Why was Witness a financial success and Blade Runner a financial failure?

[bladerunner6]

I just rewatched Witness on 4K. First time in a long time. It stood up wonderfully.

I did check out an extra on the disc , an interview with Harrison Ford. In the interview they talked about Blade Runner. The interviewer said she was surprised that Blade Runner wasn’t a blockbuster.

Both movies are very visual with Harrison Ford playing a cop in love with a woman named Rachel.

One was an immediate success and the other took time to develop its following.

Why?

[mastadge]

Because Blade Runner is slow and cerebral and ahead of its time and also has had the benefit of multiple different cuts to ultimately craft it into the film it wanted to be.

[Prohibida]

Witness seemed like the go-to movie to watch in theaters back in the 80s/90s. Before all the spectacle we take for granted now. Where as Blade Runner, when I first saw anything Blade Runner when I was a kid, it looked stiff. You watch that first trailer of Blade Runner, it is no Star Wars at all. Took a while for me and other people to love Blade Runner.

[duggie walker]

I was 15 when Blade Runner came out.

In a nutshell, it's because audiences didn't want to see Harrison Ford play a melancholic, morally ambivalent detective in a dark and sombre film with little in the way of action. They were still high on STAR WARS/EMPIRE and RAIDERS all of which were only incidentally sci-fi/fantasy films and weren't exactly dealing with complex moral issues. That's also why STAR TREK:THE MOTION PICTURE was a relative flop.

There's no ambiguity in WITNESS. John Book is a heroic figure and it's a straightforward, well-crafted thriller. You'll notice that Ford and Weir's follow-up, THE MOSQUITO COAST - in which Ford again played a somewhat morally ambiguous character - enjoyed nowhere near the same success.

From that point on, and throughout the peak of his career, Ford - with few exceptions - never played a morally ambiguous character again. He could play the rogue, of course, but his character was always the good guy; and his biggest successes were movies like AIR FORCE ONE and the Jack Ryan movies.

[RossyG]

In 1982 with SF cinema, adventure (Wrath of Khan) and wonder (E.T.) were in and the downbeat and dystopian were out.

Blade Runner and The Thing opened the same day three/two weeks respectively after the above and found their style just didn’t chime with what summer audiences were looking for.

[Martoto]

Witness got better reviews. It was more accessible. Blade Runner was quickly assumed to have just been a hype due to word of mouth being "meh".

[Jay H.]

"Nobody knows anything." ~ William Goldman

[Mr. Chaverria]

Witness is an easier film to understand, which is perfectly fine, but also it a very well crafted movie that engages you well w/o having to make you think so much. It's just a really solid movie at its simplest. Still need to get that one. Fun fact: Viggo Mortensen plays as Moses Hochleitner. It's always so much fun to see an actor you enjoy in a certain point of their career at a much earlier period. He was like 26. Hahaha.

Blade Runner is none of that. Also that first cut we got wasn't hot. It later got many cuts afterward that critically changed opinions but doesn't help out its financial progress to matter as an immediate force. But it got there, sure. To some degree.

[50strat54]

Because Witness has heart and Blade Runner is a cold piece of blue ice.

Both are great but people generally like heart.

[Rayjg]

Harrison Ford

[starmike]

E.t.

[Samus Aran]

Amish replicants!

[BluBonnet]

People bought a lot of tickets for one, but not for the other

[moreorless]

Originally Posted by RossyG

In 1982 with SF cinema, adventure (Wrath of Khan) and wonder (E.T.) were in and the downbeat and dystopian were out.

Blade Runner and The Thing opened the same day three/two weeks respectively after the above and found their style just didn’t chime with what summer audiences were looking for.

To be honest though Wrath of Khan is a pretty dark/season sci fi but it did have the benefit of the Trek name and came out a week before ET not a couple of weeks afterwards.

Ultimately though I would say Blade Runner would always have been quite a hard sell, its really more of an arty atmospheric drama than it is a blockbuster.

[Pondosinatra]

Because generally speaking, most people are stupid.

[Gacivory]

You would need a Time Machine to go back in time and ask everyone who didn’t go to Blade Runner and ask “why?” And then go to everyone who saw Witness and ask “why?”.

Because otherwise it’s all theoretical and we may never know.

[stvn1974]

Do Amish Androids Dream Of Wooling Electric Sheep?

[Doomhunter]

When the Amish go on rumspringa, blu-ray.com is the first place they go

[Prohibida]

[L.J.]

Blade Runner ahead of its time, feel then lot of folks may have been confused with what it's trying to portray. Witness good as it is, a straight forward story.