I think the visual differences broadly break into technical aspects (film grain, contrast) and aesthetic (composition, lighting, density, motion). A lot of modern viewers don't like film grain so any director not named Christopher Nolan, will get studio push back.

Personally, I'd prefer more grain texture in cinematic images but it's the era we live in, so I don't hate on BR 2049 for being an artifact of its era. It's nowhere near as bad as the visual sterile wipe that Wicked is. I do agree the compositional energy is a stylistic choice by Denis for this film. While Dune strikes a similar note visually, Sicario does get pretty kinetic at moments - so it's not his only note.

My main point was 2049 couldn't be the innovative, style-setting, visual sledghammer to that BR was - simply because there can only be one first and 2049 still had to be related to BR. Also, it's worth noting that the back story has much of Earth's population moving off-world in the 30 years since the original - as the constant ads in BR were urging. So by 2049 L.A. is no longer crowded. Most humans have already abandoned Earth, which is one reason replicants are openly doing work-a-day jobs.

Ultimately, I have so much reverence for the original as a visual seismic event still influencing films decades later, I went into 2049 with low expectations - which Villenueve managed to exceed. 2049 is nowhere near as great as the original, but I don't think there was any way it could have been - and very few films ever are. So it was enough that it didn't insult the original or stain its legacy. Then starting with a clean slate, by simply being pretty good, 2049 manages to be a reasonable success on its own terms - at least artistically.

Personally, I'm happy 2049 performed as poorly at the box office as the original. I still feel like BR fandom dodged a bullet with 2049, so it's good it didn't give Alcon aspirations of a 'cinematic universe' cash grab. Sadly, Alcon did sell a BR limited series to Amazon Prime that's in post-production. Absent Villenueve it's likely to suck, but hopefully it'll go away quickly and we can pretend it never happened.

- and thanks for the call back to Escape From New York, a film I saw on opening night at the Pantages in Hollywood.