It’s not easy to create a new science fiction universe. Like in any sci-fi adaptation, there are places, people and rules that you have to understand before you step foot into their world. We have seen great translations from paper to screen (“Lord of the Rings,” “Game of Thrones”) but “Dune” unfortunately falls short of previous successful adaptation explorations. The problem with “Dune” is that it is so concentrated on being a visual masterpiece, that it focuses on landscapes and cinematography to propel the story forward instead of plot. And when it finally does come to plot, there is not a lot there.
Trailer:
The movie is based on the 1965 book of the same name, written by Frank Herbert. The movie is hard to understand and people have complained about the book as well – it is long and incredibly hard to follow.
The movie opens with a title sequence. The planet Arrakis has been ravaged by hunters of the House Harkonnen. The house and it’s people have been claiming all the soils nutrients from the locals who live in the sand dunes. When the House Harkonnen discover that they are close to running the planet dry, they turn authority of Arrakis over to the House Atreides, where Duke Leo (Oscar Isaac) and his wife Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) and son Paul (Timothée Chalamet) will take rule of the dying planet – the only problem, is that they do not know that it is a dying planet.
During this time, the ruling class is looking for a "Kwisatz Haderach", or a messiah figure, who will save and unite the planets together. Paul (Chalamet) is rumored to be the savior and is destined to unite the people of Arrakis and the people of the House of Atredies together. Through this journey, he has dreams of an Arrakis woman, Chani (Zendaya), who he believes he is meant to rescue.
The movie has all elements that should create a successful sci-fi franchise: visually stunning planets, war between houses, a potential love interest, but the director, Denis Villeneuve, struggles to convey the emotion of the characters on the screen. More concerned with the aesthetic of the movie, they sacrifice the plot and structure for massive set pieces.
The two-hour and forty-minute run time, drags on. By the hour mark, I was struggling to stay invested. Each character, besides Chalamet and Ferguson, felt like cameo’s, an impressively cast cameo, but still all the same. Zendaya who was pitched by the studio to be one of the main characters in the film had seven minutes of screen time. Seven minutes. Each of the other characters barely hold onto fifteen minutes in the nearly three hour epic.
Dune Part I – a clever catch. If all goes well, the plan is to separate the movie into two, or three, separate installments. I have heard mixed reviews thus far, but as you can tell above, it’s not a movie that I would necessarily want to revisit. It will undeniably do well at the Oscars for cinematography, costume and score (Hans Zimmer crushing it, as per usual), but I doubt it will translate to any of the major categories.
Delayed due to the pandemic and with a budget of nearly $165M, Dune so far as opened with $30M. Yikes. "Dune" is available in theaters and will be streaming on HBO Max through November 21st.
Movie Review: 5/10
And that’s the sitch.
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