Blade Runner is my favorite movie. I was in the camp that thought a direct sequel was a bad idea.
I have to agree with Sir Ridley, the movie could have been edited down under two hours with no consequence. There were so many shots that went on for several beats too long that I found myself rolling my eyes. The slow pacing is one of the great things about the original. This movie didn't have the substance that the first one did to inhabit those moments, and it came off more like hollow imitation, cinematography porn.
Among the many things that made the original great was that it was a fairly straight forward film-noir detective movie, set in a dystopian future(sprinkled with some heady philosophical ideas). This one missed the appeal of that formula when it expanded the scope of the plot, skipping the procedural stuff in favor of a more grand narrative dealing directly with a savior type and the future of humanity (the well worn cliches of modern sci-fi).
The replicants also stuck out in this movie in such a way that I don't think I'd need a Voight Kampff to pick them out of a crowd. I was not sure if Ryan Gosling was doing his take on a robot , or if his character was supposed to be the strong silent type like Deckard, but he didn't say a whole lot and as a result I was left thinking he was either a cold machine, or perhaps not so bright. His pleasingly dumb holo-girlfriend was the same. What was Jared letto's purpose other than delivering pretentious monologues? He made replicants, and also wanted to make them with wombs? Then why was he working against the rogue replicants? Either way it seems like a bad business model.
The 100 foot tall neon naked women, and the giant sex-doll statues in Vegas. The naked replicant that jared Letto slices open for no obvious reason, the Rachael clone he shoots, the manic pixie hologram girlfriend, the pris-like prostitute, and Jared Letto's assasin, none of the women in this movie have much agency, save for the Madam. It may have been deliberate in relation to the themes about reproduction as power, and I know the first movie wasn't kind to women, but it stuck out in a film made in 2017.