A remedy against sleepless nights

Rating: 3/10 (7 November 2017)

Are you seeking a remedy against sleepless nights? You won't need any prescriptions to solve your problem. You simply need to watch Blade Runner 2049. Almost everything that could be wrong with a movie is wrong with this one. To start on a positive note, the visual effects are faithful to the original film, the directing is precise and doesn't feature any annoying contemporary shaky camera passages and the last third of the movie quickens up the pace and is at least slightly interesting. These three positive elements explain my rating but I really had to think very hard to find these reasons.
Let's talk about this movie's massive problems. First of all, the film is way too long and takes nearly three hours to tell a story that would have justified a length under a hour and a half. The original movie wasn't the most fast-paced genre film ever made but it was bearable with a length just below the two-hour mark.
Secondly, the plot is quite tiresome and can be summarized in three sentences. When things finally could start to get interesting, the film actually ends without a resolution. This makes me fear the worst. It's quite probable that there will be a sequel to this sequel which means that even those who haven't appreciated Blade Runner 2049 might feel forced to watch the sequel to know how the story actually ends. If you don't want to go through that dilemma, don't watch Blade Runner 2049 in the first place. While the original film is overrated in my book and doesn't do Philip K. Dick's novel justice, it had at least a coherent plot diagram featuring an exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution.
Thirdly, the movie tries to be overtly atmospheric but ends up being pretentious. There are numerous shots when characters walk through decayed landscapes in slow-motion. This idea might work every now and then to emphasize on the dystopian future that serves as setting but the idea is overused and prevents any momentum or pace to build up. The original film was slow as well but also had a few emotional and vivid sequences that contrasted the bleak vision of the future.
Fourthly, the soundtrack of this movie is awful despite being written by renowned composer Hans Zimmer. Whenever the movie is dragging on and showing the main character walking through empty buildings for five minutes, the soundtrack suddenly gets louder for no apparent reason but to keep the bored audience awake. This surprising effect got my attention in the beginning but after it was used for a third time in a row, this strategy became laughably predictable. The present soundtrack tries to capture the essence of Vangelis' gloomy compositions for the original film but doesn't even manage to be a rough blueprint of the original score.
Fifthly, aside of Harrison Ford's character who returns in the last third of the film when the pace quickens up a little bit, most of the other characters are quite pale. Especially Ryan Gosling's characters is so faceless that you won't care about his destiny at all. Jared Leto's villain character seems to be stolen from a weak episode of a science-fiction television series of the late sixties at best. The few interesting side characters such as Carla Juri's are underdeveloped and only have a few minutes of screen time despite the film's epic length. It's quite ironic that the most interesting character is the main character's holographic girlfriend played by Ana de Armas. The original film had several memorable performances by less talented actors like Rutger Hauer who were pushed by a great director while this film doesn't have that chemistry despite the skilled personnel involved.
It was a pain to sit through the entire movie. I felt like walking out of cinema numerous times but I stayed because I had paid for it and because I was expecting a surprising ending. Now I know that I should have walked out. Despite the great director involved, several outstanding actors and actresses on board and even one of the best soundtrack composers in the history of cinema, Blade Runner 2049 is boring, hollow and uninspired. The original film was overrated in my book but this sequel is plain horrible. It's a mystery why this film got such a solid critical acclaim but hundreds of negative reviews prove that I'm not the only one who disliked this vapid flick. For me, Blade Runner 2049 even beats the shallow Kong: Skull Island in terms of negativity and is what I consider the worst film of the year. My suggestion for you is to read Philip K. Dick's novel instead of spending any money on this disaster.