I watched this before the original — and it didn't matter. The film builds its own world so completely that the 1982 version felt like a prequel, not the other way around. Deakins shoots empty landscapes like they're characters — Vegas in orange fog, the sea wall holding back nothing worth saving. There's a coldness to it that somehow makes you feel more, not less.
The Joi storyline is where it loses me. It over-explains what the rest of the film trusts you to figure out. But K walking through that wasteland, slowly realizing what he is and isn't — that's the kind of slow burn that earns its three hours. The ending doesn't try to shock you. It just asks you to sit with what it means to choose something selfless when nobody's watching.