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Back in the day, the two big counterculture sci-fi novels were the libertarian-division Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, which made the word “grok” a thing for many years (not so much anymore; hardly even pops up in crossword puzzles today) and Frank Herbert ’s 1965 Dune , a futuristic geopolitical allegory that was anti-corporate, pro-eco-radicalism, and Islamophilic. Why mega-producers and mega-corporations have been pursuing the ideal film adaptation of this piece of intellectual property for so many decades is a question beyond the purview of this review, but it’s an interesting one.

As a pretentious teenager in the 1970s, I didn’t read much sci-fi, even countercultural sci-fi, so Dune missed me. When David Lynch ’s 1984 film of the novel, backed by then mega-producer Dino De Laurentiis , came out I didn’t read it either. As a pretentious twentysomething film buff, not yet professional grade, the only thing that mattered to me was that it was a Lynch picture. But for some reason—due diligence, or curiosity about how my life might have been different had I gone with Herbert and Heinlein rather than Nabokov and Genet back in the day—I read Herbert’s book recently. Yeah, the prose is clunky and the dialogue often clunkier, but I liked much of it, particularly the way it threaded its social commentary with enough scenes of action and cliff-hanging suspense to fill an old-time serial.

The new film adaptation of the book, directed by Denis Villeneuve from a script he wrote with Eric Roth and Jon Spaihts , visualizes those scenes magnificently. As many of you are aware, “Dune” is set in the very distant future, in which humanity has evolved in many scientific respects and mutated in a lot of spiritual ones. Wherever Earth was, the people in this scenario aren’t on it, and the imperial family of Atreides is, in a power play we don’t become entirely conversant with for a while, tasked with ruling the desert planet of Arrakis. Which yields something called “the spice”—that’s crude oil for you eco-allegorists in the audience—and presents multivalent perils for off-worlders (that’s Westerners for you geo-political allegorists in the audience).

To say I have not admired Villeneuve’s prior films is something of an understatement. But I can’t deny that he’s made a more-than-satisfactory movie of the book. Or, I should say, two-thirds of the book. (The filmmaker says it’s half but I believe my estimate is correct.) The opening title calls it “Dune Part 1” and while this two-and-a-half hour movie provides a bonafide epic experience, it's not coy about connoting that there’s more to the story. Herbert’s own vision corresponds to Villeneuve’s own storytelling affinities to the extent that he apparently did not feel compelled to graft his own ideas to this work. And while Villeneuve has been and likely remains one of the most humorless filmmakers alive, the novel wasn’t a barrel of laughs either, and it’s salutary that Villeneuve honored the scant light notes in the script, which I suspect came from Roth.

Throughout, the filmmaker, working with amazing technicians including cinematographer Greig Fraser , editor Joe Walker , and production designer Patrice Vermette , manages to walk the thin line between grandeur and pomposity in between such unabashed thrill-generating sequences as the Gom Jabbar test, the spice herder rescue, the thopter-in-a-storm nail-biter, and various sandworm encounters and attacks. If you’re not a “Dune” person these listings sound like gibberish, and you will read other reviews complaining about how hard to follow this is. It’s not, if you pay attention, and the script does a good job with exposition without making it seem like EXPOSITION. Most of the time, anyway. But, by the same token, there may not be any reason for you to be interested in “Dune” if you’re not a science-fiction-movie person anyway. The novel’s influence is huge, particularly with respect to George Lucas . DESERT PLANET, people. The higher mystics in the “Dune” universe have this little thing they call “The Voice” that eventually became “Jedi Mind Tricks.” And so on.

Villeneuve’s massive cast embodies Herbert’s characters, who are generally speaking more archetypes than individuals, very well. Timothée Chalamet leans heavily on callowness in his early portrayal of Paul Atreides, and shakes it off compellingly as his character realizes his power and understands how to Follow His Destiny. Oscar Isaac is noble as Paul’s dad the Duke; Rebecca Ferguson both enigmatic and fierce as Jessica, Paul’s mother. Zendaya is an apt, a better than apt, Chani. In a deviation from Herbert’s novel, the ecologist Kynes is gender-switched, and played with intimidating force by Sharon Duncan-Brewster . And so on.

A little while back, complaining about the Warner Media deal that’s going to put “Dune” on streaming at the same time as it plays theaters, Villeneuve said the movie had been made “as a tribute to the big-screen experience.” At the time, that struck me as a pretty dumb reason to make a movie. Having seen “Dune,” I understand better what he meant, and I kind of approve. The movie is rife with cinematic allusions, mostly to pictures in the tradition of High Cinematic Spectacle. There’s “ Lawrence of Arabia ,” of course, because desert. But there’s also “ Apocalypse Now ” in the scene introducing Stellan Skarsgård ’s bald-as-an-egg Baron Harkonnen. There’s “ 2001: A Space Odyssey .” There are even arguable outliers but undeniable classics such as Hitchcock’s 1957 version of “The Man Who Knew Too Much” and Antonioni’s “Red Desert.” Hans Zimmer ’s let’s-test-those-subwoofers score evokes Christopher Nolan . (His music also nods to Maurice Jarre ’s “Lawrence” score and György Ligeti’s “Atmospheres” from “2001.”) But there are visual echoes of Nolan and of Ridley Scott as well.

These will tickle or infuriate certain cinephiles dependent on their immediate mood or general inclination. I thought them diverting. And they didn’t detract from the movie’s main brief. I’ll always love Lynch’s “Dune,” a severely compromised dream-work that (not surprising given Lynch’s own inclination) had little use for Herbert’s messaging. But Villeneuve’s movie is “Dune.”

Opens in theaters on October 22nd, available on HBO Max the same day. This review was filed on September 3rd in conjunction with the world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film Credits

Dune (2021)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, some disturbing images and suggestive material.

155 minutes

Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides

Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica

Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto Atreides

Josh Brolin as Gurney Halleck

Zendaya as Chani

Stellan Skarsgård as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen

Dave Bautista as Beast Rabban

Sharon Duncan-Brewster as Liet Kynes

Stephen Henderson as Thufir Hawat

Chang Chen as Dr. Wellington Yueh

David Dastmalchian as Piter De Vries

Charlotte Rampling as Reverend Mother Mohiam

Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho

Javier Bardem as Stilgar

Golda Rosheuvel as Shadout Mapes

Denis Villeneuve

Writer (based on the novel written by)

Frank Herbert
Jon Spaihts

Cinematographer

Greig Fraser
Hans Zimmer

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Timothee chalamet in denis villeneuve’s ‘dune’: film review | venice 2021.

Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi classic gets epic screen treatment, with an all-star cast that also features Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa and Zendaya.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Unless you’re sufficiently up on Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi classic to know your Sardaukars from your Bene Gesserit, your crysknife from your hunter-seeker, chances are you’ll be glazing over not too far into Dune . Or wishing that House Atreides and House Harkonnen would kick off a vogue ball.

Full credits

Venue: Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition) Distributor: Warner Bros. Production companies: Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Pictures Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgard, Dave Bautista, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, Chang Chen, David Dastmalchian, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem, Babs Olusankokum, Golda Rosheuvel, Benjamin Clementine Director: Denis Villeneuve Screenwriters: Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, Eric Roth, based on the novel by Frank Herbert Producers: Mary Parent, Denis Villeneuve, Cale Boyter, Joe Caracciolo Jr. Executive producers: Tanya Lapointe, Joshua Grode, Herbert W. Gains, Jon Spaihts, Thomas Tull, Brian Herbert, Byron Merritt, Kim Herbert Director of photography: Greig Fraser Production designer: Patrice Vermette Costume designer: Jacqueline West, Robert Morgan Editor: Joe Walker Music: Hans Zimmer Visual effects supervisor: Paul Lambert Special effects supervisor: Gerd Nefzer Casting: Francine Maisler, Jina Jay

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Dune occasionally struggles with its unwieldy source material, but those issues are largely overshadowed by the scope and ambition of this visually thrilling adaptation.

Denis Villeneuve's Dune looks and sounds amazing -- and once the (admittedly slow-building) story gets you hooked, you'll be on the edge of your seat for the sequel.

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In “ Dune ,” Denis Villeneuve ’s droolingly anticipated, eye-bogglingly vast adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 cult sci-fi novel, the characters fly around in airplanes that have three sets of wings, all of which flap very fast. The planes look like insects, and the film suggests that’s one way that a flying machine, in another planetary sphere, might have evolved. On Earth, we styled our airplanes after birds. In “Dune,” they’re modeled on bugs, which gives them a fluttery malevolence.

“Dune,” a majestically somber and grand-scale sci-fi trance-out, is full of lavish hugger-mugger — clan wars, brute armies, a grotesque autocrat villain, a hero who may be the Messiah — that links it, in spirit and design, to the “Star Wars” and “Lord of the Rings” films, though with a predatory ominousness all its own. The desert-planet architecture, which is bigger than huge, is sandstone Mayan. The spaceships are like floating rocks the size of cities. And the cinematic style is “Lawrence of Arabia” meets “Triumph of the Will” meets the most visionary cologne commercial that Ridley Scott never made. (The movie is more than a little enthralled with the clockwork imagery of fascism.) “Dune” is out to wow us, and sometimes succeeds, but it also wants to get under your skin like a hypnotically toxic mosquito. It does…until it doesn’t.

Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition), Sept. 3, 2021. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 155 MIN.

Production: A Warner Bros. Pictures release of a Legendary Pictures, Villeneuve Films, Warner Bros. production. Producers: Denis Villeneuve, Mary Parent, Cale Boyter, Joe Caracciolo Jr. Executive producers: Herbert W. Gains, Joshua Grode, John Harrison, Brian Herbert, Kim Herbert, Tanya Lapointe, Byron Merritt, Richard P. Rubenstein, Jon Spaihts, Thomas Tull.
Crew: Director: Denis Villeneuve. Screenplay: Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, Eric Roth. Camera: Greig Fraser. Editor: Joe Walker. Music: Hans Zimmer.
With: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Jason Momoa, Zendaya, Charlotte Rampling, Dave Bautista, Javier Bardem, Sharon Duncan Brewster, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Chang Chen, David Dastmalchian.

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Denis Villeneuve’s Take on <i>Dune</i> Is an Admirably Understated Sci-Fi Spectacle

Denis Villeneuve’s Take on Dune Is an Admirably Understated Sci-Fi Spectacle

T o call Denis Villeneuve’s science-fiction extravaganza Dune a good example of its type of thing is probably damning it with fainter praise than it deserves. As someone who has zero interest in most books beloved by proselytizing, glassy-eyed dudes of the 1970s and 1980s, I always figured I could never be a Dune person. But I sort of enjoyed Villeneuve’s Dune —premiering out of competition at the Venice Film Festival and opening in the United States later this fall —and though it’s hard to say if serious Dune dudes will approve, what Villeneuve has put onscreen proves, at the very least, that he respects the source material to just the right degree. He neither genuflects to it nor tries to tart it up as a flashy, self-satisfied blockbuster flimflam. As movie spectacles go, it’s admirably understated: What can you say about a movie that makes the absolute most of sand?

Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel has long been considered unfilmable: Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky tried, unsuccessfully, to tackle it in the 1970s, and David Lynch’s 1984 version was widely viewed as a disappointment. Admittedly, Villeneuve ( Arrival , Blade Runner 2049 ) has a bunch of modern filmmaking tools available to him that those filmmakers didn’t, but at least he makes good use of them. The story is set in the year 10191, on a dry desert planet, Arrakis, that’s rich in “spice,” a substance needed for interplanetary travel. The planet’s longtime inhabitants are the Fremen, desert people who have found ways to survive in a harsh environment—one of their mysterious and dignified denizens, Chani ( Zendaya ), shimmers into view in a series of dream sequences, before materializing in real life.

For the Fremen, spice is a consciousness-enhancing substance, and they value it dearly. But other inhabitants of their interplanetary network think nothing of harvesting all the spice they want, giving the Fremen people nothing in return. ( Dune, in case you haven’t guessed, is heavy with geopolitical and religious symbolism of all sorts.) The emperor of all the planets puts the head of a noble family, Duke Leto Atreides ( Oscar Isaac , in a woolly gray beard), in charge of Arrakis. Atreides intends to be fair and benevolent. But when he moves to this unwelcoming, parched planet with his concubine, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), and his teenage son, Paul Atreides ( Timothée Chalamet ), it becomes clear the emperor has drawn him into a web of deceit.

Lots of stuff happens in Dune, and this is only part one. (Villeneuve has expressed confidence that he’ll be able to finish the story in a second installment.) There are many scenes of flying vehicles buzzing about like iron dragonflies. Warriors go to battle with shimmery swords, their skin sizzling when they’re struck or wounded. Little mechanical bugs can shoot right into your skin and immobilize you before killing you, slowly. Jessica, one of the movie’s most compelling and enigmatic characters, is a member of an all-woman secret society with mystical powers. At one point, that group’s mother superior, played by Charlotte Rampling in a black beaded nun’s veil, tests young Paul’s fortitude by forcing him to stick his hand into a nasty box of pain, a gizmo the size of a box of tissues. His suffering is intense, and the anguish shows on his little acorn face—but then he gets used to it, and suddenly it’s no biggie. Previously skeptical mother superior has to admit to Jessica, the anxious mom, that this lackadaisical teenager just might have special powers of his own—but the jury is still out.

Because, of course, Dune is largely a story about a young man proving himself. Villeneuve presents this tale as an unapologetically poker-faced futuristic parable. There are characters with names like Duncan Idaho (who happens to be played, charmingly, by Jason Momoa), and everyone is waiting for someone known as the Kwisatz Haderach to show up. Villeneuve lays it out before us without smirking or winking; his go-for-broke earnestness feels honest and clean. And the effects, while lavish, also have a tasteful, polished quality. Particularly impressive is the massive Arrakis predator known as the sandworm, a fearsome creature that first makes its presence known as a giant ripple of action beneath the sand, before poking its lamprey-like head aboveground to sweep its prey—machinery, people, whatever—into its toothy gob. The sandworm is the stuff of nightmares, but Villeneuve’s vision of it has a shivery elegance. Dune is sluggish in places—my eyes glazed over during one or two or maybe three of the battle scenes—but Villeneuve’s conviction counts for a lot. I would probably sit through Dune Part Deux willingly—though Herbert’s book, I’m afraid, will remain forever unread.

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Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is all world-building and no world-living

As visually rich and emotional as Part One gets, it’s still just setup for Part Two

by Roxana Hadadi

Timothée Chalamet as as Paul Atreides crouches on the floor and clutches a knife in Dune

When David Lynch’s Dune was released in 1984, a specific pattern developed among the mostly negative reviews. Lynch’s compressed adaptation, which shoved the 400-plus pages of Frank Herbert’s novel 1965 Dune into 137 minutes, was visually striking, but practically impossible to follow. A theory spread: Perhaps Herbert’s iconic sci-fi work was impossible to adapt into movie form. Nearly 40 years later, Denis Villeneuve’s attempt at Dune is earning the exact same reactions. Time is a flat circle, and Dune is as strikingly shot and impenetrably conceived as ever.

The sand? Everywhere! ( Dune was filmed partially in Jordan and Abu Dhabi.) Cinematographer Greig Fraser’s angles? Extremely wide! The sound design? Challenging! The dialogue? Partially lost, in said challenging sound design! The flirting-with-Orientalism vibe of Herbert’s text? Amped all the way up, even as practically all of Herbert’s incorporations of the complex and varied Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) culture and the Muslim religion are either blunted or excised! Jason Momoa? The only person who genuinely seems to be having fun amid this deep ensemble, and a bright spot amid so much dourness!

It would be sneeringly easy to ask, “Who is this Dune for?” Certainly one of the most formative sci-fi texts of the 20th century has retained a core fanbase. It’s a recognizable IP with a long history. And big-budget space operas continue to draw curious eyes. (Look at the never-ending sprawl of Star Wars.) To be fair, Villeneuve’s Dune is staggeringly gorgeous, and was clearly expensive as hell to make. The Arrival director leans into the contrast between brutalist design and the natural world, with unyielding angles and harsh materials bumping up against the rough bark of an improbably grown date palm tree, the riotous red of a hand dipped in blood, or the bubbling viscosity of pitch-black oil. (In case you didn’t grasp what the fought-over natural resource “spice” is standing in for.)

Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho, wielding two blades and surrounded by collapsed or collapsing soldiers in grey armor in Dune

Fraser, no stranger to this genre after working on Rogue One and The Mandalorian , makes use of every inch of every frame. Gigantic, unusually shaped ships traveling through space are as compellingly imagined as a group of Bene Gesserit witches, clad head to toe in black, emerging through the murky grey of a nighttime fog. And a lengthy mid-film battle sequence is well-edited by Joe Walker — the vicious hand-to-hand combat between various factions is blissfully easy to follow.

If you can get lost in the cocoon of production, costume, and art-design opulence, and sink into the Big Event angle of it all — which is why people go to the movies, isn’t it? — the film, styled as Dune: Part One , can be overwhelmingly evocative. The problem, though, is the film’s pervasive emotional emptiness. Villeneuve and his co-writers, Jon Spaihts (of Passengers and Prometheus ) and Eric Roth, rush through character journeys, and shortchange ostensible hero Paul Atreides ( wild-hair-haver Timothée Chalamet ). They skip over explaining most of the dense mythology of this world, instead collapsing entire communities into thinly rendered versions of other recognizable pop-culture figures. (The Fremen more or less become Tusken Raiders; the Bene Gesserit are Macbeth ’s witches.) And the result of all that streamlining is that the connective thread linking all these disparate elements into a cohesive whole is nowhere to be found. The film is a splendid, threadbare tapestry that unravels as you’re watching it.

