What is it?
The 2021 epic science fiction movie Dune (Dune: Part One).
This is how Rotten Tomatoes describes this movie:
Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet’s exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence, only those who can conquer their own fear will survive.
My Thoughts
I was hoping that someone would make a proper Dune movie one day, and I was hoping that someone would finish making movies and / or miniseries and / or TV shows for the rest of the Dune books by Frank Herbert; and so this movie was my most anticipated movie of 2020 & 2021.
I have read all six Dune books by Frank Herbert & most of the Dune Encyclopedia, I have seen all the Syfy channel Dune TV miniseries (Frank Herbert’s Dune & Frank Herbert’s Children Of Dune), and I have seen the 1984 movie Dune; the Frank Herbert’s Children Of Dune TV miniseries was my favorite of these.
My brother GC & I watched this movie at home, it would have been better to watch it in a movie theater, and I still might do that one day.
I watched this movie twice, I was somewhat disappointed the first time because I was too busy trying to compare it to the books & miniseries et cetera, it started more boring that time, the movie skipped some important details / lore & characters & locations et cetera, the music was not as good as I had expected, some of the characters did not have as much life / personality & dialogue as expected & seemed more flat, the locations were too empty, I did not like most of the armor (except for the Harkonnen armor, and I would have liked the Sardaukar armor if the color & fit was different) or the headpieces that the Bene Gesserit wore (they probably should not even have that, especially nothing that tall & that stands out that much) and the movie ended too soon / abruptly if this is meant to be part one of two movies because to me, it seemed to only cover about 25% of the book which would leave a lot that needs to be covered in the next movie.
I enjoyed this movie more the second time that I watched it, that time I just focused on enjoying it as a movie instead of constantly comparing it to the books & miniseries et cetera, this time it felt less boring & better paced & I was able to enjoy Denis’s vision for this movie better, it still had some of the other flaws though, but this movie looks good visually & it is serious; and I imagine that I will like it even more if I see it in a movie theater.
I wish that this movie would have been longer & that they would have added a few more lines of dialogue to quickly explain various things that they skipped, that they would have shown more characters & locations, that they would have put more characters in those locations, that some of the characters would have gotten to show more personality, and that the other flaws that I mentioned were not there.
This will likely end up being the best film version of the first Dune book if they finish the story in the next movie or movies, but I think that the Dune books work better in a miniseries or TV show format; but they can work in movie format if you make them longer than part one of this movie was.
This movie was not as good as I had hoped, it suffers from some of the flaws of Denis who loves the more sterile slow burn approach to movie making, some of his style works for this movie, but he needs someone to help tame his style a bit to make his movies more mainstream; and he made a few changes that I did not like.
I was also disappointed by some of the fight choreography, especially some of the group battles, and you did not get to see enough of the action.
I would probably rate this a 7 out of 10, I predict it will be an 8 out of 10 if you watch it in a movie theater, I recommend watching it, but do not watch it when you are tired and / or distracted and / or bored.
I will wait until the next movie or so to start trying to figure out if it is better than both of the miniseries or not.
The end,
- John Jr
John Jr's Blog 