My thoughts on Denis Villeneuve's Dune
OK, well. Dune then. Sort of a live review, as I watch. Some more in-depth thoughts at the end. Mildly spoilery, but not if you know the story already.
Fair warning, I will not be judging this film on purely it's own merits. It exists in the world and also in the world are Lynch's film (for reference I consider the spicediver fanedit, Alternative Edition Redux, to be the canonical version of that), the Sci-Fi channel miniseries and obviously the books. Yes, even the prequels - the first of which is one of the worst books I've ever read and I've read The Davinci Code. Anyway, on to actually watching it...
Well, it's pretty. One problem is that no matter how good the design is - and the design is VERY good - it's just not as good as Tony Masters and David Lynch building on material from Mobius and HR Giger. This film is obviously heavily influenced by them though.
In my head Caladan is a lush, fertile, welcoming world. It's been colour graded to grey and desaturated. Feels wrong.
He's lifting both shots and dialogue from Lynch's film. That's good. My brain is filling in the missing bits of internal monologing.
Nice implementation of Chakobsa. I like that.
Hans Zimmer can just fuck off with that big stupid honking sound he shoehorns into everything. So annoying.
This film is missing Roger Deakins. I mean you can say that about a lot of films but this one especially. It is beautifully shot but Deakins would have taken it to another level.
Why are people whispering at each other over like ten metre distances? I hate that. Speak up, you're outside, it's windy and you're far apart! It's not moody if you obviously can't even hear each other. Yes, small thing, but things like that which upset your suspension of disbelief are jarring.
You can't put a crysknife away without it tasting blood. Pffft. That's just ignoring lore for the sake of it. Five seconds would be all it took to do that bit. We could have had one fewer lingering shots on the knife itself instead. As an aside, the Shadout Mapes as a means to explain bits of Arrakeen and Fremen lore to the Atredies (and us!) is horrendously under-used.
The ornithopters in this movie are badass. There is an in-universe reason for them that I can't remember.
I wonder how much of this works if you haven't seen Lynch's version (which has much more internal thoughts of characters) or read the books?
Stellan Skarsgard is channelling Apocalypse Now era Brando pretty hard and that is in no way a bad thing. His Baron is absolutely superb, probably the best part of the whole film. Piter de Vries is nowhere near weird/creepy/insane enough. Leaving out Feyd-Rautha is a mistake, he's the anti-Paul and even though Sting did a relatively terrible job in Lynch's film, that doesn't mean he's not important.
Zimmer teasing elements of Eno's original theme is a nice touch as well.
You know what's cool? What's cool is that at certain key moments I get lines from the book appearing in my head, from whichever scene is happening. That's a really good sign. I haven't read Dune for years.
So OK, overall, it's not as bad as I was expecting. It's pretty. It's stylish. It's annoyingly colour graded but what isn't these days? But this film doesn't add much to the telling of Dune over the Lynch's film or even, really, the Sci-Fi miniseries. Villeneuve is obviously a fan of both books and Lynch's movie and what he has made is good. A lot of what he's made is basically just a remake of what Lynch did, and I don't just mean because both films are based on the same book - there are multiple direct lifts straight from Lynch's film, and that is perfectly OK. But it's not about what is here, it's about what isn't.
Because it leaves a lot out - it's shallow where it should be deep, it's straightforward where it should be mystical, simple where it should be weird. It's 8-10 characters when it should be twice that and worst of all a lot of it seems to rely on viewers knowing the lore rather than having time to explain it: and all that is because film is the wrong medium for this story.
It misses out on exploring much about any of the characters simply because nobody has enough screentime to go into their motivations, which are generally multifaceted and complex - I do appreciate Villeneuve not wanting to have characters stand around expositioning at each other (MCU, looking at you), or doing a voiceover of character's thoughts like Lynch did, but that means you really need to spend time with them so they can show us what they're thinking, not tell us. "Show don't tell" is good filmmaking but it takes time.
For example, Paul and Jessica get most of the screen time but we don't really learn much about them. Because you need a lot of lore to contextualise their motivations - Jessica's actions and desires need to be placed in the wider context of her relationship to Leto and the Bene Gesserit and their plans and while Villeneueve does try to do that a bit, it's one or two lines with Leto and one rushed (literally, they're doing a walk-and-talk) conversation in which Helen Moahim mentions the Kwisatz Haderach and little more.
