I thought Blade Runner a masterpiece. The setting is overpoweringly eery and the characters concomitantly bend with it. Of course the plot moves the movie along, but to me it is the tremendous distortion of the setting and the way it frames the characters that, again and again, gets my attention.
Take the hunted Hannah making a bed in the garbage and newspapers, meeting up with benefactor M. Emmet Walsh who as he ushers her into his apartment, in what turns out to be a decrepit and futuristically architected building, introduces her to his mechanized humanoid creations. Then too there are the floating billboards that vocalize starting a new life off world (government aggrandizement/lambs to slaughter). The human/android test at the start and with Sean Young. The fabulous and oddly furnished lodgings of Terrell. It's one eery oddity after the next.
And the ending is superb, even capturing the mania that we, and the replicants, have to survive.
I don't think any movie could be as good the original. 2049 is a very substantive movie but hasn't its genius. When I first saw it I strained to follow it, and in the half-dozen viewings since find that its setting, plot and characters provide the futuristic dissonance that is at the heart of this series.