Blade Runner 2049 (2017) Blu Ray

Tagline: “The Key to the Future is Finally Unearthed.” Is it 3 hours long and completely self involved? It is? I'm not interested then, I'll die in blissful ignorance. The future can sort itself out.

Premise: In a near future, robots (replicants) are hated and hunted. I still don't really understand what the beef is, two films in. The original was based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. The sequel was based on a desire to make some money and keep Harrison Ford in work doing sequels of his earlier films.

Delivery: I wasn't a friend to the original Blade Runner, held sacrosanct by so many, I hit a wall with it. It had amazing visuals for its time, but then so did that Ridley Scott Apple advert where someone literally hit a wall, like a prophetic visual metaphor for my relationship with Blade Runner. However, I am a huge fan of 2049's director, Denis Villeneuve: Sicario is amazing, Incendies brutal, Prisoners captivating and I even got on pretty well with Arrival. Everything he's ever made has been painstakingly constructed, 2049 is no different. But.

I saw Blade Runner before I wheezed over the line of a philosophy degree, a few times in fact. I never saw it as being that special. It isn't an inherent pride which stops me liking the pseudo-intellect of the Blade Runner films, because I disliked it before I knew I was capable of more complicated evaluation than simple reflex. 2049 looks great, it really does, but there's nothing to it- however desperately hard it wants you to believe so. Moments of eye catching beauty or design, one or two of action, are separated by hours of nothing.

It is literally 80 minutes before the story kicks off, but even then it's not gripping. I know it is deliberately slow, but it makes you wait two hours for a nostalgia hit you didn't want or need. My notes read, “Oh for fuck's sake there's still an hour and a half of this.” Everything about 2049 is great except for the fact that it is boring. It reminds me of There Will Be Blood, looks fantastic, sounds great, acting exemplary, but fucking hell I'm bored. Like a pig at the opera, all I'm doing is dreaming of rolling in shit.

In fact that's what 2049 is based on, not Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? But Do Pigs at the Opera Dream of Rolling in Shit? (They do at this opera).

Bedsit it? I tried, I really tried, but Blade Runner 2049 is so boring that three attempted viewings all ended short of the finish. I could be kind and award points for style, but that style wasn't enough to keep me watching, and I'm not in a giving mood.The blu ray goes back to CeX, in return for the few measly pennies it is worth. 1/10