If you only have the 1 disc version, ignore the other tracks - the best are on the first disc for the most part.

Now if you limited it to just the one-disc version, it would be easily (though originally it wasn't that easy) "Blade Runner Blues", the heaven a human mind doesn't deserve.

There's actually a 3-disc version , but the 3rd disc is largely new music by Vangelis, and it's not really close to the Blade Runner sound. The 2nd disc is largely very mellow, most of it incidental music. What's missing (besides some great tracks) are some of the cool sound effects from the film, like that blimp with the Japanese woman, and that advert that goes something like, "A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies, the chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure..."

 

http://www.screenarchives.com/title_detail.cfm/ID/21602/BLADE-RUNNER-30th-ANNIVERSARY-CELEBRATION-1500-EDITION/" rel="nofollow - http://www.screenarchives.com/title_detail.cfm/ID/21602/BLADE-RUNNER-30th-ANNIVERSARY-CELEBRATION-1500-EDITION/

Having been raised by a father who has been involved with film making ever since he was a wee lad, I may have been contaminated from the get-go, so reading a post like yours feels strangely perplexing... It's the same sort of thing I experienced talking to a newish friend of mine, who had never seen Indiana Jones (Again with the Harrison Ford...)

Anyways - I think you should see the flick before checking out the soundtrack on its own. 

 

^^^Beware, that's actually performed by Edgar Rothermich, who studied Vangelis' score and recorded what he and the label felt was a close replica of the score.

 

I have the 3CD version because I love this score and I concur, the 3rd disc of "new" music was disappointing. Not appalling, it's just not worth returning to after an initial listen. The other 2 CDs are worth the price of admission, however.

 

Guldbamsen wrote: Anyways - I think you should see the flick before checking out the soundtrack on its own.

Strongly seconded.

You mean thirded 

 

There is one other theme, that is personal to me, but only I can make sense of that for you folks. That film is an anti 1984 and an anti-establishment thing ... that is very important to me ... and not how they consider "their product" (the owl and the girl) the perfect result of their work ... whereas Roy and the rest ... were considered failures and not worthy ... and had to fight for their lives. That would suggest the society failed ... but they will never admit it! And neither would a populist board and place!

 

And Roy's last lines, are what we should fear the most about "progressive" and "prog" ... and then we can ask ourselves ... how much do we care? ... I will tell you a lot, and you know it in my responses! I already feel like crying, as I did with the ending of the film "Woodstock", because I knew one man was trying to elevate the music, and no one cared ... all you saw was ... trash! To me, that hurts even more ... that we dismiss out own spirit so easily ... and recklessly! For ideals that do not exist, on top of it, instead of reality!

Although not relevant my favourite Vangelis soundtrack music is on The Bounty some of which can be found stretched across both Themes compilations.

btw I share Moshkito's view on the film. My favourite as well!

EDIt - got my tracks mixed up , meant to vote for Tales Of The Future as that's the one with Rousos not Damask Rose 

Yes, I've seen these. In the absence of Vangelis ever playing the Blade Runner tracks live, I guess this is the next best thing ;-)

I've always loved the movie with music and all, but on its own I find the soundtrack rather tame........................................................... yeah so shoot me why don't ya

there's also the three-disc version which deserves some bucks methinks

http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=35371" rel="nofollow - http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=35371
 

 

Vangelis has stated, more than once, that the main reason why he does not do things live is because he is too much of a free form person, and he always wants to do something else, which is an issue when you are doing a concert and you can't stray from the paths that the prescribed pieces already have!

 

There is also another issue ... he plays too many instruments when he composes these things and it is too hard to transcribe them all and have someone else play them. It would be better if someone else did, and he just sat there and watched!

 

And of course, we will miss the teaspoons that he plays on every album that make his work ... progressive! Though PA might not exactly agree!

The last time I've seen him live he played a 65 minutes medley of what came to his mind...

http://www.nemostudios.co.uk/nemo/tour/recording/recording_br.htm" rel="nofollow - http://www.nemostudios.co.uk/nemo/tour/recording/recording_br.htm

 

Ohhhh yes you would ... the stuff he did with Neuronium that showed up on a CD was awesome!

 

But why are you wanting him to do what you want ... not what he wants? He is Vangelis, not you!

 

This is a hard question, specially in a place like this ... but a valuable one, that has a tendency to break things up, instead of bringing them together.

 

The music itself, is not going to go very far. One small little piece with one of his friends, is not either, which would tend to fit into an area called "experimental", which was the best description of "666" 40 years ago! Musically, it was more "cultural" than it was "creative". Same thing for their earlier albums!

 

The film presentation, and its state of the art cutting and story line, and its directing, was magnificent. The use of the music, was even better, by a director whose history was ... using the music well ... check that ... very well! So using Vangelis, he knew that he was going to have with him one of the best, and the story was literary enough that someone like Vangelis would devote time and space to it! And he did!

 

Disn't win the Oscar for it, though! The studio did not push it, and there were some fights about the movie at the time, and its versions, which likely did not help!

