Curious. What in particular did you consider a "poor production design choice"?
First I want to say that I love Villeneuve's work since day one.
His style and tone is something that has been lacking in Hollywood for a while. When I knew it was him directing I was over the moon.
But one thing that got me worried is that he always go for a minimalist approach in terms of production designs.
This style did wonders for all his previous films.
But I think it failed for Blade Runner 2046.
Save for the Las Vegas scene, the movie doesn't look like it's taking place in the same universe.
The choices do make sense sometimes, storyline and also production wise.
Storywise, the BR world has evolved so it has to be different.
Production wise, Villeneuve had to do a different look, because if he did mimick the original we would have been criticized, worse he would have been probably bored to just rehash.
But the whole evolution of the universe is lacking to me.
Wallace offices lack imagination, boring Japanese ikea design, Robin Wright office looks like the dmv or social services (yeah she's a bureaucrat but Hugh... Give me a break).
They shot exteriors in Budapest wich has some really interesting buildings, that with some SYD MEAD futuristic designs would have done wonders but they managed to use the lamest building for K Appartement and studio sets for the street scenes, wtf
I won't even talk about the embarrassing street scenes who have no depth, no real life, or omg the street wood horse analyst lift set.
The most Interresting parts were outside the city, the opening shots, the "fields", the futuristic favelas that lead to Los Angeles.
And yeah Vegas.
Look at nyc from the 80's the city was dirtier, less buildings.
Look now it still lok the same more futuristic buildings but the old ones still work and the city is cleaner.
No huge changes
BR 2049 city looks like a cousin of Dredds megacity one actually.
More mist..
The movie looks more like it's taking place in the future of Children of men than Blade Runner. It's Interresting and well done but its not the evolution of the BR world to me. It's a rationalizations of it.
BLADE RUNNER Was never a realistic sci-fi movie.
It was a believable universe but not a realistic view of our future.
The biggest problem was the design team.
They took guys like Georges Hull, who is a very competent designer but not a visualist like SYD MEAD. The guy has been doing cool, but generic concept art for years on projects like GOTG or Jupiter ascending. He did the job here but without any panache.
The rest are non names, competent but that's it.
Cheap guns for hire.
It's was very easy to do a real visual evolution of this world.
For Blade Runner, Scott took SYD MEAD designs and dirtied everything and added the art deco vibe.
You hire SYD MEAD again ask him to evolve the universe (that's the kind of reasoning that he do that makes him stand from the rest of the concept artists out there) but this time you don't dirty it as much, and put the brakes on art deco.
Why not hire one the father of the visual style of the original movie? Money. SYD MEAD cost a ****ing arm you have no idea.
For 1 SYD MEAD you can get 15 competent concepts artists.
(same thing happened with Vangelis who has approached first for the music but was asking too much, they contacted him again in late August when the canned the ost by (forgot his name), but he gave them the finger out of pride.
It's still one of the best sci-fi blockbuster out there, and it will probably stay like that for years now that it bombed but yeah I'm kinda dissapointed about the whole look.
Glad it worked for you guys.
I love the camera work, Villeneuve style is still awesome ( for example the dog shot with the spinners flying away so cool) but I find him a lazy visualist when it comes to sci-fi.
What worked with ARRIVAL does not work for me here.
Stay cool
