Thirty-five years after Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, Denis Villeneuve took on the sequel almost nobody thought should exist. Blade Runner 2049 follows Ryan Gosling as K, a replicant blade runner whose discovery leads him to Harrison Ford's long-missing Rick Deckard. It opened in October 2017, and critics were mostly dazzled, with Rotten Tomatoes counting around 94% of reviews as positive at the time.
What critics loved
The look of the film came first in nearly every review. Matt Singer at ScreenCrush called it "the most visually spectacular science-fiction film of the century," and Peter Travers at Rolling Stone described every minute as "a visual feast to gorge on." Todd McCarthy at the Hollywood Reporter singled out Roger Deakins's cinematography and Dennis Gassner's production design, and Dana Stevens at Slate wrote about its staggering sights.
Plenty of critics thought it went deeper than spectacle. Peter Debruge at Variety ranked it among the great science-fiction films of all time, Brian Tallerico at RogerEbert.com called it one of the most philosophical sci-fi films ever made, and Alonso Duralde at TheWrap felt it pushed the ideas of the original further. Michael O'Sullivan at the Washington Post went as far as saying it honours and surpasses the 1982 film. Gosling and Ford both drew praise too, with Nerdist's Kyle Anderson calling the whole cast phenomenal.
Where critics split
The running time was the big sticking point. Empire warned it was slow and deliberate rather than the action film the marketing suggested, McCarthy found it stylish but overlong, and Leah Greenblatt at Entertainment Weekly, who loved it overall, felt the visuals eventually outpaced the story. io9 called it pretentious as well as gorgeous, and Scott Mendelson at Forbes was the sharpest critic, calling it overlong and underwhelming.
Others had more specific doubts. IndieWire and Mashable both thought Jared Leto's villain was underwritten, David Edelstein at Vulture found the ending sentimental and unsatisfying, and Michael Phillips at the Chicago Tribune called the story wobbly while still finding the film often spellbinding.
The consensus
Critics judged Blade Runner 2049 as a superbly crafted film, which puts it near the top of the QC scale, held back only by the complaints about length and a thin villain. Fun lands in the middle: even its admirers described a slow, heavy, nearly three-hour mood piece rather than a thriller. Go in ready to sink into it, and most critics said the experience was worth the time.
Sources
- /Film: Blade Runner 2049 review round-up (IGN, Empire, ScreenCrush, IndieWire, Mashable, Variety, Entertainment Weekly, Hollywood Reporter, io9, The Guardian, The Playlist, USA Today)
- Looper: What critics are saying about Blade Runner 2049 (TheWrap, Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Vulture, Nerdist, Forbes, Uproxx, CinemaBlend, ScreenCrush, Chicago Tribune)
- Motion Picture Association: Blade Runner 2049 reviews (Slate, New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Hollywood Reporter, RogerEbert.com, Washington Post)