Blade Runner 2049 - Review

I am sorry, I just don't understand the appeal. Now, I am fully aware that I am going to get responses to this review telling me how uneducated I am for not liking or understanding this movie and how my opinion sucks and don't know anything about movies. However, I cannot lie about how I feel about a movie. To me, movies should be either exciting, funny, suspenseful, or anything along those lines, but at the very least, needs to hold my interest and be entertaining and somewhat comprehensible. I'm not saying that the movie needs to hold my hand and carefully explain to me what is going on, but at least get me engaged enough to keep watching. Blade Runner 2049 did none of that. First off, everyone talks about the world that this movie creates and I will admit, it is very visually stunning. I can hear my old film school teachers in the back of my head talking about world-building in story space and film philosophy in story telling when watching the world of Blade Runner on screen. It is nice to look at... but not for three hours. I didn't check how long this movie is, but it sure as hell felt like it. I get it, the world is cool to look at, but do we really need to see Ryan Gosling walk through a deserted hotel for 20 minutes before any line of dialogue is spoken or any type of musical score or sound effect is played? On that note, I keep hearing how awesome the soundtrack is. Yeah sure, the bass boosted noises at first were kind of cool, but they got old real fast. As for the story, it was much more comprehensible than the first film and it made me care about what was going on and it got me invested when exciting sequences were happening. Sorry to say though that those scenes are far from in between. I say in some of my reviews that it doesn't matter what your plot is, as long as you like the characters. I don't like Ryan Gosling's character in this movie. I get it. His character is supposed to act like somebody with no real emotion or feelings, but then again, why would we want to see that? That's a big reason of why I didn't like the first film. Harrison Ford just plays an uncharismatic drunk. Nothing interesting about him at all. I'm sorry, but I don't want to watch a story unfold where I have to care about someone who is extremely unlikable. The scenes I enjoyed the most were when Ryan Gosling was interacting with his hologram girlfriend because there was human emotion in those scenes and you could relate to it. Just the slightest hint of romance was more interesting than all the flying cars and neon lights this world could give us. Now I understand that lots of people really enjoy this movie and how complex it is, but sorry, I don't want to see a movie where the only way I will understand it is to think about it over and over on the car ride home meanwhile I am trying my best to stay awake in the theatre. Blade Runner 2049 is a cool looking movie with some loud bass in it. I won't see it as anything more than that. Am I too stupid to get all the metaphors and symbolism and philosophy behind it? Maybe you could say that, but I just want to be entertained... and Blade Runner 2049 couldn't do that for me. Straight up.