Movie Review: 'Blade Runner 2049' is a spiritually staggering blockbuster
This a more than worthy sequel to the original '80s sci-fi film, writes Robbie Collin
'Two possibilities exist," Arthur C Clarke once wrote: "Either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."
In the cold urban wilderness of future Los Angeles, the former feels like the only conceivable answer - but that raises another, even eerier dilemma, which looms like storm clouds knotting in the sky overhead.
In a similar but distinct way to Ridley Scott's masterful original, Blade Runner 2049 mulls one of the meatiest questions around: is surface all that there is, or do life's currents run deeper than the things we can see, hear and touch?
Denis Villeneuve's film toys with both options, making neither a comfort - and in the process, maps out one of the most spectacular, provocative, profound and spiritually staggering blockbusters of our time.
Like its forerunner, everything about it says slow-burning art film, apart from its budget. Half a week after seeing it, I still can't quite believe it exists...
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