Review of Dune (2021) by Euu — 23 Oct 2021

Decent movie, but nothing special. It mostly stands on the strengh of its source material and Villeneuve's ability to not destroy it. But even so, it's a very long movie for the story it tries to tell and the pacing is quite a mess. Now, I haven't read the books but I did watch both the Lynch movie and the 2000 miniseries, so I am a bit familiar with the setting and story. And thank God for that, because otherwise I couldn't understand some of the politics of this world. This movie is 2 and a half hours long but going blind into it, you will know less about this universe then you would after watching the first 90 minutes episode of the miniseries, even though they cover mostly the same part of the story. Where is the Emperor? Where is the Navigator Guild? Sure, they are mentioned, but only pasingly and you can tell they are following the Farce Awakens formula of sequel bait questions. Instead of worldbuilding, we get pretentious visions of Zendaya in the desert. We get it, Paul has premonitions, no need for 5 long dream sequences to get that accross. On the acting side, it's quite solid, no surprise given the amount of talent involved. But the problem is the main lead, the entire movie depends on him and he doesn't do that great of a job. Part of the problem is the writting, as we don't get what character Paul really is. Sure, they show him as being naive, but mostly he comes off as edgy or emo and his big character moment at the end, where he has to take a man's life, just comes out of nowhere.

Now, visualy is probably where the movie is the strongest. The exterior shots look fantastic and Villeneuve really makes this seem like a distant planet. I can't say the same about the interiors, but it's mostly personal prefernce, as I think the set design in a movie about space aristocrats should look a bit more extravagant instead of the large empty rooms we keep seeing. Same goes for the costumes. Nothing too bad but they look more like something in a generic scifi video game.

Lastly, I would have probably give this a higher score if it wasn't for the horrible shoundtrack. Zimmer's score is an assault on your eardrums. And it doesn't matter if it's an action scene or a dramatic scene, his idea of music is to have a woman yelling very loudly in the background. And I don't know if it was just the theatre I watched this, but the sound is very loud.

All in all, Dunc is not a bad movie, just a bit of a dissapointment, as they really had a budget this time and could have been something special.