The Guild are barely even mentioned. You see some lower level navigators but you don't know who they are if you don't already know who they are. The Guild's influence is so important to so much of what happens in Dune but if you didn't know they existed already I'm not sure you'd leave this film knowing there was a spacing guild at all. Same goes for the Emperor and the Landsraad, they hardly come up at all. The thing about Dune is that it's not just about Paul. Paul is important but he's really just the pointy end of a lot of long-game players and systems and their interactions. That doesn't really come over in Villeneuve's film. Also it's not really a structural issue but I'd have loved to have seen more of the Heighliners. A Navigation sequence would have been fun too.
The thing is, Dune deserves a TV series. A high budget one like Game of Thrones. I want an hour on Caladan, learning about the Atredies. I want an hour on Kaitain learning about the Padishah Emperors and the Bene Gesserit. Same with the Harkkonens. I want to be 3 or 4 episodes in before I even see Arrakis. Movies are great for telling short stories, maybe novellas at best. But big, long, complicated books need to be on TV where they can spread out, take their time, develop characters and fill in backstory and motivations.
Overall, 7/10 and I really hope the second movie gets funded because stopping here would be even worse. It's worth watching but don't expect a great deal underpinning what is still a very beautiful film. I could have written that same sentence about Bladerunner 2049, thinking about it.
I find that surprising. I love the original Blade Runner and even read the book before watching Blade Runner 2049. I not only loved 2049, I think it's one of the best cyberpunk of all time and even superior to the first. It seems to me that knowing Dune beforehand detracted from your experience as a viewer. I mean, it's hard for a film to be good for you when you arrive with so many, highly specific expectations from another media.
2049 was shallower than the original, philosophically speaking (because Philip K Dick is nothing if not a philosopher) but it was so, so beautiful that it somehow worked despite that. Roger Deakins hammered that movie into being good through sheer cinematography alone. He deserved every millimetre of the oscar he won for that film.
I cannot stand Bladerunner. I won't attempt to hide the fact I can't get past how much I love the book and how much I think Scott bungled the adaptation. I don't think Villeneuve has made that kind of a mess of Dune, I think it's a pretty solid attempt and I enjoyed watching it - albeit ultimately a failure due to being in the wrong medium. It's not Villeneuve's fault he can't tell the story of Dune (or even just half of it) in 2.5 hours, because that's just not possible. He has made a good effort and it's not a bad film, but it's just not as good as the story deserves.
fwiw a friend of mine who has never read the book nor seen any of the other adaptations watched Dune yesterday and said they enjoyed the movie but struggled to figure out why people were doing things a lot of the time. Which I suspect is not an uncommon problem. Too many shots of empty sanddunes and not enough explaining the universe they exist in.
I am still looking forward to part two, and hopefully Messiah as well. I'd love to see someone, anyone, take a run at the God Emperor trilogy (quadrilogy, strictly) because that get batshit fast. You can't skimp on the lore in those stories!
It's funny, I'm someone who has the opposite opinion. I love Blade Runner and think it's one of the best films ever made. I don't like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? much though.
A lot of people tend to judge adaptations based on how faithful they are to the original story, which I think is a bit flawed. Blade Runner is not a faithful retelling of the book. The atmosphere is entirely different, the plot is entirely different, and the themes are entirely different. It's a fantastic piece of art on it's own though, and it stands completely well on its own two legs. Had the book never existed and the film was a wholly original story, it would still be great.
There are many films like that. Starship Troopers is a film with the exact opposite theme as the book, but it's still a masterpiece. The Shining totally strays from the book in many ways, and Stephen King famously hated it, but it's still an amazing movie.
I liked Dune, but even as a massive fan of the book (I think it's bar none the best sci fi novel ever written), this movie has the opposite problem. I went to see it with a few friends, some of whom read the book and saw the lynch movie, and some who hadn't. Almost universally, the ones who were exposed to the previous works liked it a lot more than the ones that didn't, because ultimately this movie doesn't stand on its own two feet. You don't really get a sense of what's going on at all. It's like a visual rendering of the book without a lot of the actual story, much of which is left as subtext and subtle hints. The orange catholic bible that Duncan was carrying is a great example of that. No one who hadn't read the books would have any idea of what that was or its significance. The entire idea of Paul's prescience, one of the absolutely most important elements of the book, and the entire series, is sort of just glossed over. Melange, its effects, its importance are all just barely touched on.
Ultimately I think it's a fantastic companion and homage to the book, but that's not how we judge films. As a work of it's own, it just doesn't stand up for me.
As another person who hasn't read the books or seen the David Lynch version, I feel similar to u/teaearlgraycold.
