The desire of directors to have the last word on their masterpieces has been with us as long as the home video. But few directors have had such an obsessive relationship with a single film as Ridley Scott has. It has taken 25 years, five working prints and three quite different cinema releases to arrive at the definitive version of his sci-fi thriller, Blade Runner: The Final Cut. Last Saturday in Venice he declared himself more than happy to have finally come up with a version that won’t “irritate” him.

But what about us? Despite being only a minute longer, The Final Cut is radically different from the 1982 original, but not that dissimilar to the Director’s Cut of 1992. A third edit is a profound nuisance for fans of Blade versions 1 or 2.

Has it been worth the wait? Until I saw the final article on a huge screen in the Sala Grande last week I would have said no. But there is something utterly awe-inspiring about this remastered vision of Los Angeles in 2019. The dystopia seems more prophetic and bitter. The differences between Harrison Ford and the six genetically engineered “replicants” he is hired to terminate are less easy to define. And the Fritz Langian metropolis where it always seems to rain is polished to gloomy perfection.

The Final Cutis a far greater adult pleasure than Blade Runner, and it is the film Scott would have released if he had his way all those years ago. There is no rambling voiceover by Ford which Warner Brothers insisted on dubbing over the original release. According to one of Scott’s producers, Charles de Lauzirika, “audiences didn’t get the movie in test screenings. It was too dark, too downbeat, and the hero was ultimately too different from Harrison Ford’s Star Wars screen persona for comfort”.

The trouble started during postproduction. The terms of the completion bond locked Scott out of the editing suite. The studio released its own version of the film, with the voiceover and a happy ending stapled to the credits. Instead of the bleak and uncertain ending that Scott has now restored to the film, the hero Deckard (Ford) and the beautiful, melancholic replicant (Sean Young) he has fallen in love with are seen driving north through forests towards a romantic future.

Scott didn’t have the chance to change a single frame of Blade Runner until 1991, when Warners sent an early “work print” version of the film to a repertory cinema by mistake. The screening of this cut became a word-of-mouth sensation, prompting Warners to invite Scott to reedit the film. But the director was too busy shooting Thelma & Louise and preparing the Christopher Columbus epic 1492to take part. He agreed to let Warners assemble a new version that chimed with his original ideas. Thus Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut is not the director’s cut after all, but an approximation of what Scott wanted. Ford’s voiceover was stripped out, the happy ending was axed and a controversial black and white dream sequence was included which worryingly suggests that Deckard might be a replicant himself.

But according to de Lauzirika, the 1992 rerelease never got the Ridley seal of approval. In 2000 the producer had a meeting with Warners and the film’s co-executive producers, Bud Yorkin and Jerry Perenchio, to get their blessing, and then persuaded Scott to personally reedit his masterpiece.

From a distance it looked like a grotesque act of vanity. Up close the project assumed near-mythic status. All 977 boxes of negatives were reexamined, frame by frame. A day of reshoots involving Joanna Cassidy’s half-naked snake dancer and Harrison Ford’s grown-up son Ben were scheduled to synchronise a previously baffling scene at Abdul Al-Assan’s seedy serpent shop. Links in the plot have been subtly strengthened. The sharp new ending gives Deckard an existential exit line, and the sense that the chaos is far from over.

Even the music by Vangelis feels organic: an irony considering that the entire movie is consumed by the question of what it is to be human. Whether Harrison Ford dreams of electric sheep or not is actually beside the point. What’s significant about The Final Cut is that one of the great visual touchstones of modern cinema has been restored as truly intended. When the DVD is released (on December 3) you can judge for yourself whether it has been worth the wait.

TCM Crime Scene

This weekend wallow in crime and murder most foul at the TCM Crime Scene 2007 festival of film and literature in London. The festival, for which The Times is media partner, features as its opening night film The Lookout, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. There is also a special preview of the thriller War, starring Jason Statham, a Life on Mars special event, plus a screening of Quentin Tarantino’s latest film, Death Proof, as well as a Q&A with the director on Sunday night at 7.30pm. All details and booking information at www.tcmonline.co.uk/microsites/crimescene/index.htm

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