Review: Is Blade Runner 2049 Worth Watching In The Cinema?

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Blade Runner 2049 is out now and it has been getting a lot of praise from reviewers and critics.

I decided to check out the movie myself to see if it's worth all of the praise. I must say, the movie has some good parts, but its quite long for a story that could have been cut down.

To full appreciate Blade Runner 2049, you really have to have seen the first Blade Runner movie.

The main premise of the story centers around characters from the first film. I won't spoil anything for you, but you cannot just watch this movie going in blind.

Even though the story is interesting, it's not complicated like a Christopher Nolan movie.

It's quite easy to understand and you will spend a lot of time with K (Ryan Gosling) most of the time as he does his investigation.

The film does question the morality of replicants and A.I., although I don't think the film is as deep as other science fiction works I've seen in other movies or video games.

The thing that might bore some people is the slow pace and length of the film. This movie runs for 2 hours and 45 minutes which is very long.

However, I enjoyed long movies before such as Interstellar and the Lord of the Rings movies. The problem with Blade Runner 2049 is that it takes a long time for the characters to get to the point.

For example, characters discussing an important plot point can take upwards of up to 10 minutes.

There are also lots of establishing shots where you are just looking at the world with Ryan Gosling flying or walking to a particular place.

It seems as if director Denis Villeneuve took too much inspiration from 2001: A Space Odyssey and the first Blade Runner where we look at a particular scene for far too longer than it needed to be.

I feel the film could have been cut down to two hours as it didn't need to be close to three hours long.

Not to mention Harrison Ford isn't even in the movie for very long. You will only get to see him in the third act as the majority of the film centers around Ryan Gosling's character.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy parts of the film.

The visual effects are excellent and the story is interesting enough for you to watch it until the very end of it.

It just needed to improve its pace and the plot could have been better if there were more twists and turns to it.

If you are a fan of the first Blade Runner and science fiction films in general, you will like Blade Runner 2049.

If you are expecting this to have lots of action, you won't like this film because it's quite slow with long periods of scenes where nothing much happens in them.

Overall, Blade Runner 2049 is a good film, but not the masterpiece I was hoping it would be. Interstellar is still the best science fiction movie I have ever seen.

You will only like this new movie if you are interested in the original Blade Runner film. Everyone else might think it's too slow and drawn out.

Verdict: 3/5 stars

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Warner Bros.