I liked most of the movie's tone. Spectacular and beautiful in the empire sprawling dystopia that is / was Blade Runner. Visually stunning, and the 4 hours of the runtime is almost devoted to these superlative, panoramic moments...
Oh, it's just 2h 45m?
The plot is very much attractive and attemptive.
After a few hours of depth, it was okay. 7/10. If I was charitable.
Its not a good sequel. It's also not blade runner. It is trying very hard to make itself blade runner. It fits together. But, it is going in too different a direction and making different choices.
In ways that should never be attempted, it has rebooted blade runner.
The same problem exists with Ghost in the shell, Ghostbusters, The Force Awakens, etc. The pageantry and spectacular effects are the most important focus, and it destroys the native or originality of the first movie. It's akin to being the archetype of a new trope.
There's a few reboots that improve, but it's a disappointment more profound than a terrible sequel to realizing that a sequel has nothing to do with the first movie. Aliens to Alien, the movie is startlingly different and plays with the same world. Blade Runner 2049 is a different world to the original.
This isn't Fan4stic. It's just... Not a sequel. Too much has changed to be the same world as the original movie.
There are deliberate problems. First world problems, to be sure, and the story is convoluted for effect.
I can't especially pin down why it fails to be a good movie rather than a great one. It has all of the pieces, or some of the pieces of a great, re-watchable, fun and masterful film.
The briefest way to sum up my disappointment is that I don't care about the characters.
The only compelling thing is perhaps Joi the holographic fake girlfriend. And while I think that this is awesome, it is not. I probably should be concerned for the hero, or Deckard. Or anything, anyone else. Nope.
Joi is the least of the significant absurdity. The reality of Joi is something profoundly idiotic. Ie. That the best acting, most emotional and smartest person is the least powerful, and the least human. This is a problem.
If the scenery was a character, it would be the protagonist of the movie. This has actually been attempted with success elsewhere, koyannaquatsi, sic.
Maybe it's just my imagination, or opinion, or A quirk of the length of the movie perhaps. Or just a funny aspect of the direction and production, could the story be told without words? Just scenes and edits.?
Probably.
Other times, it challenges you, especially the preference to rattle the room with ambient bass and ear piercing volume for the emotional experience of the scenery. Does a dead forest require a 97db foghorn-like pulse racing ambience?
It doesn't not work. Audio is pushy rather than subtle. Loud, rather than contrast or matching the power of the visual effects/ landscape.
It's not great. It's not bad. The parts it does badly are choices made. And there's thousands of odd idiosyncrasies. It's a very long movie.
It's just on the cusp of going past the suspension of disbelief. More inconsistencies than plausible or tolerant. As a result of this, you end up pulling the threads with boredom or curiosity. A movie under 100 minutes, you can Suspend Disbelief. At the 150+ minutes mark, the fantasy erodes and it needs to work much harder for coherence.
In an Era where TV can deliver a story with movie quality over 10 to 20 hours, film has to change or choose. Perhaps, choices that were made for the film by someone who doesn't enjoy movies.
Thousands of hours of thought went into this movie, and it bleeds through. When I try to put a finger on the concepts, art, choices and script for a single vision, or a single flaw that underpins the way I don't like it enough to really enjoy this or feel favorable towards it...
Nothing about the movie is inherently bad. You can overtly go into depth into scenes and pull out the hidden details for hours, context and framing etc.
The challenge will be in 5 or 10+ years, to see if someone can make this concept work properly into a better movie, TV series or universe. It is an awesome film to break into pieces, much like Gladiator or Guardians of the Galaxy, to calibrate what makes a movie great and fun.
With some editing, it could be salvaged into a better noir film. More has to go wrong, and the movie would need more characters, etc.
Theres like an hour of filler in the storyline to accomplish... Nothing. The characters chase a red herring, and it takes time. The payoff is that the quest... Is nihilistic. Okay. Awesome.
Perhaps, it comes down to the storyline being rushed, or the twist (cough) being quite a bit mishandled.
The appeal to discourse is vain. Watercooler discussion works if you make good choices and people want more. You don't get this by overlaying and obscuring the plot with a red herring and forget about the wider implications of adding a layer of intrigue that casts infinite doubt into the story.
The elements that gave the twist for Deckard being a Replicant in the original were subtle. It pushed the choice on the viewer to infer more than the movie informed or showed to people. Hence the confusion about cuts and endings, the unicorn, etc.
Now, In its most concise, the replicants are the movie. This is the first problem, of many.
Blade runner focused on the humanity of the characters, their failures and doubts versus the reckless and charismatic replicants, better in every aspect once they could be allowed to be.
This is airbrushed in the sequel.
The other is the artistry and decadence of the settings and locations. Awesome, but amateurish as well.
