My personal feeling is also that theatrical cut IS the best edit of BLADE RUNNER for 3 key reasons:"It is the best version of the film. It's imperfect – and it seems presumptuous and I'm a huge fan of Ridley Scott, so I don't want to go up against his view in a sense – but the reality is, that tension between the marketplace, between the studios, between the fights, the creative stuff that happens when a film goes out, unless they literally pull the film out of the director's hands and recut it, and bastardize it in some way, I think really the authoritative version of the film tends to be the one that goes out there in theaters.Even with the voice-over, all the rest, there are all these defining things to it that I realized I'd missed over the years in coming to the other versions.
1) As poorly worded as much of the dialogue is, the voice-over sets too much mood, atmosphere and also clarifies story -- especially for 1st time viewers -- that's lacking from Scott's myriad of other edits. There's just something lacking from the non-narration versions, and since the movie was always intended to have a voice-over, it wasn't constructed to work without one. Watching The Final Cut is like watching a film that's kind of missing its soul. And I certainly miss Ford's voice-over when Batty dies at the end. Not ALL of it is badly written.
2) I also like the happy ending (sorry!). The abrupt "doors closing" ambiguous finale of the "Final Cut" and other versions isn't as satisfying for me.
3) In "The Final Cut," Scott goes "all the way" with the "Deckard is a Replicant" plot line -- which doesn't work for me at all. The beauty of the film's effectiveness is that a soulless human discovers humanity from a mechanical being. If Deckard is always a replicant -- what the hell is the point of the movie? At least keep it ambiguous -- which Scott's other versions DON'T do. The Final Cut basically spells it all out for the audience (which is funny because even BLADE RUNNER 2049 kept it ambiguous).
Everyone has their own take on it, but I was happy to see someone at least pledge support for the original 1982 release version.