Ever since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, everyone has experienced a shortage of theater-going experiences. Staying home and watching content on TV is good and comfortable but I imagine many of us missed the sensation of being a big dark room with other people watching a massive screen and experiencing the movie in a more immersive, engrossing way.
Since then, I have been to the cinema a few times this year but never with the notion that I was going to see a movie that needed to be viewed on the big screen. Enter Dune. This production, marketed for a long time now, and delayed several times, is the latest work of famed Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, author of other praised movies such as Prisoners, Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, Incendies and others.
Based on the Frank Herbert novel of the same name, this was set to be the return of blockbuster epics for the thinking man. In other words, an alternative to the saturated market of superheroes globalized by Marvel and DC.
Naturally, this particular release was pushed heavily on consumers as a grandiose reason to return to cinemas, as it features the type of spectacular visuals and audio that can only be truly appreciated in the big screen. I certainly was expecting that when I went in to see it a few days ago. But I also expected something more than that.
Source Material & General Thoughts:
Much was made about Frank Herbert’s novel, which I haven’t read, before the movie came out. I read that it was one of the most emblematic and relevant works of literary science-fiction in history, leveraging not only thoughtful political commentary but also some of the most inventive and iconic fantastical elements of the genre. And I heard about how Paul Atreides, in particular, was a landmark protagonist in literature in general, and about how he deserved an authentic and meaningful portrayal in a movie, unlike that which he received in the 1984 adaptation by David Lynch.
So, I went in, and when I left, surprised as I was to find, given the rave reviews the movie is getting, I was underwhelmed. And to say it right away before you keep reading, if you liked the movie, that is great. In fact, I envy you. What I’m about to say about the movie could be interpreted in a different way by someone else. That’s the cool thing about movies, and really any art form in general. So, feel free to have your opinion of course, I have mine and we can just agree to disagree.
Getting into my thoughts then, on a general level, I found Dune to be a beautifully shot, impeccably produced movie, with a soundtrack that works melodically and is nice to hear but gets way to bombastic and repetitive as the movie goes on, and especially, with a story that is painfully slow and uneventful, and characters that as of this initial part of the story, are underdeveloped, clichéd, unengaging, or all of the above.
Presentation:
As you can imagine my review will focus on the last two elements I listed out, but touching briefly on the remaining aspects pertaining to presentation, I found that Villeneuve really wanted to immerse the audience in this world, and on many respects, he succeeded. The settings are unique and very well realized. I believed in this world, even though it is very clearly alien.
The costumes are absolutely incredible, it truly is the perfect blend of fantastical, regal, functional and distinctive. The cinematography is quite good, letting your eyes linger (sometimes a bit too long) on these amazing landscapes and making the most out of the sheer scale of the world, of the objects, and of the sandworms to be specific.
Hans Zimmer’s score on the other hand is a little bit hit and miss for me. Maybe it was the speakers of the theatre I saw this film in, but so often during the movie the score kicks in at an eleven times five. It’s just way too loud at certain points and the choral elements of the tracks just make it even harder on the ears.
On top of that, while there is melodical consistency to the themes in Dune, it’s too consistent to the point of being repetitive. There is a specific set of notes that play over and over again throughout the movie, and they are not associated with anything or anyone in particular, and after a while, they stop meaning anything and start to break the immersion Villeneuve is clearly trying to instill. The tracks are pleasant, like I said before, I like them as an element of the movie Dune, because they fit in. It’s their integration that is flawed.
Regarding the plot and characters, I have to say that for a first installment of a multi-part series, this movie does not hold up as a standalone piece at all. There is no clear beginning, middle and end to the movie, it’s just going, until it randomly decides to stop. And because of that, the pacing is not satisfying. If you want to make comparisons with other works in the same fantastical vein as Dune you’ll find that Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, even the Hobbit movies were able to have self-contained fulfilling narrative structures in their opening installments. Dune features no such thing and because of that, it’s just setup, setup, setup.
Plot Overview & characterization:
The plot revolves around Paul Atreides, son of Duke Leto Atreides who rules the planet Caladan as part of a multi-planetary empire, ruled by an unseen, unnamed emperor who bestows upon Duke Leto governance over the desert planet of Arrakis, where the most valuable resource in the galaxy, the Spice, is found. This emperor took rulership of Arrakis from House Harkonnen (the villains) and gave it to the Atreides, in the hopes of pitting the two Houses against each other, in order to solidify his rule over the galaxy, or at least, that’s what we are made to think.
Meanwhile Paul spends the story learning about Arrakis, the Spice, and its native indigenous people, the Fremen, who frown on the off-worlders exploiting their planet’s natural resources. Also, he has supernatural powers and is seen by many as a sort of genetical Messiah. Basically, he’s space Jesus. A trait he shares with other popular heroes, like Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, Neo, etc.
