Villeneuve’s Dune: A Review

I watched the new Dune by Villeneuve the other night on HBOMax and it’s wrong from the very beginning. It’s beautiful.

Dune: Arrival 2049

If you like the aesthetics of Arrival and the color palette of the Blade Runner sequel (minus the neon), the film looks fantastic. If you want the entire story, then wait until they actually start producing the sequel to find out where everything goes because as fans of this franchise know: there are many books to draw material from. This film ends on an uneven note that’s less of a cliffhanger and more of an uncertain intermission. David Lynch pulled it off in one movie. I’m just saying. You don’t have to like his 1984 release, he doesn’t.

There is a lot wrong and missing. It’s clinical and has none of the charm of the 80’s film. However, the cast in this 2021 edition is solid — I do want to see them bring the characters to life again. It’s utterly goofy that they put all this effort into half a movie and really don’t have assurances that the rest will get made.

Oh yeah, Zendaya is too present and literally has a line like “This is just the beginning” at the very end of the movie. Do I want to see the rest of this story get made? Yeah, right now I do. Will I care by the time it is released? Hard telling. I plan to rewatch it again because visually it is spectacular.

I think anyone not familiar with the content will enjoy the movie. It works as a modern take on what is now classic sci-fi. I’m just not certain that book fans are really getting the faithful version they might be thinking it is right now. Comparative blinders perhaps.

Are people perceiving this film to be more book accurate because of how faithfully it renders the parts of the story shown onscreen after previous the attempts? There’s a lot that seems to be minimized or excluded that potentially drives the story far off source if future movies are made .

We’ll see!