Blade Runner director Ridley Scott says viewers and critics who thought his 1982 sci-fi movie was “silly” can “go f—” themselves. 

In a recent interview with Total Film Magazine, via Slash Film, Scott reflected on the production of Blade Runner, which has been documented as a troubled shoot and led to the release of several different versions of the movie over the past couple of decades.

Ridley Scott explains his ‘bad’ Blade Runner experience

“[The shoot] was a very bad experience for me,” Scott said. “I had horrendous partners. Financial guys, who were killing me every day. I’d been very successful in the running of a company, and I knew I was making something very, very special. So I would never take no for an answer. But they didn’t understand what they had. You shoot it, and you edit it, and you mix it. And by the time you’re halfway through, everyone’s saying it’s too slow. You’ve got to learn, as a director, you can’t listen to anybody. I knew I was making something very, very special. And now it’s one of the most important science-fiction films ever made which everybody feeds off. Every bloody film.”

Scott said he’d recently rewatched Blade Runner for the first time in approximately two decades and vehemently disagrees with anyone who finds the movie too slow or “silly.”

“I hadn’t seen ‘Blade Runner’ for 20 years,” he commented. “Really. But I just watched it. And it’s not slow. The information coming at you is so original and interesting, talking about biological creations, and mining off-world, which, in those days, they said was silly. I say, ‘Go f— yourself.’”

Released in 1982, Blade Runner stars Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The storyline sees a burnt-out, down-on-his-luck cop, Rick Deckard (Ford), hunt down a group of android replicants who have illegally entered a dystopian Los Angeles. It spawned a sequel, Blade Runner 2049, in 2017 and an anime television series, Blade Runner: Black Lotus, in 2021. A Blade Runner 2099 series is now in the works from Amazon Prime Video.