Blade Runner 2049’s initial cut was 4 hours long

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Blade Runner 2049’s initial cut was 4 hours long

The first cut of Blade Runner 2049 was apparently four hours long.

The long awaited sequel to the Ridley Scott classic might not have been the success hoped for at the box office, but the film starring Ryan Gosling certainly hit home with critics, with many labelling it as good as or better than the original movie.

The film itself was quite lengthy, with the version seen at cinemas around the world coming in at 163 minutes. But this is nothing compared to what the first cut of Blade Runner 2049 looked like, with editor Joe Walker telling Provideo Coalition that the film’s assembly cut was  a staggering fours long.

“The first assembly of the film was nearly four hours and for convenience sake and – to be honest – my bladder’s sake, we broke it into two for viewings,” states Walker. “That break revealed something about the story – it’s in two halves. There’s K discovering his true past as he sees it and at the halfway mark he kind of loses his virginity (laughs).”

“The next morning, it’s a different story, about meeting your maker and ultimately sacrifice – ‘dying is the most human thing we do’,” Walker continues. “Oddly enough both halves start with eyes opening. There’s the giant eye opening at the beginning of the film and the second when Mariette wakes up and sneaks around K’s apartment, the beginning of the 1st assembly part 2. We toyed with giving titles to each half but quickly dropped that.”

Four hour theatrical cuts aren’t unheard of, but they are rare and it would seem that the team behind this particular sequel found a sweet spot with their final run time. It would certainly be interesting to see some of those cut sequences, however. Perhaps they will crop up on home video releases.

Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K (Ryan Gosling), unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what’s left of society into chaos. K’s discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years.

Blade Runner 2049 sees Harrison Ford reprising the role of Rick Deckard alongside Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis, Carla Juri, Lennie James, Dave Bautista, Jared Leto and Edward James Olmos.