“Blade Runner 2049" may be the most well-funded sequel ever made to a movie that both tanked at the box office and got creamed by critics.

“What’s the name of that woman in The New Yorker?” said Ridley Scott, who directed the original and produced the sequel. “Pauline Kael? Oh my God! She slaughtered me. It got personal. I’d never even met her.”

Filmed for around $28 million and released in mid-1982, “Blade Runner” did not crack the list of top 25 best-earning movies of the year. Its two Oscar nominations came in technical categories: production design and visual effects.

And although Ms. Kael praised those things in her review, she said the “pulpy suspense plot” was not engrossing, that the voice-overs were “ludicrous” and that Mr. Scott was no good at dialogue.