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Let's make sure we get the tone right from the start: Nobody's knocking any of these movies or books. I legitimately believe that a properly built world can function as a lead character in a story, and for evidence of that, I point to Blade Runner.

Blade Runner was an amazing movie, and if anybody disagrees with that, it's probably because they first saw the original version with Harrison Ford's terrible, atmosphere-breaking forced monologue slapped on top. If you were lucky, like me, the first you saw of Blade Runner was the 1992 director's cut, with narration removed, bullshit sappy ending changed to brutal existential metaphor, and the whole thing just riddled with sweet-ass unicorns.



Just look at the sweet ass on that unicorn.

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See, the official 1982 version was never Ridley Scott's intended film, nor was the hasty, stilted narration ever Ford's fault -- the studios forced every one of those changes on the movie just before release. They're the ones who inserted the dreary, awkward first-person narrative, because they were worried that viewers wouldn't be able to follow the objectively simple (if occasionally muddy) noir plot. They're the ones who inserted that bullshit ending shot of Deckard and Rachael driving happily through pastoral landscapes like German tourists on vacation, and they're the ones who cut the galloping unicorn, because they hate magic and the laughter of children.