Is Blade Runner 2049 worth it in 4K?

[UPDATE: At the time I wrote the article below, a contact I knew who had an early copy of the UK/European Edition of Blade Runner 2049 didn't believe that it had a Dolby Atmos soundtrack. However, following a firmware update yesterday to his Oppo 4K Blu-ray player, Atmos will now work on the UK/EU release too when it comes out on February 5th! I've updated the review to reflect this new information.]

The Film

It tells you everything you need to know about the original Blade Runner that even a director as brilliant as Denis Villeneuve can’t deliver a sequel that holds a candle to its predecessor.

That does not mean, however, that Blade Runner 2049 is in any way a bad film. It’s consistently gorgeous to look at, tells a complex and engaging tale, and manages to advance the original film’s themes and preoccupations in new and mostly satisfying directions rather than just re-treading the same old ground. These are all impressive achievements given the quality of the source film 2049 is picking up the baton from.

Photo: Blade Runner 2049, Warner Bros

However, 2049 also feels ponderous, detached and devoid of the sort of raw energy and blazing characters that tear through every beautiful frame of Sir Ridley Scott’s film.

To some extent, this is inevitable given the different nature and ‘bigger’ themes of the story at 2049’s heart, and there are moments where the characters do get the chance to become more than just story-telling ciphers. It’s arguably, too, that the original film has somehow earned this more stately, more overtly cerebral second installment.

Ultimately, though, while I admire Blade Runner 2049 and enjoyed unlocking more of its narrative secrets on a second viewing, it’s not honestly a film I expect to watch again and again for years to come in the same way I have its predecessor.

Release Details

Studio: Warner Brothers

What you get: 4K Blu-ray, REGION FREE HD Blu-ray, 4K HDR Movies Anywhere download code

Extra Features: Making of featurette, casting featurette, Blade Runner 101 glossary featurettes, three prologue mini movies

Best Soundtrack option: Dolby Atmos

Key kit used for this test: Samsung UE65Ks9500, Oppo 203 4K Blu-ray player, Panasonic UB900 4K Blu-ray player.

Picture Quality

Blade Runner 2049 gets closer than most films to being a true 4K experience. It was shot at 3.4K, created in a digital 4K master for its cinematic release and even, so it seems, delivered with native 4K or 3.4K effects. This latter achievement is practically unheard of elsewhere in the film world to date.

The result is a picture that’s reference grade in terms of sharpness and detail. Whether it’s the pores on K’s face, the fur collar of his leather jacket, the tiny details in the floors and walls of the furnace room where K has his apocryphal toy horse memory, or the vast piles of junk around the orphanage, this is 4K heaven all the way.

Photo: Blade Runner 2049, Warner Bros

It’s indescribably great, too, to hardly ever see a resolution ‘join’ between the film’s in-camera visuals and its digital effects. Especially as this gorgeous resolution consistency has been achieved without resorting to any tricks such as gentle grain or softness filters. There’s no evidence of edge enhancement, either. On the contrary, the image looks stunningly clean throughout.

Add this clean finish to the clarity of the resolution and the extreme sense of depth the image enjoys, and you become completely immersed in the visionary world Villeneuve is presenting.

Blade Runner 2049 isn’t quite as reference grade, though, when it comes to its use of HDR. As with the 4K Blu-ray of Villeneuve’s Arrival, the HDR grading is subtle in the extreme.

Comparing it with the SDR HD Blu-ray image, there is certainly some step up in both the image’s peak brightness points and the average light level during relatively bright scenes such as those in Deckard’s orange-drenched Las Vegas hideaway. There are some stand-out HDR moments too, such as the digital Elvis show in the dark Vegas theater, and some of the shots of the city’s neon and holographic advertising.

Photo: Blade Runner 2049, Warner Bros

Overall, though, the HDR effect is much more subtle than I’m used to seeing with 4K Blu-rays. In fact, I’d say it’s arguably the least aggressive HDR image I’ve seen (though there is some nice refinement going on in the picture’s dark areas).

