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Comment by jorvi | Hacker News Reader

> (I took my wife to see a 70mm showing of 2001 in September and she just yelled at me "What the hell was that?!")

Reminds me of taking a few of my friends to a screening of Blade Runner 2049. On the way there I was gushing about how the original Blade Runner is amazing and one of the pillars of cinametic sci-fi. After the movie was done I was going off on how this was an amazing homage to the original etc., one of my friends interjected with ‘I don’t understand what the hell did I just watch’ and the others were just staring at me with this ‘???’ look on their face. They even thought I pulled a fast one on them in saying that the original wasn’t required viewing as the links are only tangential.

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In contrast to the other comments about how 2049 was slow etc., let me say that I took my wife and daughter to see 2049.

We watched the original "Final Cut" Blade Runner a couple of weeks before 2049 and both wife and daughter felt that the original was slow but they respected the movie.

After seeing 2049 my wife said she enjoyed the movie better than the original but wished it could have been an hour shorter.

My daughter was ecstatic and said that 2049 could have been another hour even longer and she would have been happy. But my daughter is a cinematographer, so possibly that's partly why she loved it.

This was the same reaction my fiancée had. While I consider the original Blade Runner the best sci-fi movie of all time (followed closely by the original Alien in which the doomed ship Nostromo feels like it departed Blade Runner earth), I do think 2049 is right up there and didn't disappoint my insanely high expectations for the film.

I thought 2049 was a wonderful, visually appealing film with a neat small story set in a big world. Which makes it a bold movie.

Sure, it was set in a universe we probably never thought to see again. The outset was flogging a horse I thought would have been better off stay dead. But in this age of huge stories - epics even - doing a beautiful, cruel, unforgiving small, and slow-paced story takes some balls.

I wasn't entirely on board with how the universe had been treated, but even then, I liked it.

I have to agree and I think it's one of the areas that cyberpunk stories can really excel in. Telling a small story in a big world helps contextualize and ground the setting.

Other than my daughter being a writer, this was my exact experience, with identical reactions on their respective parts after taking wife and daughter to 2049. Knowing that the original Blade Runner is my favorite film, my wife gave me the 5-disc collector's edition in the briefcase for Christmas 10 years ago. Picked up the BluRay of 2049 on Black Friday. Was going to opt for the 4K version but haven't seen a review I like of a 4K player yet (and I'm not sure my eyes could tell the difference after staring at screens for the last 35 years).

This is going to sound pretentious, but I think some people just don’t enjoy the artistic aspects of film making beyond plot and action. It can be the most beautiful, awe-inspiring imagery ever put to film, and if there isn’t a clear plot and a love interest and a chase scene, they just aren’t interested.

Interstellar is another movie that’s polarizing like that. To me, watching it in imax was just an overwhelming, powerful experience, but about half of the people I saw the movie with hated it because the plot is sort of a mess.

I agree with you, but I didn't find BR 2049 visually appealing at all. Part of it is just rehashing the same stuff already seen in the original- just more artificial, less dirty and chaotic, with a monotonous palette. Looking at some low res clips from youtube I'm actually wondering whether it's the movie or just a videogame.

And, as any videogame, it needs multiple levels with different environments: so the main character is wandering around, and each section of the movie is actually clearly delimited by a different palette- I guess some heavy-handed filter applied, instagram style: grey-greenish for the city, red for the desert, light orange for the interior of Wallace Corporation, blue-grey for the snowy place, etc. It's a videogame aesthetics, something that places itself comfortably in the "fantasy worlds" section of the current popular culture.

I had a similar experience after taking my girlfriend to see the original. But after watching a movie we always sit in the lobby to discuss the themes, motifs, plot, etc. (one of the things that endears me to her) and after that she began to appreciate it.

“Like tears in the rain...”

I love the original. I've seen most of its versions. I've read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep multiple times. I didn't care for 2049 at all. I found it overly long, tediously paced (I say as someone who loves Barry Lyndon), and needlessly sexist. :-(

I don't know how to tell you this without hurting your feelings but it seems to me it's time to break up with those friends and move on :/

I'm on your friends' side on this one: Blade Runner 2049 is completely rambling and pointless, bad and pretentious. It's a soulless product made to capitalise on the fame of the original.

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