Blade Runner 2049

Rating: 5/10 (8 October 2017)

When the original came out in 1982, I was a kid. The movie was probably a bit advanced for an elementary schooler, but as the film moved along, I found it to be all but mesmerizing. In the ensuing years, I have watched that film at least 20 times. It holds up better than any other science fiction movie I have seen to repeated viewing.
Looking back, that had to do with the script more so than Ridley Scott's direction. The actors were well cast and they gave excellent performances (except for Leon).
Fast forward 35 years. Denis Villneuve is the director of the sequel, and Ryan Gosling plays K, a replicant blade runner. Gosling (and Ana de Armas, and Mackenzie Davis, for that matter) spends long periods of time in this film's rather lengthy scenes gazing meaningfully at the camera. This does nothing to move the plot forward, or show the audience anything about the character. I don't blame Gosling and the other actors for this pseudo acting. I have seen Ryan in older movies, where he actually performed, as opposed to gazing meaningfully. This movie simply is poorly edited, and poorly directed.
I also noticed a bit of disjointedness among all of the meaningful stares. I have a feeling there were a few rewrites in the course of the filmmaking. The scene in Las Vegas when K meets Deckard seemed haphazardly thrown together.
The original film was based on a Philip Dick novel, and it is admittedly slightly reductive to say Dick's book had a bit of a philosophical bent.
In my opinion, the sequel tries a bit too hard to show, with visuals, how deep it is (the love scene with Joi comes to mind). I blame the director for this as well.
As for the sound, other reviewers have described it well - The sound effects are probably the worst feature, loud, grating and unnecessary. Multiple scenes of gratuitous violence and gore add nothing to the plot.
Including the eardrum-bursting "Music" Sitting at the back I could watch as people's heads slumped to one side, only to be jolted awake by an especially loud synthesizer swell.
The movie's music is sometimes too loud. It reminds me of the movie Interstellar. It's hard to appreciate certain scenes when the music is too loud.
To these comments, I can only concur. Vangelis' score from the 1982 film was much better than this discordant, heavy handed attempt.
This movie was advertised heavily for months (Sony fully intends to make that $180 million back quickly, judging by all those commercials/trailers). Denis Villneuve's sequel is barely worth two and a half hours, and is not worth the price of admission.