Amateur in that people don't live in the places created, and never did. There's a lot of brilliant and creative ideas on display, and a botched integration with the world. Things are weathered, in sterile rooms. Lighting is moody, in a clean street, with/without vehicles in the roads. A brothel is next door to a food court with a giant touch screen locker system, which seems like it should be a keyed location. It feels unlike a real location because of the fake and the overt push of the crowds.
And you have tumbled modernist art deco statues in a washed out Las Vegas, but holographic jukeboxes and intact highrises. The reason it looks fake is, people have to make places. Choices. Fund and buy resources. The reason why you don't have an office building with irrigation and water pools is someone has to clean it. Maintain it. And be irritated by it. The Wallace replicants are entirely doll manifestations that also deliver the plot and momentum of the film. This is... Stupid. Not clever. The noir elements don't merge well, the luck needed to process the plot is supra deus ex machinae, there's... Time spent on the silliest of things that do not change the plot in the 4 middle parts. We have 4 middle parts of filler to drive a plot that is being steered.
The directing / storyline choices made are... Curious. Dumb. Gaudy. Pretentious. Self important. Disconnected. Hyped. Overt. Mismanaged. Otherwise, fine. It's not a problem, despite the insanity required to implement. The visual and story choices are styled to make people feel and understand.
You can think of these settings, but it becomes fake and austentatious once built. This overt motif becomes a character in the movie, it does not ever blend in with the background. Hence, amateur.
In some ways, they did the same damage as Ghost in the Shell (2017) attempting modernized Holographic Cityscapes. It is so much more gorgeous, and so much more hollow.
The more significant problem exists with Ghost. The characters were trampled by the budget and the plot inserts. Arguably, the same problem exists with The Force Awakens, that the characters feel forced into the greenscreen and wire work action scenes from unnatural dialogue. Ford Ambles in this movie. A lot. He has his moments, but the insanity of using a cartoon Evil villain in a "billion dollar" movie is incredibly lazy.
Harrison Ford against a non blind, non insane Jared Leto would have connected people to the charismatic and driven ideologue. Nope.
The movie wants to forget subtle and forges a deliberate "fish bowl" motif to the antagonist, a "Desperate" ambitious CEO with a lust for dominance via a replicating replicant workforce. This is the lowest possible point in the movie, because of the way it is presented as... Iconoclast and preachy desperation.
I don't know if I'd give the movie a 9 without Jared Leto, but it seems possible.
I just don't even really care, that's the problem. Every other character, is fine.
Review by TolimanVIP 10BlockedParent2017-10-18T15:09:23Z
I liked most of the movie's tone. Spectacular and beautiful in the empire sprawling dystopia that is / was Blade Runner. Visually stunning, and the 4 hours of the runtime is almost devoted to these superlative, panoramic moments...
Oh, it's just 2h 45m?
The plot is very much attractive and attemptive.
After a few hours of depth, it was okay. 7/10.
If I was charitable.
Its not a good sequel. It's also not blade runner. It is trying very hard to make itself blade runner. It fits together. But, it is going in too different a direction and making different choices.
In ways that should never be attempted, it has rebooted blade runner.
The same problem exists with Ghost in the shell, Ghostbusters, The Force Awakens, etc. The pageantry and spectacular effects are the most important focus, and it destroys the native or originality of the first movie. It's akin to being the archetype of a new trope.
There's a few reboots that improve, but it's a disappointment more profound than a terrible sequel to realizing that a sequel has nothing to do with the first movie. Aliens to Alien, the movie is startlingly different and plays with the same world. Blade Runner 2049 is a different world to the original.
This isn't Fan4stic. It's just... Not a sequel. Too much has changed to be the same world as the original movie.
There are deliberate problems. First world problems, to be sure, and the story is convoluted for effect.
I can't especially pin down why it fails to be a good movie rather than a great one. It has all of the pieces, or some of the pieces of a great, re-watchable, fun and masterful film.
The briefest way to sum up my disappointment is that I don't care about the characters.
The only compelling thing is perhaps Joi the holographic fake girlfriend. And while I think that this is awesome, it is not. I probably should be concerned for the hero, or Deckard. Or anything, anyone else. Nope.
Joi is the least of the significant absurdity. The reality of Joi is something profoundly idiotic. Ie. That the best acting, most emotional and smartest person is the least powerful, and the least human. This is a problem.
If the scenery was a character, it would be the protagonist of the movie. This has actually been attempted with success elsewhere, koyannaquatsi, sic.
Maybe it's just my imagination, or opinion, or A quirk of the length of the movie perhaps. Or just a funny aspect of the direction and production, could the story be told without words? Just scenes and edits.?
Probably.
Other times, it challenges you, especially the preference to rattle the room with ambient bass and ear piercing volume for the emotional experience of the scenery. Does a dead forest require a 97db foghorn-like pulse racing ambience?
It doesn't not work. Audio is pushy rather than subtle. Loud, rather than contrast or matching the power of the visual effects/ landscape.
