This review is of the edited TV-14 version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

Uh oh, Blade Runner’s back! This series has to be one of the biggest missed opportunities in all of cinema. How do you mess up a future setting filled with androids that look like humans and corporate finally taking over the world? Well you do it by not exploring any of the fun aspects of this and instead dragging out every scene as long as possible. There are so many scenes that are just quiet as we get a lingering shot of the sky or the city. I know they want to show off the special effects but the plot grinds to a standstill way too often.

The story starts off decently enough as we see K enter a guy’s home and murder him. He’s basically an enforcer for corporate whose mission is to destroy old replicant versions. The ones that can no longer be trusted and are out of date. He’s very good at his job, in fact many would say that he is the best. The guy doesn’t fail and he never lets his emotions get the better of him. That being said, this next mission is a little different. He is tasked with murdering a replicant that was born from another which should be impossible since they aren’t fully human. Additionally K has mixed feelings about this because that could imply that this person has a soul. Can he go through with this mission or is it time to resist against the system?

Since there are more negatives than positives let me go through the good first. One of the villains is an android named Luv who actually makes for a very imposing villain. She’s a strong fighter and is quite ruthless. Her emotionless demeanor holds for most of the film although she does not like to have competition so she has a personal vendetta against K which appears later on. She gets sloppy towards the end but was otherwise a very intense killing machine that fits in with this Terminator kind of future.

In general the fights could also be good. At times not as good as possible when it just resorts to who can hold a choke hold the longest, but when there’s an actual fight then it can be enjoyable. For example there’s one scene where K’s ship is downed by a group of rebels and instead of meekly falling to the ground like most protagonists he just breaks the first guy and starts shooting. As I always say, if you’re likely going to be murdered anyway, at least go down with a fight!

The other positive I can say is there are some nice visuals here. The shots of the city actually do look nice and you could appreciate them more if they weren’t so dragged out. Likewise there are some good bits of dialogue and the idea of deciding what line you won’t cross as a contracted killer is always an interesting one. More so when you aren’t even sure if you can truly defy your programming.

The main problem with the film is in the execution. I’ve already talked about how everything is super dragged out and I’d say it’s because this movie has enough plot to probably fill 30 minutes easily and then you have a lot of fluff here. I believe the reason is that the film was trying to pack in a lot of lore and world building so you can understand what kind of world this is but that’s just not needed. You already understand it pretty well from the opening scene as well as the intro explaining what is happening.

Blade Runner also relies quite a bit on fanservice throughout the film in the most random of scenes. We see the process of creating an android which is shown in the most disturbing way possible while still keeping in fanservice. It’s to show you that Wallace is completely insane and one of those guys who lost all of his morality a long time ago. We could have basically guessed that though without that super long scene. Seriously that scene was really long and you can just tell us he’s evil without having such a long moment about it. This came in fairly early into the film to really make sure things didn’t get off on the right foot.

I would have probably just cut him out of the film entirely to be honest. You don’t need a specific main villain for this kind of film. A board of directors or something would work just as well and they still send Luv out to take K down once and for all before finishing the mission. They’re looking at this as cold hard calculated facts so you don’t even need an over the top evil villain at all. If anything it oversimplifies things by giving you a concrete main villain instead of reminding you that the whole society is crazy by this point.

Then you have the romance of sorts with K and the holographic figure known as Joi. Now how much you buy into this romance will depend on just how real you think Joi is. It’s established that even this deep into the future the robots don’t have souls yet which is why the situation of an android kid is such a big deal. At the same time, is he really hurting anyone by falling in love with a program? Even in real life you’re seeing that and well..it’s definitely something. I don’t think the plotline itself is awful but the romance is very cringe and drawn out the whole time.

I could definitely do without all those scenes. If you’re going to go through with the A.I. fantasy then I think giving her more of a solid personality beyond just being his love interest would certainly help. She literally does feel like she was just created to suit his needs which is basically what happened so without more depth then that’s it. She does obviously care about him and wants to help but it’s all programming.

This doesn’t do K any favors either since it makes him look really desperate. He was also a full villain for most of the film as he carries out his orders without thinking about the morality of it. You can understand this based on his origin but the whole time you’re still waiting for him to turn good and it sure takes a while. The only character who acts like a hero from the jump is Deckard and it takes him way longer to appear than I thought. He was a fairly big deal in the promotions and everything since people were looking forward to seeing him. I think he would have personally worked a lot better in this film as the lead compared to K. K’s great for the fight scenes but it’s not like he’s a great character either.

If the film could focus more instead of going for all the shock value then I think you could have a lot of promise here. The film just gets really gritty at times like with Wallace’s first scene and then it drags on a lot during others. So what you have here is a lot of time not really spent on advancing the story. If you want to make this a slow boil event then you need to really focus on the philosophical aspect more like K wondering if he’s a real person or not. Having to wonder if you’re an organic life form or fully robotic is an interesting angle and of course the whole conversation about having a soul.

These plots are all handled better in other mediums though. Also, as was one of my complaints in the first film, the movie doesn’t make the most of the Sci-Fi backdrop. Sure we do get more this time like flying cars and sci-fi projectors but a good portion of the film takes place in old locations like a small hotel, inside the compound, or abandoned forest areas. The main guy has a basic gun and a flying car but we’re still not seeing as much as you would expect from 2049. In movie-land I should say. In the real world I don’t think things are going to particularly look all that different 20 years from now.

Overall, Blade Runner 2049 serves as a warning bell for when robots take over the Earth and wipe us out. That said, you can see this message much more effectively by watching the Terminator films or the CGI Blame! film. Those titles are way more direct about it and also balance the action and warning tones a lot better. This one’s just way too drawn out to have an effective message and is focused on the wrong things. I couldn’t possibly imagine re watching this one and the negative moments severely overpower the positive stuff. That’s really the movie’s biggest problem. Perhaps the third film can change things but I have my doubts.

Overall 1/10