The curse of the sequels.

Rating: 3/10 (4 August 2019)

The curse of the sequels appears to be one of the few iron rules of cinema after the only iron rule of cinema inscribed on the tablets by screen writer William Goldmann that 'nobody knows anything'.
It only seems to have been broken, as critics and audience generally agree, in Godfather II.
To my mind, it wasn't broken in Blade Runner II (2049).
Hollywood seems to have this predilection for inviting, in preference to British and American directors, French directors to direct big projects, such as Fifth Dimension by Luc Bresson, and frankly 'je ne sais quoi pourquoi.' (I don't know why.)
French directors tends in Hollywood at least, to be portentous, overlong and doomladen and Blade Runner II by Denis Villeneuve is for me a case in point.
The original Blade Runner of 1981 is by general acclaim one of the great sci-fi films of all time where Ridley Scott got everything absolutely right.
I have seen both two alternative endings (original and Director's Cut), in the original where both were open-ended but one was a little more optimistic. I think both of those endings worked.
Denis Villeneueve, and the writers, of the sequel decided to give us, in my opinion, a downbeat one. I have used up two and three quarter hours of my life to watch an ending only a little less pessimistic than Shakepeare's King Lear. But, well, I had to watch the sequel since I so loved the original. I will watch the original again and again. I very much doubt I will spend another two and three hours watching the sequel.
I have also to critique Ryan Gosling's performance as the successor to main character Deckard not because it was badly acted or uncommitted, it wasn't, it was a decent performance, but he had, probably inevitably, so much less charisma than Harrison Ford in his prime.
The visuals were gorgeous but then they would have been so under any director, given the advance in special effects (sfx) since the original in 1981 - whose sfx still hold up pretty well.
To be fair to this film, however, it was worth me watching to gauge the sequel and spend the time in writing this review. There are very few Hollywood films these days about which I might say that. It was an honest attempt at intelligent sci-fi. How films of that sort are made these days?