Review of Dune (2021) by Emilytropic — 25 Oct 2021

This movie tries so hard. It 100% excels at it's gorgeous visuals/music but it falls flat in too many other ways to be a worthy epic. We get long, gorgeous sweeping vistas but very poor to no real character and story development.

Even the 1984 version even did a better job at storytelling and connecting with characters/motivations. The sometimes banal dialog doesn't give you the impression these are great houses with great leaders.

There is a few poor casting picks and some gender/race swapping of characters that was politically motivated instead of story driven. I already worry this telling will stray even further away from source material to appease modern political sensibilities.

Dune tells an unpalatable story about religious jihad and the ugly machinations of power. Why are you make a movie about source material you don't like it? While a remarkable effort that pushed music/visuals to new places, this is real sound and fury, but is far from communicating the story well.