Failure as sequel, failure as stand-alone.

Rating: 3/10 (7 October 2017)

** Warning! Here May Be Spoilers, for this movie and others. **
The original Blade Runner evoked a strong feeling: I might be manufactured by others, but it doesn't invalidate my identify. My experiences are singular and I feel them deeply. However I got here, I am real.
Blade Runner 2049 starts with an alienated second-class citizen craving that validated authenticity. His story is derailed by side issues -- his owner/operator's problems, corporate drama, a sort of love interest, profit motive, the Resistance, (pseudo-)scientific posturing, and other irrelevancies. By the end, when the story has gone in a different direction entirely, our hero just lies down and gives up, and us with him.
Specifics:
Pacing / Story / Characters: BR2049 is too long and way too slow. There is no point or purpose, no golden narrative thread. Overall it watches like the boring parts of Matrix movies, eliminated from the supercut and reworked for a different color palette. Ryan Gosling is Neo, Jared Leto plays The Architect, Carla Juri is the Oracle, Edward James Olmos is The Keymaker...the parallels don't stop there. Yawn.
Dialogue: the pretentious, vaguely ominous, Messianic BS that put you to sleep in the Matrix sequels has been refurbished for our sad, hunky Pinocchio in his futuristic pimp coat.
Deckard: his part begins with a Disneyfied sequence a la "Cowboys & Aliens" including cheesy wisecracks and a rough-and-tumble meet-cute, which ends unceremoniously with an "I'm too old for this" surrender. The sequence takes place in a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas that has occasional funny parts (which I hope were unintentionally funny rather than failed attempts at comic relief for non-existent tension.)
After investing so much time in Ryan Gosling and his story, the focus shifts to Deckard, who isn't himself away from LA, and whose tacked-on storyline hijacks the movie. (Regret: The lost years of Deckard and Rachael with the Replicant Resistance underground should have been a separate movie.) Here, Deckard starts as comic relief and ends as a plot device to move the story to some kind of conclusion. There is some emotional button-pushing for fans of the original (oh, Rachael!) and a tired attempt at emotional manipulation (getting to know the child we had no idea you'd ever wanted but for that one line a few minutes ago.)
Costumes: there are no costumes, styles, or fashion. Only clothes.
A/V: there are lovely, lingering shots of what appear to be abandoned Brutalist / Eastern Bloc / doomsday cult headquarters blanketed in untouched snow. There is gorgeous, impersonal CGI. There are building-high images of beautiful naked women, blandly presented and titillation-free. The music includes watery variations on the original score, interspersed with sinus-clearing brown noise.
(I will probably buy this movie for those location shots, quiet stills, and long, honking chords. I even want the music. But it's sad that the kernel notes of Vangelis, so precise and delicate, shine out purely even as their impact is bled away by the insubstantial context of the movie and the score.)
In contrast, I saw the sequel as a double feature with the remastered original, which took on new richness in the cinema setting. The original is a quick sit, modeled after rogue cop film noir: vibrant characters, clear narrative purpose, a stunning moll, gritty romance, and a getaway ending with a crystallized message. The sequel is pointless, diluted, internally inconsistent, and slow.
In Blade Runner 2049, people cry All.The.Time. -- and now you know why.