Review of Dune (2021) by Piglordofallham — 01 Nov 2021

"Lawrence of Arabia," was a good film, thankyou very much for basically making the space version of it Mr. Villeneuve. I can clearly understand that you also enjoy Dune, but may have not (like many of the general population) been too amped up over the 1984 version, which was frankly baffling, but had many excellent ideas that were just not capable of being put on a movie screen.. yet. Now that we have the CGI to create an utterly bland desert planet full of goofy outfits and giant worms here in the 21st century, you'd think we'd have also figured out that slow-motion effects should not be used to elongate every dreamlike sequence in a freaking film.

I enjoy this "take" of Dune, even if it is a bit generic, but that's kind of what you get when you are basically copy-pasting imagery described in the book. Granted they got a lot of it right except for the "hunter-killer" for some reason. Casting was great, aside from Momoa and Drax who probably didn't deserve the amount of screen time they both seemingly got. Newcomers all did well, but some of the others like Zendaya Maree Stoermer Coleman (lacking range or screentime), sort of seemed out of place as did Josh Brolin who must have not read the book's description of his character at all. Stellan Skarsgård didn't even bother to chew the scenery knowing his entire body outside of his face would be CGI anyway, so that was sort of disappointing. Oscar Isaac plays a pretty good father figure, but the beard didn't make him look only barely 20 years older than his own son unfortunately.

Overall I thought the fighting choreography kind of sucked, the battle hardened imperial forces looked like goobers and the "highly trained" Atreides guards didn't seem too tough either (with a few scenes having random women fighting alongside them). Good thing the director completely forgot to put in any gore or violence, otherwise I might've actually cared about these random extras who didn't put much of a fight for their very lives up against their old rivals- the Harkonnen.. since like forever.

I was one of the few that actually got pretty bored with "Bladerunner 2049" when it hit theaters, and ultimately left the showing after Jared Leto showed up to ruin the entire movie. Of course I finished it later and thought, "Wow, this Director sure knows how to make a pretty movie stretch far beyond a 45 minute plot." Unsurprisingly- 2049 also flopped at the box office for being an overly theatrical prima donna that was aping the original film to the point where they had to retcon the original film's storyline just to make the pseudo-sequel make some semblance of sense. Or maybe it was to explain Ford's cameo? Its hard to know for sure.

All-in-all, I think this version does the best job adapting SOME parts of the book, but visually it was quite bland. I think some of the costume designs looked better, but some of them also looked worse than the original David Lynch film. The Harkonnen weren't nearly as imposing or disgusting, the whole reasoning behind the ordeal was actually explained better in the original film, so that's pretty atrocious writing to be honest. I also wasn't a big fan of the constant flashbacks (flash forwards?) from the main character slowing down already kind of slower paced film. It didn't ever feel too long, but the end of "part one," if we get a part two that is, was definitely not a highlight for me. In fact, the final twenty minutes of the movie basically go nowhere, because all the tension is gone when they aren't being chased by an entire army or hunted by the Sardaukar. Some of the best moments were early on, with Lady Jessica, her relationship with her son, the "Gom Jabbar" scene, which was honestly very well done and helped illuminate why its so important to Paul as a character and for his development later on and the movie spent a bit more time building up (though unsuccessful) other side characters as well. I think the book is impossible to really adapt, though many have tried. Denis Villeneuve isn't a terrible director, but I personally am not a big fan of most of his films. The fact that he has tried to do more or less the impossible with Dune is very commendable though and I would at least like to see a part two, but lets hope it lands on a better note, preferably a little less bland and a little less long.