Blade Runner 2049 was a treat for fans of the previous movie Blade Runner, a cinematic masterpiece made 35 years ago in 1982 directed by Ridley Scott. The first movie was groundbreaking in the sense that nothing had been done like it before. It was the first cyberpunk movie of its kind and was the origin of many sci-fi movie cliches such as the “zoom and enhance” line. The movie was a poetic masterpiece which showed perfectly that not all films need to end with pleasantries and final scenes of epilogue or closure. This is why many fans loved the movie to the extent that they did, but it also happened to be the reason why a majority of the same fans were perfectly fine without a sequel. Thus, when the trailer for Blade Runner 2049 was released, people were more skeptical and had already begun judging the cover.

As a sequel made three and a half decades later, many people thought that the film would do its predecessor the justice it deserved, recognizing the fact that quite a number of people didn’t consider a sequel to a great movie a necessity at all. This is why they may have been worried at first that this upcoming two-and-a-half hour sequel would flop horribly (for all the wrong reasons), but as the release date came closer and closer, fans realized that this wasn’t just a reboot to make money off of a much-beloved classic.

Blade Runner 2049 was a 2 hour, 43 minutes film of cinematic mastery, beauty, and excellence, using the artistry of a fantastic director, composer and actors/actresses. The styles of directing and soundtrack used in the film were comparable to another beautiful movie, Interstellar, a film that shares both director and composer. Knowing this, excitement for the sequel should definitely be felt. Denis Villenueve (director), and Hans Zimmerman (composer) paid homage to the original by making every shot and every sound come out perfectly.

Not only was it a cinematically breathtaking movie, it brought a very new and refreshing plot to the story. The sequel introduced more depth and character to the prior-antagonist race of Replicants. In the original film, Replicants, a race of mass-produced human-like robot slaves, were used on off-world colonies and planets. The plot of the first movie revolved around Deckard (Harrison Ford), a Blade Runner, or Replicant hunter, as he killed several disobedient and murderous Replicants who came to Earth to find a cure to their short-spanned lives, hoping they might find immortality. In the 2049 version of Blade Runner the roles were flipped. The newest film was centered around another Blade Runner (Ryan Gosling) who had the same job of hunting down rogue Replicants, only this time the Blade Runner was a Replicant himself. The movie becomes very intriguing and makes us sympathize with the robot race in many ways when our protagonist uncovers an impossible reality. We begin to sympathize even more for the sentient-robots when we discover that the antagonist is their creator.

Understanding that the movie was an amazing piece of art, why did the movie perform relatively poorly in the box office? It can be narrowed down to two things, the fact that the prequel was made a third of a century later, and how well it was advertised. In the movie industry, when it comes to sequels, it can be said that 2049 was one of the best, but because it was made 35 years later the attention to, and knowledge of the story was very little. Bad advertising didn’t help its case either. Not much was put out there about the movie, only a handful of ads and promos were put out, if any at all. These two factors are what really killed the movie in the box office, and maybe if these detrimental issues were avoided, we would be hearing much more about the success and popularity of the Blade Runner franchise.