Blade Runner 2049: 10 Reasons It's Massively Overrated
2. It's Made Entirely Of Dull Exposition
It's a shame to report that in Blade Runner 2049, near on every scene involves characters delivering a form of exposition. And sadly the exposition isn't particularly interesting to listen to, like it is in, say, that endlessly fascinating briefing scene in Apocalypse Now in which Captain Willard is given his mission.
This is why exposition-heavy movies rarely hold up. We know the answers already, which is why the individual scenes themselves need to be good or interesting or exciting. In the case of Ridley Scott's film, you want to watch the relive the scenes again before they are weird and brilliant. The exposition is there, but it's veiled beneath moments that are strange, romantic, or frightening.
No matter how many times you see it, for example, there is a magic in the scene from the original film in which Deckard uses a machine to zoom in on a photograph. It's all about the exposition on paper, but the combination of the lighting, the music, the sound effects, the shots of Ford's expression as he looks on - it all comes together.
The "equivalent" scene in this sequel, with Officer K looking at some digits on a screen in search for a matching combination, fails in almost every way to be memorable because it's overlaid - and ruined - with relentless exposition. The characters talk about the plot over the scene and any chance of creating a real mood is spoiled.