Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner

I love Blade Runner as much as the next film fan. It probably misses or only just latches onto my top 100. I owned the 5-Disc boxset in a tin which came with this 4 hour documentary Dangerous Days which only takes 8 years until you feel like watching it. Frankly, while interesting and somewhat worthwhile, the only thing notable about it is that mammoth length. While it has a wealth of outtakes and b-roll to enjoy, there's not much juicy insights to really enjoy besides the stress the film was to make. As a long form documentary, it runs more like a sequence of chapters in a row rather than a coherent piece. Some chopping and flair could make it less dry. Nevertheless, it's still a solid piece of work and there's nothing remotely bad or particularly bland about it. I have grown a newfound respect for its special effects and production design work as well as for Harrison Ford as a professional actor. That man has a work ethic to die for.

7/10

Making a movie can't be that fraught, surely? It would appear it can, even a glorious SciFi opus!

Blade Runner is one of the most iconic and beautiful SciFi movies ever made but the production is notoriously difficult.

This documentary gets everyone involved discussing openly, apparently at least, their involvement and the various trials and tribulations.

Everything about the original production is discussed from budget and financial pressures to in depth technical details on special effects and directing.

Writers, director, producers, actors and even the crew speak about everything from script changes, number of takes, falling behind schedule, casting, lighting and ,well, everything!

A little sad to be reminded that Brion James passed away in 1999.

On the whole though the viewer will find this insight into making classic cinema refreshing.

Things to look out for: the tee-shirt war, script changes, beautiful production setups, nice to see the producers get their say, deleted and unfilmed scenes.

Wonderful insights into a type of film making that was pioneering at the time.

I love this movie (not religiously) and the making of shows you how much went into this film. Bladerunner was the first film I saw that had real weight to it: a punch looked like a real punch, a landscape looked like a real cityscape and characters had real depth. as a kid in 1982 all I remembered was the opening scene issuing forth gasps from the audience of "Jesus Christ", I was hooked. today I still think it has many layers and still deserves its place as a masterpiece. In Dangerous Days, I love the way the cast were shell shocked by the screening of the film with some going on to ask how do they top this. The Bradbury Building is haunting to look at as it was, not now that it has been renovated. P.K.Dick at first hated it then couldn't believe how they had recreated his vision.

If any of you liked this but felt it didn't touch upon enough, here are a few pointers to Bladerunner's rich development: Moebius (who now regrets his refusal to work upon the film) wrote and illustrated "The Long Tomorrow" a very good template for Ridleys Vision of the film and a must read for fans of the film. The artwork of Syd Mead is as haunting and beautiful as the film, again a must see. The novel is different to the film but strangely compliments it and is its equal counterpart. and lastly what is odd about the scriptwriters of blade-runner is they haven't just picked upon the novel to encapsulate the theme of the film, but have encompassed most of Dicks entire works in its dark futuristic feel. I bet you didn't know that PKD wrote many books with blade-runner like cities that included ruthless detectives, flying cars or white haired black cloaked replicants or psychotic female counterparts with high intelligence. Bladerunner isn't the book that portrays the film best, there are other books by him that portray the film better. In fact his vision is so much like blade-runner that you can't imagine anything else when reading some of his other novels. I would say that there is a blade-runner signature in nearly all of his books, that would explain his surprise upon seeing a draft of the film because you can see it in his work.

hope this helps those out there who want to dig a little deeper.

Dangerous Days was the working title for the film Blade Runner.

Clocking in at 3 and-a-half hours in length this making of feature on Blade Runner is way longer than the movie itself. It is a comprehensive look at a film that failed upon its release but has become a cult hit and a film way ahead of its time.

My interest in this documentary was only aroused when I heard Harrison Ford took part in this. For years Ford would not talk about Blade Runner leading to speculation that he wanted to distance himself from the film or he did not enjoy making it or its fraught difficulties on set was just too much for him.

His participation in this making of film and express words that he did the voice-over very much under protest because he backed Scott's cut of the film but was under contract and therefore obliged to do it pretty much dismisses those accusations that he was embarrassed with the failure of Blade Runner.

The film has it all from the script writing phase to getting a shooting script ready to the tensions on set, getting the special effects to be outstanding to the post production editing that led to the conflict with the director's vision of the film, the box office failure and then its re-discovery as a classic.

This is aimed at fans of the film but it should be a must see for anyone who is interested in how films are made.

The "Making Of" featurettes we see with DVDs sometimes grow into feature-length proportion. "Dangerous Days" takes its name from an early title for the "Blade Runner" movie, and it's beyond feature-length on its own.

This is a decent production, and a must-see for fans of the film. However, compared to other Making Of... featurettes, Dangerous Days is over long and might be dull for those who don't fully appreciate the source material.

To my mind, "Hearts of Darkness", the Making Of... documentary for "Apocalypse Now" is about the best Making Of... documentary there is. I would also include the full-length Making Of The Abyss as must-see viewing for science-fiction film buffs. Dangerous Days falls short of these.

Both "Apocalypse Now" and "The Abyss" featured film-making that went past the edge of human physical endurance. People were risking their lives and sanity to get the films made, and it shows as superior documentary-style drama. "Dangerous Days" mostly shows film-making that goes past the edge of endurance of the film crew for director Ridley Scott, and past the patience of the producers. Yes, it's dramatic, but not nearly as much as Martin Sheen about to get eaten by a ravenous tiger (Hearts Of Darkness) or Mary Elizabeth Mastrantionio nearly drowning at the bottom of a man-made water pit (Making Of The Abyss).

I would put Dangerous Days in roughly the same category as the Making Of... featurettes you get with the Star Wars DVDs, except that it is very long.

The pieces I found the most interesting were the features with Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, who were rival writers for the Blade Runner script, and the special visual effects segment which shows some of the thought process behind the particular model-making and lighting events in Blade Runner, without being all George-Lucasey in terms of the granularity of explanatory detail. Alternate screen tests also make for interesting viewing.