Good Guy Deckard

For a "sacrilegious" edit of Blade Runner, "Good Guy Deckard" is quite possibly the best version of the film to date. Every edit serves to streamline the pacing without sacrificing the atmosphere or story and improve the characters substantially. Deckard still remains a flawed human being (emphasis on human being and not Replicant), but is ultimately a "good guy" and not a rapist, which in turn improves his dynamic with Rachael and his overall character arc. The removal of the mentions of the offscreen murders made the Replicants a lot more sympathetic.

Highly recommended and my go-to version of Blade Runner from now on!

As someone who's always admired Blade Runner, but had a hard time liking it, this edit is a gift. The rapey parts are gone, and there's added deleted scenes that return some of the humanity to Deckard. While there are splendidly cleaned-up technical edits (TM2YC deserves all the accolades he received for the breathtaking BR: Penultimate Cut), this is possibly the most enjoyable version of the film, with a Deckard that's a little easier to spend time with. The choice to leave the entire film grainy so the deletions don't stick out works as a wonderful aesthetic choice.

My only quibble would be the presence of the unicorn origami at the end. With the excision of the unicorn dream, it doesn't seem to serve much purpose. Also, as someone who'll stick up for the narration, I'd love to see GGD with a voiceover, just in case Keo decides to revisit this edit. But if not, no great loss, this is still an essential version of one of the most gorgeous films ever made.

Quite an endeavor! No gripes over cutting as it all ran smoothly as far as I could tell. Some enhancements still might be improved upon though. I was expecting more atmosphere but I get this is hard to do when dealing with HD.... I know nothing really. I've recently seen the 'N7 Cut' from krausfadr and that utilizes the source metarial quite dynamically and with greater success. Yet again, I am not a student in these arts. Soundtrack might be better.

Given the clarity brought to the plot, and the characters here; I do never-the-less suggest a clearer picture with added depth and contrast may serve to affect the angle Wakeupkeo is going for much more appropriately. Grittier being possibly impossible to get right?!?

Its alot less dreamy for sure. And counterintuitively even though there is less exposition from Deckard, we can find ourselves sympathising with the reality of his difficult situation, without distraction, and less confusion. Which is refreshing and certainly garners a whole new sense of what this Blade Runner is all about. Another great title ('An Old Fear' is classic) from Wakeupkeo as for the first time its concievable to me that Deckard is a GOOD GUY!!!

I felt that the visual quality could be relatively soft for an HD edit, which I assume is a result of the choice of sources. I know that a lot of different visual sources were used, so it goes up and down. I think some of the lower res footage was chosen because the editor felt it made the polluted city look grittier, but I'm personally not sure if it's worth it. Overall it's certainly not bad. The grading choices were good and generally seemed to be consistent.

Audio quality and volume could vary quite widely, so I'm assuming a variety of audio sources were being used as well. It was never an issue in terms of controlling my TV volume, but it was noticeable.

Audio editing is generally solid. I think there were maybe two transitions that felt a bit quick to me. Score choice wasn't always to my taste, but I think I'm so used to the score for the final cut that I wasn't keen on hearing much that was alternate. This is subjective though. I am curious as to where the scoring came from for when Rachel is playing the piano, though? I found it a little odd that her playing wasn't synced to the music, though if that's how it is on the source that's fair enough. I don't think that's the same music that plays on the Final, Director's, Theatrical or Workprint cuts though, is it?

Visual editing: Between 54:57 and 54:59 there is a frame jump, which I believe was created by a line being cut (I think a date reference?). This is jarring and shouldn't have been made IMO. A cut like this can be done but the gap needs to be seamless. I have managed to get away with some similar cuts by using software like RIFE or DAIN to replace the missing frames, so that's something I'd recommend trying; otherwise I think I'd try something else, like tweaking what he says as opposed to removing it. Other than this, I think there was one shot during the Bryant briefing that seemed a bit too quick to have been in the original, but I wasn't certain.

Narratively, I think this works very well and is a solid option. It felt a little unnatural that there was less time spent with Sebastian and Priss, like maybe we spend a little too much away from that part of the story, but I'm honestly not sure if this is just because I'm used to something different. Because of that, I hesitate to let it affect the score.

I have seen an edit try to remove the date-rape with Rachel and not execute it very well IMO, but here Wakeupkeo just makes a very simple cut - one I'm surprised to have not seen utilised before - and it works nicely. The pacing is great, and I've always felt Blade Runner was a bit indulgent - I'm not sure if there were many trims for pacing... I don't see mention of it on the cutlist, but it really did feel like it flowed better. The photo analysis scene seemed mercifully short - thank the heavens!

On a subjective level, I prefer "father" to the F bomb - I'm not sure why there's an argument there. The F bomb just seems random in the context of the scene, and father is more thematically appropriate IMO - but each to their own! I also didn't think the deleted/extra scene with Olmos added anything, personally, and was the most obvious in terms of a quality shift.

Overall, I enjoyed this a lot. Not the first BR edit I've watched, Won't be the last. There is no perfect cut and I find all these different interpretations interesting. Keep on hacking, folks. Chop it into fine dust :)

A/V Quality
At a size of 11gb, I compared it to a streaming quality copy of the film (itunes) to compare it to an industry standard streamed HD file. The edit did look slightly softer and some of the fine details were lost in the encoding of the video. The detail is mostly impacted during smokey and/or dark scenes. The audio quality sounded fine to my ears. I wonder if a re-encoding with a 2-pass setting might be able to restore some of the lost visual details? The movie is still very much watchable in its current state.

Visual Editing
The visual editing involving the removal of scenes flowed well. I didn't read how Wakeupkeo added or retained the grit of the world, but the film did have a gritty feel as I watched it. The deleted scenes were also implemented well. While I knew when a deleted scene was used, it didn't distract from the experience and sat in the visual flow well.

Audio Editing
A few audio edits were noticed mostly due to some audio levels being a bit too loud or cuts that changed the tempo of a scene, but everything else sounded similar to the source material.

Narrative
The story remains intriguing and nothing felt like it was lost due to editing choices.

Enjoyment
I appreciated the removal of the rape scene as it's completely unnecessary and foul. The deleted scenes were inserted well and I enjoyed seeing how they added to or influenced the narrative. As a whole, this is a strong edit that is pretty much just as good narratively as the source. I do wish the video was a bit clearer for the file size (11gb), but the experience is still very much watchable. If you enjoy Blade Runner and wish to have a slightly different experience with the movie and to skip that terrible scene between Deckard and Rachael, this just might be the edit for you.