There is a potential upside to this gentle HDR approach, in that it perhaps helps explain how the film’s tricky and highly varied color palette always looks beautifully balanced and authentic. Seriously, every frame looks nothing short of exquisite, for all its lack of punch relative to many other HDR presentations we’ve seen.

You could argue, too, that the relatively dark feel of the film is entirely appropriate to its themes and ‘feel’.

While the small boost in luminance range and consistently enriched colors are certainly welcome, though, and manage to deliver a visual experience that exceeds the one I had in a (non-Dolby Vision) cinema, it’s hardly a demo-grade showcase of what HDR can do.

There are a couple of other niggles too. First, some of the external shots of the city in rain or smoke can look suddenly quite soft compared with the stunning clarity of the rest of the image. Also, frustratingly the film doesn’t ship with a Dolby Vision master, despite one being done for the film’s cinematic release.

Sound quality

The Blade Runner 2049 4K Blu-ray delivers hands down my favorite Dolby Atmos mix to date.

Photo: Blade Runner 2049, Warner Bros

From the moment the film opens with a speaker-blowing modern retread of that immense cycling down bass note that announced the original Blade Runner to the world, the soundtrack is never less than a spine-tingling masterpiece. A mind-bending blend of spectacular dynamics, sensational detailing, irresistible atmosphere, stunning clarity and, best of all, monumental scale.

As well as perfectly backing up the visuals in transporting you to 2049, the sound mix recaptures the weird emotional-yet-detached atmosphere that works so brilliantly in the original Blade Runner without merely feeling like a rehash.

Just bear in mind that the range and scale of Blade Runner 2049’s Atmos soundtrack is so epic that you need a pretty potent speaker system to do it anything like the justice it deserves.

Extra Features

All Blade Runner 2049’s extra features are found on the REGION-FREE Blu-ray that accompanies the 4K disc. They add up to a passable rather than exhaustive collection.

Photo: Blade Runner 2049, Warner Bros

A 21-minute feature on designing the world of Blade Runner 2049 gets things off to a strong start, exploring both the film’s general style as well as the creation of specific scenes and futuristic objects via a great mix of artwork, interview clips (including some with Ridley Scott) and behind the scenes footage. It turns into a bit of a love-in at times, but it’s still essential viewing.

The 17-minute feature that follows covers the casting of the film. It’s worth a watch for the behind the scenes footage, though the ‘love-in’ stuff turns up to 11.

Also provided on the Blu-ray is a series of short ‘Blade Runner 101’ featurettes explaining the basic themes of the film - a sort of Blade Runner glossary, basically.

The highlight of the extras for me, though, is the trilogy of ‘Prologue’ short films. Shinichiro Watanabe’s beautiful 15-minute anime tale set around the ‘blackout’ incident of 2022, just after the events of the first Blade Runner, is particularly good. Luke Scott (Ridley’s son), meanwhile, directs shorter film clips covering 2036 (providing a helpful bit of backstory to Niander Wallace) and 2048 (a less interesting introduction to Dave Bautista’s Sapper Morton character).

Photo: Blade Runner 2049, Warner Bros

Verdict

There’s much to celebrate here. Denis Villeneuve has against all odds delivered a film that both remains faithful to its genre-defining predecessor while finding new things to say and authentically opening up the world’s aesthetic.

The 4K Blu-ray picture is one of the sharpest, cleanest and most detailed I’ve seen, and the Atmos soundtrack (on the US disc) is a masterpiece.

The film’s a bit labored at times (highlighting the remarkable economy of the original), and the HDR is about as dialed down as HDR can get without just turning into SDR. But the good far outweighs the bad, making Blade Runner 2049 an essential addition to your 4K collection.

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Is Blade Runner 2049 True 4K?

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Is Blade Runner worth 4K?

What resolution was Blade Runner 2049 shot in?

Is Blade Runner 2049 in Dolby Atmos?