Traffic used colour very differently than the Transformers movies and most movies these days...
In Traffic there was an emotional and story related reason for having warm yellow mexico scenes and cold US scenes and such... it's very specific to that film and motivated by the different settings and mood... Also, in the mexico scenes the entire screen was bathed in the yellow heat of that setting...
In contrast, the lazy way most contemporary movies use orange and teal is to have orange skinned people and the rest of the frame blue and green tinted, for all movies, for all scenes, for eveything... Even sets and wardrobes are designed to be teal (blue-green) in most movies these days...
Blade Runner 2049 is somewhere in between... There are elements of the default orange and teal aesthetic, but there are also scenes that are monochromatic grey and white, others that are bathed in Neon of streat signes and others still that were bathed in orange for various aesthetic and story reasons... It seems more deliberate and thought out than the usual orange and teal default, but it falls short of the more extreme and idiosyncratic use of colour that Soderbergh used in Traffic...
There is more to cinematography than colour... 2049 has some solid compositions and other cinematography choices... I like the way it looks and think it works for it's story but I still think it falls short of something like Black Rain, for example... Or The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which was also shot by Roger Deakins...
However, BladeRunner 2049 will always be compared to the stunning and atmospheric original and fall short in looks... Interesringly, the original was regraded in it's "final cut" edition and the colours were changed to a more blue-green (teal) background as is the fashion these days.. That colour grade was apparently supervised by Ridley Scott and is subtle for the most part...
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