Beautiful to look at but don't touch

Rating: 7/10 (9 October 2017)

Make no mistake, this is a beautiful looking movie. The first two thirds are an exploration for K, as he tries to fulfil both his mission and find out who he is. The slow pace works and is not a hindrance here - the first 90 minutes or so are wonderful.
But sadly the film cannot continue to live up to the set-up, and the expected character developments fail to materialise. While in the original Blade Runner, each replicant was well drawn with clear motivations. We feared them, we felt tense in anticipation at what they might do next - but we rooted for them too.
In this sequel, there is little of that, and the film nosedives in the final act. The lead 'bad' replicant, Luv, has none of Batty's motivation or conflicted humanity ('I've done questionable things'), she is a pure Terminator, an automaton.
Jared Leto's Wallace is just another identikit action-movie villain. He wants to create a breeding race of slave replicants to build his Off World empire, but that's about it. When he captures Deckard with threats of torture to reveal the whereabouts of the child, we're in pure 70s Bond villain cheese.
Unforgivably, the ending steals Batty's theme as K lies down in the snow, and we have an unrealistic family resolution.
As also shown with Arrival, Denis Villeneuve loves to lay the parent--child stuff on thick, and as with Arrival, everything is neatly wrapped up and explained multiple times for the modern audience.
As Mark Kermode famously once said, you can summarise every modern Hollywood movie in 4 words: 'I love you Dad' and sadly 2049 is no different.
Still, I give this 7/10 for the bold vision, the cinematography, and sound, and, well, because it is still Blade Runner - just by numbers and committee.