I thought they did a pretty good job getting that much backstory into a 2 hour film. I think a combination of knowing the human history it was likely based on and the bread crumbs they left me actually made for quite a fun film experience. My understanding of the universe grew with the film. There was enough info to understand that there was a "federation of great houses" that had some sort of treaty with an empire, with the empire being dominant force in this relationship. This was pretty common during the Roman or British Empires and playing "great houses" off of each other was a easy way to keep colonial regions fractured and un-unified. So overarching, why the larger components were happening seemed accessible even for me without prior knowledge.
Figuring out the religious lore felt similar. Fremen religion seemed loosely based on Islam, so pretty straight forward. I didn't get all of the actual lore nuances about the blades and everything, but as I didn't know it in the first place it wasn't missed. Generalities were enough for me to feel like I understood what was happening. The religion (or maybe... mysticism? I'm not sure what to categorize it as) of his mother was harder to understand. I wish they had given a little more explanation (like a line or two more) about it during the breakfast scene and perhaps during the box scene. A lot of what Paul experienced we seemed to view externally with clips here or there. I think that could have been done a little better.
I really want to highlight their use of historic architecture. I'm sure it's what Herbert drew on and I think they did a good job leaning into this. I had a good laugh at their inclusion of a Ziggurat, which fits in so well with the landscape. Check out the Ziggurat of Ur as a comparison. I wish they had taken a short side trip into the portions of the cities where the natives lived. It would have been amazing to have a bazaar scene. You could do a lot with that visually. Also, and I know it's a low bar, but I'm glad they didn't over sexualize the female characters. The costumes were interesting and felt more true to what you might see in various parts of the world than what Disney often produces (i.e. starwars).
My only gripes were 1) Josh Brolin at large. It felt like he got a lot of screen time and did nothing to move forward the plot other than to act as a foil to Oscar Issac to show how pious he is. I understand from my partner that was a big part of the book they didn't touch on, but the Brolin character didn't really sell that point for me. All in all I think that film time could have been used better elsewhere. 2) As a lot of people have said, the whole film kind of felt like set up, which was beautiful and needed, but it felt like it was building to a climax that never arrived. If Legendary is smart they'll release the second film with an option to do a back to back with the first movie with an intermission in the middle. I would love that.
I haven't watched Dune yet, but remember a lot of people saying that about The Fellowship of the Ring.
I’m not sure if I count as someone exposed to Dune previously as I saw Lynch’s movie 15 years ago as a kid (was kind of traumatizing tbh). I haven’t read the books. I think the new Dune stands on its own. It just doesn’t have any closure. But for all of the people to see it once part 2 is out (I’m feeling optimistic) that won’t matter.
That's good to hear. I still can't shake the feeling that a lot of the important themes of Dune aren't touched on in this adaptation just because there's so little explanation. There's really not that much dialogue in general, preferring wide sweeping shots to set the context and tone rather than explicit exposition.
Unfortunately, a lot of the backstory of dune really can't be told that way. You see a gigantic Heighliner and can probably figure out that it's an important ship, but the movie doesn't portray just how important the navigator's guild is in the politics of the setting. One of Dune's big themes is that societies settle into sort of a stable equilibrium; at the time the movie takes place, that equilibrium is a tripod with the legs being the empire, the Landsraad houses, and the navigators guild, with the bene gesserit flitting around the edges. Some of that is hinted at, with the emperor being scared of the growing power of the Atreides, but it's never really explored much.
I remember talking to a friend about the scene in the tent where Paul starts seeing visions of his Jihad. My friend thought he was just kind of randomly tripping because of hallucinations from the spice, instead of accurate visions of an unchangeable future where Paul is directly responsible for a holy war which causes the death of billions, and Paul being horrified to realize that he'll eventually be responsible for more deaths than Ghengis Kahn and Hitler combined, and being powerless to stop it. I think that MAY have been addressed slightly in dialogue, but a lot of the dialog is vague, whispery, and mumbly anyway, so I wouldn't fault someone for not catching it.
Another important theme of the book is the power of religion as a tool to control vast populations of people, which in the story so far manifests as the Fremen people having a prophecy of the Madhi being an offworlder that will lead them to paradise. In the book, it's very explicit that they have this belief because the Bene Gesserit Missionaria Protectiva planted it there centuries ago. They go to every shitty backwater planet and plant the seeds of a prophecy of an offworlder with abilities that match those of a Bene Gesserit being a messiah just in case one of them gets stranded on a planet and needs a ready and willing army at the flick of a wrist. Again, that's something that's sort of touched on in dialogue I believe, but not really explicitly, or explored much.