Polygon’s complete guide to understanding Dune

Dune: Part One is set in the year 10191, when the galaxy is under imperial rule. (The Persian word “padishah,” pervasively used throughout Herbert’s novel to describe the emperor, is used only once in the film, and pronounced horribly incorrectly; the same goes for how various actors in the film butcher the Arabic “al-Mahdi.”) A number of ancient, established families rule over planets as fiefdoms, and fight among themselves. The heir of House Atreides is Paul (Chalamet), a young man whose father is Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac) and mother is the Bene Gesserit concubine Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson). Leto is training Paul to be a strong leader and military strategist, while Jessica is training Paul in the secret Bene Gesserit ways of mind control and persuasion, among other things. Paul, meanwhile, dreams about a young woman with blue eyes (Zendaya), guiding him forward on a desert planet.

Reverend Mother Mohiam (Charlotte Rampling) touches Paul (Timothée Chalamet) on the cheek in a dark room in Dune

Could Paul be seeing the future? Maybe, because House Atreides learns that at the emperor’s behest, they’ve been assigned to take over the planet Arrakis. For decades, House Atreides’s enemies, House Harkonnen, have been in charge of Arrakis, and have have mined the planet for spice, a natural resource that powers space travel. By assigning Arrakis to House Atreides, the emperor is knowingly increasing tensions — and maybe even trying to start a war.

So House Atreides travels to Arrakis: Leto, Paul, Jessica, weapons master Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin), swordmaster Duncan Idaho (Momoa), and the computer-like Mentat Thufir Hawat (Stephen McKinley Henderson). Can they befriend the Fremen, the planet’s original inhabitants, who are led by proud, principled men like Stilgar (Javier Bardem, miscast and underused)? Or will House Harkonnen, led by the Baron (Stellan Skarsgård) and his bloodthirsty nephew Glossu Rabban (Dave Bautista), not let their loss of Arrakis slide? And what role does the young woman from Paul’s dreams have to play?

This is a lot to take in, and because Dune: Part One frontloads on palace intrigue and exposition (including Zendaya’s narrated introduction to Arrakis, with the question “Who will our next oppressors be?”), its first hour drags. The script offers up broad story beats (House Atreides, good; House Harkonnen, bad) that the ensemble then has to make real through their performances. Some are better at it than others. Isaac makes a principled, honorable Leto; Ferguson a conflicted, protective Jessica. Momoa is the film’s standout as the loyal, empathetic bro Duncan. A scene of him picking up Chalamet’s Paul and spinning him around will either launch a thousand ships, or an array of gifs. But the most inconsistencies are found in Chalamet and the Fremen, which is particularly distracting given their centrality to this film, and the potential Dune: Part Two .

Chalamet tries to embody Paul’s fragile strengths, and he looks the part in his all-black space-Goth outfits. His duality of rawness and control makes the “Fear is the mind killer” scene, one of the film’s best, pulse with propulsive anxiety and royal haughtiness. Paul asks pointed questions about outsider meddling in Arrakis, and Chalamet imbues those queries with freshman-poli-sci-major brattiness. But the larger issue is that Paul is theoretically on an inward-looking journey that the film does not fully explain, and his frantic concern about what his fate on Arrakis might be is condensed into one in-tent freakout. Between the muffled line deliveries and the script’s dampening of the religious elements that made this moment so important in the book, this turning point isn’t nearly as defining as it should be.

Oscar Isaac in armor as Duke Leto Atreides locks eyes with the camera in Dune

For their part, the Fremen exist in an uneasy space as a result of Villeneuve removing many of their defining MENA and Muslim characteristics from Herbert’s novel, perhaps fearing that viewers would see people wearing robes, living in the desert, and saying the word “jihad,” and immediately pigeonhole them as terrorists. That isn’t an entirely baseless worry, given how the novel Dune progresses, and how Islamophobia has so pervaded Hollywood . And to be sure, Dune: Part One is otherwise appreciably racially and ethnically inclusive, with Sharon Duncan-Brewster’s gender-swapped Dr. Liet Kynes, Momoa’s Duncan, Babs Olusanmokun’s Jamis, and Chang Chen’s Dr. Wellington Yueh speaking Mandarin with Paul.

But overall, the Fremen characters in Dune: Part One lack the interiority they need to come across as something other than stock types. And so the film, through erasure, still ends up engaging in the Orientalism Villeneuve seemed to be trying to avoid. The motivations of Stilgar, Zendaya’s Chani, and Golda Rosheuvel’s Shadout Mapes are all murky, and their relationships with Paul aren’t narratively clear because so much of their belief system and identity is left nebulous. They are noble, exoticized others, and it’s unintentionally telling that Hans Zimmer’s score loads up on MENA folk music traditions (so many women ululating!), but that no actors of MENA heritage have speaking roles among the Fremen. This is a culture used for atmosphere and aesthetics, but approached with no deeper curiosity.

That statement could arguably be applied to the entirety of Dune: Part One . Villeneuve has spent his career merging intellectual and philosophical queries with striking otherworldly images, but that duality is frustratingly imbalanced in his vision for Dune . The visuals are mesmerizing, but the world-building is flat. The ensemble is committed, but the storytelling is liminal. Whether Dune: Part Two will ever be made is a question mark, and standing on its own, Dune: Part One is all setup with very little payoff.

Dune: Part One premieres in theaters and on HBO Max on October 22, 2021.

Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides and Rebecca Furguson as Lady Jessica Atreides stand in the desert on the set of Denis Villenueve’s Dune.

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‘Dune’ Review: Denis Villeneuve’s Epic Spice Opera Is a Massive Disappointment

David ehrlich.

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2021 Venice Film Festival . Warner Bros. will release the film in theaters and streaming on HBO Max on Friday, October 22.

In the end, Denis Villeneuve was all too right: Your television isn’t big enough for the scope of his “ Dune ,” but that’s only because this lifeless spice opera is told on such a comically massive scale that a screen of any size would struggle to contain it. Likewise, no story — let alone the misshapen first half of one — could ever hope to support the enormity of what Villeneuve tries to build over the course of these interminable 155 minutes (someone mentions that time is measured differently on Arrakis), or the sheer weight of the self-serious portent that he pounds into every shot. For all of Villeneuve’s awe-inducing vision, he loses sight of why Frank Herbert’s foundational sci-fi opus is worthy of this epic spectacle in the first place. Such are the pitfalls of making a movie so large that not even its director can see around the sets.

How big is “Dune”? We’re talkin’ slabs upon slabs of angular concrete as far as the eye can see, spaceships that seem to displace entire oceans when they emerge from the seabeds of Caladan, and sandworms so large they could eat the Graboids from “Tremors” like bar nuts. Even yoked kings Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista look like tabletop miniatures when placed against its backdrops, as if cinematographer Greig Fraser discovered a way to shoot deep focus and tilt-shift at the same time.

So why, for all of its unparalleled immensity, does watching “Dune” amount to the cinematic equivalent of being handed a novelty-sized check made out for six dollars? Why is the scope of Villeneuve’s dream betrayed by the dull shallowness of its reality to the point that his film’s most astounding effects — which are every bit as tactile and transportive as those in “Blade Runner 2049” — feel more like optical illusions? Why does this “Dune” feel so small?

The first and most fundamental problem is a screenplay (credited to the heavyweight trio of Eric Roth, Jon Spaihts, and Villeneuve himself) that drills into Herbert’s novel with all the thunder and calamity of a spice harvester, but mines precious little substance from underneath the surface. And while it’s not much of a shock that Denis Villeneuve hasn’t succeeded where the likes of David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky have already failed, his “Dune” is at least uniquely dispiriting, as the director of “Prisoners,” “Incendies,” and “Arrival” comes to this project with such a deep affinity for stories about transcending cyclical violence.

Alas, that’s really all this adaptation is allowed to be, as the source material is bisected in a way that punts all of Herbert’s most resonant (and psychedelically unstable) ideas about the braided relationship between colonialism and chosen one narratives into a sequel that may never be made.

It’s hard to overstate how little actually happens in this “Dune,” which flows like an overture that’s stretched for the duration of an entire opera. In stark contrast to the Lynch version — which immediately unpacks the Emperor’s twisted scheme to weaken house Atreides by giving it control of the spice planet Arrakis — Villeneuve’s film sees this story through the eyes of the great family’s young heir, Paul (Timothée Chalamet), and embraces the boy’s awestruck confusion at moving to a desert world and learning that he was bred to be the white savior of its native people. “Who will our next oppressor be?” Zendaya asks in the introductory voiceover that Villeneuve gives her in lieu of a character to play, but the rest of the movie completely betrays that sting of suspicion.

This much-debated aspect of “Dune” is complicated in later installments of Herbert’s series, but here it remains unchallenged; Paul is Jesus Christ as a eugenics experiment designed by space witch Charlotte Rampling, who paired Duke Atreides (a bearded and winsome Oscar Isaac , who gets to yell “Desert power!” several times) with a very special concubine (the ever-capable Rebecca Ferguson ), and the Bedouin-coded Fremen of Arrakis are happy to accept this foreign twerp as their prophet.

It helps that Chalamet is a natural fit in the role. The actor is something of a chosen one himself — a gawky New York kid who leveraged his internet boyfriend status into legitimate stardom — and Villeneuve helps steer him toward the dislocation of a bird-boned model descended from a line of sex mystics and Hemingways. Paul Atreides invented the blankness that Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter would later inherit, but Chalamet spices things up by making the character palpably out of his depth.

As you would expect from a movie that features approximately 50 percent of the world’s famous actors, casting isn’t a problem here. “Dune” only falters when it comes to giving its cast something to do. Josh Brolin is all pugnacious charm as the beefy mentor with a heart of gold, but he’s reduced to grist for the mill as soon as the action relocates to Arrakis, leaving only the shield technology he uses in his sparring matches with Paul as a legacy; the red and blue Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots effect is a big upgrade from how Lynch rendered the shields back in 1984, but Villeneuve’s disastrous choice to double down on it throughout the rest of the movie robs every subsequent action sequence of any beauty or believable sense of danger.

Momoa is similarly likable as swordmaster Duncan Idaho, but spends most of “Dune” trapped in Paul’s insufferable dreams of the future, which are scattered throughout the story like ransom notes from a more exciting cut of the film. The characters with less screen time make more of an impact, especially the gluttonous robber-baron Harkonnens who cede control of Arrakis only to grow stronger in the shadows. Bautista serves up some very large adult son energy as the second-in-command, David Dastmalchian is all sniveling creepiness as the grand vizier, and Stellan Skargård is the undisputed MVP as Baron Harkonnen himself, whose performance finally answers the question: “What if ‘The Island of Dr. Moreau’-era Marlon Brando could fly?”

But “Dune,” at heart, is a film that eagerly flattens great actors like Chang Chen and Stephen McKinley Henderson into the wallpaper because it knows the scenery will have to do most of the heavy lifting. Patrice Vermette’s astonishing and cavernous production design complements (or enables) the stagnant ultra-formalism that Villeneuve has pursued since “Incendies,” and anyone who felt that “Blade Runner 2049” could use 100 percent more aerial shots of ships flying above some unlivable future-scape will feel like they’ve died and gone to heaven.

But Villeneuve’s seismic world-building is all tone and no melody. He spends precious minutes detailing the topography of Arrakis and the suits that allow people to survive its deserts, but devotes nary a moment to Duke Atreides’ private concerns about the intergalactic feudalism that shapes his fate, or Paul’s nebulous inner conflict over leaving his old world behind. That “Star Wars” and its blockbuster ilk have burned Herbert’s sci-fi tropes into the collective unconscious should be an opportunity for a 21st century film like this, not an excuse. And yet Villeneuve’s only move is to crank up the volume until the distortion makes it sound like you’re experiencing something new, a tactic that has its upsides (e.g. the Bene Gesserit’s voice seems like it’s coming from inside your soul), but also leads Hans Zimmer to fall back on the ethnographic wailing of his “Gladiator”-era scores. Few composers would have been able to match the Lynch version’s one-two punch of Brian Eno and Toto, but Zimmer just thumps around in the sand as if he wants the worms to eat us all.

Fear not: The sandworms do come. They are big and bristly and they’re responsible for the only scene in which the film’s biblical drone is enlivened by even the tiniest dollop of dramatic tension. Villeneuve is in love with the scale of these subterranean beasties, each of which is half as long as the R.M.S. Titanic, and he frames them with such palpable awe that you almost expect the “Jurassic Park” theme to play every time they rear their butthole heads. But one look at the sandworms is enough to rob them of their mystery. They’re soon reduced to sound and earthquakes, signifying nothing but your growing desire to be watching “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind” instead.

And that literalness, or at least that abject lack of associative thought, is what damns this “Dune” beyond salvation. Here is a film consumed by dreams from even before the moment it starts (you’ll see what I mean), but also one so arch and full of empty spectacle that it keeps your imagination on a tight leash, which grows all the more enervating as Paul and his mother find themselves being chased through the desert by sandworms in the final act. Eventually, “Dune” only resembles a dream in that it cuts out on a note so flat and unresolved that you can’t believe anyone would have chosen it on purpose.

“This is only the beginning,” the last line threatens, and yet it unmistakably feels like the end of something too. Not the end of watching movies on the big screen, but perhaps the end of making movies that are too big to fit on it.

“Dune” premiered at the 2021 Venice Film Festival. Warner Bros. will release it in theaters and on HBO Max on Friday, October 22.

As new movies open in theaters during the COVID-19 pandemic, IndieWire will continue to review them whenever possible. We encourage readers to follow the safety precautions provided by CDC and health authorities. Additionally, our coverage will provide alternative viewing options whenever they are available.

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10 Reasons Why “Dune” Is One of The Best Sci-Fi Films of The 21st Century

At last, the spice flows. After a botched release put on hold by the pandemic, Denis Villeneuve’s long-awaited epic has finally made its way into every theater worldwide. And like a giant sandworm crawling through Arrakis’ desert, the movie has sent shock waves all around the industry, being instantly embraced by hardcore cinephiles and casual audiences alike. Right now, there’s simply no bigger movie than Dune — a colossal adaptation of a story that’s equal parts a Homeric adventure, political chess game, an allegory of cultural colonialism and an environmental thesis.

Every big release like this is inevitably greeted with some skepticism. After all, there’s so many great movies available and so little time, and sometimes it’s hard to gauge whether all the hype around a new one is truly warranted. What exactly sets Dune apart — especially in a genre as oversatured as science fiction? Addictive spice, prophetic witches, holy wars, giant worms… There’s a lot going on in the movie and coming up with an answer to that question can feel overwhelming.

Whether you’ve recently been introduced to Dune’s world, you’re a long-time fan of Herbert’s book or you’re still on the fence — we’ve got you covered. With no further ado, let’s go through ten reasons that makes Dune a one-of-a-kind experience.

1. The source material

Having a strong source material isn’t truly a prerequisite in order to make a compelling sci-fi movie — but it certainly doesn’t hurt either. A worldwide bestseller like Frank Herbert’s hardly needs an introduction — to say it’s one of the most influential novels in the genre is an understatement. In Dune, Herbert created one of the richest and complex worlds in all science-fiction — an expanding saga that transported readers to a world of wonder that equally mirrored many political and theological issues plaguing our own.

Modern cinematic behemoths such as Star Wars, Mad Max or Blade Runner owe an enormous debt to Dune. In a sense, Herbert opened the door to a more introspective kind of narrative that deliberately tried to tackle contemporary problems rather than distance itself from them. Many themes and narratives that we take for granted now after gradually becoming genre tropes over time were first found in his seminal novel.

With the second installment already greenlit, time will tell if Warner Bros decides to go even further and make a run at the sequels, particularly Dune Messiah which serves as a fitting epilogue to the main story. What’s certain is that no modern sci-fi movie currently has more potential of establishing itself as a successful franchise than Dune — precisely because none have a roadmap as foolproof as the seven novels written by Frank Herbert.

2. Denis Villeneuve

Now, for all of Herbert’s brilliance, there’s a reason why Dune was deemed ‘virtually unadaptable’ and sat on the shelf for ages. A deliberately anticlimactic, monologue-heavy story with an exhaustive lore and unorthodox themes? By any means not the kind of uplifting escapism film audiences eat up.

Previous attempts at adapting the novel showed that not even having a brilliant director at the helm was any guarantee of success — just ask David Lynch. But if there was a current filmmaker suited for such a daunting task, that’s Denis Villeneuve — an auteur with a flawless track record including two instant classics in Arrival and Blade Runner 2049.

In science-fiction more than any other genre, having a deft director with a clear vision of his own is crucial to avoid arguably the biggest challenge to a successful film — studio interference. It’s crystal clear that Dune was made by someone with a profound respect and love for the property like Villeneuve who didn’t compromise any creative decision that would jeopardize his film.

A lesser director would surely have crumbled at the prospect of cramming a nauseating load of storylines and exposition coherently without sacrificing any of the mysticism and gravitas that defined the novel. Thankfully, Villeneuve was up for the challenge and delivered in spades. After pouring his heart on the film, it seems the French-Canadian will have a chance of wrapping up the story himself in the upcoming sequel.

3. It’s a strong indictment on colonialism and ecology

For a movie based on a 60-year-old novel, a surprising virtue of Dune is that it deals with universal themes that still feel relevant to this day. Outside conquerors (the Imperium) arriving at a foreign land (Arrakis) and exploiting its resources (spice) at the expense of its indigenous population (Fremen) is a narrative outline which heavily draws from mankind’s own bloody past.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to make parallels between Dune’s spice mining — necessary for space travel — and the oil wars that have repeatedly ravaged the Middle East. Greed is shown to be the root of all evil, and the final trigger for the full-blown conflict between Harkonnens and Atreides. Life in Arrakis is ridden by water shortage — caused in no small part by decades-worth of corporate profiteering — which is then distributed according to wealth and status. This stark contrast is underscored with the image of lush gardens being watered on a daily basis in the Atreides fortress while the Fremen are forced to use stillsuits in order to preserve their own body moisture.

