The Esteemed Critic Reviews Dune

 

Denis Villeneuve's Dune is a beautifully imagined film, full of stunning imagery and excellent special effects. Unfortunately, it's also boring, something the Critic can't say for the Dune novel, which he's in the middle of rereading. Somehow, Frank Herbert's magnum opus continues for hundreds of pages, often discussing the politics, philosophy, and religion of his world without losing the reader's attention. It's almost as though without the internal monologues of its characters such as the Baron Harkonnen or Liet Kynes, Dune is just another sci-fi messiah story. Villenueve certainly gives us the most book-accurate depiction of Dune yet (although the flying Baron seems to be a carryover from the it's-so-bad-it's-good David Lynch flick) but somehow, it's just not enough. The film suffers from a few miscastings and character deviations. Josh Brolin would seem to be a great pick for the warrior poet Gurney Halleck, yet despite a few verbatim quotations from the novel, he lacks the charm of the novel's character. This is a serious movie, overly grim and humorless. The Baron is changed from a gleeful, gluttonous monster to a straight-up mismash of two Marlon Brando characters (Kurtz from Apocalypse Now and Dr. Moreau from The Island of Dr. Moreau). Anyways, the main problem with Dune might be that it suffers from the Seinfeld is Unfunny trope. Would there be Star Wars without Dune? Lucas cribbed a desert planet (Tatooine is Arrakis), stillsuited warriors (Tusken raiders are Fremen), magical powers of compulsion (the Jedi mind trick is the Voice), and the overall story line (a boy hero gains supernatural power to overthrow an evil Empire). So yes, we finally have our big-budget, faithful adaptation of Dune in 2021, over fifty years after it was written. Is it too late? Can you build a new franchise out of something that has influenced science fiction for half a century? Or are the elements that make Dune special restricted to the literary format? The Critic doesn't have a clue, but he must admit that he was ready to leave the theater before the movie was over.