Was this really necessary?
Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet’s exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence-a commodity capable of unlocking humanity’s greatest potential-only those who can conquer their fear will survive.
Three Stars
Despite my next words, note that I do give movies based on books a heaping pile of salt. I know that they won’t get all the details. I fully expect to not go in and see scene for scene, word for word played out.
The good:
The movie is gorgeous. The special effects are as expected for a film of this budget.
It was awesome to see the Sardaukar in this light where the’d been glossed over in past adaptations.
Loved seeing POC actors as when I read the book, I definitely didn’t picture an all white cast at all.
Kynes as a black woman was great. I also loved seeing the underground areas and them explained when that was often omitted in past adaptations.
The nod to Lynch/Giger’s Harkonnen was chefs kiss I Loved how the Baron was depicted.
It was good to see the nods to the Atreides history with the bull shots.
The bad:
I do not feel like this movie was loyal to the book at all.
So much of the movie relied on people having seen past films or read the books to know what was going on – or if they could follow the basic, they missed out on so much that wasn’t explained on film. I spent a good bit of time explaining different things after the fact to friends who saw it but didn’t see the past movies or read the books.
Lady Jessica was shown as an emotional mess constantly whereas in the book she is stoic and strong from her intense training.
The focus on Paul’s obsession with Chani was tiresome. Yes, its important but this movie came across like a YA love story and not an epic space opera.
The omission of Princess Irulan, the Emperor, Feyd, and the Spacing Guild was atrocious. In fact, Irulan’s absence was greatly felt as her histories are such a crucial part to the whole vibe of the book.
The deletion of the dinner party was ridiculous.
Don’t tell me they didn’t have time when they wasted a huge part of the movie with cgi explosions.
The focus on Duncan – while I appreciate that they had Mamoa in the part to draw the crowd and didn’t want to let them down…it was eye roll worthy- I would understand if they are planning to show off his clone later on but thats a later book. Not this book.
I saw enough thopters…it was obvious they were really excited by that design with all the screen time.
I could keep going but you get the point. I know that the director had his own vision of how he wanted to share things but honestly it came out as bad fan fiction and they could have just called it something else, changed the names, and pretended it was inspired by Herbert and not an adaptation – it worked for Lucas after all…