There’s still room for hope — with imperial ecologist Liet Kynes envisioning a future where Arrakis develops into a self-sustaining ecosystem. But it would be wise to take Dune as a forewarning of the fatal consequences of unchecked ambition enabled by immoral leaders.

4. World building

In sci-fi more than in arguably any other genre, world building can make or break a film. So many recent releases have been crippled by their scope (Star Wars) or drowned in their ever-expanding universe (Marvel). The truth is, it’s hard to find the perfect balance between having a setting that feels grand and unique but which at the same time doesn’t undermine the characters and story being told.

In this regard, Dune is simply on a league of its own, and offers everything you could look for and more. If you’re down for some gripping political intrigue with clashing noble houses, backdoor scheming and blurry allegiances, the Atreides and Harkonnen’s feud will keep you glued to the screen. If you’re aching to see contrasting worlds and cultures with their own customs, you have the defiant Fremen herd dodging the Imperium, secluded in the far depths of Arrakis’ wasteland. If your thing is watching religious institutions pull the strings with their prophecies and dogmas, look no further than to the Sisterhood of Bene Gesserit.

All in all, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more captivating setting than the one Dune inherited from Herbert’s novel — a world that feels fully realized but is layered enough to leave you craving for more.

5. It deliberately deconstructs and subverts the typical ‘hero’s journey’ arc

Both in film and literature, there’s an overtly familiar story template widely known as the ‘hero’s journey’ — a term coined by professor Joseph Campbell — with which the majority of fiction is constructed. The theory broadly outlines the archetype of a character who goes on an adventure, where he meets his destiny and beats great odds to overcome an obstacle or antagonist. A tale as old as time which applies to many iconic characters from Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter or Frodo.

Paul Atreides is the heir to a powerful Duke and the product of a centuries-in-the-making breeding program developed by the Bene Gesserit, a genetic marvel gifted with unparalleled prescient powers and destined for glory. On the surface, he sure seems to fall into this trope. The movie tricks you into believing as such, baiting viewers into blindly embracing him as the ‘chosen one’ who will lead the Fremen and defeat evil.

In truth, Dune is preaching against this type of ‘savior figure’ so prevailing in fiction. In Paul Atreides, Frank Herbert created a reluctant leader forever burdened with foresight — aware of a destiny he was thrown into and terrified of the things that future will bring. As we soon learn through many of his visions, Paul’s followers won’t restore peace but sow destruction in his name. Is he a sympathetic character? Maybe. But one you should never make the mistake of idolizing.

Dune: Part 2 explained, for someone who has no idea what Dune is

The good, the bad, and the Bene Gesserit of Dune: Part Two.

by Alex Abad-Santos and Patrick Reis

Timothée Chalamet gazing fixedly into the camera while wearing desert garb with a breathing tube in his nose, from the movie Dune: Part Two.

This article contains spoilers for Dune: Part Two

Like a Harkonnen soldier levitating around in the endless desert, one can find oneself a bit lost when it comes to Dune . On paper, the franchise has everything a science fiction space opera needs: telepathic matriarchs with hostile accents, ostentatious helmets, slimy villains that resemble pudding, a coming-of-age story about destiny, and colossal worms that shake the sand like a T. rex in Jurassic Park . Yet, after seeing each of director Denis Villeneuve’s interpretations — two now, clocking in at nearly five and a half hours of Dune — I find myself with more questions than answers about how this world works, who’s bad, who’s good, and what the worms on Arrakis eat.

Image reads “spoilers below,” with a triangular sign bearing an exclamation point.

Dune: Part Two, officially in theaters March 1, tells the tragedy of House Atreides, a noble family with great hair. After an assault in Dune: Part One by the Harkonnen, the bad, bald enemies of the Atreides clan, son Paul (Timothée Chalamet) and his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) are taken in by the Fremen, the humans who make the planet Arrakis their home.

Paul, who has prophetic powers, wants vengeance on the Harkonnens but also wants to liberate the Fremen, especially after learning their way of life from the rugged Chani (Zendaya). Jessica, meanwhile, has motivations of her own, including mythologizing her son as a messianic figure, igniting a holy war, and carrying a sentient female fetus in her womb. The Harkonnens, so pale and aesthetically unpleasant, desire two things: spice, the expensive material that makes this universe go round; and brutality for everyone who stands in their way. Looming over this conflict are the superpowered sisterhood known as the Bene Gesserit, Florence Pugh’s Princess Irulan brooding over the political implications of these events, and, of course, some big, beautifully gross worms.

Three giant sandworms speed toward tiny fleeing soldiers.

That’s a lot of moving, spinning parts — not unlike the worms of Dune!

Luckily for me, Vox senior politics editor Patrick Reis is not only patient but an avid Dune fan, having read Frank Herbert’s novels and watched their live-action adaptations. He’s well-versed in everything Atreides, knowledgeable about Chani and the Fremen, and has the ability to explain the complexities of the Bene Gesserit in ways that Dune neophytes can understand.

Patrick — a Dune expert — and I — a Dune newbie — both saw all 166 minutes of Dune: Part Two and were able to compare notes. From director Villeneuve’s stunning visuals to the lore of Arrakis, Patrick and I talked through all the questions you’re too embarrassed to ask about the movie and franchise of the moment.

Patrick, let’s get to it. What are your initial thoughts on the movie? Did it live up to expectations? Was it better than the first one?

Dune: Part Two is definitely better, but that’s a bit unfair to the first movie. The first movie built the book’s whole world and previewed so much of what was to come. The second one took all those storylines and turned them into action pieces, which made for a more entertaining film. I think it almost makes more sense to take the two together and think of them as a season of television — and an extremely good one.

The sequel is beautiful. That was my dominant experience. It wasn’t a perfect movie by any stretch, but it was so visually stunning that I kept wanting more. The movie, like the book, leans so heavily on the setting, and that’s a strength here. The planet Arrakis — a desert, near-waterless world also known as “Dune” — is the titular character, and by constantly showcasing it, the movie became so much more immersive. When the movie ended and the lights came up, I was subconsciously expecting to walk out of the theater into a desert. That’s impressive to me.

We’re on the same page. From the small things, like the way doors open, to the big ones, like the battle scenes and all the different ways things explode, I found that so much attention is paid to every detail. And those details combine to completely affect the mood of every frame. It’s a masterpiece in visual storytelling. You could watch this movie on mute and understand almost everything that’s happening, which is extremely helpful for newbies. Was there a scene that stood out in particular to you?

Obviously, the showstopper is when Paul rides the worm. That was tremendous. But I think the opening battle may have even been cooler. The Harkonnen troops, in all black, levitating up the rock formation is an image that will stick with me for a long time, as will the image of the Fremen exploding out of the sand. And it comes to a perfect conclusion with Rebecca Ferguson reminding us that she is absolutely not to be trifled with.

Ferguson is truly incredible as Lady Jessica, and we’ll talk more about that later, but first I wanted to say how surprised I was that Timothée Chalamet more than held his own throughout the movie. This story wholly rides on the tension of a pensive, if not frail, young man becoming the foretold messiah. We know Chalamet can do the former ( Call Me By Your Name particularly), but I was surprised how convincing he was in scenes where he has to convince the Fremen — the desert people who live on Arrakis — to follow him. At one point he even adopts the Fremen name Muad’Dib, which refers to the tiny desert kangaroo mouse — a very cute and endearing act that Timmy pulls off brilliantly.

He was almost too convincing! Chalamet did such a great job never making Paul a conventional action hero, which would have tipped the movie into full-on camp. But in the final third, he turns the intensity way up, and he’s quite convincing as a leader.

If I have a quibble with the movie, it’s his transition from reluctant leader to messianic figure. The book spends more time on the weight of prescience — both the power you hold and the torture of knowing how you’ll shape the future. Once Paul gained the ability to see what was to come, he seemed more determined and confident, and I missed the brooding, tortured Paul from earlier in the film.

I thought Zendaya picked up the slack here, being the voice of anti-fanaticism at a time when the dam had clearly burst. Chani’s look of horror at what had become of Paul — and the messiah-driven military movement he was leading to overthrow the galactic order — is what stuck with me immediately after the movie ended. It’s a big break with the book, but, to me, one for the better.

Poor Chani, navigating a relationship is tricky enough. Having your boyfriend turn into a messiah overnight must’ve felt like whiplash. Would you follow Chalamet’s Paul into a holy war, yes or no?

Zendaya glares at the camera while standing amid her fellow Fremen.

Hard pass. #TeamChani

The movie is two hours and 46 minutes long and unfurls an entire act in which Austin Butler’s Feyd-Rautha is introduced as this grandiose villain, the seeming successor of House Harkonnen. Then it sort of just tosses him aside at the end. With the way the movie positions him — lots of solo scenes, lots of ominous lighting, so much attention to his cannibal harem — didn’t it seem like Butler’s Feyd-Rautha would have a bigger role?

Dune: Part Two contained a beautiful, terrifying short film in the middle called “Meet Feyd-Rautha.” It’s near black and white — a big visual departure from the rest of the story. It also introduces a new final (final-ish?) boss for Paul, and it’s full of new characters.

It was, like the rest of the movie, visually stunning, but I don’t think it holds up as well as the rest of the film.

I felt like those scenes dragged a bit, particularly given how long the movie was overall, and I didn’t love Butler’s character. I thought he’d be more compelling if he were more different from the rest of the Harkonnens — smarter, more introspective, less across-the-board evil. Instead, he felt like just the distilled version of the rest of his family, whereas the book makes a much sharper contrast between Rautha and the brutish Rabban (played by Dave Bautista). It made me wonder why the Bene Gesserit — the holy order of sisters plotting behind the scenes to control the galaxy by breeding a superbeing — would think of Rautha as so special.

From what you’re saying, there seems to be a missed opportunity for a bit more complexity there. It just felt like we subbed one violent bald man for another. This second chapter was not particularly kind to Rabban, who seems to have become the universe’s cuck in the span of 40 cinematic minutes. He can do no right and everyone around him is either frustrated with his failure or eclipsing him. By the end, I feel like it was as if we were supposed to wonder if this man was so scary in the first place. I suppose there’s some comfort in knowing that nepo babies exist on Arrakis too.

I think the most compelling characters in the Dune story are the Bene Gesserit. I affectionately call them the “Ben and Gerrys.” They’re a bunch of grumpy women dressed in beautiful garments and have superpowers like mind control and poison transmutation. What I don’t quite get is why don’t my Ben and Gerrys just run things?

Here’s where I’m not so sure that the big, subtle backstory of the book comes across in the movie.

Let’s back up a bit. Long, long before the events of the films, humanity had a purge of all “thinking machines.” And so for centuries (and maybe longer) the main advances in technology have not been better machines, but re-engineering humans themselves. That’s the big project your Ben and Gerrys are working on: breeding the superbeing.

A cloaked woman with writing across her face.

Paul was supposed to be the second-to-last step before that superbeing. Lady Jessica was to have a female — Bene Gesserit can determine their offspring’s gender because of course they can — to mate with Feyd-Rautha. But out of love for Oscar Isaac’s Duke Leto (RIP), she granted his wish for a male heir. Intentionally or otherwise, that brought the superbeing into being a generation early.

Remember that scene where Paul drank the electric blue worm juice?

It’s the same Pantone shade as blue Gatorade .

That’s when he made the big leap into superhuman abilities, gifting him both eons of memories of lives past and also a near all-seeing command of how his actions today can shape the future for a long time to come.

So to get back to your question: The Ben and Gerrys seem content to let the men fight the relatively small-stakes conflicts over the imperial throne and control of the spice. But behind the scenes, they are in control of the big struggle: to produce a superbeing whom they can control. Unfortunately for them, they only get halfway there.

Is having an ominous English accent a requirement for Ben and Gerrys?

Personally, I would have given them all thick Midwestern accents, but nobody asked me.

A heavy Minnesotan accent would’ve completely changed the game. “For worm’s sakes, Paul, use the Voice .” Also, Anya Taylor-Joy as Paul’s sister who is actually still a fetus is just giving me rancid vibes. She seems like bad news!

I don’t want to give too much away from the next books, but yeah, there’s a lot going on there.

A lot! Ferguson’s Lady Jessica goes from skittering around the desert and smashing Harkonnen soldiers with rocks to becoming a “Reverend Mother.” I know that means something specific to Dunies.

When Lady Jessica drank the blue Gatorade and became a Reverend Mother, that entailed her receiving the memories of thousands of years of ancestors. And the reason those around her were so horrified that she’s pregnant was because those memories were all being received by a fetus, who basically became self-aware and developed Bene Gesserit mental powers before even having a fully formed body. Suffice to say, that’s not the healthiest way to start a human life, and so you’re not wrong to suspect that not all is well there. All that plays out later in the books, so I’m not sure how much we’ll see of it on screen, but her character gets fascinating — and intense.

Having seen exactly two Dune movies now, my biggest criticism is that there are not enough worms. This is a planet with giant worms with huge, hairy butthole-like mouths, and I can’t help but feel like they deserve as much attention, if not more, as two humans named Paul and Jessica. Paul and Jessica are great, but are they giant worms? No!

All I’ll say is that book three and especially book four get really wormy and really, really weird.

What do we expect for the next Dune movies? What happens in the books?

The first two movies covered the events of Dune , and they did so pretty faithfully. The next book is titled Dune Messiah . It’s about the aftermath of Paul Muad’Dib’s Fremen jihad, with Paul having to live with the consequences of the path he chose for the galaxy, and the Fremen having to assess what they really got in exchange for anointing him.

I imagine the Ben and Gerrys are still plotting away and Florence Pugh’s Princess Irulan will have a bigger role than just Wikipedia-ing the war. Will we also find out if Anya Taylor-Joy’s vibes are actually bad?

Two bald men in black look at one another.

Fear not, the Ben and Gerrys aren’t going anywhere. The next book also introduces a new set of rivals: a patriarchal set of gene-splicers and cloners known as the Bene Tleilax. (I promise you, each book gets a bit more weird than the last.)

As for Paul, Chani, and Irulan, the film departs some from the book’s handling of their relationships, so it’s hard to know what’s in store for Irulan. But in the book at least, she’s right in the middle of the action. Same goes for Anya Taylor-Joy’s Alia, who’s out of the womb and making moves as Paul’s ally.

And Paul is still at the center of all of it. The book, after all, is called Dune Messiah .

Villeneuve said in December that the script for Part Three was almost finished. There’s no release date yet, meaning that newbies and fanatics alike will have to wait to reunite with Paul, Ben and Gerrys, Anya Taylor-Fetus, and the beauty and brutality of Villeneuve’s Dune .

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Review: A “Dune” Sanded to Dullness

It’s surprising how cheesy the new “Dune” looks. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, the adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel seems less like a C.G.I. spectacle than a production still waiting for its backgrounds to be digitally filled in or its sets to be built. David Lynch’s version of “Dune,” from 1984, was a profuse film, teeming with sets and costumes as intricate as they were overwhelming, making extended and startling use of optical effects, and, in general, displaying an urgent will to turn the fantasy worlds of the story, which is set in the year 10191, into physical and visceral experiences. Villeneuve’s interests appear to lie elsewhere. He puts the drama and plot first, avoiding details that could be distractions and appearances that aren’t explained (or explained away) in dialogue or action. The bareness with which he depicts the story doesn’t resemble the shoestring production values of nineteen-fifties sci-fi cheapies, but it instead suggests merely a failure of imagination, an inability to go beyond the ironclad dictates of a script and share with viewers the wonders and terrors of impossible worlds.

Like most fantasies and futuristic science-fiction movies, “Dune” requires a large amount of exposition to set up the rules of its universe. Lynch, in his “Dune,” hardly distinguishes exposition from drama, because he’s as interested in the what as in the why. His film establishes a phantasmagorical and nearly fetishistic relationship to the material world, to even apparently trivial objects as well as to gestures, phrases, inflections. He unifies his cinematic field, lavishing as much attention to detail—and as much time—on relatively undramatic scenes and background elements as on scenes of great moment. By contrast, Villeneuve (who wrote the film with Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth) appears embarrassed by the lengthy exposition that the story requires. Rather than revelling in it, he dispatches the necessary information hastily and dutifully, because he knows all too well where the film is going and why it’s going there.

There’s a nexus of planets under the reign of a shadowy emperor, whose realm runs on a mineral known as spice. Both a hallucinogen and an energy source, spice is mined in the deserts of the planet Arrakis, which has been colonized for that purpose and, at the emperor’s orders, run by the evil House Harkonnen. But the emperor removes the Harkonnens from governing Arrakis and dispatches the benevolent House Atreides and its leader, Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac), to take their place—along with his consort, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), and their son, Paul (Timothée Chalamet). But the Harkonnens and their cruel leader, Baron Vladimir (Stellan Skarsgård), aren’t giving up so easily, and this seems to be all according to the emperor’s plan to lure the House Atreides to its destruction.

Arrakis is no empty desert. It’s inhabited by the Fremen, a people who have endured the spice colonies and survived by living underground in elaborate warrens, constructing advanced technology to sustain themselves in difficult conditions. The Harkonnens are ready to exterminate them, whereas the Atreidae want to make common cause with the Fremen and help them. Paul, young and untested, comes to believe that he is the Messiah, the so-called Kwisatz Haderach, whom a religious order of Atreides women, known as the Bene Gesserit, have been trying to breed, from generation to generation, and who will be the savior for both the House Atreides and for the Fremen. What’s more, Paul’s dreams conveniently include, as a special enticement, anticipation of a Fremen woman named Chani (Zendaya), whom he will love.