I find the first part of that description very interesting. The latter, not so much. And the movie focuses in on Paul so much, while maintaining his stoic bland hero persona, which is to be expected from this archetype, but there is no exciting anything around him to make up for that. The movie just throws a bunch of plot elements, like Paul’s powers, his visions, his connection with Zendaya’s character Chani, with his father and mother, with his close friends, with the Fremen in general and with himself, up into the air, but focuses in on none, and so all end up being superficial, in no small part because the movie hinges on Paul so much, and he is quite superficial himself.
Everyone else is just kind of there, and you can pinpoint what their characters are about within a second of looking at them. Paul is Space Jesus, Leto is the dutiful loving father (incidentally, because he is the most human of the characters, he ended up being my favorite character), Chani is the native love interest, Duncan and Gurney are the hard loyal soldiers, essentially the same character so I don’t know why there’s two of them, Baron Harkonnen is the obvious evil villain, Stilgar is the hard but empathetic native leader.
The exception to this is Paul’s mother Jessica, who is well played by Rebecca Ferguson to be fair. She appears to be a complex person, whose story revolves around the enigmatic cult of the Bene Gesserit, a clan of “witches” who serve sort of a mixture of seers of the future and beings with the power to influence others. She birthed Paul with Duke Leto in the hopes that their combined genetic inputs would create a much foretold about messianic figure, but is torn between her desire to have Paul fulfill his destiny and her motherly impulse to protect him, in a way regretting forcing this path onto him.
However, this paragraph of me explaining this is longer than any conversation these characters have about this and that’s a problem. I know that in such a world, the writers probably wanted to employ the rule of “show don’t tell”, especially given the amount of exposition the film has to go through. Still, they exaggerate, leaving the movie to be underwritten and so its characters fall neatly into their archetypal boxes with little dialogue that could flesh them out.
The same is true for some aspects of the world and the plot, which desperately needed more context to explain them to the audience. A good example of this is the poison pill Duke Leto expels onto Baron Harkonnen as he dies, which seemed to come out of nowhere. After leaving the movie and coming home to research, I found that it was given to him by the doctor who betrayed the Atreides, but this was not communicated clearly enough to the audience, not only that the doctor gave it to him (which I simply may have missed), but also what it was and what it did to the Harkonnen’s, which was never addressed.
Worldbuilding & Dream Sequences:
The world of Arrakis itself seemed to receive some contextualization from the character of Dr. Kynes, which was welcome, but she is needlessly killed off, so we lose one of the few people who could actually tell us more new things to make us care about the world. After two and a half hours, I left the theatre knowing almost the same thing as I did when I walked in after having read the IMDB synopsis of the plot.
Where I’m going with all of this is that because of all of these factors combined, by the midway point of this movie, I was kind of bored, and I didn’t really get why or how. I still don’t, in fact. Everyone is praising the movie for its visuals and worldbuilding, and yes, that is the strongest aspect of the film. However, the story itself is not getting so much attention, as far as I can see, just the ambience around the story, and for me that’s not enough. The action is sparse, simple, and not amazing looking, so that’s no big help either. In short, the style is all there, but it lacks substance.
And if I can bring up one last gripe I have, and this is a big and small one at the same time but is emblematic of many of the problems I have with the movie, is that there is a ridiculous amount of repetitive dream sequences and talking about dream sequences in this movie.
If you’re hoping to see a lot of Zendaya in the movie, you are out of luck, because she is as much in this movie as someone who stars in a music video. There is so much footage of her just walking around Arrakis in slow motion, with awe inspiring music in the background in Paul’s visions of her and it’s just too much. It takes up so much time and attention when after a few times it’s not needed anymore. We get it, she’s somehow special and Paul is entranced by her, and she’ll be a big part of his future, but we get none of that in this movie so why show her so much in the first place? It’s just wasting time that could have been used to make the actual active characters of this movie more enriched as people which might have helped me be more engaged.
To be clear, I’m not hating on Zendaya, nor any one actor in Dune. I think none of them are poorly cast, and none of them do a particularly bad job. They just don’t have an opportunity to be bad, just like they don’t have an opportunity to stand out, with the exception of Rebecca Ferguson. They’re just doing what they were asked to do, but what the script demands from them is honestly really not that much, so I’d say that little to no responsibility for the movie’s quality falls on them.
In the end, I was let down by Dune, however I don’t know how much of it stems from me potentially not being a fan of the source material. It may be the case, I admit. However, I can see so much potential in this story from what is presented to me that I do think some responsibility falls on Denis Villeneuve to realize it a more compelling way. Not everyone can be satisfied, and I guess I’m that particular camp of people that weren’t. I have little doubt that I will watch the second one, because I really want to keep giving both this material and this director a chance, but I regret that I really am not able to see much in the way of meaningful substance in this franchise, as of yet.