I will remember for the rest of my life how as soon as the credits rolled on the opening weekend showing the guy in front of me threw up his hands and said "I don't get it". Having seen the original I was surprised. 2049 is way more consumable and straightforward. But these are the kinds of people you need to entertain to support a $100,000,000 budget.
That’s what I thought, too. Not sure it’ll matter in the grand scheme of the movie series. The goal isn’t to bring me up to speed with the books. It’s to tell a story on a screen.
To be fair, it is a two part movie at least. I imagine the latter two in particular will be elaborated on as they become more relevant to the plot, and there'll likely be more on the politics of the setting as well. They probably just didn't want to front load the movie with exposition dumps, though they may have gone a bit far in the other direction.
Completely tangential, but I feel like I missed something.
Blade Runner & The Shining are widely regarded as classics. But Starship troopers?
Would you mind explaining why you consider that a masterpiece?
Starship Troopers is definitely in the cult classic realm, definitely not widely regarded as a classic as much as the other two though. It was reviewed so poorly upon initial release because very few critics actually realized what it was at the time. It was a scathing criticism of fascism disguised as a campy sci-fi action movie.
Starship Troopers, the movie, is filmed as a piece of propaganda made by a fictional government.
The entire theme of the movie on a surface level is all of the things that the book earnestly tries to be; a piece of fiction making a case for a strong central government where military service is the epitome of morality, where humanity is at its best and brightest when developing new weapons and fighting wars, and where the ideal man is one who follows orders competently and doesn't ask questions about why they were given.
The movie, unlike the book however, intentionally lets the viewer peak past the cracks in that ideology. Humans are at war with a biological species that in all likelihood, hasn't even attacked them, and are just defending their territory.
The war kicks off because an asteroid hits earth, which the government immediately blames on the bugs on the planet klandathu in a far away star system, however, the bugs were never even shown to be capable of space travel, let alone capable of accelerating an asteroid faster than the speed of light to hit a planet on the other side of the galaxy, meaning that the two most likely explanation is 1. it was just a random asteroid, or, more likely 2. it was a false flag perpetrated by the government to kick the war off.
This war is an endless cycle of death and mayhem perpetuated merely to satisfy the military industrial complex of the government and has no real purpose. Children are raised to hate an enemy that they've never seen in preparation to feed them into the meat grinder next, and the entire society is just raised to be mindless drones for the endless killing machine.
It's honestly one of the most perfectly executed pieces of satire to ever achieve mainstream film success. The story goes that Paul Verhoeven read a few chapters of the book, couldn't finish it, absolutely hated it and everything it stood for, and so decided to make his movie a not so subtle jab at all of the themes the book explored.
Excellent explanation. Thanks.
IDK about masterpiece, but it's a generally well regarded adaptation from the book by Robert A. Heinlein.
I had initially thought Blade Runner 2049 was a remake and didn't watch it because of that; I randomly saw it a few months ago and was absolutely blown away. It is hands down the most visually impressive film I have ever seen.
Villeneuve is no joke, dude. If he play his cards right he will be a really big deal in Hollywood for years to come. Watch Arrival and Sicario if you haven't yet.
I’ve read a lot of comments, even some here (@wervenyt, @onyxleopard), which raise the issue of the movie not explaining things properly, things that were explained in the books.
Why do you want those explanations in the movie? They’re a wiki page away.
This is a superbly long movie which doesn’t waste a lot of time explaining things which you can in fact Google. Or better yet, talk about with people who are familiar with the universe. It’s a unique opportunity to bring to the big screen an established world.
I speak as someone who hasn’t read the books and was in fact not at all familiar with the Dune universe until minutes before the movie, when my friend told me “yeah so there are no computers in that universe because of a war with the machines” and that was it.
The movie was difficult to follow but intriguing and I wanted to know more. I rewatched it in fact, and I read reviews, explanations, posts like this one and learned more intricacies about this world that was unknown to me.
You know how Valve popularised releasing a new game, with a new universe, and doing an ARG around it so you can find and glean information about that universe outside of the game? Imagine releasing a movie today alongside a massive wiki and a bunch of books that will answer any and every question you have about, like, why don’t people just use guns or something.
Game of Thrones had a similar benefit. The series was (to a point) a standalone marvel, but if you wanted to learn more and speculate, you could!
So when I read those comments criticising the movie for not repeating those readily available explanations, I almost perceive it as entitlement. That we’re entitled to a massive, massive information-packed story that doesn’t last too long, explains everything, still has captivating action, and that you can somehow follow. Not only is that impossible, but why do you even want that when all the movie needs to do, as a newcomer to the series, is make you want to learn more? (And if you’re familiar with the universe already, why do you care as long as the movie is faithful to it?)
