It’s official. Rick Deckard, the fatigued replicant-hunter played by Harrison Ford in Ridley Scott’s latest stab at “Blade Runner” (1982, 1992, 2007), is himself a replicant, though he doesn’t know it. How do we know? Because Mr. Scott, who likes to talk about himself with phrases like “I’m all about …” and “That’s what I do,” says so, and he’s the auteur, pal. The unicorn dream, which made its debut in the 1992 version, is the evidence. Hampton Fancher, who wrote the original screenplay, can insist that anyone who thinks Deckard is a replicant (or android or robot) is “stupid.” Mr. Ford can deny that he ever played one. And fandom can march on Warner Bros. with pitchforks and torches, but it won’t do any good. Life is full of disillusionments.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you probably have a (real) life, and the thought of watching as many as five — five — versions of “Blade Runner” may suggest deferred puberty or clinical insanity. Yet such are the inducements as Warner Bros. releases three packages to observe the 25th anniversary “final cut.” For most of us, one cut will do. Film studies professors, on the other hand, will find a semester’s potential syllabus stored in a Deckard-style briefcase complete with handle, origami unicorn and, according to a press release, “a signed personal letter from Sir Ridley Scott.” That’ll keep him busy — just getting the names of everyone he has to write to.

A brief history: “Blade Runner” was one of 1982’s box-office debacles, admired for its art direction, criticized for its wan pace and narrative confusion, and ridiculed for a voice-over commentary read by Mr. Ford as though he were Philip Marlowe on Quaaludes. A second version was released internationally, virtually identical to the first but for the addition of a few seconds of graphic violence. Then Sir Ridley’s incomplete “workprint” — the movie equivalent of a first draft — made its way into cinematic consciousness, suggesting that the released film was not what he had intended. Encouraged by the demands for a better “Blade Runner,” Sir Ridley issued a director’s cut, in 1992, which disposed of the pointless voice-over and inane ending and added the unicorn.

This was a big improvement, yet we now learn that the revised film was merely the director’s first director’s cut. Now we have what is optimistically called “the Final Cut,” and it is far and away the best edition and the only one that need concern us, thanks to computer-generated images. There is irony here worthy of the writings and thoughts of Philip K. Dick, whose 1968 novel, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” inspired — very loosely — the concept but not the title (which was borrowed from an unrelated novel by William Burroughs) of “Blade Runner.”

The film is often vaunted as the last great special-effects extravaganza made “in camera,” before the advent of computer graphics. But Sir Ridley, whose eye for architecture, costume, and smoke rarely let him down, lost track of a few more kinetic details — including a stunt double for Joanne Cassidy, who wears a ludicrously inappropriate wig, a dove that takes off from a rainy deck into a clear blue sky, and inept lip-synching. These and other details have now been computer-corrected: Ms. Cassidy’s present-day head has been grafted to the body double’s body, Mr. Ford’s son has provided accurate lip-movements to be melded with his father’s profile, and the dove flies into storm clouds.

“Blade Runner” never looked and sounded better, and this is a film in which looks are practically everything. It is as dependent on art direction as, say, Vincente Minnelli’s “Gigi” (1958); every inch of the screen is answered for, indoors and especially outdoors, as horizons disappear into matte paintings, smoke pots, shimmering neon, giant screens, airborne vehicles, and crowds as opaque and variously dressed as in a Halloween parade in Greenwich Village. From the justly celebrated opening shot — a grotesque metropolitan hell with fireballs shooting into the starless night — we are drawn into an alternate world. The director’s small army of designers, builders, illustrators, costumers, hairdressers, and makeup artists left few details unexamined in constructing a nightmare city that lingers in the mind with greater resilience than the characters.

The landscape is hardly logical or consistent. The introductory shot doesn’t comport with the street details, which include a few Los Angeles landmarks (the film is set there in 2019), but it hardly matters. When Sir Ridley is playing with light, bric-a-brac, architecture, and the elements (snow, rain, relentless smoke), he is riveting. Not so much when he is telling a story. Maybe he intended for Mr. Ford and Sean Young to play their putatively sympathetic characters as though powered by batteries, while the replicants, as portrayed by Rutger Hauer, Daryl Hannah, and Ms. Cassidy, are brawny with life — even if their vivacity is animated by murderous rage.

Other elements suggest directorial incompetence. The script seems often to have been lost amid the décor, so that no one noticed the potted dialogue, deficient characterizations, and narrative languor. Credited to Mr. Fancher, who was fired for refusing revisions, and David Peoples, who wrote most of the finished film, “Blade Runner” is curiously lacking in wit and rhythm; the best speech was written and recited by Mr. Hauer, as his character’s dying valediction.

Set pieces that should generate tension and suspense were flatly shot and edited. Deckard’s pursuit of Zhora (Ms. Cassidy), which at the very least might have been Movie Chase 101, is lifeless and uninvolved — more intent on a sugar-glass stunt than the characters. The slugfest between Deckard and Pris (Ms. Hannah) is incoherent — why does she insert her fingers into his nose? Mr. Hauer’s Roy Batty, who provides the picture with its most grotesque violence and an unexpected burst of poetic feeling, is largely unexplored. His death is painful because we know we will have to return to more dark tracking shots and elliptical dialogue from Mr. Ford and Ms. Young.

Still, “Blade Runner” is an essential movie experience because its canvas is so fully realized. It affects people who see it, not because it explores “what it means to be human” (Philip K. Dick does that, Sir Ridley could care less), but because it shows what it means to embrace modern, urban life. Most futuristic science fiction is inherently silly — it predicts robot slaves, flying jeeps, and pillbox hats, but not cell phones or computers. The dystopias that work build on the present: Times Square on a Saturday night in a summer rain with smoke emanating from subway gratings and manholes is “Blade Runner,” 2007. For that matter, change the word “replicant” to “immigrant,” and the film can double as a Lou Dobbs jeremiad.

But which edition do you buy? The inexpensive two-disc DVD has the final cut and a 212-minute documentary. The reasonably priced four-disc set has that plus the other three theatrical versions from 1982 and 1992 (a waste of time), plus some very good featurettes, including two on Dick. The overpriced five-disc version has all that plus the “workprint” version (another waste of time), but also includes a solid 30-minute film about the technical revisions made for the final cut, as well as that personal letter. In offering these choices, Warner Bros. is subjecting consumers to what the movie calls a Voight-Kampff test: Your decision will divulge whether you are a human, a replicant, or a teenager.

Mr. Giddins is the author of “Natural Selection: Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music, and Books.”