Some films were made to be broadcast in several parts but nonetheless play seamlessly as a feature—Bruno Dumont’s “Li’l Quinquin,” for instance, which was made for French TV. The new “Dune,” which runs for two and a half hours, is a single film that plays like a collection of episodes in a series—which, in a way, it is, insofar as the movie ends with a cliffhanger, when Paul meets the Fremen and Chani says (more to the audience than to Paul), “This is only the beginning.” The film includes very short scenes of terse dialogue that slot the story together piece by piece while hardly allowing for dramatic development, let alone the characters’ full perspective on the action. Lynch’s version includes “inner voices”—internal monologues, in voice-over, that, despite being brief, are vastly texture-enriching and deftly add a haunting dimension of subjectivity. Unsurprisingly, Lynch also makes ample and frenzied use of Paul’s dreams and other internal visions. In the new film, these visions are mere snippets and flashes, hints and approximations. Paul is put to a terrifying and mortal test by a Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit (played in Lynch’s film by Siân Phillips and in Villeneuve’s by Charlotte Rampling). But, whereas Lynch draws out both the agony of Paul (Kyle MacLachlan) and the specific details of the tortures that he endures, Villeneuve hastily dispatches the same scene and merely winks at Paul’s afflictions. Villeneuve makes “Dune” as if he were his own showrunner, following not the dictates of a domineering producer but his own mandate—to deliver a simplified coming-of-age story and emphasize the cautionary aspect of destructive colonial rapacity and even more destructive Messianic delusion. His images are as rigid and hermetic as the illustrations in a graphic novel. His point of view is without a second level, without physicality, without visceral impact, without an unconscious. The movie’s stripped-down material world correlates with a stripped-down emotional one—narrow, facile, and unambiguous.

The prime terror of life on Arrakis is the threat of attack from gigantic sandworms, which are said to grow up to four hundred and fifty metres long, and can swallow a huge harvesting rig in a single gulp. In Lynch’s film, their arrival is heralded by the eerie spectacle of short bolts of lightning sparking up from the sand. Villeneuve’s conception is monotonously literal—the sand bulges, and the maws of the creatures are shown in quick, devouring motion that’s closer to a disaster scene than to one of gargantuan body horror.

What’s most startling in this “Dune” is where the sense of directorial passion—of effort, of personal commitment—does go. What Villeneuve appears to savor most is knife duels, fiery explosions, knowing gazes (between Paul and his mother, between Paul and Chani), and the pats on the shoulder that the young Paul gets from his father and his mentor, a warrior named Duncan (Jason Momoa). “Dune” ’s cautionary tale of a would-be savior reflects strangely back on the movie’s directorial psychology. Far from the excess, the hectic cruelty, and the extravagance of Lynch’s vision, Villeneuve’s is spare, austere, and almost savior-like in its commitment to a coherent and worthy set of principles. Perhaps the film’s very dullness, its withholding of visual and even dramatic pleasure, is Villeneuve’s version of virtue signalling.

The prime victims of this austerity are the movie’s actors. Villeneuve has assembled a terrific cast of more and less familiar performers, but he’s given them little time and little leeway. Because the pieces of the movie are calculated to fit together in unambiguous arrangements, the performances are reduced to ciphers. Chalamet, whose theatrical specificity is both an art and a liability, is onscreen for much of the film and yet reduced to a mask of his own appearance. Stuck with a script that denies his character variety and complexity, he delivers a performance that never gets to take shape. What he can do with the role in a second installment may be the biggest cliffhanger of all.

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Dune Ultra HD Blu-ray Review

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DSU/DTS Neural:X Rating * (non-rated element): NA
Disc 1 : Dune Ultra HD Blu-ray
Disc 2 : Dune Blu-ray • The Royal Houses • Filmbooks: House Atreides • Filmbooks: House Harkonnen • Filmbooks: The Fremen • Filmbooks: The Spice Melange • Inside Dune: The Training Room • Inside Dune: The Spice Harvester • Inside Dune: The Sardaukar Battle • Building the Ancient Future • My Desert, My Dune • Constructing the Ornithopters • Designing the Sandworm • Beware the Baron • Wardrobe from Another World • A New Soundscape
Digital Code

GalvatronType_R

I’ve read other rave reviews of the audio and video transfer for this movie and normally I’d be first in line to buy this disk. But I’ll hold off for the inevitable dual box set to include the second movie. As much as I liked this movie, I really didn’t care for the abrupt “please greenlight a sequel” rushed ending.

Thanks Ralph! I went ahead and pre-ordered the 3D version and am really excited! Watched Dune on HBOMAX and liked it.

I'm not going to lie ... despite my best efforts to keep my expectations low, I had very, very high hopes for this one on disc. Credit HBOMax for my excitement as they got the audio right for once on their stream. I'm glad to see this one live up to expectations! I can't wait for this one to get here Tuesday. Thank you Ralph!

GalvatronType_R said: I’ve read other rave reviews of the audio and video transfer for this movie and normally I’d be first in line to buy this disk. But I’ll hold off for the inevitable dual box set to include the second movie. As much as I liked this movie, I really didn’t care for the abrupt “please greenlight a sequel” rushed ending. Click to expand...

Thank you for another excellent review Ralph - par for the course. With you rating the sound a 100, its a must be.

fattire said: I'm not going to lie ... despite my best efforts to keep my expectations low, I had very, very high hopes for this one on disc. Credit HBOMax for my excitement as they got the audio right for once on their stream. Click to expand...

Great review Ralph! Now I must wait "patiently for my Amazon delivery late Tuesday afternoon." And then I must wait "patiently for a window of 155 minutes" to actually watch it uninterrupted!

pbarach said: I agree, the audio on HBOMax was quite good. But the writing? The story? Not so hot. I did like the book. Click to expand...

I appreciated this movie on Dolby Cinema, had “medium” expectations (I assumed it was going to be directed towards a young audience based on the choice of cast) but I was pleasantly surprised! I loved the cinematography and sound design (+soundtrack) and thought Chamalet was excellent, he is obviously a very gifted actor. Thanks for the review Ralph!

I fully expect this movie to be a total experience. Cant wait to get it!

darthray said: For what's it's worth, right from the beginning the Director "Denis Villeneuve" had decided to this movie in two parts. For trying retaining the complete to stay true to the books, just like "Peter Jackson" did with "Lord of the Rings". For not becoming very confusing, for those who did not read those books. As for the double box set, it is a personal preference. Since I prefer having each movies in a different box, while I do understand in the long run a double box set is cheaper to get. Darth Click to expand...

GalvatronType_R said: But I’ll hold off for the inevitable dual box set to include the second movie. As much as I liked this movie, I really didn’t care for the abrupt “please greenlight a sequel” rushed ending. Click to expand...

dnoonie said: Oh!!!! So this one movie is just part of book 1!? If so this could be very good! I just don't see how book one can be done in just one movie. Click to expand...

darthray said: From memory since is has been over 40 years since I read those books and still remember the overall story, I believe it was three books in total. So the this movie could end at the first book, or somewhere in between the second and last one. Darth Click to expand...

Chris - CDI

One thing to note with interest is that while Ralph's review mentions it was digitally shot, it doesn't go into detail - it was originally shot on digital, then transferred to 35mm, then scanned back to Digital - which most certainly has much to do with the final look of the film. (link here )

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One of 'Dune: Part Two's Most Breathtaking Scenes Was Almost Altered by the Studio

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The Big Picture

Dune: Part Two overcame concerns to become an instant classic with a bold and haunting black-and-white sequence on Giedi Prime.
Denis Villeneuve's decision to use black-and-white in Dune: Part Two marked a tone change and provided depth to House Harkonnen.
The sequel explores intergalactic politics and is predicted to be a major awards season contender, following the success of the first film.

Although the calendar releases for 2024 have been severely affected by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes that derailed productions last year, Dune: Part Two has been a tremendous success for everyone involved. Dune: Part Two was hailed as an instant classic that pushed the thematic and visual sensibilities of Frank Herbert ’s epic universe in an exciting new direction. One of the most haunting sequences in Dune: Part Two takes place on the House Harkonnen planet of Giedi Prime , and was shot entirely in black-and-white.

In what he considered to be an extended tribute to classic black-and-white horror films, Villeneuve chose to remove the color from the scene on Giedi Prime to show how the planet revolved around a black sun, and thus was not exposed to natural light in the same way that House Atreides was on Arrakis. Beyond the literal reason stemming from the source material, Dune: Part Two ’s stunning black-and-white sequence evokes images of visceral horror, and serves a great role in introducing the new villain Feyd-Rautha ( Austin Butler ) as a true contender who could steal the throne from Paul ( Timothée Chalamet ). Although it's a sequence that has been praised for its boldness, the House Harkonnen black-and-white scene was nearly altered by Warner Brothers when they realized what Villeneuve was doing.

Dune: Part Two

Paul Atreides unites with Chani and the Fremen while seeking revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family.

Why Was the Giedi Prime Scene Almost Cut From 'Dune: Part Two?'

Cinematographer Greig Fraser , who had won an Academy Award for his work on the first Dune , stated that he and Villeneuve chose to screen the footage for Warner Brothers because “people who were not there would watch this footage and go, "What the heck is that?" Given that there was no way of artificially adding color to a scene that had been shot in a specific format, Fraser and Villeneuve were “exposed, figuratively and literally, where there's no way” the scene could be changed. Although Warner Brothers initially started to panic, the studio’s hands were forced by the nature of the production. Both Dune films may have changed aspects of the source materia l, but this method of fleshing out the way that Giedi Prime looked was a throwback to what Herbert originally had intended.

The use of black-and-white in Dune: Part Two was significant in marking a change of pace in the story by showing the scale of the universe. Earlier segments of the film focused on the vast beauty of the desert of Arrakis, and explored the greater intimacy of Paul’s connection with the Fremen as he begins to accept his role as their messiah. While it was not dull in the slightest, the first half of Dune: Part Two was methodical in its pacing, and needed a significant change in tone to indicate that the action would be ramping up in the second half. Villenueve’s gamble appeared to have paid off, as Dune: Part Two has subsequently been hailed as one of the greatest adventure movies ever made.

'Dune: Part Two' Gave More Depth to House Harkonnen

One of the greatest strengths of Dune: Part Two is that there is more time spent examining the intergalactic politics , which indicates that House Harkonnen is really just a pawn used by the Emperor ( Christopher Walken ) and the Bene Gesserit to keep the other systems in line. Feyd-Rautha may be cruel, but he was never going to be anything other than a puppet, even if he did succeed in usurping Paul. The complexity in which the film details these nuanced ideas about political aggression is one of the primary reasons why Dune: Part Two is one of the rare novels that is as good as its source material.

Considering that it is one of the year’s best films so far , Dune: Part Two will likely be involved in many award-season discussions at the end of the year. The first Dune was one of the rare science fiction films to break into the Oscars’ Best Picture lineup, and managed to walk away from the ceremony with six trophies. Whether the sequel can perform the same is unclear yet, but it would be surprising if Dune: Part Two was not at least a major contender.

Dune: Part Two is streaming on Max in the U.S.

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3 Reasons The Fall Guy’s Dune Parody Should Become a Real Movie

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The Fall Guy, starring Ryan Gosling, featured a Dune Parody, but the fake movie has the potential to make a great action film.

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Dune movie review, what people on reddit think, generated from these links:.

Overall, Redditors have mixed opinions on the Dune movie reviews. Some praise the film's visuals, world-building, and faithfulness to the source material, while others criticize the pacing, editing, and lack of character development. Many users express excitement for the upcoming Part Two and hope that it will address some of the issues raised in the first film. Some users also discuss the importance of reading the book before watching the movie to fully appreciate the story. There is a general consensus that the movie is worth watching, but may not be for everyone.

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Dune: Part Two Review

With its beautiful cinematography, visceral action, a dark score by Hans Zimmer and interesting character arcs, Dune Part Two is a great addition to the already amazing Dune Part One.

Denis Villeneuve is my favorite director and Dune Part One is one of my all-time favorite science-fiction films, so my expectations for Dune Part Two were incredibly high. I am in a bit of a shock to say that Dune Part Two met my unreasonably high expectations. Is it a perfect film? No, I don't think it is, and I don't think it has to be... or even can be.

My only, somewhat minor, issue with the film would be that the plot didn't flow as smoothly as I would've liked it to—it felt like the film was jumping from scene to scene instead of flowing from one scene to another. This did become less of an issue the more I watched the film though, probably because I became more familiar with the plot and its structure.

The pacing also felt a bit fast, especially compared to Dune Part One, which had perfect pacing. But after multiple viewings, this too became less of an issue. An example of this would be the final battle. I initially thought this was too short, but I then came to the realization that this event was never about the battle itself. It was about Paul luring The Emperor from the safety of his ship, to come to Arrakis, so that he could overthrow him and become The Emperor. Another example would be the fight between Gurney and Rabban, which I initially thought was ended too abruptly. After having some time to think about it, the abrupt ending of that fight made perfect sense. It shows us that Rabban is a nobody—he makes a lot of noise, but when it is actually time to prove himself, he fails.

Regardless, I still think the film would've benefitted from 20 more minutes, especially in the third act, to provide the plot with the necessary breathing room. Admittedly, while reading the second half of the book, I also felt that the plot wasn't as smooth and the pacing also felt a bit off. So, maybe Villeneuve, the editor Joe Walker, and the screenwriter Jon Spaihts did the best they could with the plot considering the source material...

This faster pacing, combined with the sensory overload, dense plot and strong character arcs, made Dune Part Two quite overwhelming on my first watch. Not necessarily in a bad way, but I wasn't able to get my thoughts straightened out after my first viewing—something I was able to do after my second, and even third, viewing. Having said all that, I absolutely loved the entire experience it provided and how it is a great continuation of the Dune story. I have seen the film in both IMAX and Dolby Cinema, and even though Dolby Cinema had better image quality and a more balanced audio mix, IMAX felt more immersive due to the 1.90:1 expanded aspect ratio of the screen and more impactful bass. Unfortunately, we don't see great films like this very often. So when we do, I think it is something we should cherish.

As the title indicates, Dune Part Two feels like it is part of a film—Like Villeneuve said, Part One and Part Two should be considered as one film. It doesn't only feel like the second half of a film, it also feels like the midpoint of a story—with the midpoint being Paul taking the Water of Life. Knowing that Dune Messiah will be Dune Part Three, this makes sense. I can't wait for this trilogy to be completed. I feel that when Part Three is released, the trilogy feels like one big and cohesive story, the story of Paul Atreides. Right now it feels like watching the first half of Lawrence of Arabia without watching the second half—like, it's excellent but there is so much more to the story, and therefore to the plot and character arcs too.

I loved the omens in Dune Part One. After watching it again after seeing Part Two, I noticed there are a lot of omens hidden in the dialogues. Even though I have read the book, I never really picked up on them before.

"A great man doesn't seek to lead. He's called to it... and he answers." - Leto Atreides

This dialogue from Leto Atreides in Dune Part One has so much more meaning to it when you know Paul will be called to lead by the Fremen in Part Two. One that also has much more meaning is the vision that Paul has about someone that hands him a knife. Initially, I thought this was only referring to Chani giving Paul the knife to fight Jamis, but now I realize it is as much about Jessica's influence on Paul to start the Holy War.

"I'm following someone... and it triggers a Holy War. Millions and millions of people starving to death... because of me."

A more obvious omen is that Gurney warns Paul about the hidden blade when they are training. Paul remembers this lesson in his fight with Jamis and his fight with Feyd-Rautha.

"The desert takes the weak. My desert... my Arrakis... my Dune." - The Baron Vladimir Harkonnen

Remembering this dialogue from The Baron in Dune Part One made the scene where Paul tells the Fremen to give The Baron's dead body to the desert even better. It tells us that The Baron is a weak man... a weak man taken by the desert.

"Paul Atreides must die, for Kwisatz Haderach to rise."

This dialogue, and the vision of Paul dying, is another one that stood out to me. Dune Part One makes it seem like this is about the fight with Jamis, but it is about the Water of Life—one of the strongest and most important moments of Paul Atreides' character arc.

And talking about Paul's character arc, Timothée Chalamet did an outstanding job portraying Paul Atreides and his rise into becoming the Lisan al-Gaib and Kwisatz Haderach. His acting skills have significantly grown since Dune Part One. The way Timothée portrayed Paul Atreides after he took the Water of Life was such a strong contrast compared to how we see Paul before he took it. The same can be said about how Rebecca Ferguson portrayed Lady Jessica after she took the Water of Life—both created some very dark and gripping scenes that changed the tone of the entire film. Paul's speech to the Fremen in the South was very eloquent. It was so eloquent that even I felt its persuasive force and emotional weight during that entire scene.

"E Rudhi Dina, heshidhanii: ne Lisaan al-Gayib!"

Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha was another one that I was impressed with. Butler is unrecognizable and becomes overshadowed by the strong characteristics of Feyd-Rautha, exposing us to this intense presence whenever he is on screen. I can go on and one about how great the actors were in Dune Part Two, but every single one did an amazing job. They all disappeared into their characters—characters that helped strengthen the worldbuilding Frank Herbert created and Denis Villeneuve, and his team, put to screen.

You can't review Dune and not talk about the cinematography, especially the grand scale it visualizes. Greig Fraser has outdone himself with Dune Part Two. I loved how they shot certain scenes as if they were shot with a telephoto lens and used Telephoto Compression. This is a technique that enlarges the background without enlarging the foreground, which is great to create a massive scale for objects in the background relative to object in the foreground—like the scene where you see Paul and Chani running in the foreground and seeing a massive Ornithopter falling in the background, or the scene where you see Paul standing on the dune in the foreground and seeing the massive worm coming towards him in the background. Telephoto Compression also provides the ability to shoot the scenes in deep focus. This way the foreground, middle ground and background remain in focus... although this effect was not replicated in every scene that looked like it used Telephoto Compression.

