My Dune Review

My Dune Review

by Aodhfionn Tysysacha

 

ENVY ME! I got to watch the new Dune movie.

Sandworms dominate the sands of Araxes and the minds of people the way Sharks and Whales dominate the sea and the minds of people when they think of the ocean. Fear and awe. They're huge, too big for the mind to comprehend. In that way, Dune is maybe too big. Dune was always filled with innumerable things too big for the mind to grasp. 

An impossibly complex plot by their enemies, surrounded and beset by people with their own impossibly complex agenda’s and plots.

In the novel, The Emperor remarks that Duke Atreides own military forces are nearly as effective as his feared Sardukar forces, and his honourable ways are making him popular among the other nobility of the Landsraad. He and the devious Baron Harkonnen hatch a plan to put the potential upstart in his place. Their plan is like giving a political appointment to oversee Afghanistan, they assume the planet itself will overwhelm them enough that they will be vulnerable to the coup de grâce.

The movie does not mention the minor detail that the Atreides are not just politically popular, but martially competent, thus the Emperor’s need for complex intrigues to bring him down. I bring it up, because it is a minor detail I have had to explain many times since the first time I read the novel 50 years ago.

The movie does not justify the need for the complexity, people just accept these things, just handwavingly 'because reasons'. I think the average viewer finds it sufficient that The Emperor is a douche and the Baron is hateful, good enough reasons for most people.

Greed and Power Lust almost beyond the wildest dreams of avarice. Villeneuve decided that you can’t really show it, so you just show the side effects around the fringes.

The native Fremen, long acclimated to the deadly planet, have no reason to suspect the Atreides will be any different than any of the previous colonial oppressors. It takes more than platitudes to convince them that the Atreides might be sincere about making them partners instead of grist for the mill and dirt under their boot heel.

Colonial oppression, ethnic tensions, climate disasters, corporate fascism, craven careerism, political myopia writ very very very large.

The film takes itself way seriously, as does each scene. It is as if each scene was designed to be stand alone to be either breath-taking, awe-inspiring, surreal, poised, or riveting. Good pacing, enough dialogue to clue in the noobs, small snippets of establishing shots to show details so as not to weigh us down with clumsy exposition dialogue, images of epically imposing dangerous things, vivid action scenes. 

Villeneuve quipped that Dune is too immense to watch on a television screen, and apparently it is too immense for one movie. It ends abruptly. That is far and away the biggest disappointment.

I was swept up in the swirling sand, and imagined the dust-choked aridity and paranoia borne of layers upon layers of intrigues generations in the making. 

Despite not even making it all the way thru the first novel, the movie did a good job of inclusion of detail yet streamlining the narrative to accommodate cinematic pacing sensibilities. Some complexities were smoothed for the noobs. Movies are a business, noobs buy tickets.

My favorite film of all time was Blade Runner. Villeneuve’s sequel was fantastic, so I had faith in him that if anyone could do it, he could.

Cinematic charismatica spectacle, monolithic scale, majestic landscapes, visceral soundscape, monumental architecture, breathtaking visual imagination set pieces, impressive spacecraft, charismatic actors wearing epic costumes, and full of nifty gear.

Asking for a glass of water has never been so dramatic.

Overly serious grandiose grimness with nothing less than the interstellar fate of the free worlds at stake at all times. 

Paul rocks magnetic pensiveness troubled fragile conflicted psyche of a reluctant survivor turned would-be savior, studied his Hamlet pinned in on all sides by the weight of history, fate, and circumstance beyond his control, not to mention a bizarre diabolic eugenics program.

Hero’s journey, survival story, occasional arcane details, and prescient visions without much or any context.

The partly disturbing prescient visions come with no context, they are not a reliable way to get information about future events. Chani is more of a muse and spirit guide than a character until the end. It is like finding out your hot imaginary friend actually exists and wants to hang out.

Atreides swordmaster Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa) rocks the action, backed by a thundering orchestral score. Duncan is the only guy on the planet with a sense of humor. Momoa is an unstoppable force. The combat scenes were very individualized, intimate in a way, filled with anticipation and threat of dangerous mayhem,

Reasonably coherent narrative albeit avoiding readily digestible exposition that would be useful to the uninitiated. The history and complex societal structure are excessively condensed but not entirely absent. Blah blah blah, power and influence, blah blah blah trade war, blah blah blah oppression and genocide.

The Spice itself is virtually a throwaway line about it’s a mind-expanding substance’s benefits to health, longevity and knowledge, and needed to pilot faster than light spaceships necessary for interstellar trade. 

I personally felt the movie would have done well with just a little bit more fanboy servicing. The linguistics were managed, but not mastered. For those of us who read the novels, the language was a big part of the setting.

Villeneuve’s Dune is one HUGE overture. I think it assumes we already know a lot of the detail, and doesn’t care if you don’t. The movie wastes little dialogue and screen time on exposition. You either read the novel(s) or you are just along for the ride, deal with it. There is minimal noob friendly exposition, but given how much I had to explain to my lovely wife, obviously not enough.

I suspect Villeneuve opted to make the movie hinge on being a sensory experience, more than concentrating on acting. Which is a shame, because he had fantastic cast to work with, but made them secondary to the admitted luxuriously detailed and inspiringly artistic sensory experience. I anticipate a fabulous collection of screensavers in our future. I think there are no small actors in the movie, although there are several HUGE name actors in small parts.

Villeneuve obviously would have preferred to cast Marlon Brando as The Baron Harkonnen, but Brando is inconveniently deceased. The audience cheered when he floated. Shout out to Lynch, but who cares, the audience loved it. Stellan Skarsgård did his best Marlon Brando impression, I loved it. Obviously watched Apocalypse Now way too many times. Stellan Skarsgård is the runaway winner for MVP in this movie, but mostly because most of the stellar cast is grossly underutilized.

For some reason NO ONE wants to cast Gurney Halleck as "an ugly lump of a man" as depicted in the novels. Josh Brolin will have to do. Less jarring to my sensibilities than Patrick Stewart. I thought Patrick H. Moriarty did a fair job in the mini-series. But you know, meh, whatever, I am not going to waste emotional energy caring.

The music is fabulous and sometimes a little unnerving, almost a form of ‘the voice’ by itself.

A pageant of color controlled aesthetics, sleek utilitarianism, and brutalism designs.

Dune is in no small part about patriarchy, but the film shows how women subvert that patriarchy.

I liked the great sandworm’s giant maw swirling vortex of doom. There should be some sort of an award for the scariest sphincter ever.

The movie will no doubt suffer from the sheer weight of excessive fan expectation, but also its own self-importance. Villeneuve’s awe-inducing vision successfully transported me to Arrakis and I felt immersed. People who have not even seen the film are hate-bombing it because Villeneuve made some flippant comment about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Villeneuve’s Dune is made out of awesome, all those hateful reviews are without serious merit, it is merely a reflection that they are just hateful people. Minor details they blow out of proportion as if anyone other than hater/whiners look for a reason to hate-whine. If we’ve collectively learned anything from the past 6 years, it is to be suspect of loudmouthed shameless hater-whiners.