Blade Runner 2049: 10 Reasons It's Massively Overrated

Arguably the most frustrating thing about Blade Runner 2049 is the way in which it ultimately feels like a giant first act of a film and not a complete and self-contained picture, like the original. At 163 minutes, you really would have expected something that justified such a lengthy running time. And yet...

Blade Runner 2049 spends most of its runtime setting up some interesting aspects, such as "Where's Deckard?" and - towards the end of the picture - a plot point about replicants rising up against humans. It's this latter plot point which you'd assume the third act of 2049 to deal in, and yet the revelation never goes anywhere.

Arguably this is something left for a potential sequel: the war between humans and replicants would make for an excellent follow-up, after all. But Blade Runner 2049 doesn't have its own "replicant war" moment. The final two hours of the movie play out like they're still building towards a second or third act - and it never comes. By the time the credits are rolling, the most interesting aspects - like the replicant rebellion and the agenda of the film's main villain, Wallace - have been abandoned.

As such, Blade Runner 2049 comes off like a collection of scenes that never really go anywhere. The film never feels like it actually gets started, despite being three hours long. It's a strange and frustrating experience to come away from, because ultimately we've been handed a sequel that feels like episode one of a six-part TV series.