One of my favorite scenes of the film is the arrival of Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV. We see Stilgar waving his hand while the camera slowly moves forward, grabbing our attention and moving it from his hand gesture to the open desert and the sandstorm behind his hand—a reminiscence of Paul's hand gesture after he took the Water of Life and said:

"My visions are clear now. I see possible futures, all at once. Our enemies are all around us... and in so many futures they prevail. But I do see a way, there is a narrow way through."

This visual connection between the hand gestures, combined with our shifting attention from the hand gesture to the open desert and predicted desert storm in the background, tells us that Paul knows he has to lure The Emperor to Arrakis, so he can overthrow him and become Emperor himself.

While the camera slowly moves forward to Stilgar's hand and the open desert, the score is also slowly rising. And when The Emperor's ship arrives from behind the mountains, the chanting in the score becomes this powerful force. The camera is positioned low on the ground, looking up at this colossal ship in the sky that is coming towards us. This blocking, combined with the chanting in the score, beautifully shows us the rank, power and almost godlike status The Emperor has.

Another scene I love is the scene with Feyd-Rautha and Lady Fenring on Giedi Prime. While shooting The Batman, cinematographer Greig Fraser, had a lot of time playing around with lighting that is surrounded by darkness. This skill is exactly what he shows with the infrared sequences on Giedi Prime. The scene with Feyd-Rautha and Lady Fenring has the best use of lighting I have seen in a while, up to par with the lighting in Blade Runner 2049. The shot where we see their faces in darkness being lit by flashes of light from the fireworks, and the shot of the dark silhouet of Lady Fenring in the foreground created by the flashes of light in the background, create strong images that provides the scene with a lot of mystery.

Something else about the cinematography in Dune Part Two that particularly stood out to me, was the blocking and staging during the fight scenes. The way the camera moved along with the characters looked really well choreographed and dynamic, placing the viewer right inbetween the action—adding to the immersion of the action.

Another aspect that added to the immersion was, of course, the visceral and dark score by Hans Zimmer. It reminds me of the score in Dune Part One, but way darker. It feels as if Hans Zimmer said f*ck it, and went all in with this one. I really appreciate the contrast between the more dreamlike and mysterious score of Dune Part One, and the dark score of Dune Part Two. This perfectly resembles the story of Paul Atreides. In the first film, he is this innocent boy that discovers a beautiful new world, while in the second film, this innocent boy turns into the Lisan al-Gaib that fights the Harkonnen.

For years, people have said that Frank Herbert's book, Dune, is impossible to adapt. I think Villeneuve has proven to us that this is not the case—his screenplay shifts the focus more to the story of Paul Atreides, and manages to not only visualize the work of Frank Herbert, but also to transfer its spirit from page to screen. Yes, there were quite a few things missing or changed in both films, but as someone that has read the book, I do believe this Villeneuve adaptation is the best Dune adaptation we will ever see.

A big change from the book is that in the film, Paul is the one that kills The Baron instead of Alia, and I think it was really well executed. Right before The Baron killed Leto, he said his bloodline ends there, having Leto think Paul is dead. When Paul kills The Baron, he says "grandfather", meaning that not only the Atreides bloodline continues... but The Baron's bloodline continues too—The Baron's bloodline is conquered by his enemy.

Overall, Dune Part Two was an amazing theater experience and a great continuation of the Dune story. It is an overwhelming sensory overload that I am definitely going to enjoy many more times to come. Dune Messiah can't come soon enough.

Addaam reshii a-zaanta!

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Dune Part 2 was an unforgettable theatre experience. It’s been a few days now and I just can’t shake the feeling it left me with.

It was reminiscent of my experiences seeing Avatar and Fury Road on opening night, or seeing the 40th and 50th anniversary showings of Alien and 2001: A Space Odyssey. If I had one small gripe it might be that Walken was underused? But that’s a very minor complaint.

I loved the first film but I did have some issues with the pacing in the back half. But this? It was as good a science fiction film as I’ve ever seen. I had a big dumb smile on my face the whole time.

Here’s hoping they let Villeneuve make his Rama movie because there is so much potential in that book. I do wonder if he’ll want to step away from sci-fi for a bit with his last four films being in the genre.

I didn't enjoy it as much as you did, but I thought it was well worth seeing.

I do think the film would've benefitted from 20 more minutes, especially in the third act, to provide the plot with the necessary breathing room. This faster pacing, combined with the sensory overload, dense plot and strong character arcs, made Dune Part Two quite overwhelming on my first watch.

I suspect you're right. There are also key informational elements in the book which could have made it into the film with more time. Did anyone else feel the editing could have been more refined? I sometimes had the sense that it was just one thing after another, with rather abrupt transitions to the senses, instead of feeling properly connected.

Another issue I have is that some of the thematic ideas are expressed in a somewhat trite, simplistic and overly direct way in the dialogue. Now, I don't remember much from the book, so I don't know whether this was a problem there too. But many of the quotes people seem to enjoy seem to me so blunt and so much shouting "we're making a thematic point here!" that it's a little painful.

I'm a big fan of the dreams and visions, and I agree with you about the choreography. Great sound design too. The score works very well with the film, but as a listener of classical music I don't think I would ever listen to it apart from the film.

I think I would want you to say more about the internal connections you saw in the film. That is perhaps the best part of your review.

Dune is a landmark science fiction novel first published in 1965 and the first in a 6-book saga penned by author Frank Herbert. Widely considered one of the greatest works within the sci-fi genre, Dune has been the subject of various film and TV adaptations, including the Academy Award winning 2021 film Dune directed by Denis Villeneuve. Dune: Part Two opened on March 1, 2024.

Dune Part Two Review: It was beautiful…

Granted, this adaptation of the latter half of the Dune (1965) book was not a definitive adaptation of all of the events of the book and I will go into this later, but I have to say this is the best movie I have seen in years.

For so long the entertainment industry has been riddled with over saturation of the same content whether it be multiple yearly tv shows or movies from multiple franchises that or mediocre to ok or continuing reboots.

Then I saw Dune Part Two and thinking this is a movie to behold. For me what’s important about a movie is its intention, why is it made? Is there a passion here? This movie delivers that core message of the danger of a man like Paul, and this is the thing, he is neither good nor evil. He is that fulcrum, the ogre and the saint. A conduit for a holy war that is beyond his control and messiah’s that are the centre of these crusades are dangerous idols.

I remember reading the first Dune book back in September 2020, days after the first trailer came out with Hans Zimmer’s version of Pink Floyd’s Eclipse, when I saw this trailer I was inspired to read the book as it had something unique to other franchises. When I finished the line “history will call us wives” I was in awe because of the books shows so much about religious figures whilst creating this whole new world.

Yes, it changed multiple things from the end of the book such as:

Leto the Elder

Barons Death

Count Fenring

Water of Death

I’m not going to say that these changes are objectively justified as changes to any book are not great and ultimately everyone deserves their view on these changes. For me, I can live without the above changes as the principle message remains clear from Dune Part 2.

For me the standout performance was definitely Timothee Chalamet. The other performances were incredible and deserve absolute recognition for how well they were done but what sealed it for me with Timothee was his speech in the south, the POWER in his voice, the presence he held in that scene, Paul dominated the Fremen, the Kwizasz Haderach truly was born in the south.

My only tidbit I would say is that it should have been longer. Villeneuve says that there is a trend amongst people to what movies to be longer. I would say longer movies done right tend to be stronger, LOTR movies, Godfather movies have proven this is the case. Having the battle scene be longer would have been better but ultimately I am satisfied with Part 2.

That’s my review done haha! Thank you for taking the time to read and I hope I did not bore you too much! I hope you all have a wonderful time enjoying Part 2 as I did and have a great day!

Just saw the movie found this thread first and here I am. I’m torn. Dune is one of my top ten books hands down. And I absolutely agree the line “history will call us wives” was fantastic among many other amazing quotes, and there was so many great things about the books. But I reread it maybe a few weeks ago and a lot of things didn’t hit the same, some harder, some irk me now that I’m older and hopefully wiser.

I’m not crazy about some of the changes they introduced here. They discarded whole aspects of the fremen culture, multiple wives, responsibility for the family of the man you kill in a duel, they kept showing everyone with incredibly lax stillsuit discipline for more expressive face shots. Why was the sietch not sealed with airlocks?! Why are you camping at night and walking the dunes in the day?! I know filming at night must suck, but water discipline!

My biggest gripe though, the one I’m actually kind of offended about? They over simplified the setting by not presenting the space guild. Paul ascended the throne because he could threaten the guild with the destruction of the spice which they need and with that over their heads they refuse to transport the armies of the great houses to Dune. It’s the entire reason the spice is so important. Ignoring that whole aspect of the empire and its importance irks me.

On the other hand, this actually gives a reason for the jihad. In the books Paul takes the throne, it’s his, then we skip ahead twelve years and the fremen have killed their way across the galaxy and worlds have been destroyed and little to no explanation of why is ever given. Paul ruled the Empire. Order the guild to cut off trading to rebel worlds until they fall in line. Easy, but instead… religious war? What? Why? So I’ll reserve judgment on that one for a tick and see if and what a potential dune 3 might bring if we get one.

But if there’s anything I really appreciated about the movie? They introduced out and out skeptics among the fremen. Paul needing to win over some of the fremen as apposed to “here I am I won one knife fight I’m one of you now.” That I love. And maybe I’m a hypocrite for that because it is another change to fremen culture, but at least that change felt organic, or realistic maybe because for a population the size of the fremen to not have skeptics or those which only pay religion lip service was a bit of a hard sell. That the religious fervor spread even into the ones who didn’t believe at first honestly made that bit better because people get sucked into cults all the time.

So that’s me. Loved some changes, others grated. Pretty happy overall but the unexpected nature of the changes makes me twitch at more than a few of them.

Dune 1 was better edited/paced by miles, that part when they introduce us to his cousin i went to the bathroom, booooring, and for what? We then have that arena on his birthday that felt shallow as possible, he then do nothing the entire movie to fight Paul in the end... So much time wasted on someone that had 0 impact on the movie.

Then that scene when his trainer kills the Barons nephew "for my family and friends" i felt like watching Fast and Furious. Cringed hard.

All of that to have a final battle that felt unimportant, no combat, no danger, no nothing, paul and the fremens break on the Emperor ship and again, nothing happened except he killing the Baron.

Lots of temporal jumps/cuts that watered down the importance of things.

This movie got a lot of his priorities wrong.

Although a good movie, if part 1 is a 8/10 movie this one is 7.5!

My short DUNE review (didnt like it)

I got to see Dune yesterday at a preview in Germany and unfortunately didn't like it. It has several problems that will prevent it from being a beloved classic (like I hoped it would become), even if it's commercially successful.

The story itself It barely tells any story. We meet the Atreidis on Caladan and they're in the process of moving to Arrakis as per the Emperors orders. The Harkonnen move out. The Atreidis get there. They're given a tour of the planet. The Harkonnen attack. Paul and Jessica are taken/flee into the desert and meet the Fremen. The End. Every step of this takes forever and leads up to basically nothing (handcombat with an angry dude introduced 5 seconds prior). I couldn't believe the end, they just walk off into the desert. Not even a hint of how they'll begin to fight back. But this is the primary reason why I think it won't be a classic: it'll be a chore to rewatch. Each scene is streched to it's maximum and despite taking it's time, we learn remarkably little about the world, far less than in Lynchs movie. Most of the time nothing is happening. The characters never take action, stuff happens to them.

Tragically a bigger problem is the worldbuilding, which is dearest to my heart. It just feels wrong. The world is obviously huge, the spaceships and other machinery are giant, as are the dwellings, but there's barely any people. Example: Even when they're showing a big army in formation, they're spaced like 15 meters (no joke) apart, like they didnt have enough extras, even tho those shots are obviously CGI. I do know that other than the occasional moment when the main characters pass among the common folk, the books dont really depict the lives of the masses, because the main characters of Dune are always elites and ubermensch paragons, so their concerns and experiences are bigger than those of Average Joe Everyman living on Caladan or Ix. Unfortunately, Dennis seems to have misunderstood that blindspot to imply that there are no common folk in the Dune universe, because the world shown in his movie seems utterly depopulated. What I'm seeing is simply not plausible. It feels like places built by a higher civilization inhabited by the survivors of an apocalypse. All we see of Caladan is a (in sci fi terms) tiny mountain/coastal fortress thats occupied by 100 people tops, which reminded me most of Lukes exile island in TLJ. The set design itself is sterile. It's the complete opposite of Star Wars (thinking of 1977). Very soulless. I can't possibly imagine children playing pretend in this Dune universe. Most interior shots look like wet concrete, or an abandoned slate mine. There's never much going on in the background. It's all a bunch of huge empty hallways and staircases. And every single shot is totally dominated by a single color, most often grey. I know Dennis seems to consistently favor this design style, as he used it in BR2049 for Wallace's enormous ziggurat: Brutalist rooms, big enough to comfortably land a jumbo jet within, occupied by one person... But I really don't like the world he created.

The Good I enjoyd what little was shown of the Harkonnen, they're different from the David Lynch ones but interesting and well designed in their own right. When the Atreides put on their ceremonial robes for 5 seconds I really enjoyed the costume design (other than that they along with everyone else wear grey the entire time). If this was the dominant look of the movie I would have enjoyed it a great deal more. The actors all do a fine job. Timothy Charlamagne acted the part with the box really well, they didnt make it see-through but you could really believe his pain.

Anyway sorry to dampen the mood, I'd just like to know if I'm alone in this

Agreed. As I posted elsewhere:

"...Watched it. For fans of the books, it will seem like a garbage cliff notes half movie. For those who don't know the book, it will seem like...I don't know what, I really don't.

Denis' worst film by far. Not sure what the early enthusiasm was about. So many incomplete threads and absent rationales...not a good film in terms of just basic filmmaking, let alone articulating the fundamentals of what Dune as a novel was about.

The Lynch version was far more committed; this one looks better, but offers no insight, just a plot step that's followed by a plot step and then...it ends."

Unfortunately OP it's not going to be World Of Dune where you are like a "fly on the wall" experiencing Dune.

It's instead Blockbuster Dune where every NOTE is designed to generate ROI.

The good of that is sheer production quality. The bad is that "empty artificial feeling". Overall for a blockbuster it will immense fun and rewarding, as a classic it won't be.

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'Dune' Review Thread

Rotten Tomatoes : 84% (31 reviews) with 8.20 in average rating

Critics consensus: Dune occasionally struggles with its unwieldy source material, but those issues are largely overshadowed by the scope and ambition of this visually thrilling adaptation.

Metacritic : 76/100 (18 critics)

As with other movies, the scores are set to change as time passes. Meanwhile, I'll post some short reviews on the movie.

Denis Villeneuve’s attempt to tame the notoriously difficult novel about an interstellar empire at war over control of a precious natural resource has no lack of cinematic spectacle — from its majestic landscapes to its monumental architecture, nifty hardware and impressive spacecraft. It also benefits from a charismatic ensemble led by Timothée Chalamet in intensely swoony form as the young messiah who might lead the oppressed out of tyranny. But it doesn’t quash the frequent claim that the book is unfilmable. At least not in part one of what is being billed as a two-part saga.

- David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

For all of Villeneuve’s awe-inducing vision, he loses sight of why Frank Herbert’s foundational sci-fi opus is worthy of this epic spectacle in the first place. Such are the pitfalls of making a movie so large that not even its director can see around the sets.

- David Ehrlich, IndieWire : C-

Denis Villeneuve's adaptation has a majestic vastness, and most of it actually makes sense, but it's an act of world-building that runs out of storytelling steam.

- Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is beautiful to behold, a faithful adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel. Or of its first half, that is. And therein lies the problem that the film faces, for in cutting this story into two parts, Villeneuve has front-loaded Dune with a lot of set-up and no obvious way to end things… and so it lingers, and eventually overstays its welcome. This is a technically brilliant, visually amazing movie with a top-notch cast and deep sci-fi concepts. A shame, then, that it feels like a drag in its back half.

- Scott Collura, IGN : 7.0 "good"

An absorbing, awe-inspiringly huge adaptation of (half of) Frank Herbert’s novel that will wow existing acolytes, and get newcomers hooked on its Spice-fuelled visions. If Part Two never happens, it’ll be a travesty.

- Ben Travis, Empire : 5/5

Good heavens, what a film. The drama is played out with relish by an ensemble cast and Villeneuve is confident enough to let the temperature slowly build before the big operatic set-pieces eventually break cover. He has constructed an entire world for us here, thick with myth and mystery, stripped of narrative signposts or even much in the way of handy exposition. He has handed us a movie to map out at our leisure and figure out on the run: apparently spitting on someone is an gesture of respect, while walking sideways like a crab is the safest way to proceed. After that we’re on our own, wandering in the desert, wonderfully immersed. It’s a film of discovery; an invitation to get lost.

- Xan Brooks, The Guardian : 5/5

It would be a travesty if we never got to see the second part of this story, but Part One has satisfying narrative threads with a logical endgame that leaves you wanting more. The set pieces, while sporadic, are exciting and the movie presents such a fantastic, robust sci-fi world, you could watch it a million times and find something new with each viewing. And yet, that dense, complex world exists solely to enhance a personal, relatable, emotional story. A story of a world where a boy grows to be a man with all sorts of unfathomable expectations — expectations this movie probably has on it too. But don’t worry, Dune is awesome in every sense of the word, and it’ll be a movie fans cherish for years to come.

- Germain Lussier, Gizmodo

Even with its imperfections, “Dune” as an experience is awesome, with astounding special effects, great production design and a propulsive Hans Zimmer score. Insect/helicopter hybrid vehicles buzz around, Paul’s frequent future visions add a mysteriously neat vibe, and it’s hard to beat scarily mawed sandworms that could stretch across quite a few football fields. You’ll just need to hope for a "Dune" sequel – or head to the books – for it all to make sense. Sure, it's got Spice, but better storytelling would be nice.

