'Dune' 2021 Film Review
A space opera masterpiece
Arrakis—Dune—Desert Planet.
The opening moments of Dune will fill you with awe and wonder.
First is there only darkness. The beat of a drum. Then rolling dunes, sand—and spice, glittering bronze-cinnamon in the wind.
A girl’s voice.
“My planet Arrakis is so beautiful when the sun is low,” she says. “Rolling over the sands, you can see spice in the air.”
The peaceful moment is shattered. Horns blare ominously as a soldier in an alien-looking space suit and flowing robes trudges through the twilight desert, lasgun in hand.
“At nightfall, the spice harvesters land,” the girl says, and we see one such machine, like some fiery beast amidst the plumes of darkling sand.
“The outsiders race against time to avoid the heat of the day,” the girl says as the drums beat faster. We see men and women laying in ambush in their desert garb. We see the girl, her eyes the unsettling blue-within-blue of her people, the Fremen.
“They ravage our lands in front of our eyes,” she narrates. “Their cruelty to our people is all I’ve known. These outsiders, the Harkonnens, came long before I was born. By controlling spice production they became obscenely rich. Richer than the Emperor himself.”
We see rows upon rows of vast spaceships lined up in front of sprawling battalions. Men marching. A clash in the desert between Harkonnen troops and Fremen freedom fighters. Lasguns blasting spice harvesters into fiery ruin.
“Our warriors couldn’t free us from the Harkonnens,” the girl says over it all, “but one day—by Imperial decree—they were gone. Why did the Emperor choose this path, and who will our next oppressors be?”
Of course, this is nothing like the opening to Frank Herbert’s novel upon which Dune is based. The film, wisely, sets the stage for the greater conflict early, introducing us to its chief players before diving headlong into the story.
Read the rest of this review at my Forbes blog.
I will repost the review here at diabolical next week (after the five-day exclusivity period on Forbes).
Let me know what you thought of Dune in the comments! Thanks for reading!
This is the final part of our third diabolical book club. Read my review of the novel by Frank Herbert here.
I'm quite an old person. I read the book when it first came out when I was about 18, then read it again when I was about 35. And 35 was a really long time ago.
I absolutely loved Dune Part 1. Beautiful and astonishing! Watched it on Max pre-opening day, (NOT going to a theatre anytime soon because of the virus); watched it again tonight. I think I see a whole lot more re-watching coming so long as I am subscribed to HBO.
My only (small) gripe is that, although I understand (and applaud) the reasoning of screening this film in two parts, I can only hope that I live long enough to see Part II.
Dune is visually spectacular, but strangely bland. It seemed to me that the writers missed all of the key themes so skillfully brought to life in Herbert's novel - Religion, Politics, Vendetta, Ecology, etc. The mentats have been reduced to nothing. Yueh's betrayal is there but it is not shocking because there is no understanding of his conditioning. And his key role in saving Paul and Jessica is not covered well at all (We see his diamond mark in the ornithopter - but if you didn't read the book I'm not sure you would understand the significance). Liet-Kynes is (so far) a throw away character. There is no real understanding of the ongoing vendetta between the two houses. Baron Harkonnen himself is only barely explored. And so it goes.... so many rich characters that are so poorly developed. I also wondered what the poor person who had not read the book would make of the plot and the many little easter eggs strewn throughout the movie. I was really hoping they could do for Dune what Peter Jackson did for LOTR, but sadly they did not achieve that. That being said - I did not hate the movie - I'd rate it 3 stars out of 5.