Blade Runner 2049: 10 Reasons It's Massively Overrated

10. The Pacing Is Downright Bizarre

Blade Runner 2049 clocks in at a whopping 163 minutes, which suggests that - in order to be the best film it can be - it needed to be this length.

Unfortunately that isn't really the case, given that the overall pacing of the film is notably off for the sum of the experience. What we have here, really, is a two hour movie stretched out to almost three and as a viewer it's really made apparent.

The picture opens with a laborious hour of "world-building," but really it's unnecessary in its slowness because this is a world we're already familiar with. The original Blade Runner gave audiences one of the most fully-realised dystopias in all of cinema, but the pace never slackened. We explored the world as Deckard went about his business. For much of the sequel, though, you start to feel like a lost tourist.

The first hour could have been cut down to half the length - not to mention it takes more than an hour for Officer K to track down Deckard, and even that sequence takes 15 minutes too long. What remains of the picture then feels oddly rushed as it attempts to piece everything together super quickly. But why didn't we just spend more time on the actual story than messing about in that first hour?

It's hard to escape the feeling that there's a brilliant two hour movie in here somewhere, but what we ended up with was merely a good three hour one.