Grade: B
There’s a lot riding on Dune. It’s the second big-screen adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic sci-fi novels, and the first that’s widely expected to be taken seriously. It’s loaded with talent. Like, just an obscenely great cast, along with Hans Zimmer “braAAAAHHHMMMMing” his way through the score, all under the direction of genre auteur Denis Villeneuve. It’s clearly a huge studio investment.
The hopes behind this movie go beyond the expectation that it’ll be the first of two (or maybe three, or hell… maybe four) films encompassing the core tale of Herbert’s first book. It’s clearly here to build a franchise, with not only sequels, but prequels and side-quels, TV spinoffs, official podcasts, animated shorts, and just oh-so much fucking merchandising.
That’s not to say that Dune (technically, Dune Part One) isn’t good. It is. Without boring you by breaking down the plot, the story is incredibly dense but not overwhelming, slow-paced yet oddly kinetic, with cinematography that’s downright breathtaking more than a few times. At two hours and 20ish minutes, it’s borderline great. And therein lies part of the problem.
It’s easy to think of a few scenes that could be axed, making for an introductory epic that’s equal parts dense and fast-paced and actually great. However, those 20ish minutes might be critical to Dune Part Two, which is currently in the fingers-crossed stage of movie development. Or they may be critical to some other aspect of Dune projects that are being stacked eagerly waiting to be greenlit.
Anyway, it’s worth noting that the influence of Herbert’s writing is so vast and widespread that Dune, to new audiences who didn’t read the books (like me) or have no awareness of David Lynch’s ’84 adaptation (which I wish was me), it might feel read a little to close to so many meta-popular staples of the past several decades, notably Star Wars and Game of Thrones.
As far as expectations go, Dune’s aesthetic itself is a big payoff, thanks in large part to Villeneuve. While the core story doesn’t rework itself to separate itself from the influences it’s left in its wake, the look and feel (and sound) all feel unique. It’s almost enough to buy into the myth that theaters are some kind of magical experience.
While it seems likely that Dune will manage to captivate enough of an audience to warrant a conclusion to its story, it’s not clear if it’ll be the franchise cornerstone to launch a thousand interconnected tangents. Then again, who’s to say what the future holds? Besides the box office returns, I mean.
Dune is currently playing in theaters and on HBO Max
