Let me get this out of the way immediately. I do not like Blade Runner. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I know that the film has its fair share of fans, but I am not one of them. I think it’s far too slow, has a paper thin premise and looks completely dreary.
However, I was quite excited for its 35-years-after successor, for two reasons. The first, obviously, was Ryan Gosling. The second was that the trailers for this movie are sublime. I didn’t expect to be let down as much as I was.
I’m going to start with the positives, though. Blade Runner 2049, despite it still being way too dark (visually) for my liking, is a beautiful looking film. Every frame seems crafted by artists who paid attention to every detail.
Furthermore, the plot is significantly more interesting than the original film’s. In this, it is more of a story of K (Gosling), a next level replicant member of the Los Angeles Police Department, trying to discover himself as he works on a peculiar case that is connected to Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), the original protagonist of the original 1982 film.
However, the execution of this plot is really questionable. For one thing, Harrison Ford is barely in the film. This was sold like a passing of the torch movie, but is anything but because of how little screen time Deckard actually has. Usually I like it when older characters take a back seat like this to give the newer ones the spotlight, but this is ridiculous. There isn’t even a viable bond between Gosling and Ford in this film, at all.
Speaking of Ryan Gosling, his performance in this film is nowhere close to his best, and I suppose a large reason for this is the way his character is written. Calling his performance robotic would be ironic, but it is.
I went into this film completely unaware of the runtime (I usually prefer to do this) but I didn’t expect to be anywhere near as long as it was. 2 hours 45 minutes is completely out of proportions, especially considering how incredibly slow the film is. It really doesn’t need to be that long. It’s not like I’m a 2 year old with no patience. The Godfather is a slow film, but it’s still good. This isn’t.
Jared Leto is also in this film, playing a supposedly important character who shows up in two scenes. This isn’t something only his character possesses. Characters who are pivotal to the plot of the film are in only one or two scenes, and so you have such little weight to their importance that the entire movie fails to have you really care about everything that’s going on.
I will end on a positive note. This film expresses quite well what it feels like to be human and experience human emotions, especially around Ryan Gosling’s character.
Blade Runner 2049 is nowhere near as bloated or boring as the original, but it still significantly fails to meet its potential. A few good moments are sprinkled here and there, but ultimately, all you feel is disappointment.
On a scale where M is the lowest and R is the highest possible rating, with the highlighted letter being the rating:
The Geeky Critic 