A completely worthy sequel, but let's hope the director's cut redoes the score.

Rating: 8/10 (9 October 2017)

This is one of very few spoiler-free reviews I've written for IMDb. This movie deserves it.
It's definitely one of the best sequels ever made, especially considering how many years have passed since the original. Aliens is still my favorite sequel of all time, but this one is a close second for entertainment value, and as a continuation/expansion of the story started by its predecessor, Blade Runner 2049 is arguably equal or superior.
If you're mad at Ridley Scott for what he did to the Alien universe with two rather abysmal prequels, go see Blade Runner 2049 and hopefully all will be forgiven.
Blade Runner 2049 is filled with nods to the original, but they are seamlessly integrated because this really does feel like the same world 30 years later.
At first, the movie seems to be presenting us with a new and different, more lonely, and more isolated future than Deckard's rainy, crowded streets of LA. But, in time, it reveals the Blade Runner world we expect, expanded in a way that does justice to 35 years of real- world cinematic advances, while introducing some new and very memorable settings.
The movie has a very deliberate pace - obviously too slow for some reviewers on IMDb - but even that feels like a stylistic homage to the original (or at least an homage to complaints about the original). I detected some scenes here and there that felt a bit too dragged out, but they were few and far between, and I imagine they fit the director's vision, so hopefully there won't need to be too many different versions of this film.
In a way, the story line is simpler than that of the original, but in another more practical way, it is much deeper. From the start, I was expecting a chase for newer or more (or more interesting) replicants, but all I can say is, the movie goes in a direction I wasn't expecting. If it feels at all predictable (and to me it really didn't - there were some plot twists that surprised), it is only because it fits naturally within the Blade Runner world so familiar to fans of the original film.
Harrison Ford plays a very important part in this film, but it is Ryan Gosling's movie for sure, and he does a fine job with the role.
I saw it in 3D and, while the movie wasn't ruined by gimmicky "obviously just done for the 3D effect" scenes, there were times when I felt like the scenes were a bit too washed-out and bleak, and I wasn't sure whether that was the intent or just the effect of the 3D glasses. I'm sure I'll see it again in the theater but haven't decided whether to go with 2D next time.
The only aspect of the movie that I really disliked was the score. At times Vangelis-like (which is to say, almost angelic-sounding), it was more often than not ominously oppressive, drowning out my ability to concentrate on the on-screen action instead of creating the powerful effect Hans Zimmer usually achieves. I feel like his contribution does not elevate Blade Runner 2049 the way it did Interstellar (where it was also way too loud, but at least created powerful emotions).
My dislike for the score notwithstanding, the few nods to the original score are done extremely well, with the most important one arriving not a moment too soon (and that's as close to a spoiler as I'll get).
The entire movie continues and expands the discussion about the complex interactions between humans and the technology they create, while introducing some surprisingly original ideas (at least for cinema) about the interactions among various different technologies.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Is Deckard a replicant? All I can say is that Blade Runner 2049 addresses this question. Well, maybe "acknowledges" would be a more appropriate word...