Film Shapes

SPOILERS!!! STAY AWAY IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN YET!! It's been a week since I saw Blade Runner 2049 and it's proving to be a tricky one to chew over. Initially, I was very impressed by its grandeur and ambition. Then I was slightly numbed by the languid pacing. Finally, I found myself appreciating the links between this and Ridley Scott's original masterpiece from 1982 (or later depending on which cut suits). All this while adjusting my ginger cheeks in the cinema. 2 hours and 45 minutes of adjusting. In the preceding seven days, my brain has been catching snatches of film and replaying it to me - of both films. And I think this is one of the key points. Many sequels of well-known films pale in comparison to their forebears (lets say Crystal Skull and Prometheus as examples - though I didn't hate the latter) but 2049 has done something that these others didn't achieve. It's successfully fused the DNA of its predecessor into its structure and done so with ...