Almost there...

Rating: 8/10 (10 October 2017)

I was surprised Ridley Scott wasn't going to direct 2049 but Villeneuve proved to be worthy of the task. The cast is spot on, the photography is excellent, the sound effects are chilling, the universe is splendid, it is almost there. It is hard to pinpoint an obvious flaw in the movie and that's why I still rated it 8 out of 10. But there's not enough of Jared Leto, the streets of Chinatown are not packed enough, the pod where K lives is too much inspired from the 5th Element, the pace of the movie is quite random and for a film that long you expect more tension, some lengthy western confrontations, well just a bit more. You want more inventions like in the original one where every single object on stage was a specific design. Villeneuve respected the sets of the original, very good, but maybe just a bit too much, he should have owned this new universe. And honestly the new Nexus have no extra features and they can even get trashed by a human bare handed? Tiny bits of frustration all consolidated by the obvious clues that a #3 is already in the making. You don't enjoy a movie as the ultimate one if you feel that the end of the story is in a sequel. And when one respects a movie enough to wait 35 years before the next sequel... it defeats the purpose to make the audience feel the next one is much closer than that.