Echoes

Rating: Null/10 (25 November 2017)

This movie has actually little in common in style with the predecessor. There is much more Tarkovsky ('Stalker', 'Solaris') in it than Ridley Scott. Many people wrote about the picture's deliberate slowness, but hardly anyone about the unusual soundtrack which I thought was truly remarkable. At the beginning of the movie, there are some synthetic space sounds obviously quoting Vangelis, but that's about it regarding similarities to the first movie. Most of the sound consists of noises with extensive echoes, thus the sound very often evokes a feeling of huge empty spaces. This underlines very well how the Replicants have an emptiness in their lives, not owning actual memories. The whole psychology of the movie works very well. Still I'm surprised they got 150 mega bucks for an art movie that denies action scenes to the blockbuster audience almost entirely.
Now for the actors. Apart from Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling, I liked Robin Wright, Jared Leto, Mackenzie Davis and the killer chick Sylvia Hoeks best. From Denis Villeneuve's excellent, but more traditional looking sci-fi film 'Arrival' I had not expected that the style of this movie would be so extreme. I wonder why they made me wear 3D glasses at the cinema. There is so much dust, fog and darkness that you hardly notice any 3D effects. When 'Blade Runner 2049' is released on Blu-ray, I'll be satisfied with the 2D standard version. Yes, I'd like to watch it again, and the only thing I'd like to skip is the horribly clichÃ©d scene when the good old times are celebrated by unearthing Elvis and Frank Sinatra. At that point, I was worried Harrison would start teaching Ryan how to play saxophone next, but they spared us the embarrassment.