 

Not progressive. But magnificent film making and film with an excellent cast of everything!

 

a measure I think of how good it was is that Ridley Scott's sci-fi follow up was only released last year (and needless to say nowhere near as good)

I sincerely hope there is no Blade Runner sequel as previously mentioned and please don't let that guy who did the awfull new version of Total Recall loose on it

at least Ridley Scott is directing but after Prometheus which was very average (I think), I would still rather he didn't. 

Same here. Prometheus should have never been made - I'd rather watch Aliens Vs Predator 2 then watch Prometheus again. And I think at least 50 percent of the magic of Blade Runner is Vangelis' score, which I don't believe he or anyone else can re-produce.

may well be true

I agree with Guitar Noir in that, if there's to be a sequel, I hope it's about other characters within that world, rather than Deckard and Rachel's story... I don't want to know where they've gone or how they're getting on; it's best left to the imagination. Is Deckard a replicant? Best left a mystery, which deepens the film.

So much that's special about Blade Runner is its retro-futurism and film noir character (reflected in Vangelis's score as well) - the seeming perpetual night, the urban seediness, the constant rainfall, not to mention the tropes of the world-weary cop and the femme fatale... If the textures and mood can be re-created, and we can follow completely new characters in this same place - wow, that would be so cool. Especially if they can get the music right. If the narrative can somehow intersect with the original in some way that's surprising without feeling contrived, that's even better. Perhaps a totally different Philip K. Dick short story can be set in the Blade Runner universe. I'm reminded of how Robert Altman took a dozen different Raymond Carver short stories and weaved them into his great film Short Cuts.

If it's done right, it could be great. But so rarely are things done right. Has there ever been a case where a director revisited one of his classic works and it was anything other than mediocre? Coppola's Godfather III should never have been made; ditto Scott's Alien prequel Prometheus. Lucas's Star Wars prequels were utterly awful.

Deckard suspects to be a replicant, Douglas Quaid thinks to have dreamed of Mars, and nobody knows if Palmer Eldritch is a dream or not. Being unable of recognize reality from dreams is the typical theme of every Dick's novel.  

Yes, it's a theme mined in cyberpunk and postmodern scifi as well (of which Blade Runner was a pioneer, along with precursors like Chris Marker's La jetee and Godard's Alphaville). In post-Blade Runner films like Dark City (and the director's follow-up, the under-rated I Robot), The Matrix, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Truman Show, and Vanilla Sky (as well as the remake of Marker's film, 12 Monkeys), characters are unsure of their own identity and what's real.

When I first heard that there was to be a re-make of Total Recall, I was desperately hoping that it would be set in the Blade Runner world (which after all made frequent mention of 'off-world colonies'). Alas they blew it...

Dark City could have been a great movie if only they omitted explaining everything in the first minutes

I agree. I quite like the film, but it misses masterpiece status. The director followed Dark City with the film I Robot, which I strongly disliked at first but have come to like over the years the more I thought about it.

For example, one reason I didn't like it at first (and it got a lot of criticism over this) was the product placement in the film: Converse shoes, Audi car, etc. But then I began to realize: all these products are destroyed in the film: the shoes become covered in blood and are ruined; the car gets rubbished; Will Smith's character grabs the FedEx robot by the face and pushes him away, etc. It goes to the heart of the film: it's the corporation and its slimy CEO that's unleashed the robots, etc etc. The director was clearly riffing on Blade Runner: a cop is the hero, there's a CEO who sits at the top of his empire perched over the city; Deckard may or may not be human, while Will Smith is half-robot...

But hey, that's just me.

I think they were looking at a sort of prequel to the main film ... but the film without Roy, and his group and total individuality ... is not likely to stand up, and be nothing but a copy of the whole thing.

 

Could be interesting if they look at the early days of the replicants, and find that the ones that didn't work were the odd ones where something like a wire went wrong, and it became ... the Darryl Hannah character, for example ... or the other wire went broke, and it became Roy ... or the like, but even that is a bit too strange and creating a whole world around that, might be next to impossible.

 

The "after" of the film would be very tough ... the likelihood, is that he ages, and Rachel doesn't ... and this creates an interesting dilemma ... she will become a Melmoth the wonderer ... she can not love, because they will all die! And there are no replicants that were succeesful that would make sense for her to get involved with. And does she have emotions? How can she "love" and appreciate the man that fell in love with her?

 

As long as it doesn't become a crappy Hollywood love story ... I might see it!

I thought it's pretty well accepted that (at least, according to Ridley Scott) Deckard, too, is a replicant (he just doesn't know it). But I agree, the Roy character is, for me, the central and most memorable character in the film. In fact, Rutger Hauer's Roy is probably my favorite character from any movie--and the "Tears in the Rain" scene the most powerful scene I've ever been witness to. 

I say, Let it lie. There's no need for prequels, sequels, or remakes. Heck, there are enough "alternate versions" to keep one busy for the rest of our lives.