Listening to Blade Runner's Terrible Voiceover

Denis Villenueve should pull an April Fool's prank where he releases a version of Blade Runner 2049 with Ryan Gosling providing awkward and unnecessary narration.

The fact that the executives couldn’t figure out what emotions were being shown on screen makes me think they might have been the real replicants.

Ruining tears in rain with voiceover should be a crime against humanity.

I’m ultimately glad Ridley Scott got his final cut. I feel like if I’d watched the original cut first, my love for the film would’ve been diminished.

“Apocalypse Now” is a perfect example where the addition of a voice over actually works in the movie’s favor

I like the interpretation of Gaff as being made redundant, but in my honest opinion Gaff's hostilities towards Deckard are because Deckard abandoned the system and chose to be alone. And its Gaff's way of looking down on Deckard for his nihilism and cynicism. This works especially well because Gaff is basically there to pull Deckard back into this system, out of the fringe and in line with society.

The voiceovers honestly don't even sound like Harrison Ford, they sound like someone doing a decent impression of him

With this and Once Upon A Time In America, Why is the Ladd Company insistent on fucking up great movies upon their initial release?

In a way it's quite fitting that Harrison Ford sounds as unwilling to do the narration job as Deckard is to chase down replicants. Okay, that doesn't make it any better, but still...

If anything, the original Blade Runner voiceover just represents a bigger problem of studios not trusting their audiences enough to let them think for themselves and let the film speak for itself. It's why while test audiences can be useful in a lot of cases (Animated films, in particular, go through numerous changes over their production so changes based on test audiences aren't too out of the norm), relying too heavily on them especially when a film is very far into production just shows a lack of confidence in not only the film itself but the filmmakers as well. The writers forcing VO very quickly in without Ridley Scott's input clearly demonstrates that. Also, it just ruins the point of the film being a visual medium with numerous interpretations from audiences if you just have Harrison Ford spell out how to feel. This isn't to say voiceover narration is inherently bad (don't worry, I'm not CinemaSins) but it works in certain films more than most. And Blade Runner as you said was clearly made without any notion of putting VO in, so it just comes across as...the film doing a SparkNotes on itself. Plus, I just love how you can tell Harrison Ford was so bored and uninterested do the VO; surprised he doesn't badmouth that as much as he does with his time on Star Wars lmao. Great video Dan.

Harrison Ford's voice acting in the voice-over makes me laugh at how dead he sounds. You can tell he really didn't want to do them.

Re: Deckard not using the foreign language at the restaurant...I've seen a similar criticism leveled at Babylon 5 and thought I'd mention: it isn't a plothole. Plenty of ppl know enough of a language to understand it when spoken (or when written) but can't craft phrases/sentences themselves with any degree of ease. In multi-language areas, it's common for ppl to speak back and forth in different languages, understanding each other (more or less) despite not talking in the same tongue.

Show don’t tell. Voiceover: “HERE’S ALL THE TEXT AND THE SUBTEXT, YOU BIG DUMB-DUMBS."

The only gripe I have with the final cut is how they criminally replaced "I want more life...fucker" with "I want more life...father." ruined the final cut for me and takes me back to the director's cut.

Harrison Ford has got to be one of the best actors in the world when it comes to faking giving a shit for a movie role(He made the best scene in the Rise of Skywalker by a mile because of that), so the fact that he absolutely could not fake enthusiasm for the narration says alot.

"They don't advertise for killers in the newspaper... that's my profession." Your profession is advertising for killers?

For me, the voice over was an integral part of the movie. That's how I saw it when it came out in theatres and I don't remember it being a problem at the time. Still. lots of people hated it from the get go.

Bladerunner is my favorite movie. I never thought of the voiceover. It never bothered me.

Lmao was that Roy Batty line edited? At 19:25, it sounds like he calls Tyrell “fucker” but I swore in the movie he said “father”? Maybe I’m just slow and deaf idk.

we've seen this countless times, producers meddling with a creative endeavor because profits are at risk if a "product" isn't made to hold the hands of the lowest common denominator, I don't blame the producers or the executives, this is what feature films have to battle with under a capitalistic industry, the voice over makes sense when you have profits as the goal and test audience as indicators