- Brian Truitt, USA Today : 2.5/4

This version of “Dune” sometimes feels as if it aims to impress you more than entertain you; it’s grim on a staggering level, ditching most of the fun of sci-fi yarns in favor of a worldview that feels more like Villeneuve’s “Sicario” or “Prisoners” than his “Arrival.” But it’s also a formidable cinematic accomplishment, a giant mood piece that can be exhilarating in its dark beauty.

- Steve Pond, The Wrap

Villeneuve, not the normally brilliant Lynch, was clearly born to bring this one home. A devotee of the novel since first reading it at age 14 and always having had it on his bucket list of films he would love to make, Villeneuve has gone faithfully, with co-writers Jon Spaiths and Eric Roth, to the heart and soul of Herbert’s vision in focusing on the human element of the futuristic story, set some 8,000 years or so from now when a crisis of ecology and the environment sparks a massive turf war between two families — the Great Houses of Atreides versus Harkonnen — as the battle for survival moves to an imposing planet named Arrakis, aka Dune as its native Fremen tribes call it.

- Pete Hammond, Deadline

The sheer awesomeness of Villeneuve's execution often obscures the fact that the plot is mostly prologue: a sprawling origin story with no fixed beginning or end. (The director has said that he only agreed to take on the project if the studio let him split Dune's narrative into two parts, and that he's still "very optimistic" the second will get made.) Minus the fuller context that Herbert's extended universe and dense mythology provides, the meaning of it all feels both endlessly beguiling and just out of reach: a dazzling high-toned space opera written on sand.

- Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly : B

Part two of "Dune" must happen so he can finish the hero's journey he started. Audiences deserve to see the conclusion of an action film so immaculately crafted and patiently paced, one that's more focused on inspiring reverent amazement through the simplicity of durable storytelling structures rather than the complexity of cinematic universe building.

- Marshall Shaffer, /FILM : 9/10

An astounding spectacle, vast in scale and ambition. Prepare to have your breath snatched away.

- James Mottram, Total Film : 5/5

In the far future of humanity, Duke Leto Atreides accepts the stewardship of the dangerous desert planet Arrakis, also known as Dune, the only source of the most valuable substance in the universe, "melange" (also called "spice"), a drug that extends human life, provides superhuman levels of thought, and makes faster-than-light travel practical. Though Leto knows the opportunity is an intricate trap set by his enemies, he takes his Bene Gesserit concubine Lady Jessica, young son and heir Paul, and most trusted advisors to Arrakis. Leto takes control of the spice mining operation, which is made perilous by the presence of giant sandworms. A bitter betrayal leads Paul and Jessica to the Fremen, natives of Arrakis who live in the deep desert.

Denis Villeneuve

Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve and Eric Roth (based on Dune by Frank Herbert)

Hans Zimmer

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Greig Fraser

$165 million

Release date:

September 3, 2021 (Venice Film Festival)

October 22, 2021 (United States on theaters and HBO Max)

Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides

Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica

Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto Atreides

Josh Brolin as Gurney Halleck

Stellan Skarsgård as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen

Dave Bautista as Glossu Rabban

Stephen McKinley Henderson as Thufir Hawat

Zendaya as Chani

David Dastmalchian as Piter De Vries

Chang Chen as Dr. Wellington Yueh

Sharon Duncan-Brewster as Dr. Liet-Kynes

Charlotte Rampling as Gaius Helen Mohiam

Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho

Javier Bardem as Stilgar

"This version of “Dune” sometimes feels as if it aims to impress you more than entertain you; it’s grim on a staggering level, ditching most of the fun of sci-fi yarns in favor of a worldview that feels more like Villeneuve’s “Sicario” or “Prisoners” than his “Arrival.”

Call me crazy but I don't remember Dune ever trying to be your typical "zooming from planet to planet to save the day" kinda book. Its not supposed to be your typical pulp sci-fi story with jokes and humor all over the place, its supposed to be grim and dark while showing the realities of becoming the very thing you hate. Its not a story full of hope and promise in the slightest. Reviews don't normally bother me but this one annoyed me a lot.

Looking about how I expected - people like the world, the effects, and the overall feeling, but the first half of the story can't hit the heights you'd want and can't resolve the bigger story.

I'm looking forward to seeing it in theatres on the biggest screen I can find. It looks like we'll have to hope that part 2 can do the rest of the story justice and, in doing so, elevate part 1 with it.

'Dune' Review Megathread

Legendary Picture's Dune premiered on September 3rd at the 78th Venice Intl Film Festival and reviews are coming in. Please post them to the subreddit as you find them. We will be collecting them in this post for easy reference.

Articles are grouped into two categories below: those containing spoilers, and those which are spoiler-free. Please be aware that the same applies to the respective articles' comment chains.

Rotten Tomatoes: 84% (343 reviews), 7.70 average rating

Metacritic: 75/100 (54 critics), "generally favorable reviews"

Spoiler-free reviews

Cinemablend , Eric Eisenberg - 4.5/5

It’s an exceptional and special big screen experience, and does an incredible job laying the foundation for what is an expansive, unique universe, but it also can’t help but feel like the serving of a decadent and delicious appetizer that comes out while the epic entrée to come is still braising in the kitchen.

The Daily Beast , Marlow Stern

One area of concern lies in Dune’s softening of Herbert’s book’s Islamism. While the cast is far more diverse than Lynch’s Aryan lovefest, there is nary a Middle Eastern actor in sight, and its Islamic influences are relegated to terminology, e.g. “Shai-Hulud,” “Mahdi” and “Lisan al Gaib.” The Fremen too, symbolizing Arab peoples, have been mostly pushed to the background, though will likely factor in more in future installments.

Deadline , Pete Hammond

No matter what your opinion is of the source material, this vision for bringing it alive as a movie deserves only premium exhibition.

Den of Geek , David Crow - 4.5/5

Dune is an astonishing swing of ambition and passion from filmmakers at the top of their craft, and it more often than not connects like a thunderbolt.

Digital Spy , Ian Sandwell - ★★★☆☆

There's a lot to admire in Dune: Part One, especially in terms of the impressive world-building and the excellent cast. However, you're left thinking about how good the second part will be, rather than being totally fulfilled with this movie. Let's hope this isn't our only visit to Arrakis.

Empire , Ben Travis - ★★★★★

An absorbing, awe-inspiringly huge adaptation of (half of) Frank Herbert’s novel that will wow existing acolytes, and get newcomers hooked on its Spice-fuelled visions.

The Film Stage , David Katz - C+

Denis Villeneuve has surmounted this slew of bad omens, by arguably––in filmmaking terms––making the most impersonal adaptation possible. For all his skill and talent, his deftness and subtlety, he acts as just a translator for Herbert’s largely uncompromised original vision, let alone an interpreter or proselytizer.

Gamespot , Michael Rougeaou - 10/10

Denis Villeneuve's Dune is the best possible adaptation of the classic sci-fi novel.

Gamesradar , James Mottram - ★★★★★

As absorbing as Dune’s plot is, it’s the world-building that will leave your mind blown. The costumes, the production design and the visual effects are all elite-level, perfectly harnessed to bring Villeneuve’s vision of Herbert thrillingly alive. From the suits used to recycle the body’s moisture in the desert to the helicopters with rotor-blades that flutter like mosquito wings, this is science fiction to get utterly lost in.

The Guardian , Xan Brooks - ★★★★★

Denis Villeneuve’s slow-burn space opera fuses the arthouse and the multiplex to create an epic of otherworldly brilliance.

Independent , Clarisse Loughrey - ★★★★★

It is a film of such literal and emotional largeness that it overwhelms the senses. If all goes well, it should reinvigorate the book’s legacy in the same way Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy did for JRR Tolkien’s work.

Indiewire , David Ehrlich, C-

Los Angeles Times , Justin Chang

To call this “Dune” a remarkably lucid work is to praise it with very faint damnation. Perhaps reluctant to alienate the novices in the audience, Villeneuve has ironed out many of the novel’s convolutions, to the likely benefit of comprehension but at the expense of some rich, imaginative excess.

The Mary Sue , Princess Weekes - ★★★☆☆

All I could think of was early Game of Thrones and how a product like Dune would thrive with Villeneuve’s vision on a weekly program like HBO. To me, Dune is not un-filmable; it is just not meant to be a movie. It has all the makings of a fantastic television series, but forcing Dune to fit into the big screen limits how much we are able to explore, every time.

The New Arab , Hanna Flint

Villeneuve has certainly achieved the grand scale of his vision. It's just a shame that vital elements of the story, character building and MENA representation have been lost in his translation.

The New Republic , David Klion

Villeneuve, to his great credit, doesn’t hit audiences with dense paragraphs of exposition like those above. He understands that a successful film is one that transports us, and that with stunning visuals, a first-rate cast, and an economical script, we’ll come along for the ride without asking too many questions.

Next Best Picture , Cody Dericks - 8/10

Villeneuve adds his usual brains and soul to yet another epic blockbuster property and, once again, he’s secured victory. But it is we, the audience, who gets to reap the rewards of his hard work.

Observer , Siddhant Adlakha - 2.5/4

The film itself is mostly fine, with breathtaking visuals broken up by a less captivating story that often drags its feet. But its place within Western traditions-both real and imagined-is strange, unsavory, and fascinating.

One Room With A View , Anahit Behrooz - ★★★★☆

At times Dune feels like it is holding back; perhaps because it only covers the first half of Herbert’s novel, perhaps because this investigation of power lacks the weighty interrogation of the human condition that made Arrival in particular so enrapturing. Yet balanced by a largely stellar cast (inexplicably none of whom are Middle Eastern despite the source material’s clear geopolitical parable) and sumptuous visual storytelling, Dune breathes life into Herbert’s plentiful world.

Polygon , Rafael Motamayor

Against all odds, Villeneuve’s film not only lives up to its source material’s reputation, but to the reputation he’s built as one of our best directors within the genre.

RogerEbert.com , Glen Kenny - 3.5/4

I’ll always love Lynch’s “Dune,” a severely compromised dream-work that had little use for Herbert’s messaging. But Villeneuve’s movie is “Dune.”

The Telegraph , Robbie Collin - ★★★★★

This new adaptation of the 1965 Frank Herbert novel from Denis Villeneuve, the director of Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, is science-fiction at its most majestic, unsettling and enveloping.

Time Out - Phil de Semlyen, ★★★★☆

Chalamet is rock solid as this Luke Spicewalker figure, but everyone is watchable here – there’s no Sting to stink the place up. Pick of the supporting cast is Stellan Skarsgård, who channels Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now as the Harkonnen’s bloated head honcho, the Baron. He’s a power-hungry schemer whose litany of monstrous traits includes floating through the air like an evil children’s balloon.

Variety , Owen Gleiberman

Vulture , Alison Willmore

Paul’s reluctance to fall into the role created for him isn’t the usual self-doubt, but the dread of someone who begins to believe he’s meant to initiate a holy war. Being the hero of the story has never looked so poisoned, and that alone is thrilling enough to hope Villeneuve gets to make part two of this impressively batshit venture.

Spoiler reviews

People should always slow down when it comes to fresh reviews.

2001 A Space Odissey early reviews were basically split 50-50 into "great movie" and "absolute garbage nonsense" and we talk about THAT freaking masterpiece.

So far Dune got definitely great reviews. You can't get unanimous praise.

My feel is that, as usual, if you like and understand Denis style you'll love this too.

It's not for everyone and Dune novels weren't for everyone. This is a sci-fi for adults, the same way Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 were.

Hail to the Spice

Don't know how much this sub cares but ATM Dune has 3.9/5 stars on letterboxd (it is mainly used by people who like cinema, critics and enthusiasts). It's quite a high score, the same of this year's best picture at the Oscars, Nomadland.

'Dune: Part Two' Review Megathread

Please share reviews and updates in the comments.

CAUTION! Some reviews may contain spoilers!

You can spoiler-tag/hide text by writing >!like this!< . That's > ! and ! <, but without the spaces.

https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043033952-Formatting-Guide

Rotten Tomatoes -- Tomatometer 94% (354 reviews) // Audience Score 95% (2,500+ verified ratings)

Metacritic -- Metascore 79 Generally Favorable (based on 62 critic reviews) // User Score 8.3 Universal Acclaim (based on 420 user ratings)

The year’s first surefire blockbuster is a sequel that outdoes Denis Villeneuve’s first epic 2021 sand opera. OK, it’s a tad long and solemn, but Chalamet and Zendaya are destiny-kissed lovers to die for, and the thundering spectacle is off the charts.

-- Peter Travers , ABC News (review)

Villeneuve’s great talent lies, I think, in invocation. He may be less perfect when it comes to conclusions but he’s brilliant at summoning -- a sense of doom, a suddenly appeared spacecraft, a sandworm.

-- Jake Coyle , Associated Press (review)

As blockbuster movies go, Dune: Part Two is a thrilling ride that totally earns its two-and-a-half-hour running time. The filmmakers add much-needed heft to their display of virtuoso filmmaking by adding serious real-life themes.

-- Murtada Elfadl , AV Club (review)

You might expect a big-budget space opera to exhilarate you and move you, and on those terms Villeneuve's sprawling, pretentious folly has to count as an abject failure. But if you want to feel awestruck, that's another matter.

-- Nicholas Barber , BBC.com (review)

Even as we marvel at the stunning and immersive and Oscar-level cinematography, editing, score, visual effects, production design and sound in Denis Villeneuve’s Part Two, we’re reminded at every turn that this is an absolutely crazy story...

-- Richard Roeper , Chicago Sun-Times (review)

What Villeneuve and company achieve in Dune: Part Two is every bit as impressive and, in its peak imagery, hypnotic as part one.

-- Michael Phillips , Chicago Tribune (review)

Part Two possesses state-of-the-art cinematic qualities that reward soaking in its grandeur... After the initial promise, though, the film only sporadically rises to the level of its sky-high expectations.

-- Brian Lowry , CNN.com (review)

The technology here is magic: something to be felt in your soul, not puzzled out in your head.

-- Robbie Collin , Daily Telegraph (review)

Another epic helping of sci-fi wildness from Denis Villeneuve that’ll take true believers to paradise — even if it’s a bit too much Spice to digest in one sitting.

-- Ben Travis , Empire Magazine (review)

It may take five and a half hours for his character to truly come to life, but two films in, Chalamet’s evolution as Paul gives everything a center.

-- Danny Leigh , Financial Times (review)

This is a real epic and it is exhilarating to find a film-maker thinking as big as this.

-- Peter Bradshaw , Guardian (review)

Plagued by a nagging shallowness when it comes to portraying the Fremen... the film has difficulty fully embracing the nuance of Herbert’s anti-imperial and ecologically dystopian text.

-- Lovia Gyarkye , Hollywood Reporter (review)

There are moments in Dune: Part Two that feel so audacious, they play out as if they were already etched onto the cinematic canon.

-- Clarisse Loughrey , Independent (review)

A sci-fi epic for the ages: a sweeping tragedy of mythic proportions, a cautionary tale of the perils of zealotry. It’s a towering feat of sci-fi cinema that will put Dune: Part Two in contention for the pantheon of greatest sequels ever.

-- Hoai-Tran Bui , Inverse (review)

An instant landmark of its genre.

-- Joshua Rothkopf , Los Angeles Times (review)

It belongs firmly to Zendaya, who gives the second half of Denis Villeneuve’s Frank Herbert adaptation an emotional tangibility that the first, in all its exotic majesty, eschewed.

-- Alison Willmore , New York Magazine/Vulture (review)

Our blockbuster drought is over, thanks to a brilliant sequel set on a sweltering desert planet.

-- Johnny Oleksinski , New York Post (review)

Those of us who retain a stubborn fondness for Lynch’s much maligned adaptation will sense what’s missing from Villeneuve’s: an imaginative density, a hint of psychoerotic danger, the grotesque, teeming aliveness of a fully inhabited world.

-- Justin Chang , New Yorker (review)

The first film tackled the hard work of arranging the game pieces on the board, so Part Two swiftly sets about bashing them into one another. All those factional conflicts roiling away throughout the first film finally get to boil over at last.

-- Glen Weldon , NPR (review)

The second Dune instalment is jaw-on-the-floor spectacular. It elegantly weaves together top-tier special effects and arresting cinematography; it layers muscle, sinew and savagery on to the bones of Part One.

-- Wendy Ide , Observer (review)

“Dune: Part Two” is a robust piece of filmmaking, a reminder that this kind of broad-scale blockbuster can be done with artistry and flair.

-- Brian Tallerico , RogerEbert.com (review)

Villeneuve has outdone himself. More importantly, he’s done justice to the scope and scale and sheer weirdness of a stoner-lit touchstone’s back half without, pun intended, sanding away its edges.

-- David Fear , Rolling Stone (review)

Stands in stark contrast to so many other shallow blockbusters of recent years.

-- Matt Singer , ScreenCrush (review)

Villeneuve has taken the worst and most preachy bits from Avatar, about how imperialism is fuelled by the exploitation of natural resources, and seemingly repackaged them with an orange Instagram filter and a couple of dozen heavy brass “braaaaam”s...

-- Kevin Maher , Times (review)

The movie fairly throbs with conflicts and intrigues, all the more so if you see it on an IMAX screen with the deep bass of Hans Zimmer’s majestic score rumbling through your body.

-- Peter Howell , Toronto Star (review)

Part Two rights the cosmic battleship with plenty of staggering visuals, all the gigantic sandworms you’d ever want, plus a deeper thematic exploration of power, colonialism and religion.

