For the life of me, I still can't understand why they made a sequel to Blade Runner. If there was ever a classic movie that didn't need a sequel, that would be it because making a sequel could only ruin the allure and mystique of the original. Blade Runner is an outright classic that raises a lot of interesting questions about the nature of life and humanity that left the audience to figure out the answers themselves. What could really be gained from a sequel? What would it even be about? Well, the team behind Blade Runner 2049 seem to have taken the path of not really making a sequel at all, but more of an original story that happens to take place in the same universe as the first movie with a few tangential connections. That was probably the right move from a narrative standpoint, but it also plays into what I feel is the film's greatest weakness. Which is that it never really justifies its own existence.
