All of a sudden, nothing happened!......a lot.

Rating: 2/10 (20 May 2018)

I have always been a fan of the original since I saw it in 1982. It was original, ground breaking and visonary. Its influence on subsequent films of the genre is everywhere.
It was also entertaining. It had a good story and moved at a pace that retained the viewers interest.
"Blade Runner 2049" achieves none of the above. It is okay to look at, but merely okay, a couple of the cgi sequences of "Spinner" flybys looked plain "shonky" whilst others looked great, but there was no consistency.
The story had potential but it was the direction that was the problem. Its dull! Dull! Dull! Dull!
It plods along, going nowhere, and going nowhere very, very slowly. Long labouring shots of scenery do not a plot make.
Mumbling characters with little or no expression in either face or voice do NOT hold the attention, no matter how depressed they look.
Characters who generate no sympathy, empathy or just interest in general from your audience do not make for a good film.
A bad guy with nothing to say, no real motivation, and is generally dull, (that word is the recurrent trait of this film) and just disappears from the plot halfway through does not hold any interest for the audience.
So what we end up with is a slow, tedious film that exacerbates its dullness by feeling like its also being shown in slow motion, constantly.
Once again the dearth of talented, original, independent thinking writers and directors in todays Hollywood is painfully exposed.
"Blade Runner 2049" stole 163 minutes of my life and I want them back.
(P.S. Dear IMDB, the paid up Hollywood shills padding out the review sections on here are starting to become pretty obvious).