Post by lenlenlen1 on Oct 26, 2021 16:14:22 GMT
DUNE (2021) directed by Dennis Villeneuve.
SPOILERS for those who haven’t seen it!!!
I did like this movie. But I could have, should have, loved it. This review is filled with both pros and cons so bear with me...
Amazing SFX and fantastic world building! In short, you "believe". This universe is fully realized, (Except for a curious lack of Emperor, though he is mentioned). I am glad to have seen it in a theatre. And I was so blown away by the visuals that I actually saw it again at home that night. Call me crazy.
Also, very good sound and music. The sound is used to punctuate the “alieness” of everything, and the massive size and scope of several images throughout. The score is also truly alien and epic in equal parts.
Very nice performances (the best by Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica) and you buy everyone as the characters they play.
But curiously, even though the movie is long, a lot of the characters STILL don't get the screen time they could have gotten. Most of the expanded time is devoted to Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa) and he delivers a nice performance as well, but he is mostly relegated to fight scenes. In short, we don't really learn anything more about the supporting characters than we did in previous Dune movies. There’s a lot of standing around behind Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac) in this.
So where is the extra time spent? Well... we see Paul (Timothee Chalamet) and Lady Jessica having breakfast. We see them sitting in a tent. We see them spinning around in a space ship. We see him having lots of visions (visions that by the way, may or may not come to pass, which makes them worthless IMO), and visions of Zendaya (as Chani) whom, as pretty as she is, does nothing in this movie. Literally nothing. She's merely an object of desire, nothing more. But we have no idea why she should be SO desired, so she basically boils down to a lot of pretty shots in the desert. Her shots are like watching those European perfume commercials (of which she has done a few).
This next quibble may or may not be a secret to you (did I mention SPOLIERS?), but this movie is one half of a movie. And the bad thing is, that it totally feels like it. In a bad way.
This whole movie is really everything that happens right up until where the good stuff is supposed to start happening... but then... the end.
And what’s worse is that it’s not "the end" until next year, like the Lord of the Rings franchise, but rather the end until "we don't know when" because the sequel is not actually scheduled! WTF? It’s a coming of age story where the main character does NOT come of age.
And we have no idea if the studio will actually green light a sequel seeing as how this movie will most likely under perform at the box office (To be fair the movie did make approximately 40 mill in theatres this opening weekend, and may make back its money in worldwide box office, but a monster hit like they were hoping for it will not be.)
Anyway, at the end of this movie is where the first third of David Lynch’s version is. Lynch, for as much as I’ve always contended that he was the wrong director for this project, was actually quite economical in his use of time and delivers a full movie. Whereas in this, Villeneuve (a much better director for this project), is so reverential to this novel that he can’t seem do the editing needed to give us a full story even though he’s given almost three hours to deliver.
Ultimately he’s so in love in with Dune that he thinks it sacrilegious to get rid of stuff that makes little difference to the overall flow of things. And yet, he still somehow fails to deliver the stuff we DO need.
We need less political intrigue BS and more Paul figuring out who he is, because that’s the true heart of the story. It’s what counts when later in the story he takes his revenge and become the supreme being in the universe. THAT’S the story. Not whether or not the spaceships move like dragonflies, or whether or not force fields are broken by slow movement (worthless force fields if you ask me), or whether or not Zendaya looks pretty against a desert backdrop (she does).
All the details are very cool, no doubt, but when adapting to a movie you edit all that stuff out to get to the heart of the matter: It’s a coming of age story where the main character not only gets his deserved revenge but he gets much more than he bargained for (Messianic power). You don’t need two movies (which will add up to almost 6 hours if the sequel gets made) to tell one story, just so you can pad it with minutiae. Too much reverence sometimes is NOT a good thing.
However, going into it with all this in mind, I still recommend seeing this movie, and in theatres. Because it is that epic in scope.
Enjoy. And let’s hope we get that sequel, because that’s where the really good stuff will happen!
SPOILERS for those who haven’t seen it!!!
I did like this movie. But I could have, should have, loved it. This review is filled with both pros and cons so bear with me...
Amazing SFX and fantastic world building! In short, you "believe". This universe is fully realized, (Except for a curious lack of Emperor, though he is mentioned). I am glad to have seen it in a theatre. And I was so blown away by the visuals that I actually saw it again at home that night. Call me crazy.
Also, very good sound and music. The sound is used to punctuate the “alieness” of everything, and the massive size and scope of several images throughout. The score is also truly alien and epic in equal parts.
Very nice performances (the best by Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica) and you buy everyone as the characters they play.
But curiously, even though the movie is long, a lot of the characters STILL don't get the screen time they could have gotten. Most of the expanded time is devoted to Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa) and he delivers a nice performance as well, but he is mostly relegated to fight scenes. In short, we don't really learn anything more about the supporting characters than we did in previous Dune movies. There’s a lot of standing around behind Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac) in this.
So where is the extra time spent? Well... we see Paul (Timothee Chalamet) and Lady Jessica having breakfast. We see them sitting in a tent. We see them spinning around in a space ship. We see him having lots of visions (visions that by the way, may or may not come to pass, which makes them worthless IMO), and visions of Zendaya (as Chani) whom, as pretty as she is, does nothing in this movie. Literally nothing. She's merely an object of desire, nothing more. But we have no idea why she should be SO desired, so she basically boils down to a lot of pretty shots in the desert. Her shots are like watching those European perfume commercials (of which she has done a few).
This next quibble may or may not be a secret to you (did I mention SPOLIERS?), but this movie is one half of a movie. And the bad thing is, that it totally feels like it. In a bad way.
This whole movie is really everything that happens right up until where the good stuff is supposed to start happening... but then... the end.
And what’s worse is that it’s not "the end" until next year, like the Lord of the Rings franchise, but rather the end until "we don't know when" because the sequel is not actually scheduled! WTF? It’s a coming of age story where the main character does NOT come of age.
And we have no idea if the studio will actually green light a sequel seeing as how this movie will most likely under perform at the box office (To be fair the movie did make approximately 40 mill in theatres this opening weekend, and may make back its money in worldwide box office, but a monster hit like they were hoping for it will not be.)
Anyway, at the end of this movie is where the first third of David Lynch’s version is. Lynch, for as much as I’ve always contended that he was the wrong director for this project, was actually quite economical in his use of time and delivers a full movie. Whereas in this, Villeneuve (a much better director for this project), is so reverential to this novel that he can’t seem do the editing needed to give us a full story even though he’s given almost three hours to deliver.
Ultimately he’s so in love in with Dune that he thinks it sacrilegious to get rid of stuff that makes little difference to the overall flow of things. And yet, he still somehow fails to deliver the stuff we DO need.
We need less political intrigue BS and more Paul figuring out who he is, because that’s the true heart of the story. It’s what counts when later in the story he takes his revenge and become the supreme being in the universe. THAT’S the story. Not whether or not the spaceships move like dragonflies, or whether or not force fields are broken by slow movement (worthless force fields if you ask me), or whether or not Zendaya looks pretty against a desert backdrop (she does).
All the details are very cool, no doubt, but when adapting to a movie you edit all that stuff out to get to the heart of the matter: It’s a coming of age story where the main character not only gets his deserved revenge but he gets much more than he bargained for (Messianic power). You don’t need two movies (which will add up to almost 6 hours if the sequel gets made) to tell one story, just so you can pad it with minutiae. Too much reverence sometimes is NOT a good thing.
However, going into it with all this in mind, I still recommend seeing this movie, and in theatres. Because it is that epic in scope.
Enjoy. And let’s hope we get that sequel, because that’s where the really good stuff will happen!
