Author certainly knows a lot about the Blade Runner universe. Surprised that they think the second film is better. I think most Blade Runner fans see the second as technically excellent but a little cold. Also making Blade Runner’s android nature explicit rather than implied, didn’t really advance the story.
I think 2049 was great. I cant say it's better or worse because it's different but it fits and was more than I hoped for. Of course it has problems but so did the first one, and nothing is perfect especially in sci-fi. The Hans Zimmer score is fantastic.
For me the Vangelis score is one of the all-time greatest movie scores, although I’m probably biased from having heard it young. Such a unique and recognisable sound, and just the perfect mood for the film.
Pretty sure it was the same summer he got frozen in carbonite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syd_Mead
The freshness of the technology is what I like about the first film and makes the second film a more of the same feel to me.
Just read the Syd worked on both Blade Runners...
I adopted the book last.
It feels a little bit like how the "camp" Batman got dirty and gritty in the later movies. If "gritty" is the first order derivative, Bladerunner 2049 took the gritty of Bladerunner and went for the second-order derivative, fatalistic.
Interesting that the score makes the difference, the score from blade runner 1982 is really unique to me and inseparable from the movie. If I hear a single note from it I think about the movie and if I see a frame of the movie, I think about the music. I can't remember a single thing about the 2049 score, except that at the time I thought every interesting part was a shallow clone of the original mashed up with the main theme from Terminator 2 because someone thought it was about robots.
I mostly agree with you about Leto.
That said, check out the synthwave genre for a modern/retro take on all this.