I also saw the trailer for _Blade Runner 2049_, which has made me want to re-watch the original before I go see the sequel and ruin it all; the director's cut is the version to go for, right?
Final Cut (2007 version), IMHO. Director's Cut (1992) wasn't supervised by Ridley Scott though they followed extensive notes from him & he approved it. He wasn't entirely happy with the result though, hence the Final Cut.
Which is the One True Version is a matter of much debate among serious fans/obsessives¹. There’s a DVD boxset of the film you can get which has five different versions of the film.
1. Workprint
2. US Theatrical Cut
3. The International Cut
4. The Director’s Cut
5. The Final Cut
Number 1, the workprint, as it implies is not a final version but is of interest if you’re a SF/O. 2 & 3 are the original releases, 3 is the version we had in the UK and is a little less censored for violence than the US version – both of these versions have the voiceover² and that is generally the main point of debate
Number 4 is the 1992 re-edit that has been rightfully pointed out is not truly the Director’s Cut because it wasn’t Ridley doing the new edit. It’s probably my favourite though.
Number 5, actually is the one that Ridley edited. I prefer 4 to this one because although 5 does a great job in correcting some of the errors in the original (including some reshoots with Joanna Cassidy literally decades after the original shoot), it has some dialogue changes that were really unnecessary in my view – most specially changing “I want more life, fucker!” to “I want more life, father!” The father was implied in the earlier version. It’s also a bit bloodier and shows Roy Batty killing a character which was previously only implied - again I didn't think that change was necessary but that's a personal opinion.
1. Delete according to point of view (or overexposure to raging fanboys).
2. Some people really hate the original release versions now, most especially because of the voiceover but they still have their fans and were the versions that originally gave the film its cult status (if that version was as terrible as some now state, there would never have been an interest in revisiting it). I’ve stated my own preference above but I think the film works with and without the voiceover – they are just very different films.
Crucially I think the question about if Deckard a replicant or not has a different answer depending on which version of the film you’re watching (in my view at least). I think in 2 & 3 Deckard is human. In 4 & 5, he’s a replicant. Again a personal view.
This does matter though and not just for fan reasons and unfortunately has unpleasant facts associated with it – the ‘love’ scene between Rachel and Deckard can be seen as a violent sexual assault if he’s human, if he is a replicant it could be seen as a similar clumsiness to the way we see Priss & Batty kissing later in the film.
I’m being charitable there though and I think it’s a problematic scene that Sean Young was very uncomfortable with and was also unhappy with how Harrison Ford treated her in that scene and generally throughout the shoot. Young later gained a reputation for being “difficult” which appears to be Hollywoodese for “Will not sleep with Director/Producer/Leading Actor” – now that we know from Carrie Fisher’s biography that Ford had previous for sleeping with young female co-stars, perhaps this was what was going on.
