Beautiful and Interesting BUT...

Rating: 7/10 (10 September 2019)

Three hours? Really? The length of this movie had to be due to hubris... I appreciate Denis Villeneauve but this film was unnecessarily long and I have to imagine he thought everything he included was not just necessary but also interesting. It wasn't.
However, the visuals and some of the plot were enough to keep me engaged throughout. I've never seen the original(ya I know. relax.) but I appreciated that it wasn't necessary to understand what was happening in this sequel made so many years later.
I honestly thought the story really had something going right up until the director tried to subvert our expectations a la Game of Thrones style. The "twist" was lame and I immediately lost interest and missed the time I spent watching the film.
As for Gosling, he's never been a favorite of mine but I really enjoyed his performance here.
Harrison Ford was Harrison Ford. The movie didn't need him in it but whatever. Jared Leto was there... being weird and not much else. The script really didn't give him anything to do.
It was clear that the producers let Villeneauve run with this one when maybe they should've reined him in a bit but hey -- there are only a tiny handful of really talented directors working right now and it's fair to count him among them so I get it. 7/10 enjoyable but far from a sci fi game changer.