The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025

44. 1982 - Blade Runner

Blade Runner Ending Harrison Ford
Warner Bros.

Honourable Mentions: First Blood, The King of Comedy, The Thing

In some ways, it feels like a bit of a cheat to call Blade Runner the best film of 1982. It wasn't until 1992 that a version resembling Ridley Scott's original vision was given a wide release, and it took a further 15 years after that for the "Final Cut" - an edit of the film presided over by Scott, and widely considered to be the definitive version of the film - to premiere on home video. The original theatrical print, which included toned-down violence, a studio-imposed happy ending and a miserable narration from Harrison Ford, was, for lack of a better phrase, not it.

Of course, retroactively, that Final Cut does ensure that Blade Runner is the best film of 1982, shading John Carpenter's masterpiece The Thing by a whisker thanks to an impeccable set of performances from Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer and Sean Young; a magnetic composition from Vangelis; and a glorious fusion of science fiction and neo noir administered by Scott and an accomplished design team comprised of Syd Mead and Mark Stetson, among many others.

In short, Blade Runner typifies sci-fi at its very best - a story about the fantastical that cuts to the very core of our humanity.

 
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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.