Review of Dune (2021) by Sarrr — 07 Nov 2021

The concept of the film is completely incomprehensible. On the one hand, it shows just that beautiful overview footage to demonstrate the "epicness" of what is going on, while on the other hand it instantly cuts off sometimes very important details for the narrative of the story, including some narrative lines and characters.

I enjoyed the first part of the film (before the flight to Arrakis), and frankly, I'm very saddened by everything after the middle of the film. It's just one mess. Where clarification is needed for people who haven't read the book at all, no voice-over narration is done, no main character talk. Just a picture: the one who needs it will understand. This is very bad!

Cast 50-50. Personally, I liked the cast, but the play of individual actors here is exactly the opposite. Personally, I thought Oscar Isaac was cast for nothing as Leto Atreides, but he played it perfectly. The wonderful Stellan Skarsgard (Vladimir Harkonnen), on the other hand, is simply awful. Instead of the strong (as a person), ruthless and cunning ruler of the House of Harkonnen, we are shown some butcher-burner with incomprehensible motivation from the principle of a harmful child.

Also some of the characters have had their gender and racial identity changed to please modern tolerance. It is not clear why. Apparently, just to make it happen.

Seems to me (looking specifically at the first half of the film) Villeneuve and Warner Bros. in general should have made not a two-part film, but an extended ten-part film without limiting themselves to the time frame. Use the expansion of Herbert's (canonical) universe, especially since there are more than enough books written. And certainly don't change the gender of the characters, cut out events important to the narrative, and explain what's going on to the audience. I don't think voice-over is a good move in modern filmmaking, but introduce new characters, and include additional dialogues of the main characters with them, or just their conversation in the background.