Decades following the release of Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic Blade Runner, the reviews for its sequel, Blade Runner 2049, are in — and most critics are lauding the film as just as good as its predecessor (though perhaps without the shock factor).
Little is known about the plot, but Blade Runner 2049 picks up 30 years after Scott’s 1982 original, and introduces Ryan Gosling as K, a detective tasked with tracking down artificial lifeforms known as Replicants. Along the way, he also seeks out Deckard (Harrison Ford, reprising his role from the original).
The Denis Villeneuve-directed film currently boasts a 97 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and is expected to open to $40 million or more at the North American box office when it hits theaters Oct. 6.
The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy commended the “entrancingly immoderate work” in his review, saying the highly anticipated sequel “achieves something very close to the same narcotic effect with a voluptuous mood bath that’s impressively sustained from beginning to end.”
He noted that “what Blade Runner 2049 inevitably lacks compared to its progenitor is a sense of the shock of the new, perhaps the principal factor that made the original so important to its fans at the time.” In place of that, the film offers “the shock of the old” in the re-emergence of Ford, who “really delivers with a ragingly physical performance that bursts the film’s exquisite languor.”
In terms of audience reception, McCarthy pointed out that the film’s whopping 164-minute runtime will likely have viewers wondering…
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