I'm certainly not frustrated with a lack of explanation in the movie. My complaint is that there is too much exposition for so many questions to remain. I felt like the majority of the viewing was squandered on pandering to people who can't connect dots for themselves, and yet it didn't really succeed in actually clarifying things. I'd much rather they had cut every scene where Paul is a viewer insert, asking moronic questions that he already knows at that stage in the book, and reinserted the subtle and complex storytelling of slow-burn political intrigue.
You're calling me entitled for wanting an easier movie, when I want a much more difficult one.
Please do not take my post the wrong way, i didn't mean to call you entitled. I can't find a better word to describe a certain expectation i see people have around this movie though: wanting it absolutely to be self contained. And that means to explain everything that is present in it, every mechanic, instead of letting us wonder. Or in the case of some dune fans, wanting it to cover a lot more (i can absolutely empathize with that, but it's already a super long movie! There will be more...). If this doesn't cover you, then i apologize for misreading your post.
At any rate i can agree with the point raised by @mat that this deserves its own Game of Thrones like TV series. Way too much to unpack for a movie. But it looks like that is what we will be getting over time so it's very promising.
No worries, I am definitely a certain type of entitled; I wanted Villeneuve to make a movie that would have failed financially. I was just disappointed that he didn't do the impossible and make a movie that appealed to my taste for the inscrutable, and also got sequels. If I had it my way, this would have been the first half of an eight hour long film, and nobody has the patience for that.
Hey now. I would absolutely have the patience for it :)
I think you’re arguing for the same thing as mat: a high quality TV show
I actually am not sure about that. Maybe with the new definition of serialized drama, where each episode lacks a distinct arc, but I really think that the pace of a long, methodical film would be better suited than to try and write miniature plotlines for each 30-60 minute stretch.
I may not have communicated my point clearly enough. I wasn’t disappointed due to lack of explanation, I was somewhat disappointed due to the focus on some things at the expense of others. The source content is so rich, so choices about every second to put on screen must have been agonizing. There’s a difference between explaining things and hinting at them. For instance, using Paul’s holo-vid session to show the desert mouse was a neat touch. But there were missed opportunities like that all over. Opportunities to show the space navigators. To show the plot about how Leto’s men, (but not Leto) suspected Jessica of being the traitor. There was a magnificent decision tree of what to put on screen, and I was just expressing disappointment in which branches got lopped off. I’m not saying I wanted it to be longer and have more forced exposition, just to have followed some different threads here or there.
So I think there are two aspects here. Firstly if people want to go to outside sources to learn more about a universe because they're interested in that universe, that's fine. But if the storyteller relies on people doing that in order for a story to make sense at all, that's bad storytelling.
I think it can be a fine line to tread, especially with such a well-established universe as Dune, but it's my opinion that Villeneuve ended up on the wrong side of that line with this movie. Not too drastically, but still. It might be that part two clears up a lot of stuff but as that currently doesn't exist, I'm not prepared to give him a pass just yet. I am hoping to be able to change my opinion in a few years.
Secondly, you might have understood the film as it stood (good for you - lots of people I know who haven't read the book were pretty lost!). But what you understood was an extremely - even given the limitations of film - limited version of the story. Of course lots needs leaving out when you convert hundreds of pages of densely packed text into a relatively short series of pictures and conversations and I'm not expecting every bit of nuance to make it to the screen, but again, I feel like Villeneuve left out more than he needed to and the quality of the story he told suffers as a result.
I personally dislike this modern sense of the word 'entitled' as a bad thing. I think Dune is good enough and important enough in the sci-fi and wider literary canon to be entitled to better treatment than it got. I don't see wanting things to be better as a negative thing. I don't think that criticising Villeneuve for leaving out things he could have put in (eg, the crysknife lore would have been easy to include) is bad. I'm not expecting him to put everything in, that would be impossible. But he could have done better. I don't think it's a bad movie. But I also don't think it's as good a movie as it could have been.
As for being faithful, you are right that's the only thing that truly matters. But the problem is he left so much stuff out that he started to lose that faithfulness. Villeneuve had opportunities to develop the characters and the plot but more often than not we just got another action sequence instead. If I want action there are nine Fast and Furious films which are better than Dune for action. Dune isn't an action sci-fi adventure, it's a complex story about society, politics and the machinations of power which happens to be set in a sci-fi universe. It's entitled to more than it got.
