Why Blade Runner 2049 Flopped So Hard

6. It's A Self-Indulgent Tone Poem (And The Reviews Confirmed It)

Given the way Blade Runner was, you could very easily have assumed that 2049 was going to be deeply invested in its own visual mythology. Blade Runner basically invented an aesthetic, and with Denis Villeneuve and Roger Deakins in charge of the look of its sequel, it was clear the studio were looking to do something similar.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you appreciate movies as art), the result is a self-indulgent moving art exhibition that values aesthetic and style over narrative substance and coherence. It looks beautiful, but by almost every positive critique's reckoning, story is entirely inconsequential - the plot serves only to vaguely tie together all the pretty pictures.

The problem for the studio is that all of those reviews were so positive about that that they failed to whip up any hype for the movie. Already strangled by the studio's desire not to spoil any of the plot (as if it needed protecting, anyway), those critics had to talk about the visuals, and too many praised it in such a way that it sounded unappetitising to "mainstream" audiences.

You want your film marketing - both in-house and review-led - to present the most palatable distillation of your movie (whether that means lying or not), and unfortunately, though the reviews were great, if you read the actual details of them, they weren't the sales pitches they needed to be.