LogFAQs > #974928790

So I was at the library the other day and decided to see what they had, and this is what I picked up....

Dune: Part One (2021)
Directed by: Denis Villeneuve
Written by: Frank Herbert; adapted by Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, Eric Roth
Starring: Timothe Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Stellan Skarsgard, Zendaya, Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Javier Bardem, Dave Bautista
Previous status: Never seen

"I see you found the mood."

That quote - from Brolin - spoke to me, because I hadn't felt "in the mood" to watch movies for a while. And I thought the library might get me jumpstarted again. It did, at least for now. Really, that's some cast list.

That said, I found the first hour of the movie to be way too long, with too much exposition that didn't exactly feel relevant, and too much scenery porn for my liking. Sure, the movie deserved its Oscars for visual effects and production design, but this felt like too much exposition. The first major plot point took place an hour into the movie, when Paul inhales the "spice" - everything before that was setup, and it started to get tiresome. I found myself distracted.

There's also the villains' cliche appearance, clearly ripping off of Voldemort, with the Baron having the gluttony thing. They didn't make an effort to hide that. Yes, I know the book was originally written in the 1960s, but that doesn't change that this modern lens clearly ripped things off from other successful franchises. In fact, it almost felt like "The Voice" - a Bene Gesserit power - was a Jedi mind trick, and Paul fulfilled the prophecy to bring balance to The Force. Perhaps this is why Dune was adapted into a movie in 1984 and was done so again in 2000 and now - to make $$$ off the Star Wars trilogies despite its sheer lack of alien species. Everyone here is some kind of human, though each race has its own powers and benefits. Perhaps this was something that inspired George Lucas to do it better for cinematic purposes.

And this is what leads me to argue that Star Wars is better for the silver screen and Dune is better as a novel, with many things left in the mind of the reader. There's more pages for exposition there. I have more patience for it when reading or when gaming. It's all about the medium you're using. Something like Star Wars is too surface-level to work as a deep novel, while something like Dune benefits from descriptions, lore, and exposition, to immerse the reader in its world. While this movie was visually dazzling, I found it hard to care about the characters and the world because it was too stripped down and yet I felt like I was supposed to understand the lore when all that went by really fast. To adapt a tome like Dune into a movie, you need to strip it down somewhat. Don't take out things like Jason Momoa's self-sacrificing badassery or Dr. Kynes (Duncan-Brewster) outwitting the Clonetroopers, obviously. The sand worm stuff was all necessary and the thing looked like your standard sand worm except less skin around the "eye" to allow the "mouth" to open backward. Good job on the design team there.

While, yes, Zendaya is cute, the sword tech is neat (though I thought it was only used for sparring at first, as it looked like simulation), and the blue eye effects were very noticeable, I felt like I was thirsting to read the book as opposed to go see Part Two this fall. Too bad the library didn't have any copies of the original. The movie gets a lot of points for the visuals but given how elongated it is, I can't give it any more than a 3.5/5.