I'm not sure I disagree with you on that. The fanedit of Lynch's movie fixes a lot of issues with the original cut and I really do love that film - but it's still pretty flawed. I am reasonably confident that Villeneuve's part two will pull it together, or at least an extended cut of both movies will improve on the overall thing.
But. I still think it deserves better. It's a 10,12, 14 or more hour story on screen, at least. Which is a TV series. So y'know. Best movie version is nice but it will only ever be the best in a medium which is fundamentally inadequate for a story of that kind of depth and complexity.
I dunno. I want to like film but it so often ends up leaving me wanting more. I feel the same way about short stories, I almost always prefer a full length novel.
2021s Dune has a runtime of 2h32min. Considering the extension, complexity, and detailedness of the source material, that is not a lot. It's shorter than Blade Runner 2049, Villeneuve's previous film.
So, a few initial thoughts, a few hours after viewing, and about two months after reading the book for the first time.
This movie is what I was afraid the book would be. No intrigue, little character development, random keywords mumbled sans explanation or even significant reaction, no dense layering of implications. A ton of exposition, but not enough that my viewing partner (who's unfamiliar with the text) was able to easily follow. He got that the visions were predictions of the future, but was unable to discern them from reality, and didn't understand at all why they never really played out identically. He even thought that all Bene Gesserit had blue eyes, they just hide them.
There wasn't enough time spent building character. Jessica is one of my favourite characters in sci-fi (my inexperience in the genre notwithstanding), and by the end of this movie, she's just kind of there. Gurney Halleck and Thufir Hawat more or less just disappear during the climax, but not dramatically. They're just two major characters whose plotlines are left hanging.
It was still beautifully shot and composed, the score was excellent, and the acting was impressive. We both had a very good time, and not just because it was two friends kicking back. The movie has major flaws, but the direction and performances more or less make up for it. Solid, not great.
This pretty much sums up my thoughts as well. I really hope that this movie gets a LOTR style director’s cut.
I think the book would be better adapted to a tv series, in the vein of (early) game of thrones or his dark materials.
Actually, with all of the high quality TV adaptations coming out in the last few years, I think I have changed my mind. I think almost all books are better suited as a tv series than a movie or set of movies. There are certainly exceptions; for example, the Harry Potter books would not suit a tv series. But I’m general, I think tv is a closer fit to the novel.
So I finally watched it.
I'll try to be concise, a lot was said about this movie already.
I feel that the evaluation of this film can greatly change depending on how the sequels are gonna be managed. That is because it feels like a huge awesome teaser. If film 2 abandon the hermeticism and bet on real, extended exposition, than yeah, this film is a pretty good introduction. If, however, Villeneuve keeps doing what he's known for doing (mysterious movies with little exposition, saying lots with little dialogue), than this film will be retroactively considered a pointless exhibition of artistic pedantry.
My gut tells me that Villeneuve applied his personal touch (subtlety, moodiness, and conciseness) to a story that really need more explanations. I never read Dune, but I'm very familiar with the universe, and when I saw the 2.5 hour runtime my first thought was "that's absurd, that's a 4 hour movie!". IDK who decided for that length, but it makes no sense. Especially during COVID... there's a scarcity of new releases and they would have no trouble whatsoever booking film theaters, regardless of duration. I'm betting there will eventually be a very extended version on streaming.
Random thoughts:
Sure, but technically so are the Guild Navigators, yet they're described in the books as being totally monstrous looking due to their excessive spice consumption causing them to experience radical physical mutations. And while Baron Vladimir Harkonnen was only described as being "grossly and immensely fat", it was to the point where he could no longer even support his own weight anymore, and so required anti-grav tech to move around. And IMO it would also totally make sense for him to be slightly mutated and monstrous looking as well. Keep in mind that he held fief over Arrakis for over 60 years, was a massive hedonist, and one of the few people in the universe (besides the Guild upper echelon, and the Emperor) with enough wealth to consume excessive amounts of spice, and regularly hold spice orgies.
Hmm, I could have sworn he was described as having the blue-within-blue eyes of spice addiction, but upon rereading the descriptions of him from the book it appears the only mention of his eyes are as being "spider-black", so I guess not. Regardless, I still think he should have been far more obese and Jabba-like than how he was portrayed in the movie, as that actually would have been more faithful to the book.
p.s. Apparently some of the original concept art created for the movie by Jerad Marantz actually does portray him that way, which makes me wonder why they decided to thin him out so much for the final design.
I started reading Dune. There it is said that he weighs around 200kg (440 pounds). I don't think he looked 200kg in the movie, but I may be wrong.
