Blade Runner 2049

Denis Villeneuve kept the film pretty true to its source material. He prepared a sequel to the legendary techno sci-fi, which deserves praise. He forgot about any emotions and thus made the film into a cold doll, but on the other hand, he played beautifully with Los Angeles of the future and he harmonized it perfectly with the amazing synthwave music. You won’t find orgies like this in just any movie. After viewing I actually realized that I actually ended up with the same impression of the sequel as I had of the original movie. So, to save myself from a three-star review, I gave it four stars straight away. The visuals in combination with the music simply forced me to. Even though I haven’t seen a colder movie in a long time. (11/03/2018)

Unfortunately, this one missed me. I turned off the old Blade Runner halfway through and it would have turned out the same had I watched this one at home. I consider Denis Villeneuve to be a very promising and skilled director, Sicario with Prisoners are among my favorite films, but I find Blade Runner 2049 unrewarding as an audience member. Visually, of course, it's a treat and makes you want to take a camera and photograph a every single scene. Ryan Gosling was a good fit for the lead role, but that's probably all there is to it. The vaunted Harrison Ford shows up 30 minutes before the end, a time when you are tired and exhausted, Jared Leto as the bad guy is there 10 minutes overall, which is perhaps one of the biggest problems, because a good bad guy makes a good movie. The R-rating is very underused, there are no twists and the action makes up about 15 minutes of the 163 minute running time, well no wonder 5 people left the theater and if I wasn't an proper movie fan I probably would have left too. Too artsy, surreal and dreamy, it almost gave me hemorrhoids from the constant changes of positions in my seat! 45% (10/14/2017)

A place of deep melancholy shallow landscaping. Instead of a simple noir story, this an incredibly supple and unfortunately desperately transparent story about the search for meaning in a world of vanishing memories. There is about the same difference between the original and this one as between a physical experience and the nicely painted backdrop. At the same time, Blade Runner 2049 well documents the impotence to which Hollywood has condemned the current fashion of resurrecting icons. Blade Runner was as much a tribute to history as engaging visions of the future world. The second part is just a blank canvas, where Villeneuve and Deakins apply a few new contours, but at the same time they can't break out of the familiarity of the old ones. Sure, that's not even the goal. But instead of a vision, the result is a sterile museum. And unfortunately, by far the worst directing moments that the brilliant Canadian has been part of. It is the same in key moments as the Chinese finale of Arrival. Paradoxically hurried, unfinished and explicitly simple in terms of script. The original Blade Runner had a secret. These are just transparently literal symbols. A fleeting thing that will only be remembered in 30 years as a testament to a time that has become entrenched in its own memories of visionary times. The epoch of replicants with a time fuse. I am betting a synthetic kidney. (10/09/2017)

There's probably no bigger fan of the original Blade Runner than me, so, first of all, I don't think a movie like this needed a sequel at all. In terms of the story, it's like The Matrix. There, the mythology was developed in the other two episodes, here, the story is developed in a way that makes sense, but does not enrich the original film. In terms of pure craftsmanship, it's a solid piece of filmmaking, but I didn’t feel the atmosphere of Scott's gem, that "Babylonian" mix of cultures and peoples with a predominantly Asian element where you could easily become an anonymous figurehead. Deakins does magic, yes, but the atmosphere is missing, and anyone who says otherwise has failed to feel the subtle nuances of the first Blade Runner. I missed an interesting character like J.F. Sebastian and his electronic toys in the prequel, I missed a fateful character like Pris, I missed a strong villain like Roy Batty whom you both hated and pitied. There's none of that in Villeneuve's film, just a terminator in a skirt and a bland Leto. Thanks at least for the holographic Joi, probably the only interesting character in the film. I just can’t avoid feeling slightly disappointed. (10/07/2017)

Much better than I was afraid of, but much worse than I hoped for. The first is true mainly due to the accurately captured peculiarly slow hypnotic "non-spectator" atmosphere (I felt like it was 2049 minutes long), addressing major existential issues through slight hints (however worse than in previous movies), refined in terms of design and ideas, functional update of the world by thirty years, the roaring and intoxicating audiovisuals prove that it is not the same with only slight changes, in other words we can see a real acting of Ford. The second is true because of several plot lines from the final sequence, which are questionable, or even reprehensible. There is quite a lot of too long or even superfluous scenes. It´s too cold, despite the desire to raise emotions and there are to many different topics that are only mentioned and then fade away as quickly as a flash. It will definitely not become a timeless legendary movie, only perhaps in terms of craftsmanship perhaps, but it´s absolutely more than just a damn good anti-utopian film. That´s for sure. The question, of course, remains whether "more than damn good" is enough in the case of the follow-up of one of the most influential films of the movie industry. (10/05/2017)