-- Brian Truitt , USA Today (review)

Heavy with spectacle and theme as it is, Part Two is often surprisingly nimble. As a filmmaker, Villeneuve has long had trouble balancing plot with picture, but here he almost gets the calibration exactly right.

-- Richard Lawson , Vanity Fair (review)

Whatever you do, don’t mistake this follow-up for a sequel. It’s the second half of a saga...

-- Peter Debruge , Variety (review)

Instead of a theme park, it's more of a cathedral -- solemn, sober, beautiful and forbidding. Greig Fraser's photography and Hans Zimmer's score are full of majesty.

-- Kyle Smith , Wall Street Journal (review)

“Dune: Part Two” builds a world that’s undeniably spectacular, compressing a sprawling, borderline incomprehensible story into an efficient narrative-delivery system.

-- Ann Hornaday , Washington Post (review)

A place to talk about the box office and the movie business, both domestically and internationally.

'Dune: Part Two' Review Thread

I will continue to update this post as reviews come in.

Rotten Tomatoes: Certified Fresh

Critics Consensus: Visually thrilling and narratively epic, Dune: Part Two continues Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of the beloved sci-fi series in spectacular form.


	93%	333	8.40/10
	89%	72	7.60/10

Metacritic: 79 (61 Reviews)

Sample Reviews:

Whatever you do, don’t mistake this follow-up for a sequel. It’s the second half of a saga... - Peter Debruge, Variety

Plagued by a nagging shallowness when it comes to portraying the Fremen... the film has difficulty fully embracing the nuance of Herbert’s anti-imperial and ecologically dystopian text. - Lovia Gyarkye Hollywood Reporter

Villeneuve’s great talent lies, I think, in invocation. He may be less perfect when it comes to conclusions but he’s brilliant at summoning -- a sense of doom, a suddenly appeared spacecraft, a sandworm. 3/4 - Jake Coyle, Associated Press

A spectacular feat of science-fiction filmmaking, marrying immersive world-building with engrossing storytelling. 4/4 - Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

Part Two rights the cosmic battleship with plenty of staggering visuals, all the gigantic sandworms you’d ever want, plus a deeper thematic exploration of power, colonialism and religion. 3.5/4 - Brian Truitt, USA Today

An instant landmark of its genre. - Joshua Rothkopf, Los Angeles Times

Villeneuve has made a serious, stately opus, and while he doesn’t have a pop bone in his body, he knows how to put on a show as he fans a timely argument about who gets to play the hero now. - Manohla Dargis, New York Times

Our blockbuster drought is over, thanks to a brilliant sequel set on a sweltering desert planet. 4/4 - Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post

A deeper and richer sequel aimed at grown-up sci-fi fans. 3/4 - Rafer Guzman, Newsday

What Villeneuve and company achieve in Dune: Part Two is every bit as impressive and, in its peak imagery, hypnotic as part one. 3/4 - Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

Director Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sprawling sci-fi classic is true to its source material in terms of scope (it’s huge!) and complexity (its plotting is very dense). 3/4 - Soren Andersen, Seattle Times

Dune: Part 2 makes sense in a kind of cosmic way, even when the nuts and bolts can be mystifying. Villeneuve trusts his audience, but his audience also has to trust him. 4/5 - Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic

While the war may be portrayed as a jaw-dropping spectacle, the answers to all those political and moral questions may leave the audience deeply uncomfortable. Herbert would be proud. 4/5 - Richard Whittaker, Austin Chronicle

The movie fairly throbs with conflicts and intrigues, all the more so if you see it on an IMAX screen with the deep bass of Hans Zimmer’s majestic score rumbling through your body. 4/4 - Peter Howell, Toronto Star

In terms of pure spectacle and shock-and-awe achievement, Villeneuve has produced an adaptation of mad glory and power. - Barry Hertz, Globe and Mail

This is a real epic and it is exhilarating to find a film-maker thinking as big as this. 4/5 - Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

It may take five and a half hours for his character to truly come to life, but two films in, Chalamet’s evolution as Paul gives everything a center. 4/5 - Danny Leigh, Financial Times

The technology here is magic: something to be felt in your soul, not puzzled out in your head. 4/5 - Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph (UK)

This is sharper, slicker, more resonant than the first installment. 5/5 - Nick Howells, London Evening Standard

There are moments in Dune: Part Two that feel so audacious, they play out as if they were already etched onto the cinematic canon. 5/5 - Clarisse Loughrey, Independent (UK)

The sequel, while impressive, loses the restraint and elegance of the first film, leaning more towards a blockbuster experience. The quiet confidence of Part One has morphed into unshackled bravura in Part Two. 3.5/5 - Wenlei Ma, PerthNow

Part Two possesses state-of-the-art cinematic qualities that reward soaking in its grandeur... After the initial promise, though, the film only sporadically rises to the level of its sky-high expectations. - Brian Lowry, CNN.com

You might expect a big-budget space opera to exhilarate you and move you, and on those terms Villeneuve's sprawling, pretentious folly has to count as an abject failure. But if you want to feel awestruck, that's another matter. 3/5 - Nicholas Barber, BBC.com

The first film tackled the hard work of arranging the game pieces on the board, so Part Two swiftly sets about bashing them into one another. All those factional conflicts roiling away throughout the first film finally get to boil over at last. - Glen Weldon, NPR

Heavy with spectacle and theme as it is, Part Two is often surprisingly nimble. As a filmmaker, Villeneuve has long had trouble balancing plot with picture, but here he almost gets the calibration exactly right. - Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

Villeneuve has outdone himself. More importantly, he’s done justice to the scope and scale and sheer weirdness of a stoner-lit touchstone’s back half without, pun intended, sanding away its edges. - David Fear, Rolling Stone

Another epic helping of sci-fi wildness from Denis Villeneuve that’ll take true believers to paradise — even if it’s a bit too much Spice to digest in one sitting. 4/5 - Ben Travis, Empire Magazine

Part Two picks up where the first instalment left off, literally and figuratively, delivering another stunning set of gorgeous visuals and exceptional action sequences. - Tim Grierson, Screen International

The last act doesn't quite land, but the opening two hours make for some of Villeneuve's finest work. 4/5 - David Jenkins, Little White Lies

[Boasting] an ambitious and exhilarating story that matches its style, it’s the finest thing Villeneuve has helmed and the 2024 film to beat for outsized sci-fi showmanship. - Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

Not only does this new movie pick up exactly where the last one left off, it also carries over the strengths and weaknesses that made the previous chapter so astonishing to look at but stultifying to watch. C - David Ehrlich, indieWire

As blockbuster movies go, Dune: Part Two is a thrilling ride that totally earns its two-and-a-half-hour running time. The filmmakers add much-needed heft to their display of virtuoso filmmaking by adding serious real-life themes. B - Murtada Elfadl, AV Club

A sci-fi epic for the ages: a sweeping tragedy of mythic proportions, a cautionary tale of the perils of zealotry. It’s a towering feat of sci-fi cinema that will put Dune: Part Two in contention for the pantheon of greatest sequels ever. - Hoai-Tran Bui, Inverse

Though visually a knock-out, Denis Villeneuve's second installment repeatedly sheds momentum, something no 166-minute epic can afford to lose. 2.5/4 - Dylan Roth, Observer

The story may never break free of its more dated tropes, but the Dune movies represent a remarkable collection of talent coming together to, if nothing else, remind us of the power of epic storytelling on a big screen. B+ - Liz Shannon Miller, Consequence

Denis Villeneuve’s film, like its predecessor, offers an object lesson in the visual splendor made possible by meticulously storyboarded minimalist maximalism. 3.5/4 - Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

Stands in stark contrast to so many other shallow blockbusters of recent years. 8/10 - Matt Singer, ScreenCrush

After somewhat laboriously placing those chess pieces on the board in the first Dune, Villenueve and co-screenwriter Jon Spaihts send them into strategic alliances and conflicts, and the results are often breathtaking. - Alonso Duralde, The Film Verdict

A masterpiece of breath-taking landscapes, incredible special effects and awe-inspiring action. Dune: Part Two is a complex and gorgeously layered production that could well be Villeneuve's best work to date. 5/5 - Linda Marric, HeyUGuys

“Dune: Part Two” is a robust piece of filmmaking, a reminder that this kind of broad-scale blockbuster can be done with artistry and flair. 3.5/4 - Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com

Blockbuster and IP filmmaking at its finest. Dune: Part Two rocks a script that doesn’t shy away from character complexities, and does a shockingly solid job of reacquainting viewers with the Dune chessboard while adding more pieces to it. 4/5 - Perri Nemiroff, Perri Nemiroff (YouTube)

“Dune: Part Two” will explore the mythic journey of Paul Atreides as he unites with Chani and the Fremen while on a path of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family. Facing a choice between the love of his life and the fate of the known universe, he endeavors to prevent a terrible future only he can foresee.

Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen

Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan

Dave Bautista as Glossu Rabban Harkonnen

Christopher Walken as Shaddam IV

Léa Seydoux as Lady Margot Fenring

Souheila Yacoub as Shishakli

Anya Taylor-Joy as Alia Atreides

DIRECTED BY: Denis Villeneuve

SCREENPLAY BY: Denis Villeneuve, Jon Spaihts

BASED ON THE NOVEL DUNE BY: Frank Herbert

PRODUCED BY: Mary Parent, Cale Boyter, Patrick McCormick, Tanya Lapointe, Denis Villeneuve

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Joshua Grode, Jon Spaihts, Thomas Tull, Herbert W. Gains, Brian Herbert, Byron Merritt, Kim Herbert, Richard P. Rubinstein, John Harrison

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Greig Fraser

PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Patrice Vermette

EDITED BY: Joe Walker

VISUAL EFFECTS BY: DNEG

VISUAL EFFECTS SUPERVISOR: Paul Lambert

COSTUME DESIGNER: Jacqueline West

MUSIC BY: Hans Zimmer

CASTING BY: Francine Maisler

RUNTIME: 166 Minutes

RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2024

Dune: Part Two - Review Thread

Rotten Tomatoes : 97% (116 Reviews)

Metacritic : 80 (40 Reviews)

To be fair to Villeneuve, it was never a given that there’d be a thirst for this franchise in the first place, and audiences went into Part One not knowing that they’d want a Part Two just as soon as it finished. Part Two would be an epic achievement from any other director, but it feels that there is something bigger, better and obviously more decisive to come in the third and hopefully final part of the trilogy. “This isn’t over yet!” says Chani, and if anyone can tie up this strange, sprawling story and take it out with a bang, Villeneuve can.

Hollywood Reporter :

Running close to three hours, Dune: Part Two moves with a similar nimbleness to Paul and Chani’s sandwalk through the open desert. The narrative is propulsive and relatively easy to follow, Hans Zimmer’s score is enveloping, and Greig Fraser’s cinematography offers breathtaking perspectives that deepen our understanding of the fervently sought-after planet. All these elements make the sequel as much of a cinematic event as the first movie.

Variety (80/100):

Villeneuve treats each shot as if it could be a painting. Every design choice seems handed down through millennia of alternative human history, from arcane hieroglyphics to a slew of creative masks and veils meant to conceal the faces of those manipulating the levers of power, nearly all of them women.

Rolling Stone (90/100):

The French-Canadian filmmaker has delivered an expansion and a deepening of the world built off of Herbert’s prose, a YA romance blown up to Biblical-epic proportions, a Shakespearean tragedy about power and corruption, and a visually sumptuous second act that makes its impressive, immersive predecessor look like a mere proof-of-concept. Villeneuve has outdone himself.

The Wrap (75/100):

For those already invested in the “Dune” franchise, “Dune: Part Two” is a sweeping and engaging continuation that will make you eager for a third installment. And if you were a fence-sitter on the first, this should also hold your attention with a taut, well-done script and engaging characters with whom you’ll want to spend nearly three hours.

IndieWire (C):

The pieces on this chess board are so big that we can hardly even tell when they’re moving, and while that sensation helps to articulate the sheer inertia of Paul’s destiny, it also leads to a shrug of an ending that suggests Villeneuve and his protagonist are equally at the mercy of their epic visions. No filmmaker is better equipped to capture the full sweep of this saga (which is why, despite being disappointed twice over, I still can’t help but look forward to “Dune: Messiah”), and — sometimes for better, but usually for worse — no filmmaker is so capable of reflecting how Paul might lose his perspective amid the power and the resources that have been placed at his disposal.

SlashFilm (7/10):

Perhaps viewing the first "Dune" and "Dune: Part Two" back-to-back is the best solution, but I suspect most people aren't going to do that — they're going to see a new movie. And what they'll get is half of one. Maybe that won't matter, though. Perhaps audiences will be so wowed by that final act that they'll come away from "Dune: Part Two" appropriately stunned. And maybe whenever Villeneuve returns to this world — and it sure seems like he wants to — he can finally find a way to tell a complete story.

“In so many futures, our enemies prevail. But I do see a way. There is a narrow way through,” Paul tells his mother at one point in the film. Like Paul’s vision of the future, there were many ways for Dune: Part Two to fail. But not only does it succeed, it surpasses the mythic tragedy of the first film and turns a complicated, strange sci-fi story into a rousing blockbuster adventure. Dune: Part Two isn’t a miracle, per se. But it’s nothing short of miraculous.

IGN (8/10):

Dune: Part Two expands the legend of Paul Atreides in spectacular fashion, and the war for Arrakis is an arresting, mystical ride at nearly every turn. Denis Villeneuve fully trusts his audience to buy into Dune’s increasingly dense mythology, constructing Part Two as an assault on the senses that succeeds in turning a sprawling saga into an easily digestible, dazzling epic. Though the deep world-building sometimes comes at the cost of fleshing out newer characters, the totality of Dune: Part Two’s transportive power is undeniable.

The Independent (100/100):

Part Two is as grand as it is intimate, and while Hans Zimmer’s score once again blasts your eardrums into submission, and the theatre seats rumble with every cresting sand worm, it’s the choice moments of silence that really leave their mark.

Total Film (5/5):

The climax here is sharply judged, sustaining what worked on page while making the outcome more discomforting. It’s a finale that might throw off anyone unfamiliar with Herbert, or anyone expecting conventional pay-offs. But it does answer the story’s themes and, tantalizingly, leave room for more. Could Herbert’s trippy Dune Messiah be adapted next, as teased? Tall order, that. But on the strength of this extravagantly, rigorously realized vision, make no mistake: Villeneuve is the man to see a way through that delirious desert storm.

Polygon (93/100):

Dune: Part Two is exactly the movie Part One promised it could be, the rare sequel that not only outdoes its predecessor, but improves it in retrospect… One of the best blockbusters of the century so far.

Screenrant (90/100):

Dune: Part Two is an awe-inspiring, visually stunning sci-fi spectacle and a devastating collision of myth and destiny on a galactic scale.

RogerEbert.com (88/100):

Dune: Part Two is a robust piece of filmmaking, a reminder that this kind of broad-scale blockbuster can be done with artistry and flair.

Review Embargo: February 21 at 12:00PM ET

Release Date: March 1

Paul Atreides continues his journey, united with Chani and the Fremen, as he seeks revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family, and endeavors to prevent a terrible future that only he can predict

Léa Seydoux as Lady Margot Fenrin

Tim Blake Nelson and Anya Taylor-Joy have been cast in undisclosed roles

Memes centered around Frank Herbert's Dune saga and its adaptations. Mark spoilers and flair them according to their source!

My honest review of the Dune Movie

I just saw the Dune Movie now that Netflix has added it to its collection. I’ve seen every Star Wars movie and tv show series, as well as most DC and Marvel movies, so it’s fair to say that I’m an experienced movie fan and my standards are quite high.

So it’s pretty easy for me to say that the Dune movie earns a 2.4 out of 10 from me. I’m sorry to say that it just didn’t live up to the mark that other sci-fi movies coming out now have made.

For starters, it’s a really drab movie. Yeah, I get it, it’s supposed to take place in the desert, but it wouldn’t kill the editors to add blue and purple and red sparkles when there’s a fight scene or something. For example, in Thor: Ragnarok there is a heavy use of these colors that keep me glued to the screen so that I can absorb the movie plot better. Without those colors, I found myself going on Reddit a lot during the movie.

Also, there’s the issue about how unrelatable the characters are. It was hard for me to identify with any of them, especially since none of them break the fourth wall, like, at all. It would have been really cool if Paul had looked at the camera after Gurney tells him about how horrible the Harkonens are and say “what’s this guy’s damage?”. It would have also been great if he would have used is “voice” powers to say “slay, gurl” to the harkonen soldiers holding them captive in the ornithopter.

It’s not just Paul either. Lady Jessica was also extremely dry and bad as a character. For example, when Shadout Mapes starts to wail during their talk, she could have easily said “damn bitch, I’m a bene gesserit, not Beyoncé”. It was a missed opportunity. Big fail. Also, the fact that Zendaya is in the film and there is ZERO references to Euphoria pretty much felt like an insult. She could have easily said “Spice is the wonder drug of the universe, and no, not the kind teens snort before math class.”

Also, I didn’t get the story. It was kinda like Star Wars but just harder to follow. I don’t know what to say other than that.

I know this post will get downvoted to hell, but I don’t care. I’m just glad all the movies I watch and actually like have none of the flaws Dune is rife with.

I finally watched Dune (2021) and am shocked at how bad it is

To be clear: Cinematography and CGI? Beautiful. Soundtrack? Incredible. Acting? I have no complaints.

But I struggle to think of any recent movie I've seen where I knew and cared less about literally all of the characters.

I read the book earlier this year*, and I still had a hard time following what was going on and who was who. So much happened and I was bored by all of it: there was no emotional core and no (and I mean literally , in the proper sense of the word, no ) character development. I know nothing about who these people are, what they want, or what drives them; half the time I can't even remember their names. The movie makes the book look like a masterclass of a character study by comparison.

