Strangely enough, Ridley Scott’s seminal 1982 masterpiece Blade Runner was one of those films I resisted seeing for a long time, simply because if you love sci-fi you’re supposed to love Blade Runner and I hate being told what to do. Of course, once I saw it, I knew that conventional wisdom in this case was right all along. Blade Runner is an amazing film, both in its ability to simply and beautifully evoke a dystopian 2019 Los Angeles half-emptied by emigration to off-world colonies, leaving behind the unordinary – and also in its harrowing exploration of its three central characters, played by Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young.

The original domestic version of Blade Runner was famously ruined by its releasing studio, Warner Brothers, whose suits proved essentially they didn’t “get” the film by adding unnecessary voice-over narration and, most infamously, tacking on a happy ending using footage looted from The Shining. In 1992, in response to unauthorized releases of “work print” versions that attempted to restore the director’s vision, Ridley Scott hastily put together a director’s cut which then became the definitive edition of the film – that is, until now.

Scott has finally put together the long-rumored ultimate version of what the film should have been like all along, called Blade Runner: The Final Cut. The film will be released in select theaters in New York and Los Angeles on Oct. 5 and at film festivals in Venice and New York starting in September, followed by DVD offerings in various combinations slated for Dec. 18. These range from a two-disc “special edition” to a five-disc “ultimate collector’s edition,” which will contain the new version and accompanying commentary as well as restored workprints, hours of documentary material about the film’s genesis and legacy and on story author Philip K. Dick, 45 minutes of deleted and alternate scenes, galleries of conceptual designs both used and abandoned, and scads more.

What’s different about this silver anniversary version? Apart from remastering, rescoring, and enhanced special effects, which sort of goes without saying, Scott has reportedly extended the “unicorn scene,” which in commentary discussion he explains as being crucial to the question of whether Ford’s character, Deckard, is an artificially created being, or replicant.

Not only should every certified sci-fi fan snap up this long-awaited revision, but I’m hoping that with the Final Cut Blade Runner will once and for all leave behind its cult-film status and stand alongside 2001 and other landmarks as one of the great films, period, of all time.