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‘Blade Runner 2049’ Was Originally Four Hours Long and Split Into Two Parts

posted 7 years ago by Satan2016 (23947)
2 replies | jump to latest

Nope, you can't see it!

http://screencrush.com/blade-runner-2049-four-hour-cut/

Villeneuve even considered releasing the final film as a two-parter:

That break revealed something about the story – it’s in two halves. There’s K discovering his true past as he sees it and at the halfway mark he kind of loses his virginity (laughs). The next morning, it’s a different story, about meeting your maker and ultimately sacrifice – “dying is the most human thing we do.” Oddly enough both halves start with eyes opening. There’s the giant eye opening at the beginning of the film and the second when Mariette wakes up and sneaks around K’s apartment. We toyed with giving titles to each half but quickly dropped that. But what does remain is that there’s something of a waking dream about the film. That’s a very deliberate choice in terms of visuals but also the kind of pace they were striving for on set and the hallucinatory feel in the cut – it’s the kind of dream where you tread inexorably closer to the truth.

[–] NotASpeckOfCereal (302) 7 years ago

A slightly different take from another article:

"It doesn’t sound like director Denis Villeneuve ever actually intended to release the movie in that form, but Walker says viewing the movie like that did help them recognize that the story is already sort of told in two halves[/i]"

https://www.avclub.com/blade-runner-2049-was-originally-4-hours-long-1820019200

This is the part I found most interesting:

"[i]Walker says the stuff that got cut from this four-hour cut was mostly “a lot of connective tissue and bridges,” and they also “pared the dialogue down to the minimum amount you could get away with,” which suggests that nothing extremely crucial was trimmed away—meaning there’s no need to hold out for special Director’s Cut or Final Cut versions of 2049."

I think "connective tissue and bridges" is absolutely a good reason for a longer cut of the film!

[–] [deleted] 7 years ago

It would have made more sense as a two movie deal... but the La La Land dude was so boring in what was the first half of the film that I can't imagine anyone would been interested in going to see the second movie later on. The movie was horribly cut with pacing that rivaled watching paint dry. The first pre-Deckard movie could have easily been cut down to 45 minutes in length and lost nothing... Then put in the Deckard half and the movie would have been maybe 1 and a half hours long and flowed much better. This movie needed some serious cutting.