So glad I caught this in IMAX. I have no idea what it's like in other formats, but I think I will carry that experience with me through every rewatch.
This movie showed me things I've never seen before, sounds I've never heard before. I can think of 5 or 6 scenes that were absolutely jaw-dropping. It's boiling over with new ideas. I want more!
Never has Hans Zimmer bombast worked so well for me. I was continuously blown away, and then swept away, by this glorious soundtrack.
But it is way too self-conscious and its originality becomes a gimmick. Let me explain. The movie isn't as fast paced as almost all the big Hollywood movies. At the contrary, it takes its time. But every scene takes its time even when it is absolutely not necessary. There are a lot of shots of Gosling slowly walking in great sets. Do great sets make a great movie? Some shots seem to be motivated by how great the set is. There is no reason for this movie to be that long.
Having watched Arrival, I can be 100% certain that this movie's patience and ponderousness is genuine. Denis Villeneuve is such a perfect fit. The original Blade Runner is even slower, I'd argue, and is more transparently about the beauty of its world.
I am also completely fine with a movie that sacrifices character/story potential for other equally cinematic things. Avatar was kind of the embodiment of that, for example.
But I fully agree with this criticism:
probably would have been even better with less dialogue- in fact, less dialogue, fewer scenes and overall greater abstraction could have made this really, really special
With that alteration, this easily could have been a masterpiece. Shame it was so close.
SpoilersWhen Harrison Ford arrived, it was like, wow, that's a real actor right there. This is his best performance in a very long time. He pumped so much emotion and weight into his first few scenes especially.
Most fiction about androids, including Westworld and Ex Machina, don't bother to deal with the issue of the human soul — what that is, and under what circumstances a synthetic human could hope to have one. Blade Runner 2049 addresses this question head-on. To paraphrase the movie: if something is legitimately, biologically born, how could it not have a soul? I appreciated that this movie is philosophically serious.