Blade Runner 2049 (Theatrical Cut) - Review Thread

Seeing it in a few hours.

It's a typo. Not sure what happened there... Too excited, clearly.

I thought it was a funny joke.

Ohhh. I mean the Theatrical thing.

I dosed off when he went to the orphanage and woke up when he was getting bitched at for failing the baseline. Turns out I slept during the most important part of the movie. Goddamnit. Anyway... pretty good movie. It’s just way too fucking long. Why does Hollywood keep insisting on these 3 hour blockbusters? By the time Harrison Ford showed up I was ready for the movie to end. Also, can Hollywood stop bringing dead actors back to life? There was a shock factor with Peter Cushing in Rogue One, but now it’s just getting creepy. Anyway, enough negativity. I don’t need SnoBorderZero accusing me of being a contrarian. That’s what Jibbs is here for. I don’t hate the movie. It’s alright. It’s just not a masterpiece.

The plot was solved before Harrison Ford showed up. I forgot he was even in it. I know I’m getting into spoiler territory here, but the biggest issue with the movie IS Harrison Ford. There was no reason for him to be there. They could have ended the movie at the orphanage. All they needed to change was Ryan Gosling’s interaction with the hooker. That could have been one scene instead of two, and when he arrives at the orphanage, the two opposing forces could have met up. Have some action scene to wrap things up and then end it with the big reveal. This could have been a 90 minute movie.

That's because you watched the shorter U.K. cut. I had to sit through the French-Canadian version with all the android sex.

"All these women wanna have sex with me, but I only have heart for Deckard."

I want to live in a world where I could put myself on top of someone's body and have Ryan Gosling inside me. 

ANYWAY....

I'm still processing. I won't write any sort of incredibly detailed review because I never do that. I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.  The world building was done so well, the costumes were incredible (seriously, I NEED Luv's wardrobe).  Personally, I thought a few things could be cut.  There wasn't a whole lot of movie that felt unnecessary to me. 

My only complaints would be Jared Let's attempt at being a blind person "look up, look down, look down again, look up" and that I wasn't a fan of the soundtrack.  It's like it was done the same way Irreversible's soundtrack was done (to make you nauseous or give you a headache).
 

Blade Runner 2049 is the definition of a beautiful, stylish film with great sets, great visual effects and an enormous atmosphere that unfortunately doesn't have a whole lot underneath the surface. I admire how it didn't try to revisit the same themes that Blade Runner established but at the same time it didn't try to set itself apart either. It presents a rather vague story about a miracle child and while that's fine the movie seems to plod along while not really giving much to the audience. Instead it's an overlong collection of scenes where Ryan Gosling is looking at his hands or admiring holograms. Establishing a tone and atmosphere is fine, it was used to great effect in my favorite Gosling movie Drive, but here it almost feels like it's taking the place of the substance of the story. I've said before how a movie needs to earn its runtime. Lawrence of Arabia is a nearly 4 hour movie without a wasted scene. Blade Runner 2049 is a 110 minute movie stretched to 165 minutes. What's strange is that I wouldn't call it bloated. When people say a movie is bloated that means there's a bunch of nonsense crammed into it. There isn't a whole lot taking up the additional time in 2049, just a lot of scenes that could have been better spent on the cutting room floor. We don't need to see a bunch of bees, we don't need a strange Her rip-off sex scene, and we really don't need a scene with the old 'we're building an army for a revolution' nugget that we've seen 1,000 times in other movies. It just didn't feel like there was a lot for me to grab onto and digest. If the movie was missing something it was a Roy Batty character, an antagonist who grounds the theme and the plot. There was nothing of the sort here. Jared Leto's character may have been an attempt at that but he was mainly used for either exposition or some pseudo-philosophical waxing. It feels weird when the most interesting characters in a movie are the hologram woman and the guy who was in the previous movie and isn't introduced until the 2 hour mark. Ultimately the movie was fine and was worth seeing, it's just not worth seeing again. It's certainly not the masterpiece that some critics are making it out to be and doesn't come close to the original in terms of quality and depth but it's worth checking out if you want to delve deeper into the lore of the Blade Runner universe.

C+ so says Doomsday

Probably my second favorite movie of the year so far, behind Logan.  I was absorbed in it from beginning to end.