Interesting. I found 2049 bleak and cold and without any real meaning. Just some well produced scenes without a story. I feel a lot of today's movies are like this.
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.