Also provided on the Blu-ray is a series of short ‘Blade Runner 101’ featurettes explaining the basic themes of the film - a sort of Blade Runner glossary, basically. Though 2049 can be cool in its emotions, it wears them better than the original. Blade Runner arguably still has the measure of its progeny, but that speaks volumes as to how good 2049 often is. Bigger in scope, with more to grapple with and discern, it's a long watch but it's hard to take your eyes off it. There are a couple of other niggles too. First, some of the external shots of the city in rain or smoke can look suddenly quite soft compared with the stunning clarity of the rest of the image. Also, frustratingly the film doesn’t ship with a Dolby Vision master, despite one being done for the film’s cinematic release. Blade Runner 2049 isn’t quite as reference grade, though, when it comes to its use of HDR. As with the 4K Blu-ray of Villeneuve’s Arrival, the HDR grading is subtle in the extreme.

Selected items are only available for delivery via the Royal Mail 48® service and other items are available for delivery using this service for a charge. Overall, though, the HDR effect is much more subtle than I’m used to seeing with 4K Blu-rays. In fact, I’d say it’s arguably the least aggressive HDR image I’ve seen (though there is some nice refinement going on in the picture’s dark areas). Dialogue is clean and clear throughout. Person to person exchanges solid a rich in-the-room quality to them. These exchanges can be particularly jarring and unsettling when K undergoes his baseline tests as words are thrown fast and furious with an increasing intensity. As clean as dialogue is, there are long stretches of silence where no one is talking and all you're left with is atmosphere. Sometimes it's rain, sometimes wind, sometimes it's nothing at all. This Atmos mix handles these variations beautifully with plenty of constant surround activity from every angle. Even in the quietest of moments, there's always something to hear. For me, Blade Runner 2049 is a titanic achievement. It's the sequel I never wanted but am overjoyed to have. Villeneuve and his creative partners nailed it. Coming out of Sicario I was excited to see what Villeneuve could do with Arrival as the original short story was so short but heady. Coming out of Arrival I knew he was going to do something interesting with Blade Runner 2049. After this film, I know Dune is in capable hands. That said, I don't need another Blade Runner. Sure there is a lot left to explore, but it doesn't need to be. Two films are enough for this little franchise of science fiction masterpieces. The 17-minute feature that follows covers the casting of the film. It’s worth a watch for the behind the scenes footage, though the ‘love-in’ stuff turns up to 11.vibrantly alive. (The green forest she's editing when K first arrives is so gorgeous that it belongs As there are multiple cuts of Blade Runner - only The Final Cut has been given the full 4K treatment. When Blade Runner made its Blu-ray debut in 2007, the film was given a perfect 5-Disc treatment featuring The Final Cut as well as the original 1982 Theatrical Cut, the slightly different International Cut, the radically different 1992 DIrector's Cut, as well as the unfinished Workprint Cut. While fans have their favorite versions of the film, director Ridley Scott has put his foot down that The Final Cut is the definitive release and as such is the only version of the film to get a full 4K Restoration effort. Roger Deakins has stated that he's not a huge fan of HDR and we can't tell if the 4K is hugely brighter or darker than the Full HD Blu-ray as it would seem it's subtly implemented. Image consistency across the resolutions appears to be the key. While I won't go so far as to say that Blade Runner 2049 is as good as or better than the original Blade Runner, it gets pretty damn close. So close that the margin of difference is really only quantifiable to that moment of first discovery. As I detailed in my review for the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release of Blade Runner, I discovered the film under pretty unique and very memorable circumstances that made me an instant fan of that film. I didn't want to believe that Blade Runner 2049 could even come close to being as good as it is. I was expecting to walk out of the theater thinking "That was pretty good. They didn't screw it up!" In actuality, after sitting through the credits I walked out of the theater speechless, in a stupor. Blade Runner 2049 brought up so many thought-provoking ideas about heady issues and themes like love, having a soul, and what it means to be human that I needed to take a walk for a mile or two to process everything. But the bottom line feeling that was fueling my thoughts was just how incredible the film was. I just couldn't believe that it was actually that good.

