Lacking Intelligence - SPOILER

Rating: 2/10 (7 October 2017)

No complaints about the casting, performance, or any of that, and special kudos to Ana de Armas who is luminous. The special effects are persuasive. So what's the problem?
Like too many of Villeneuve's movies, this one is incredibly . . . dumb. NONE of the projections made about the world of 2049 make any sense at all. (This was not a problem with the original). Between now and then, we are asked to believe society will create an entire race of replicant human beings, the climate will be uniformly gray and dreary, all traces of urban sophistication or beauty will disappear, and all of this (of course) accepted without a whimper
I'll leave the absurdities about climate and environment and focus on one thing - artificial intelligence. We DO have it, right now, and it has nothing to do with human DNA. It takes the form of robots made of plastic and metal elements, doing repetitive mindless work that human beings used to do, which is great for the time being, but poses a problem for the future. There aren't replicants now, there are never going to be, which makes the whole futuristic scenario an exercise in futility.
SPOILER - by miles the worst scene is when the replicant detective (Gosling) stumbles in to an orphanage in which these poor little tykes are working in dark, claustrophobic conditions. Are you kidding me? Not only are these Dickensian scenes 150 years out of date, but any manufacturer is going to find regular robots far more efficient than a passel of children.
All this may sound picky, but it's not. I love science fiction, but you have to have premises that relate to realistic social or human conditions. These don't. I strongly suspect Villeneuve came up with this implausible scenario so we can be told that 'no society ever succeeded other than on the basis of enforced labor' - dead wrong - and other holier-than-thou statements. The picture ends up having the same, narky feel as 'Incendies' or 'Prisoners', which is not where you want to be,
Dystopian drama? Sure. Dystopian fantasy? Who needs that - which is why this movie is a grossly miscalculated boondoggle.