Blade Runner: Ultimate Collector's Edition

Yes, Rick Deckard is a replicant. Blade Runner director Ridley Scott finally ends the speculation over his android-hunting cop. ”If you don’t get it, you’re a moron,” he says in a new DVD extra. Whether you ”get it” may depend on which version of the 1982 futuristic noir you choose. There are five of them in this five-disc, briefcase-packaged Ultimate Collector’s Edition (take that, George Lucas!). While the latest ”Final Cut” version is not dramatically different from the 1992 Director’s Cut, it does correct several technical flaws, including continuity-defying scars, stunt doubles with bad wigs, and Roy Batty’s dove flying off into an inexplicably blue sky. The exhaustive documentary extras — almost eight hours‘ worth — also set the record straight on a few counts, like the expository narration for dummies and the original’s happy-smiley ending, rumored to have been inserted by financial backers against Scott’s will. Not so, says the director: ”It was our idea. I am not stupid — I looked at [test-screening] results and said, ‘This ain’t working.”’ (Ford, for his part, hated the voice-over. You can even hear him complaining about it on unused session tapes.) So is the UCE an exercise in overkill? (There are two- and four-disc Final Cut editions as well.) Not really, considering how dramatically Blade changed the entire look and feel of sci-fi with its wet, smoky, dystopian vision of the future. And if, after sitting through it all, you still don’t ”get it,” unlike Mr. Scott I won’t call you names. A