The overall Atmos is an excellent one, with consistent activity in the height channels. Whether it's K's spinner, voices or Los Angeles' environment (it rains a lot), the height channels have weight and presence. The positioning and steering of effects are seamless as gunshots zip past, Spinners throttle across the screen and waves crash along the Sepulveda Wall in the film's climax. 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.

A digital code is included inside along with an advert for Sony's 4K discs. The featurettes are small but informative. The most interesting extra are the prologues, of which the 2022 short directed by anime legend Shinichiro Watanabe is the best.

Picture Quality

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. legendary Roger Deakins, a pioneer of digital cinema who personally oversaw the film's post-production on a 4K digital intermediate. Deakins also 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. Director Albert Cho, Alejandro Mora, Attila Veres, Brandon Lambdin, Brian Niemczyk, Charlie Watson, Denis Villeneuve, Donald Sparks, Dora Simko, Gábor Hegedüs Hege, Gergely Apjok, Hajós Péter, Jessica Clothier, Joel Kramer, Karen Davis, Levente Kölcsey-Gyurkó, Susan M. Elmore, Tamás Péter Chipie, Vera Janisch

Blade Runner 2049 can be hunted down on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray presented in 3840 x 2160p with a widescreen 2.40:1 aspect ratio, using 10-bit video depth, a Wider Colour Gamut (WCG) and High Dynamic Range(HDR), encoded using the HEVC (H.265) codec. The UHD Blu-ray was reviewed on a Samsung UE55KS8000 Ultra HD TV and a Samsung UBD-K8500 Ultra HD Blu-ray player.

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For more about Blade Runner 2049 4K and the Blade Runner 2049 4K Blu-ray release, see Blade Runner 2049 4K Blu-ray Review published by Michael Reuben on January 17, 2018 where this Blu-ray release scored 4.5 out of 5. To Be Human: Casting Blade Runner 2049 (HD, 17:15) – This is another interesting featurette, this time looking at the casting of the film, from the major roles to the smaller but equally as important ones. 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. 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. Nexus Dawn (HD, 6:31) – This short short was directed by Luke Scott, son of Ridley, and explains in more detail how Jared Leto's Wallace was able to continue production of Replicants and how his versions differ from the older models.

The cult film found a bigger audience fed by re-releases of The Final Cut. That led to a sequel being developed, with Denis Villeneuve in the director's chair and Ryan Gosling in the central role. Nexus Dawn (HD 6:31) Directed by Luke Scott, this short expands on a part of the prologue explaining how Jared Leto's Wallace was able to continue production of Replicants and also plants a couple seeds for his motivations in the movie. First up we have the three prologues, which flesh out what happened in the years between Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049. These short films were released online as part of the film’s promotion.

Sound Quality

Nowhere to Run (HD 5:49) This expands on Dave Bautista's Sapper Morton and how the character became a rogue Nexus 8 replicant. 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. Blade Runner 2049 4K Blu-ray delivers truly amazing video and audio in this exceptional Blu-ray release Characters in BR 2049 say as much (or more) with their faces as with their words, and the UHD's increased