Delayed Reaction: Dune

Premise: In a futuristic galaxy, warring nations fight for control of a substance known as "the spice", which can only be found on a single planet.

 

Much like the movie, I don't even know where to begin. The original Frank Herbert novel Dune is one of those books that, from the moment it was published, someone has been trying to crack the code to adapt to a movie. While I haven't read the book, from the little I know, I can see why they'd want to adapt it. The world of the novel is very compelling. Time and time again we've seen that creating a universe is the most difficult part of blockbuster franchise filmmaking. That's why wells like Star Wars, Star Trek, or the MCU have been dipped into so often rather than creating something original. Even watching this movie, I can imagine a world where there's a half dozen movies set in the Dune universe that all rank as the top 2 or 3 movies of the years they were released. 

 

Alas, the trouble of worldbuilding is that people don't like exposition dumps nor do they like not knowing what's going on. This movie is pretty dense. It spends a lot of time explaining things, and it took me a while to determine if I was interested enough to care about what they were explaining. That’s a bad place to be in when watching a movie. It really is edited with that hacksaw approach where you can tell there's all sorts of complexities they had to leave out. I'm not sure I wanted a 3.5-hour version of this movie - that's would've been painful - but I'm sure that version would've been better.

 

There's also the fact that I'm not much of a David Lynch fan to begin with. I'm not great with the kind of movie he excels at. The kind where people say "Don't worry about figuring out what's happening. Just experience it". To his credit though, the Lynchian touches in this are the best things about it: stuff like the aesthetic and stilted performances. This isn't a David Lynch movie though. It's obvious the producers and studios stepped in at some point, presumably when they realized who they hired and saw what kind of movie he was making. 

 

Just in case I haven't made this clear, I didn't like this movie. I see the appeal of the book. I even see some of the cult appeal of this movie. I mainly see the flaws though. I'm super looking forward to Denis Villeneuve's attempt at it later this year, because all the raw parts are there.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend