Blade Runner 2049 bothered me

Spoilers below. OK? OK.

TL;DR: I did not love it.

Jared Leto. I mean, did Niander Wallace inherit the business from his dad? Joe Turkel’s Eldon Tyrell was someone you could believe had set up a corporation producing Replicants. Leto’s Wallace came across as more reformed-pot-smoker-turned-cult-leader. I may just be jealous that Jared Leto looks so youthful at 45.

Niander Wallace. Why did he have to eviscerate the female Replicant? I agree with Michael Moran on this. The film generally seems to have a problem with women.

That female Replicant. Is this really how Replicants are born? Tipped out of a plastic bag covered in egg yolk? The future of humanity: boil-in-the-bag people.

Gaff’s was a deleted scene that someone accidentally left in. And Edward James Olmos looked like Colonel Sanders.

LA. You could practically smell the filth and the rain in the original. As impressive as the panoramic vistas are in BR2049, there was no substance. The original took the time to breathe, where BR2049 occasionally left me bored.

The whole Joi / Mariette / overlay thing was weird.

Why the hell did Luv leave K alive after taking Deckard?

Wallace: “You do not know what pain is yet”.

Shocked Chandler Bing GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

The CGI Rachael. Back in 1993 I watched Jurassic Park with a mate in a cinema in York. As the Tyrannosaurus rex burst onto screen I remember involuntarily saying out loud, “fuck me, that’s a dinosaur”. Somehow CGI worked so well you didn’t even register that that’s what you were seeing. Even now, twenty-four years later, a CGI Rachael, Leia or Moff just lifts me out of the film and asks me to be impressed by the technology when I wanted to be in the story. There’s something about a CGI face, particularly a familiar face, that jars – I wonder if it always will. Dinosaurs good. People bad.

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