*To be honest, I didn't love the book to start with. Herbert really excels at worldbuilding a complex culture and ecology, and I found the plot generally entertaining, but the writing and characterization both oscillate between passable and straight-up bad. But I still consider myself a sci-fi fan (especially in movies, where prose quality isn't a concern) and went into the movie absolutely ready to love it. Surely thin characters will become inherently more fleshed-out by virtue of being played by flesh-and-blood actors, right? Surely the director will be able to find the story's center and adapt the source material accordingly, right? Instead, the movie took one-dimensional characters and somehow made them less dimensional by basically boiling them down to a name, while simultaneously cramming in basically every major plot point from the book with almost no attempt to streamline or simplify.

How in the world has this movie garnered such a positive response? Or, perhaps the bigger question, how in the world was this created by the director of Arrival, one of the most nuanced, fascinating, character-focused (and absolutely one of my favorite) sci-fi movies I've ever watched?

Aside from having satiated my curiosity about what the movie is like, I truly feel like I've wasted 2 1/2 hours of my life.

What did you think of Dune (2021)?

I honestly thought it was just an okay movie.I thought the first half of the movie was boring and dull.While the second half was pretty good with more action and things that are explained compared to the first half.It was dissapointing and not that enjoyable but i still liked it.I liked the visuals and cinematogrophy.I gave it a 6/10.What do you think🤔?

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Alien: Romulus Review

Alien is back from the (evil) dead.

I’d like to invite anyone surprised to hear that director Fede Álvarez and Alien are a match made in space hell to stop reading this and watch his 2013 remake of The Evil Dead (but, like, come back after.) It was the first time in 20 years the Necronomicon was opened, and horror fans pinned the survival of the beloved franchise on the young director’s efforts. That faith was rewarded with one of the most effective horror remakes ever , and that ability to both honor and modernize a sacred text of the genre is the most obvious explanation for the success of Alien: Romulus. Like a kid in a Freudian nightmare of a candy store, Álvarez bellies up to a feast of Alien iconography and cryptozoology with abject glee, even and especially in scenes of bone-crunching mayhem. Alien: Romulus distills the franchise into its most functional, focused form. And once it starts cooking, it doesn’t let up.

Top to bottom, Alien: Romulus displays exemplary production design which, while nodding to what’s to come in the future-set Aliens, owes far more to the totemic textures of Ridley Scott’s original movie. The industrial futurism of Michael Seymour’s original sets is wonderfully replicated in the malfunctioning Renaissance station, colored by red warning lights and the spindly blacks of H.R. Giger’s Xenomorphology as they weave into that aesthetic as threateningly as ever. Alien: Romulus also represents what’s undeniably the franchise’s most cohesive blend of computer-generated and practical techniques employed to bring its locations, creatures, and injury effects to life. The saying goes that the best CG is the kind you don’t notice, and the team here has achieved a largely seamless blend of all those elements. The irony here is that I have to immediately contradict myself: there are a few times – especially in the third act – where you can very much tell Álvarez is cutting to closeups of fake-as-hell xenomorph heads being blown apart. But those moments, or times when you can clock a miniature being used, do as much to evoke the franchise’s first two movies as any iconic one-liner or recreated shot.

Alien: Romulus Gallery

Álvarez really lets Romulus breathe through its first act, taking time to establish the central relationship between Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and android Andy (Daniel Jonsson), who live as siblings in indentured servitude on Weyland-Yutani’s Jackson’s Star colony. Desperate to leave the colony’s perpetually sunless gloom – which Álvarez renders as a metal hellscape befitting of a Terminator flash-forward – Rain and Andy reconnect with their old scavenging buddies, the crew of the Corbelan IV. Rain’s resourceful nature and protectiveness of her synthetic sibling get the audience on her side quickly and, as a performer, Spaeny does great work believably grounding Rain in the moment-to-moment horror of a young adult making their first foray into the big, scary world and finding it’s worse than they could’ve imagined.

Rain is heavily solution-focused, which gives her plenty of hero moments as the movie goes on, but Álvarez and co-writer Rodo Sayagues’ script doesn’t hold much space for her to change along the way, or to at least highlight what makes her so resilient in the first place. Jonsson winds up with the trickiest tightrope to walk in his performance, constantly balancing childlike hesitation with cold efficiency, collating what information he should offer and which of his bedrock directives he should follow. But Jonsson holds the core of Andy well once that conflict becomes central to the plot. The accompanying unpredictable shifts in Andy’s personality serve not just to ratchet up the tension, but also as a mirror by which the human characters see themselves reflected.

As for the crew of the Corbelan – sibling pairs Tyler (Archie Renaux) and Kay (Isabela Merced), and Bjorn (Spike Fearn) and Navarro (Aileen Wu) – Álvarez and Sayagues employ archetypes which will be instantly familiar for Alien fans. Tyler’s steely reserve evokes Dallas, Bjorn’s edge and bandana call up both Alien’s Parker and Aliens’ Vasquez… you get the idea. While numerous films in the franchise flirt with slasher conventions, Alien: Romulus commits harder to the subgenre’s quintessential structure than ever before. As such, it’s wise not to get attached to anyone who speaks mostly in jokes or exposition. That structure occasionally lets the audience get ahead of the plot, but Álvarez throws enough curveballs and misdirects to offset this.

Álvarez establishes the ensemble economically, especially during the Corbelan’s trip up to the Renaissance, where cuts to each character reveal how they react in stressful situations, reinforcing those archetypes just before the acid hits the fan. Merced gets the most personalized material, spending much of the movie separated from the main group and playing catchup in increasingly awful fashion. While these cutaways do function well as their own little Alien vignettes, it should be noted that as they crop up through act two, they splinter the focus a little and lead to Romulus’ only real pacing hiccups. That’s not to say there’s no utility to the way that time’s spent, though: Kay’s agenda is more complicated than her friends’ which opens the door not only to Romulus’ most brazen theme work (the nature of which I’ll leave vague), but for late twists that kick off the movie’s audacious, cacophonous, and unbearably tense final showdown.

What's The Best Alien Movie?

Pick a winner.

Alien: Romulus rarely shies away from the chance to celebrate its forerunners, mostly for the better but, in one significant case, definitely for the worse. But let’s focus first on what works, and works well: Álvarez understands exactly how and when to deploy Alien’s most iconic imagery. Though the scavengers’ initial exploration of the derelict Renaissance is a quiet, tense affair, just below the surface, you can feel Álvarez’ hand establishing the space like a kid breathlessly showing off all his toys before settling on which one he wants to share with you first. Duct systems, airlocks, stun batons, motion sensors, a dead synthetic, maybe the odd tweak from flame- to freeze-thrower here and there. But Álvarez doesn’t spend too much time fetishizing these inanimate objects; they’re purely functional and so don’t feel like they cross the line of being fan service for the sake of fan service.

Romulus even finds space – plenty, in fact – to incorporate elements of Creative Assembly’s excellent Alien: Isolation game. Whether it’s the registration points which Álvarez deploys (moments which wind up serving as devilishly clever nods to The Godfather ) or the flares which get used to clever practical and defensive ends, it’s emblematic of an attitude that all Alien is good Alien, an ethos that drives this whole movie forward and unlocks its most shocking narrative turns. Of course, Romulus also brings its own new toys and tricks, the most significant of which is zero gravity. It’s baffling to consider that the franchise really hasn’t mined zero G more in the past, and it’s used well here not only to spice up some xenomorph encounters, but repeatedly as a ticking clock obstacle the scavengers have to work around due to the Renaissance’s malfunctioning gravity drive.

And yet, like Weyland-Yutani has been known to do, Alien: Romulus can’t seem to abandon some ideas which, on their face, seem destined for messy ends. As I mentioned, Romulus handles most of its exposition quite elegantly early on, but Álvarez overplays his hand and commits to, as executed here, a deeply flawed vehicle by which to deliver that information once we’re on the Renaissance station. I’m dancing around the details for spoilers’ sake, but I’ve never been more sure that you’ll know exactly what I mean. This choice by no means derails Romulus – the movie racks up plenty of good will in other ways – it just feels like a wholly unnecessary evil and the only part of the movie that regularly breaks suspension of disbelief. Which is saying something… this is a movie about genetically perfect killer aliens, after all.

Evoking the genetic f***ery that always spells doom in these movies, Alien: Romulus is a lean, mean, chimeric beauty. Fede Álvarez proves that his Evil Dead remake was no fluke: The director seamlessly keys into the narrative and aesthetic touchstones of the series and marshals them to breathtaking ends. Romulus occasionally takes a turn down a dead end hall pace-wise – and unfortunately its most audacious bridge to the franchise’s past is extremely rickety – but those missteps are forgivable considering how confidently and judiciously Álvarez handles them elsewhere. Helped along by a talented ensemble of young actors and reference-quality production design, Alien: Romulus’s back-to-basics approach to blockbuster horror boils everything fans love about the tonally-fluid franchise into one film, and it’s one that you’re going to need to start making time for the next time you plan on marathoning Alien and Aliens.

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Dune: Awakening received both a release date and a gameplay trailer at the event. Set to debut for PC in early 2025, the game is an open world survival MMO set on the most dangerous planet in the universe, Arrakis.

The way to survive the desert is by learning the ways of the Fremen. The five-minute preview below shows users what to expect when playing the game, including how to use some of the tools at a character’s disposal.

“Expand your potential through combat, spice, building, and trade. As guild intrigue and warfare rage, control the spice and cling to power,” the game’s description from Funcom reads.

Meanwhile, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is set to launch on December 9 for Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC and Steam. It will arrive on Sony’s PlayStation 5 in Spring 2025.

The gameplay trailer Xbox debuted at Gamescom not only shows details about Indy’s latest adventure, it also pulls back the curtain on some of the motion capture performances required to build the game.

Netflix also provided first looks at Squid Game: Unleashed and Monument Valley 3 , both of which are debuting on the platform later this year.

Squid Game: Unleashed is “a 32-player party royale showdown featuring challenges fans will recognize from the hit series (and some new ones). Team up with friends, face off against enemies, and race through deadly obstacles to prove your skills and claim ultimate glory. Dominate the competition and unlock rewards through daily missions and themed events inspired by the Squid Game universe,” per Netflix’s description.

The game will coincide with the release of Squid Game Season 2 will debut on December 26, with the third and final season coming in 2025.

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DUNE 2021 Movie Poster : r/dune
Dune: A Movie Review
DUNE Movie Review (2021)
'Dune' movie review
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'Dune' Review Thread : r/movies
SanderSo47. ADMIN MOD. 'Dune' Review Thread. Rotten Tomatoes: 84% (31 reviews) with 8.20 in average rating. Critics consensus: Dune occasionally struggles with its unwieldy source material, but those issues are largely overshadowed by the scope and ambition of this visually thrilling adaptation. Metacritic: 76/100 (18 critics)
Dune (2021)
r/dune. Dune is a landmark science fiction novel first published in 1965 and the first in a 6-book saga penned by author Frank Herbert. Widely considered one of the greatest works within the sci-fi genre, Dune has been the subject of various film and TV adaptations, including the Academy Award winning 2021 film Dune directed by Denis Villeneuve.
'Dune' Review Megathread : r/dune
r/dune. Dune is a landmark science fiction novel first published in 1965 and the first in a 6-book saga penned by author Frank Herbert. Widely considered one of the greatest works within the sci-fi genre, Dune has been the subject of various film and TV adaptations, including the Academy Award winning 2021 film Dune directed by Denis Villeneuve.
Dune movie review & film summary (2021)
The new film adaptation of the book, directed by Denis Villeneuve from a script he wrote with Eric Roth and Jon Spaihts, visualizes those scenes magnificently. As many of you are aware, "Dune" is set in the very distant future, in which humanity has evolved in many scientific respects and mutated in a lot of spiritual ones.
'Dune' Review
Release date: Friday, Oct. 22. Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Zendaya, Jason Momoa. Director: Denis Villeneuve ...
Dune (2021)
Rated 4.5/5 Stars • Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 06/17/24 Full Review Blake L A good sci-fi movie, just not a good Dune adaptation movie. ...
'Dune' Review: Spectacular and Engrossing…Until It Isn't
"Dune" makes the worms, the dunes, the paramilitary spectacle, and the kid-savior-tests-his-mettle plot immersive — for a while. But then, as the movie begins to run out of tricks, it turns ...
Dune: Part Two Review: Staggering to Look at but Agonizing to Watch
It's a struggle that " Dune: Part Two " continues to embody all too well. This isn't quite the same common — and admittedly boring — criticism that's been leveled against massive ...
Dune Is an Admirably Understated Sci-Fi Spectacle
The emperor of all the planets puts the head of a noble family, Duke Leto Atreides ( Oscar Isaac, in a woolly gray beard), in charge of Arrakis. Atreides intends to be fair and benevolent. But ...
Dune review: Denis Villeneuve's Frank Herbert adaptation is all
When David Lynch's Dune was released in 1984, a specific pattern developed among the mostly negative reviews. Lynch's compressed adaptation, which shoved the 400-plus pages of Frank Herbert ...
Dune Review: Denis Villeneuve's Spice Opera Is a Major ...
'Dune' Review: Denis Villeneuve's Epic Spice Opera Is a Massive Disappointment ... Submit to Reddit. Pin it. Post to Tumblr ... But "Dune," at heart, is a film that eagerly flattens ...
10 Reasons Why "Dune" Is One of The Best Sci-Fi Films of The 21st
After pouring his heart on the film, it seems the French-Canadian will have a chance of wrapping up the story himself in the upcoming sequel. 3. It's a strong indictment on colonialism and ecology. For a movie based on a 60-year-old novel, a surprising virtue of Dune is that it deals with universal themes that still feel relevant to this day.
My review/thoughts on Dune (2021) as someone that didnt enjoy ...
Hello! We're manually approving every post due to a significant increase in traffic from the new film. Any personal reviews, thoughts, questions, or general musings about Dune (2021) should be posted in our Dune (2021) Discussion Threads.Basic questions about the franchise should be directed towards our Weekly Questions thread.For real-time discussion of the movie and everything else Dune ...
Dune, Part One Ending Explained
Dune Movie Ending Explained. With House Atreides nearly wiped out by the Harkonnens' sneak attack on Arrakeen, the villains presume both Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) and his mother, Lady ...
Dune: 10 Unpopular Opinions About The 2021 Film, According To Reddit
Dune Contains Faulty Logic. One Redditor argues that because "humans overall are savvier than audiences of the past" and scrutinize every aspect of sci-fi movies today (from the fictional technology to the logic of the characters), Dune should never have been made. The faulty logic inherent to its concepts of space travel, the mining of spice ...
Dune 2 review: A newbie and a fan talk through the questions you were
The planet Arrakis — a desert, near-waterless world also known as "Dune" — is the titular character, and by constantly showcasing it, the movie became so much more immersive. When the ...
Why Dune's Reviews Are So Positive
Variety : "Dune" makes the worms, the dunes, the paramilitary spectacle, and the kid-savior-tests-his-mettle plot immersive — for a while. But then, as the movie begins to run out of tricks, it turns woozy and amorphous. The overwhelming problem most reviews (even the positive ones) have about Dune is how incomplete the movie feels. Denis ...
Dune 2021 Ending & Real Meaning Explained
The Real Meaning Of Dune's Ending. With the Dune adaptation split into two parts, it truly only explores the themes of the novel halfway. Paul goes on a typical hero's journey in the first part of Herbert's novel and that is intentional. Herbert plays into this archetype only to deconstruct it in the second half of Dune and the rest of the series.
Review: A "Dune" Sanded to Dullness
Directed by Denis Villeneuve, the adaptation of Frank Herbert's 1965 novel seems less like a C.G.I. spectacle than a production still waiting for its backgrounds to be digitally filled in or its ...
Dune Review : r/dune
Dune is a landmark science fiction novel first published in 1965 and the first in a 6-book saga penned by author Frank Herbert. Widely considered one of the greatest works within the sci-fi genre, Dune has been the subject of various film and TV adaptations, including the Academy Award winning 2021 film Dune directed by Denis Villeneuve.
Dune Ultra HD Blu-ray Review
Dune comes to Ultra HD Blu-ray from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment featuring 2160pHEVC encoded video and lossless Dolby Atmos/TrueHD 7.1 channel sound. Dune was shot digitally, derived from a 4.5K source, and rendered from a 4K DI for its presentation in Ultra HD. The 1080p transfer looks solid and this Ultra HD rendering takes it up a notch with a discernible increase in detail, and ...
One of 'Dune: Part Two's Most Breathtaking Scenes Was Almost ...
The use of black-and-white in Dune: Part Two was significant in marking a change of pace in the story by showing the scale of the universe. Earlier segments of the film focused on the vast beauty ...
3 Reasons The Fall Guy's Dune Parody Should Become a Real Movie
In a clip from Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Michael Keaton's Beetlejuice is still pining over Winona Ryder's Lydia all these years later. The Naked Gun reboot will reportedly replace Leslie Nielsen with Liam Neeson as the main star, and he is the perfect choice for the movie. Alien: Romulus introduces a ...
Dune Movie Review
More Reddit posts talking about Dune Movie Review. Honest Review of Dune Part II (First Watch) r/dune. r/dune. Dune is a landmark science fiction novel first published in 1965 and the first in a 6-book saga penned by author Frank Herbert. Widely considered one of the greatest works within the sci-fi genre, Dune has been the subject of various ...
Alien: Romulus Review
A back-to-basics approach to blockbuster horror boils everything fans love about the tonally-fluid franchise into one brutal, nerve-wracking experience.
Indiana Jones, Borderlands 4 & More From Gamescom Opening ...
Gamescom's Opening Night Live featured sneak peeks at several highly anticipated video games, including Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Dune: Awakening and Borderlands 4. On the heels of the ...

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Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition), Sept. 3, 2021. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 155 MIN.

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