Blade Runner 2049 - The Lifespan Cut (Completed Fan Fix)

Hi everyone, first time fan editor here. I've decided to tackle Blade Runner 2049, which I thought was a good film which suffered from unnecessarily slow pacing. I don't have a problem with long movies but they have to earn their run time, which I don't feel Blade Runner 2049 does. A lot of that time is spent on characters taking too long to say simple dialogue, overly indulgent scenery shots, and the camera lingering on Ryan Gosling's face for a questionable amount of time. So... I present, Blade Runner 2049: The Lifespan Cut.



Main objective: To trim the length of the film without chopping any major scenes. Remarkably, I have managed to cut the time of the actual movie (not including credits) down to 2hrs 6minutes (originally 2hrs 33mins), and only one whole (tiny) scene in the film has actually been removed. This shows how unnecessarily elongated the original film is. 27 minutes removed - and it'll still be same film you remember, more or less.

Secondary objective: I'm a huge fan of the original Blade Runner and wanted to evoke a few more memories of that in my edit. As such I've inserted some musical cues from the original soundtrack by Vangelis. I haven't gone overboard with this, just enough to bring back the nostalgia. I also feel that 2049 is too "clean" looking. I've played with the colours and contrast throughout the movie to make it look a bit grimier. A key example of this is the scene with Officer K and the prostitutes on the city streets. By making the shadows darker and the neon lights garish, I think it gives off the idea that the city is unclean and the dazzling lights are there to distract its residents from how miserable the place truly is.

Here is a summary of all the changes:

- Created a brisker pace by tightening up dialogue.

- Shortened or tweaked the speed of various scene setting shots (for example, flying over the synthetic farms which takes far too long in my opinion).

- Removed the scene with Luv pouring tea for a prospective client (this is the only scene that was entirely cut, and it's short anyway).


- Trimmed the Niander Wallace scenes / god complex nonsense as much as possible. I've heard valid arguments for removing Wallace entirely but that would deprive us of the recreated Rachel scene which I thought was one of the film's stronger moments.


- Added Vangelis score and original sound FX from Blade Runner (a few little easter eggs for fans of the original!)

- Altered colours and contrast throughout the picture.

- Various other trims related to pacing (such as having  Officer K strike Mr. Cotton abruptly, rather than staring all around the room before doing it). It would take forever to list all the little cuts so I'll let the video itself do the talking.

This is a completed fan fix and I've uploaded the video online so If anyone would like a link, please PM me and I'll and send it right over. Any comments / feedback would be greatly appreciated! Many thanks!

why dont you show some clips/ examples on here.
so to get proper feedback and advice.

cover version 1

Wow, nice work on the cover! That's awesome.

I'll get to work on some clips and post them up soon.

Here's a short video showing the sort of changes you can expect to find right the way through "Blade Runner 2049: The Lifespan Cut":

You've definitely changed the pacing. Not sure I like it, but it looks well done.

The regrading needs some work though, IMO. I see what you're going for in both instances (desaturation and greater contrast), but you've pushed it too far. Those scenes now look like they're from different movies.

What does everyone think of the added vangelis when they're kissing? I'm not decided but I think I really like it.

darthrush said:

What does everyone think of the added vangelis when they're kissing? I'm not decided but I think I really like it.

Click to expand...

I like it - i think it works well. 

I also like the street scene colouring but no so much Vegas - it looks too washed out.

I like the pauses between sentences in the original - Blade Runner is meditation for me - so i have no problem with the films length.

I like the original film, but the samples are well done. I like that you are not actually removing anything, just tightening the scenes. It might be good to watch with the wife who gets bored easily.

Thanks for your comments guys. I was on the fence about changing the saturation in the Vegas scene (as it's quite a long segment of the film) but I went with it in the end because I thought the orange hue was way over the top in the original cut. I actually wanted it to look washed out, sort of reminiscent of the dusty wasteland you might see in Fallout New Vegas. 

The pacing is really a change I wanted to make for my own benefit, cause on repeat viewings it's the aching pauses between dialogue which will probably put me off watching the film again in the future. Just think of it as a streamlined version of the film.

Here's a few side-by-sides to illustrate what I mean. The colours on the left just look unnatural to me. I guess they were trying to give off a vibe of the place still being slightly irradiated from the bomb, but it just seemed like overkill to me. I wanted the lighting to look a bit more subdued and dusky.

I get what you were going for but I think you went a little overboard there. Looks like it needs at least a little more color if you don't want to keep it as is.

The left looks unnatural, but so does the right. It has no colour. Have you tried something other than a universal desaturation? Maybe desaturating the highlights only, or changing the colour to be less orange?

In this version, I desaturated the highlights, removed some yellow from the highlights, and bumped up the exposure in the highlights slightly. What do you think?

(my version / original / Lifespan Cut)

Definitely a good shout, Problem Eliminator! I'll see what results I can come up with.

Sounds like a good edit. I signed in for the first time in a while just to see what editors were doing to BR'49. Just rewatched the film over the weekend and as much as I loved it, I felt it was needlessly long. Also, I remember wishing there was more Vangelis music when I watched it in theaters.

In the YouTube clip you uploaded, I'm seeing some issues with the regraded scene though. Something wrong with the black levels. Reminds me of the awful high-contrast live action stuff in the Bakshi LOTR. But maybe it's just an uploading error? Otherwise, I don't mind the regrade.

For that scene I bumped up the contrast mainly cause I don't like how clean everything looks. This is supposed to be a dystopian city, so I wanted it to appear darker and dirtier.

That said, the Youtube video is heavily compressed so it's not representative of the final quality. If you PM me I can send you a link to the full version of the movie, if you'd like to see it.

Edit submitted, thread moved to Pending.  Good luck.

Bad Wardrobe said:

27 minutes removed - and it'll still be same film you remember, more or less.

Click to expand...

memories. . . you're talking about memories.

Interesting how different people have different tastes for different things.

I actually really enjoyed the entire opening sequence with the synthetic farms and extended overhead shots.  Helps to set the atmosphere and get you in the mood for another Blade Runner movie.  

I also kinda like the orange coloring that so many others seem to have a problem with.  

On the other hand, I really didn't like that Rachel was brought back at the end, and how Wallace gloats over Deckard's meeting her as if he was actually there in the room with him.  With that in mind, I do agree that the Wallace scenes might have been cut and/or at least abbreviated!

The opening shots were perhaps a classic example of what I was trying to achieve. I enjoyed them too and they helped set the scene of this new future, but each shot just seems to linger a few seconds too long in my opinion. Making minor trims to shots like this is really the heart of this edit. Over the course of a 2.30hrs film it makes a massive difference. I was at first making a note of every individual cut but there are literally thousands of them so I abandoned logging them all.

I had fun cutting Wallace's scenes. Check out the clip below. It was tricky but I managed to remove him killing the newborn replicant, without removing the scene. Unfortunately Wallace's hand does appear to jump about a bit, but it was a worthy sacrifice so I could remove the "cartoon villain" moment of him slaughtering her. This guy is supposed to be a businessman, I can't imagine he would readily destroy his stock like that (particularly after he'd just explicitly stated that he could "only make so many"). I don't imagine replicants are cheap to produce!

Note: Nudity, NSFW. Video/Audio quality is lowered for this example clip.