I've... seen things you people wouldn't believe...

Rating: 2/10 (11 October 2017)

...I've seen an amazing story removed of all subtlety and replaced with religious drivel wrapped up in a series of mindless, pointless action scenes with no explanation or point.
Do you think that how in futuristic films there's often ecological ruin as a cautionary aspect, that the new Blade Runner is so bad to serve as a warning about the decline of cinematic values? If so then it's a masterpiece. If not, well...
I am a huge fan of the original, usually mentioning it as one of my all time favourite films. I watched 2049 with some trepidation and yet was still massively disappointed and even a bit insulted. The plot was ridiculous and had religious tones, with the replicants referring to a 'miracle' and 'souls' over and over with what is honestly quite an impossible occurrence of one of them giving birth. I decided to just allow myself to believe this could happen but the film only got worse from there on. By the end I was so disinterested in what happened that I didn't even care about the death of K, arguably the only ambiguous part of the whole film. The original had masterful subtlety and ambiguity and left you seriously pondering the issues around AI. The original 'villains' had motives and depth, whereas in this the villains are mindless inhuman sadists with no substance whatsoever. This is a load of tarted up trash. You can slap a load of slick (yet uninventive) VFX on a bad story but it is still a bad story. Forgettable, insipid, insulting trash.
I'd even recommend that there's more to be gotten from simply rewatching the original, especially since the new film brings no new ideas whatsoever. I wish I had.