Blade Runner 2049can feel a bit padded at times. It's not too long or anything, I wouldn't cut any scenes, but there are certain stretches where one can feel the length. Ridley Scott himself has recently come out and said that part of the reason why this film didn't connect at the box office was probably due to its length. Again, I'd say that it is a tad long, but that has more to do with pace rather than length. Some scenes could have been trimmed, but not eliminated. To be honest, I'm glad that Scott didn't direct this sequel. After the middling Prometheus and the messy Alien Covenant, I don't think he would have had the patience to let this film and its ideas breathe in a satisfying way. Scott's films of late feel like they suffer from Intellectual ADD, one interesting idea pops up without being fully explored before jumping to another interesting idea before being dropped altogether and outright forgotten.The 4k Blu-Ray version of Blade Runner 2049 recently came out so I spent a few hours going through the movie frame-by-frame to get some of the most beautiful screenshots from the movie. Well, I ended up getting 270 so I guess I absolutely love this movie, Roger Deakins you are a mastermind of cinematography! Below are all 270 Blade Runner 2049 4k screenshots, there are maybe 10 duplicated where I wasn’t happy with the lighting and adjusted. There may also be some a bit blurry for a 4k screen but should be fine on anything smaller. All Images are extracted from the 4k Blu-Ray movie at 3840 x 1600 pixels. The colours have received a boost, thanks to Wide Colour Gamut (WCG). They're enriched, and the texture and subtlety of the tones is more readily appreciable. The various oranges and reds, mixed with yellows and glossy creams in the Las Vegas sequence are gorgeously rendered. Public Domain street photography of vehicles traveling on road between large buildings during nighttime But it's a film full of many moments of breathtaking vision. You'd have to search far and wide to find a film from 2017 that's this well realised. While Blade Runner felt small and contained, 2049 aims for an epic and sweeping quality that's not far off David Lean's widescreen images.

For the 4K enthusiast who can't wait to get a look at the Ultra HD Blu-ray release that's due on September 5th, take a look at my coverage of the film and the A/V presentation Here. Against all odds, Denis Villeneuve has crafted a truly worthy sequel to Ridley Scott’s original Blade Runner. This is not quite a masterpiece, nor can it be called a “perfect” film like the original, but 2049’s conceptual, visual, and character additions to this world are significant and feel completely organic and true to that compelling earlier narrative. Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 is a deeply cinematic experience, a film that dazzles the senses even as it challenges the intellect. It’s also a remarkable 4K Ultra HD experience that’s not to be missed.As confirmed by Roger Deakins, Blade Runner 2049 was shot digitally in the ARRIRAW codec at 3.4K (Open Gate) resolution using ARRI Alexa XT and Mini cameras, with Zeiss Master Prime lenses. Also per Deakins, the post-production workflow was done at 3.4K. Visual effects were rendered in 3.4K (some at 4K). The film’s Digital Intermediate and color timing were finished at 4K. [Editor’s Note: Our friend Petr “Harmy” Harmáček, who some of you may know for his fine Star Wars Despecialized efforts, worked on the visual effects for Blade Runner 2049 at UPP in Europe and confirmed to us that they were done in full native 4K resolution. Chris McLaughlin, CG supervisor at the project’s VFX lead Double Negative, says they delivered their VFX at 3.4K.] The result is presented here in the 2.40:1 theatrical aspect ratio. Image clarity is excellent overall, with remarkable texturing and fine detail, both notable given the film’s dense atmospherics (which include almost the persistent use of smoke, fog, rain, snow, and/or smog). The presentation’s HDR10 high dynamic range adds a gorgeous luminosity to the brightest areas of the picture – think neon signage, holo-projections, and display screens – and lends a richly-nuanced quality to the color palette. That palette is often quite bleak, which makes Deakins’ artful use of coloring all the more striking when it appears, such as in the film’s Las Vegas sequences. Simply put, this is a stunning 4K image – perhaps not quite reference quality as compared to the very best 4K imagery (captured at even higher 6K or 8K resolution), but certainly it’s reference quality for this film. There are those who will bemoan the film’s sub-4K image capture, but given the aforementioned use of atmospherics, capture at higher resolutions would not have resulted in an appreciable difference in image resolution, thus Deakins and Villeneuve’s choice of 3.4K. In the end, the image you’re seeing here, particularly with HDR, is essentially a better-than-theatrical experience. It does not disappoint. If you're new to the film on Blu-ray and are hankering for a terrific overview of the 5-Disc Blu-ray set that's readily available, please give that a read Here.