there are notable fans of the voiceover version, it’s not exactly the most celebrated part of Ford’s acting career.
Then, the real meddling started as the decision was made to reconfigure the ending of the film to allow for a happy escape between Deckard and Rachel. It was clear that the production was becoming worrisome for the money people and they wanted to try and mold the movie Ridley Scott had been making into something trying to be more commercial and accessible.
But all their fiddling would end up being for nought. Blade Runner opened at the number two spot at the box office with a disappointing $6 million dollars compared to its $30 million dollar budget, the equivalent of almost $100 million dollars today.
Harrison Ford vs. E.T.
It didn’t help that Blade Runner was opening in the third week of a massive pop culture game-changer at the box office, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. There’s this common perception that Blade Runner didn’t do well at the box office because it was a dour, grim-looking movie while folks were riding the emotional highs of E.T. I think there’s some credence to that argument, but I don’t think Blade Runner was ever going to be widely accepted by general audiences even if it had the best spot possible on the release calendar.
It’s a strange, melancholic, and meditative movie which is not something mainstream audiences hardly ever want to throw their support behind unless it’s culturally attached to a Barbie movie. This isn’t a film with a loveable, quippy hero who saves the day from the big bad. It’s a dark, contemplative examination of what it means to be human, our reckoning with the knowledge that we are going to die, the ever-destructive and apocalyptic nature of a society ruled by capitalism. Look, Blade Runner is great but it ain’t exactly a good time at the movies.
The Resurrection Of Blade Runner
Blade Runner’s failure makes plenty of sense once you understand the context of its release and the kind of movie it is, but what’s most surprising about Blade Runner is how its failure led to it being properly appreciated.
Even during its initial release, there were plenty of viewers who fell in love with Ridley Scott’s adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel, clunky Harrison Ford voiceover and all. Though the critical response was mixed at the time, sci-fi fans saw how remarkable and groundbreaking the effects work in the movie really was.
This led to Blade Runner being adopted as a cult film, and as more information about the film’s troubled production made its way out into the world, the more film fans started to see the value in the movie.
And that led to Ridley Scott getting the opportunity to recut the film in a way that completely changed its perception. In 1992, Warner Bros. released Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut. In this version, Scott removed every bit of the Deckard voiceover, cut out the imposed happy ending, and even added a dream sequence that reshaped the entire story to add ambiguity to Deckard’s own identity.
Scott was given another chance to re-edit the film in 2007 with The Final Cut, which mostly contains everything from the Director’s Cut with newly shot effects scenes and other digital changes.
Thanks to the multiple versions of Blade Runner and their overwhelming success on home video, fans have had plenty of Blade Runner to overanalyze and opine on over the years. The movie has become more than just a cult classic, as evident by its inevitable franchiseification with a direct studio sequel in 2017, an animated series, and an upcoming streaming series on Prime.
Blade Runner Failed And Became Iconic
Needless to say, Blade Runner is anything but a failure today. The sci-fi film is alive and well, continuing to influence new generations of filmmakers. But it’s important to remember that the box office and initial response to a movie are often inconsequential to its actual longevity in pop culture.
Here’s a fun example: in 1982, Blade Runner was the 29th highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office. Want to know some movies that beat it significantly that year? Sharky’s Machine at number 23, Firefox at number 14, and Porky’s at number 6. Now, unless you’re an oldhead or a film freak – I’m both – I’d wager you haven’t seen those movies and may not even know about them, but you’ve definitely crossed paths with something from Blade Runner.
So the next time some other YouTube movie dimwit wants to rattle on about the importance of box office as it relates to a movie’s quality or cultural impact, ask them why they don’t have a collectible Porky’s peephole on their shelf of toys. And then go watch Blade Runner because it’s great.
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And because I couldn’t fit it in anywhere else in the script, I’ll just tag it on here at the end: Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty is one of the best acting performances in all of cinema. Okay, I’m done.