It's not great. It's not bad. The parts it does badly are choices made. And there's thousands of odd idiosyncrasies. It's a very long movie.
It's just on the cusp of going past the suspension of disbelief. More inconsistencies than plausible or tolerant. As a result of this, you end up pulling the threads with boredom or curiosity. A movie under 100 minutes, you can Suspend Disbelief. At the 150+ minutes mark, the fantasy erodes and it needs to work much harder for coherence.
In an Era where TV can deliver a story with movie quality over 10 to 20 hours, film has to change or choose. Perhaps, choices that were made for the film by someone who doesn't enjoy movies.
Thousands of hours of thought went into this movie, and it bleeds through. When I try to put a finger on the concepts, art, choices and script for a single vision, or a single flaw that underpins the way I don't like it enough to really enjoy this or feel favorable towards it...
Nothing about the movie is inherently bad. You can overtly go into depth into scenes and pull out the hidden details for hours, context and framing etc.
The challenge will be in 5 or 10+ years, to see if someone can make this concept work properly into a better movie, TV series or universe. It is an awesome film to break into pieces, much like Gladiator or Guardians of the Galaxy, to calibrate what makes a movie great and fun.
With some editing, it could be salvaged into a better noir film. More has to go wrong, and the movie would need more characters, etc.
Theres like an hour of filler in the storyline to accomplish... Nothing. The characters chase a red herring, and it takes time. The payoff is that the quest... Is nihilistic. Okay. Awesome.
Perhaps, it comes down to the storyline being rushed, or the twist (cough) being quite a bit mishandled.
The appeal to discourse is vain. Watercooler discussion works if you make good choices and people want more. You don't get this by overlaying and obscuring the plot with a red herring and forget about the wider implications of adding a layer of intrigue that casts infinite doubt into the story.
The elements that gave the twist for Deckard being a Replicant in the original were subtle. It pushed the choice on the viewer to infer more than the movie informed or showed to people. Hence the confusion about cuts and endings, the unicorn, etc.
Now, In its most concise, the replicants are the movie. This is the first problem, of many.
Blade runner focused on the humanity of the characters, their failures and doubts versus the reckless and charismatic replicants, better in every aspect once they could be allowed to be.
This is airbrushed in the sequel.
The other is the artistry and decadence of the settings and locations. Awesome, but amateurish as well.
Amateur in that people don't live in the places created, and never did. There's a lot of brilliant and creative ideas on display, and a botched integration with the world. Things are weathered, in sterile rooms. Lighting is moody, in a clean street, with/without vehicles in the roads. A brothel is next door to a food court with a giant touch screen locker system, which seems like it should be a keyed location. It feels unlike a real location because of the fake and the overt push of the crowds.
And you have tumbled modernist art deco statues in a washed out Las Vegas, but holographic jukeboxes and intact highrises. The reason it looks fake is, people have to make places. Choices. Fund and buy resources. The reason why you don't have an office building with irrigation and water pools is someone has to clean it. Maintain it. And be irritated by it. The Wallace replicants are entirely doll manifestations that also deliver the plot and momentum of the film. This is... Stupid. Not clever. The noir elements don't merge well, the luck needed to process the plot is supra deus ex machinae, there's... Time spent on the silliest of things that do not change the plot in the 4 middle parts. We have 4 middle parts of filler to drive a plot that is being steered.
The directing / storyline choices made are... Curious. Dumb. Gaudy. Pretentious. Self important. Disconnected. Hyped. Overt. Mismanaged. Otherwise, fine. It's not a problem, despite the insanity required to implement. The visual and story choices are styled to make people feel and understand.
You can think of these settings, but it becomes fake and austentatious once built. This overt motif becomes a character in the movie, it does not ever blend in with the background. Hence, amateur.
In some ways, they did the same damage as Ghost in the Shell (2017) attempting modernized Holographic Cityscapes. It is so much more gorgeous, and so much more hollow.
The more significant problem exists with Ghost. The characters were trampled by the budget and the plot inserts. Arguably, the same problem exists with The Force Awakens, that the characters feel forced into the greenscreen and wire work action scenes from unnatural dialogue. Ford Ambles in this movie. A lot. He has his moments, but the insanity of using a cartoon Evil villain in a "billion dollar" movie is incredibly lazy.
Harrison Ford against a non blind, non insane Jared Leto would have connected people to the charismatic and driven ideologue. Nope.
The movie wants to forget subtle and forges a deliberate "fish bowl" motif to the antagonist, a "Desperate" ambitious CEO with a lust for dominance via a replicating replicant workforce. This is the lowest possible point in the movie, because of the way it is presented as... Iconoclast and preachy desperation.
I don't know if I'd give the movie a 9 without Jared Leto, but it seems possible.
I just don't even really care, that's the problem. Every other character, is fine.