I've seen actual people on youtube that are fatter than the Floating Bastard...
How do you think the Lynch version of Baron compares? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWq15lDh8yM
That video is not available for me but I sought another.
This Baron is even slimmer. Just an actor on a reclined chair and some crap in his face.
Forgot to say something very important (for myself at least :P): I'm 100% going to read this book.
I missed so much reading the books as a teen. The social commentary on oppression of a people to expedite transportation. The stability of a feudal society and instability of a technologically driven one.
The themes of islamic oppression were obvious to my partner, based only on the first 40 minutes of this movie. She knows nothing about Dune, yet the lack social commentary from the book made her wonder what the movie was on about. It's a big budget hollywood sci fi, and we are only 40 minutes into a 5hr dilogy, so maybe they erred on the side of safety and are hooking us on the first movie before going all Twilight Zone and gently alluding to the hard social commentary.
Coming in cold, my partner was not troubled by the lack of computers or robots or AI, the lack of guns, the feudal structure. She went along with the fully formed world that is barely explained, which reminds me of the original Star Wars. Certain things that are easily missed could be explained a little more to ratchet up the tension for those unfamiliar with the story line.
As someone who has not read the book and had the movie running on TV while I was still a toddler: it worked great :) It was the first time since the pandemic that I went to watch a movie in the cinema and I enjoyed it a lot. Obviously, I can't talk for the cuts that Villeneuve did, but what I saw I enjoyed - a lot.
The only issues I had with the movie were slight pacing issues at times. Everything else I thoroughly enjoyed. But I knew what to expect. When you go to see this movie, you have to just accept some things and how they work in this world without questioning everything (not that you did it, but I've seen that a few times, some of my friends who expected more of a The Expanse than Dune). I'm sure the book(s) will fill many, many gaps that I've just accepted with lore and extra characters and all that stuff, but I feel like if you add more to the movie it might become overwhelming for someone who's not familiar with the book. The way it was I could always follow everything, and normally I'm bad with people's faces and names. I feel like that's a feat on its own already. I'm very excited for Part II, whenever that may release.
I agree with you, though, that it would make a great series, that may even surpass the movie. There's a short article with Jason Momoa and he says that there should be a 4-6 hour version and that he doesn't want any footage trimmed, which of course is not gonna happen for cinema. So that basically screams series. But who knows, maybe if we wait another 37 years, we'll get a series :) By then I'll probably have read the books.
I agree with most of your points. I will say I don't feel like this interacts (even on a meta level) with the David Lynch one at all. I actually feel like I saw a lot more visual parallels to the Dune 2000 and Command and Conquer video games. From the Atreides banner looking a whole lot like the GDI logo to the spice silos that look exactly like the games' Tiberium silos it's kind of unmistakable once you start to pick it out.
I loved this depiction of Harkonnen. The Lynch version kind of fell into that trap of villains whose whole deal is being like "I AM VERY OVERINDULGENT AND ALSO VERY GAY!" (They did this in Squid Game too which was kind of eye-roll worthy). I also saw the Brando parallel and felt like it was a much more grounded way to depict it. I also missed seeing Feyd and wonder if he'll be in part two or if we just get Rabban.
One thing I will echo your complaint about, though, is the film's overall lack of color. It's so visually striking but somehow the entire color scheme is grays and browns. It's disappointing when so many of the cultural references the seres draws its visuals from are known for sumptuous colors and textiles. Even the blue-on-blue spice eyes feel a little muted, as if they only included them because they had to and would really have preferred to not.
I remember David Lynch's Dune being almost cartoonish.
The muted colors of Denis Villeneuves Dune, bring a 1984 dystopic feel, which works well for me.
I loved the movie and have not read the books 7/10. However, I do have a few things that keep it from being amazing. The pacing is all over the place and the movie is missing needed character building moments with much of its cast, clearly a lot was left on the cutting room floor and the film suffers because of it. I do not know if we will ever see a extended cut, but much like Kingdom of Heaven and Lord of The Rings a better version of the film exists in the shot footage and if the director has no restrictions.
I agree with your take on the whole. I saw it with 3 friends, two of which had read the books. We left the theatre and immediately had to explain to our uninitiated friend all sorts of aspects of the world-building and politics that this adaptation did not include. For instance, there was no explanation of mentats, no explanation of the lack of computers/robots, no depiction of the emperor or the other great houses besides Harkonnen and Atreides. I felt like this was the tragedy of Leto Atreides, the film. It was very good as that, but I agree that the scope was narrowed and the source content is so rich that this felt sparse just by virtue of its focus. It could have been so much worse, and yet could have been so much better.
