10 Movies Totally Ruined By Test Audiences

Poor Blade Runner, did executives ever meddle harder than they did with Ridley Scott’s magnum opus? Fresh off the success of gritty horror Alien, Scott had a vision of cyberpunk noir which redefined the phrase “ahead of its time”.

Adapting Philip K Dick’s hallucinatory writing was no mean feat, and the film managed despite all odds to capture the disorienting ambiguity of the original novel. That is, until the producers got a hold of it. Worried about accessibility, a new voiceover was tacked on to the finished film, aiming to clarify important myths and instead managing to further muddy the plot.

An absurd cheery ending was tagged on (with leftover footage from The Shining, no less!) and any daring uncertainty was left resolved, resulting in a finished film which managed to be both over-explained and over-complicated. The changes were for naught, as the film went on to bomb at the box office, but fortunately we got to see Scott’s vision via a director’s cut which reinstated his creative choices. And a divisive sequel, though the less we get into that the better…