If there was a sci-fi story that felt like it had plenty of potential to be the next big intergalactic thing, it was Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel, Dune. A franchise that has an extensive number of novels under its belt, the world of Dune felt rich and strong enough with its characters, themes, and environments to work as a successful film franchise along the lines of something like Star Wars or Star Trek but attempts at bringing the source material to the screen has mostly been incredibly unsuccessful. With failed projects like David Lynch’s 1984 film and the 2000s sci-fi channel miniseries, this story seemed to be one that nobody could properly get right on film, and it remained untouched for several decades until French Canadian director, Denis Villeneuve, signed on to direct a new film in 2017. When the movie was released in 2021 (after being pushed back from their 2020 release due to COVID), it was safe to say that this version did leagues better than any of its predecessor. Set in the far future, Paul Atreides (played by Timothy Chalamet) is the ducal heir to House Atreides and is constantly met with cryptic dreams that he believes provide visions of the future. His powers are believed to possibly make him the Kwisatz Haderach, a messianic being with clairvoyant powers needed to guide people to a better future, and his powers could be tested as his father, Leto (played by Oscar Isaac) is given control over the desert planet, Arrakis, which despite its harsh living conditions houses ‘’Spice’’, a valuable substance that is greatly sort after. Now living on Arrakis, House Atreides is soon attacked by the Sardaukar troops who are working with Baron of House Harkonnen (played by Stellan Skarsgård) who wishes to take control of Arrakis once again. Now stranded, Paul and his mother, Jessica (played by Rebecca Ferguson) have to navigate the dangerous dunes of Arrakis and hopefully come across the people that Paul has been having visions of, so that he can retake what was stolen from him and bring safety and peace back to the planet. Dune was a massive hit for critics and audiences when it was released, earning several Oscar nominations and fully secure a follow up film in 2023.

While the story of Dune clearly has potential to work as a film or tv series, it would be incredibly hard to translate it effectively from one source to the other. It had a strong fan-base, but they were incredibly strict in making sure everything from the books were kept in any film version, which was extra difficult as the amount of content in said books was astronomical and it was even coined to be ‘’impossible to film’’ by many that attempted since initial film prospects were given in 1971. It was multiple movie-spanning franchises like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings that showed a Dune film or series could keep attributes from the source material while still working as a proper visual franchise. Probably one of the reasons this film succeeded where others had failed was its choice in director. Denis Villeneuve was not only a huge fan of the book series but had also shown his love for sci-fi stories and environments in previous works of his like Arrival and Blade Runner: 2049. His style of film-making is also much more spectacle-based, allowing his environment to feel large in scale and epic in proportion, which is exactly what this movie requires. Dune seems to emulate a style of epic cinema that hasn’t truly been recaptured, with a feel similar to The Ten Commandments or even Lawrence of Arabia. It quickly separates itself from other similar sci-fi stories like Star Wars and Star Trek with its own expansive world, planets, races, and even mythology, it feels like a world that is prime for exploration and one that is connectable with many people as its made for several table-top and role playing games. One of the downsides to this spectacle-above-all approach isn’t that it lacks a plot, if anything the movie is so jam packed with exposition that it feels like its constantly talking about something in order for everybody to have even a basic idea of what’s going on. To the film’s credit, it does this surprisingly well and it never feels too strongly like a basic plot-dump that doesn’t flow nicely at all, but it isn’t a film that really allows for softer character moments (it’s hard to even remember people smiling in this film), but it’s also a story that doesn’t need too much of that. Also, the last act of the movie is a little messy and not that engaging, despite the length, it isn’t too bad getting through a majority of the film, but the final act almost feels like its tagged on from the next film just to give some sort of fighting climax.

Something that really needed to have been done better for this movie to truly work as a full package was its cast of characters. This isn’t to say that the handling of the characters in this film was extremely poor, but for how this story and narrative is laid out, they needed to be handled much better than they were. Characters in a sci-fi/fantasy story are the real glue to keeping the audience as engaged as they are. You can have all the worlds, different languages, action sequences, colorful creatures and all that stuff packed into your world and mythos, but if you don’t care about the characters within said world, nobody will care about any of that stuff. A world and environment which focus heavily on political intrigue, custody battles of planets and inner-trade wars for a special mineral needs to have likeable people at the forefront in order to get people engage, and unfortunately this movie doesn’t really do that. The characters aren’t bad or even uninteresting as some of them are actually given some good backstories and roles, but what they have in backstory, they lack in personality. None of them really exhibit many different character traits as this environment doesn’t really offer any other characteristic outside of ‘’harden weary person who expects the worst’’ kind of attitude. What saves it outside of the decent backstories, are the actors themselves, as they do the best they can with this material and make it work. It is an expansive cast, so a majority of the characters do go underdeveloped, but the expansive cast is packed with quality actors, so even small roles are noticeable due to getting great talent. Timothy Chalamet works as the lead character, Rebecca Ferguson is a little wimpy in her role, but its not too annoying, Jason Momoa does stand out in this environment, but he has great charm to him, and Stellan Skarsgård actually brings some good intimidation to what would otherwise be a generic villain. Not every character works as Oscar Isaacs, despite acting perfectly fine, never truly feels like an authority figure, and Zendaya seems to only exist to pretend like she’s shooting perfume commercials, but other than that, it’s a great cast.

One thing that was always needed for a film version of Dune was the production value, more specifically the epic quality and massive scale that would have been needed to make this truly feel like a faithful version of the story, as it was known for this grand epic quality. Thankfully, this movie really manages to capture that quality through its technicals, livening up what could be a pretty laborious sit and transform it into something that can provide some truly gorgeous visual. The strange thing about this is that the movie is strangely not very interesting looking from a color-palette standpoint, focusing on a lot of muted browns and greys which makes the environment look really washed out and uninteresting in a not-clever way, so how this movie manages to still look great comes from its cinematography and its effects. The shots in this movie done by Greg Fraser do a great job showing off the environments as desolate, yet really capture the space, presence, and angle of every frame to make it all look so expertly crafted and so detailed. It takes bland-looking locations and does everything in its power to make it look as interesting as it can, and the effects double down on that by being very impressive, even for a movie like this. Its designs are a little basic by sci-fi standards (those insect ships excluding), but a lot of the CG really makes a lot of the action sequences and different creatures look great. The script for this movie is really what keeps it working as well as it does, with famous screenwriter, Eric Roth, along with help from Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts, really helping to make all the background information and multiple different characters work as well as they do without it feeling too wordy and false.

Dune is a very long, very story-pact, very little character-based, very spectacle-based movie, and weirdly that isn’t too much of a detriment for this film. What would usually act as an incredibly dull, lifeless, overly talky movie that cares more about needless politics than substantial characters weirdly worked around this issue through great directing, acting and effects to make such a monumental and large story work as a film. It is going to continue with another movie thanks to the success this movie had, and honestly it feels like it could hit the bullseye if it expands upon what didn’t work in this film and keep what worked here. The characters could have been more interesting, the environments could have been better look (at least from a color factor) and the last act could have been much stronger and less anti-climactic, but overall, for this movie to work as well as it did, shows that its in the right hands. Check it out, see the famous Sand Worms do their thing and see if this is a movie you would want to see have a proper conclusion.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,