I really hope the second film gets made (or the trilogy if they make Dune Messiah the third installment as Villenueve has expressed interest in).
The one major criticism I have is that Yue’s betrayal didn’t feel impactful, as he had such little screen time. (I guess Mabe was similarly under-utilized.)
I haven't watched Villeneuve's Dune yet, but I'm about to this week. I've read the books and recently watched Lynch's Dune.
I realized that Lynch's Dune is incomprehensible for viewers who haven't read the books. When I watched it, it had been 1–2 years since I read the books, so my memory was a little faded. Even with some knowledge of the lore, I found myself surprised when terms like Kwisatz Haderach and Weirding got dropped. But I imagine for someone who heard, uh, quick-sat had-a-rack?, for the first time, they'd get lost.
I think there's an intractable problem in adapting complex sci-fi stories for film. Epic sci-fi requires a lot of world-building and exposition in order to establish the logic in which an interesting, otherworldly narrative can take place. Miss out on the exposition and the narrative becomes illogical.
Text as a medium is forgiving: readers can re-read words, re-process them, and even go back pages for reference. But film is unforgiving: it pushes the viewer ever onwards toward the end like in a busy metro. Too much exposition and the viewer trips and gets trampled underfoot as the film hurriedly keeps pushing forward to its destination.
I'm both very excited and apprehensive to see the film this week. :D
That’s exactly the art of film, though. The best films marry the content to the form in a manner that enhances both. It requires mastery at every stage of the creative process to accomplish. I think this adaptation was good, but still fell short of its potential.
That's true. But I think that sci-fi is fundamentally extra difficult for film adaptation because it takes on the additional burden of building a world from the ground up.
A lot films take the real-world and tweak a few major things about it. Most assumptions about the real world carry into the film world. Most of the world building is already done before the film even begins. We know what police, firefighters, paramedics, the IRS, Jesus Christ, etc. are. You can take an existing concept and add a twist: police +... cybernetics!
Sci-fi often tries to build a whole new world. That's one of the most appealing things about it. But that means that a sci-fi film cannot import as many natural assumptions, so there's significant overhead in building a whole new world, as new concepts build on other new concepts building on other new concepts. Miss out on one thing and the whole conceptual pyramid might collapse.
I've come to believe that certain stories are simply unadaptable for film because they just have too much complexity to be fit on film — and too much complexity to be streamlined without compromising the narrative.
Endings matter.Much like the second button makes or breaks a shirt. It's the ending of a movie that makes or breaks a movie.
Dune's beginning was good, the middle was fantastic, but the ending was atrocious. Ignoring the lack of a traditional cliff hanger ending (a la empire strikes back) the movie just stops. And it stops poorly. We had just learned about the importance of a special non rhythmic sand walk. And how did the movie end? With everyone walking off into the dunes. With normal rhythmic walking.
Continuity girl had a day off when they filmed the ending. 7/10.
I thought the ending was fine. It was perfectly set up by declaring in the titling right off the bat "Part 1", so I had zero expectations of anything dramatic, climactic, or final. It seemed a suitable place to stop, where Paul and Jessica are apparently about to enter Fremen society, perhaps begin a Fremen life.
I know what you mean, but I think a possible explanation here is that what they were walking on was sand-covered hard ground (rock), which isn't subject to the same issue, perhaps. We saw this when Paul and Jessica were escaping the worm, cautiously at first, and Paul stomps a bit on the ground and realizes, then declares, that the ground is suitable for flat out running.
I've had this comment on my mind since I first read it since it's so very specific to the last shot. I only just finally watched the movie.
They were walking on rock, not sand. Single file over a narrow strip of rock, and a safe path it was already heavily implied that the experienced Fremen would know about.
I've read a couple of times that Villeneuve has said he would like to make Messiah as well, as a third film. I always thought Messiah was more of a extension to the first book than a sequel really.
He's also said he is planning to do much more with part two, to have more fun and put more in. Which I look forward to seeing.
Also, and I haven't been able to confirm this, but a friend who is usually pretty good about getting things right did say yesterday that part two has been greenlit by Warner. The studio has had nothing but good to say about the movie so far so it seems like part two was always on the cards as long as the numbers looked good for part one, which they definitely have - and the US release hasn't even happened yet.
It still needs to be a TV series. But Villeneuve is the sort of director who would never lower himself to TV, he's angry enough about people watching Dune on their TVs as it is.
He's directing the pilot of the new HBO Max series they are developing about the Bene Geserit.