‘Blade Runner 2049’ Review Roundup: A Beautiful Addition To The Original

Blade Runner 2049 is receiving great reviews from audiences and critics alike. The Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling project has earned an impressive 94% on Rottentomatoes. Thirty years after the original film, Gosling takes over as a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K. He unearths a secret that sends him on a quest to find Ford’s Rick Deckard, who has been missing for 30 years. Robin Wright, Jared Leto, Ana de Armas and Sylvia Hoeks co-star.

BLADE RUNNER 2049 REVIEW ROUNDUP

“Blade Runner 2049 is that rarest of sequels: An original… [Director Denis] Villeneuve‘s huge visual and emotional energy carries this along, in a movie which proceeds at only one speed: Relentless. Enormous widescreen shots demand we study the entire scene. Long-take action sequences insist we experience every kick, every blow. Like a nightmare, the film refuses to release us, until we wake at the end. If only to wonder – how do we know we’re awake? How do we know – really know – anything?”
–Stephen Whitty, nj.com

“Director Denis Villeneuve has managed a miracle of creation worthy of the themes of Blade Runner 2049. He’s turned the long-gestating sequel to the beloved 1982 sci-fi film into a visual experience that transcends the original… The screenplay by Hampton Fancher (who co-wrote the original) and Michael Green give plenty of class war themes to chew on over the film’s two-hour and 43-minute running time. That might have been a little too long considering how over-baked the sequel’s third act feels towards the end. But that’s a small price to pay for the rest of the movie. Do androids dream of electric sheep? Maybe. But science fiction-loving cinephiles have definitely been dreaming of a movie like Blade Runner 2049 for years.”
–Ethan Sacks, NY Daily News

“Mr. Villeneuve’s film…is a carefully engineered narrative puzzle, and its power dissipates as the pieces snap into place. As sumptuous and surprising as it is from one scene to the next, it lacks the creative excess, the intriguing opacity and the haunting residue of its predecessor. As such, Blade Runner 2049 stands in relation to “Blade Runner” almost exactly as K stands in relation to Deckard before the two meet: as a more docile, less rebellious “improvement,” tweaked and retrofitted to meet consumer demand. And the customers are likely to be satisfied.”
–A.O. Scott, The New York Times

“There is much to like here, but 2049, like Alien: Covenant, feels too enraptured with its own headiness. Even Nabokov’s Pale Fire makes a cameo. Maybe “Blade Runner” wore its complexities on its sleeve, too. But it’s hard not to agree with the old blade runner who turns up late in the film and tells K: “I had your job once. It was simpler then.”
–Jake Coyle, ABC News

“Over 163 stylish minutes, Blade Runner 2049 wrestles with nothing less than what it means to be human, serving as a beautiful thematic companion to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, a film that redefined a genre. It’s too soon to tell if the follow-up will have the influence and staying power of the groundbreaking original but it’s clear from the beginning that this no mere piece of nostalgic fan service. Unlike a lot of reboots or long-delayed sequels that merely remix the themes and characters of the beloved original to give viewers the hollow comfort of familiarity, Denis Villeneuve and his team are remarkably ambitious, using the topics raised by Blade Runner to continue the conversation instead of just repeating it to make a buck. To that end, they have made one of the most deeply philosophical and challenging sci-fi films of all time, a movie that never holds your hand as it spirals the viewer through its gorgeous funhouse of the human soul… And yet while hundreds of writers and filmmakers were inspired by Blade Runner, it’s hard to believe any of them could have found a way to expand its legacy as completely as Villenueve does here with a movie that doesn’t feel at all repetitive. He’s in no way seeking to improve or replace—the films now work together, enriching each other instead of mimicking.”
–Brian Tallerico, rogerebert.com