Do not be afraid of Blade Runner 2049’s 3-hour runtime
Blade Runner 2049 is a very good film. It is also, we should remember, nearly three hours long. Those 164 minutes are a visually stunning exploration of a finely realized, deeply melancholy future America, sure, but they’re also 74 minutes longer than the Ideal Movie Length—the one everyone agreed upon before Peter Jackson came a-knocking in the early ’00s and opened the floodgates so everything from Judd Apatow comedies to superhero punch-ups could wreak havoc on theatergoers’ circulatory systems.