Dune (2021) Review: An Epic Beginning

“Dreams make good stories. But everything important happens when we’re awake.”


  • Based on the 1965 novel of the same name by Frank Herbert
  • The novels have been cited as influences for epic franchises like ‘Star Wars’, popular games such as ‘Warhammer 40,000″, and Hayao Miyazaki’s “Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind”
  • ‘Dune’ is in theaters October 22, 2021

 

Ever since the flop of the 1984 Dune film, the film world has been chomping at the bit to give the legendary novel a worthy adaptation. With French-Canadian Denis Villeneuve as the director (Arrival, Blade Runner 2049) and a huge, impeccable A-list cast, the 2021 adaptation has definitively hit the mark with the first of a planned two-part film epic in Dune (2021), although not without a few imperfections.

Villeneuve couldn’t have been a better choice as director; his science-fiction repertoire and talent for visualizing grandeur of immense magnitudes is on full display, bringing movie audiences into awe and wonder at the infinite scope of outer space and otherworldly civilizations. I highly recommend watching this film on the biggest screen possible, because if there’s one movie you have to watch on a grand scale, it’s this one.

This review is from the perspective of someone who has not read the original Dune novels by Frank Herbert, but will contain some spoilers. Read at your own risk!

 

Warning: SPOILERS below!

Intertwining Plot and Visuals


The story follows a young Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet, Little Women) the son of a duke (Oscar Isaac, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker) and a Bene Gesserit (Rebecca Ferguson, The Greatest Showman), which is Dune’s version of what is a cross between a Jedi and a witch. Inheriting his birthright from both of his parents, Paul is destined for greatness, and we mostly follow him as he develops his powers and explores his destiny while his family is sent to manage the desert planet of Arrakis.

There is so, so much setup. But considering the source material, the film does a great job of explaining a lot of it without making it boring. One of the ways Dune does this is by fully utilizing the film’s visuals to accompany dialogue and information to great effect. Every frame of the film is a postcard-perfect masterpiece, from beautiful closeups to breathtaking alien landscapes. I can’t even imagine the work that went into rendering all of the planets, aircrafts, and palaces into digital reality. Villeneuve has come a long way from the abstract oblong spaceships of Arrival, delivering detailed carriers and dragonfly-esque helicopters onto the big screen. Some may find that the grandeur may be somewhat of a distraction to the infodumps, but I found them very complementary.

Things happen somewhat slowly story-wise in order to pace out the information but I can’t complain much: the film made a choice to embrace pacing that leans into the gravitas of its characters and political intrigue. In the age of TikTok, a slower film such as this may feel old-fashioned, but considering the themes on political manipulation, nobility, and destiny, it does not feel out of place.

A shout-out to the team who developed the colors of the film! The color scheme of the film is rather muted, somewhat pastel, but very clean. Color is used very well to make the audiences feel the harsh desert without it seeming drab, or feel the weight of the enemy Harkonnen’s home planet in contrast to how Arrakis or the Atreides’ home planet Caladan are depicted.

Timothée Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson in Dune as Paul Atreides and Lady Jessica

Let There Be Characters


The Atreides family are the core characters that we follow, and boy do they exude nobility, wealth, and excellence. Even with limited screen time, Oscar Isaac’s Leto Atreides might be the most relatable character of the entire film: a good leader whose enemies try to use his honor against him, a great father who encourages his son and defends his lover despite being completely out of his depth in regards to their powers and destiny in which he does not share. But even he was presented as somewhat of an ethereal being, as is almost all of the film’s main characters. His death scene, in which he sits in naked display for his enemies, is depicted like an ancient Roman sculpture, or a godly Renaissance painting, from the way his body is positioned to the framing of the camera itself.

This ethereal, god-like nobility is what makes it hard to empathize with several of the characters. I found it hard to connect with Paul despite Chalamet’s excellent acting, because he is depicted as quite distant, somewhat unrelatable. In a way, it makes sense, because how is someone supposed to empathize with someone who is essentially depicted as a foreign planet’s messiah? He is supposed to become one of the most powerful beings in the known universe, and he can pretty much do anything without too much of a fuss. Characters either like Paul or hate him, not for who he is, but for what they expect or want him to be, and this dehumanizes him despite his overt likability. He is a cool character, but not in the same way as, say, Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings, who we first get to know as a gritty but honorable ranger with a big heart for innocent hobbits, before learning of his royal lineage and destiny.

In fact, where the film felt weakest was the development of the characters and the relationships they had with each other, particularly in connection with Paul. There were many hints towards these relationships, but not enough time was spent on them.

For example, when we see Paul Atreides meet weapons master Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa, Aquaman) for the first time, we get a sense that they really get along owing to how happy they are to see each other and how Paul is concerned for Duncan’s well-being, but their energy doesn’t seem to connect, and not enough of the film is devoted to the two of them before an untimely end. Or the one scene between Paul and Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin, Avengers: Endgame) which simply wasn’t enough to cement a connection despite Brolin’s magnificent presence as the master swordsman.

Even Paul’s relationship with his mother is somewhat distant because of how she half-treats him as a student or her ward rather than her actual kid, but I do give props to Rebecca Ferguson for portraying this conflict of interest while she stands up to her Bene Gesserit sisters on the subject, even if she doesn’t seem to project those feelings towards Paul himself. 

Jason Momoa in Dune as Duncan Idaho

 

Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet in Dune as Chani and Paul Atreides

In fact, one of the relationships that the film devotes the most time to is the one between Paul and the girl from his visions, who we later learn is a native inhabitant of Arrakis called Chani (Zendaya, Spiderman: Far From Home), and she is in the film for all of five minutes. While I understand that this is a long-term setup with prophetic and romantic implications, Dune could have done with fewer dream sequences and more present-day developments. As Duncan Idaho points out during the film,”Dreams make good stories. But everything important happens when we’re awake.”

Lighting the Way for Part 2


A solid groundwork has been laid for another, if not several, Dune films to follow. As long as the future films find time to develop the characters and their bonds rather than sacrificing such character moments for setting and exposition, the film series stands a solid chance of becoming a classic.

Other reviewers may have commented on a somewhat abrupt ending to Dune, but I didn’t think that it was more abrupt than say, the end of each part of The Lord of the Rings trilogy or The Hobbit films. At this point, we should be used to broader epics told in parts, and Dune finds a good place to end the first part of Paul’s journey as he is being led into the next. And I do look forward to the next entry of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. Far from being a failure, Dune (2021) is a beautiful spectacle that deserves to be seen to the end.

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