I REALLY WANTED TO LOVE IT!
Dune premiered on the big screen and on HBO MAX, at the same time. So, like many subscribers, I had the choice to plunk down fifteen dollars, or to watch it free. After watching countless trailers with my friends, who actively work in the movie industry, and being wowed by gigantic CGI’d ships, wide cinematic shots, and detailed sets, I decided “It would probably be better if I watched it on the big screen.
Throw in the fact that Star Wars was inspired by Dune, logically, it was the correct move – right? And Disney wasn’t involved, so it must be good. (Yes I know it’s a WB production)
~sigh~
I’m sorry to report, the remake of Dune was a dud. Yes, the shots are “somewhat” great and dramatic, but the story and directing were so awful, I felt like walking out of the theater a few times. This movie gets a grade lower than F. By the way, If you suffer from insomnia, you would probably give it an A.
GRADE: Zzzzzzzz
I’m sorry, I just don’t buy these characters as heroes.
LET’S START WITH THE ABOVE AVERAGE ELEMENTS
Let’s start with the cinematography. At first glance, if you’re like me, you were probably wowed by the trailers. But upon closer review, it’s really nothing that we haven’t seen before. Wide shots of the desert, well, I’ve seen that before. Spaceships….uhm, seen that too. Panoramic shots of cities, uhm…yeah. There’s nothing new here that blows my socks off. There were interesting masks in here, though. Maybe if this pandemic continues, I can sport one?
When it comes to the wardrobe. It’s interesting but boring. When I think of great wardrobes, I think of the BBC series The Musketeers. The wardrobe/costumes in Dune are eccentric and don’t really serve a purpose, other than looking strange. I think I’ve seen them on the runways during Fashion Week. It’s really nothing that great. Just eccentric.
It is just me, or do these Musketeers look more prepared for battle?
The CGI was great, along with their spacecraft. But then again, I wasn’t wowed. The ornithopters were cool. In case you are wondering what ornithopters are, thopters for short, they are aircraft that have flapping wings. They don’t work in real life, but hey, they look cool – in a strange way. The thopters in Dune resembled dragonflies, but didn’t fly like dragonflies. Did you know that dragonflies can fly backward just as fast as they can fly forwards? And their wings can move independently as well. In fact, they pretty much dominate the insect flying world, regarding their acrobatic capability. Was that expressed in the movie? Uhm…no. That’s just lazy writing. Let’s just put things in the script without thinking…
Here’s what probably happened. The director commanded, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we put this thopter-dragonfly into the movie?” Just to let you know, this thopter is canonical to the book, but as a director, you still need to do your homework. But NO research into the flight of dragonflies was done. So, the result was a dragonfly aircraft, that flew like fighter jets, and dove like fish. Yeah, even sci-fi should be somewhat scientific?
AND NOW THE REAL UGLY…
Dune was a boring movie.
This monstrosity was two and half hours long, and it felt as though it was two and half days. I swear, I wanted to walk out of the theater, but I didn’t because I paid fifteen bucks for it.
Why was it boring? Well, it comes down to two major factors. The script and direction sucked balls.
LET’S START WITH THE SCRIPT
Dune is based upon a 1965 novel by Frank Herbert. To be quite honest, I’m not sure how great of a book it was, but odds are, it told a tighter story than the movie I just saw.
Every character in this movie was flat. Your villains were bad because – they were bad. The heroes were good beacuse – well, they were called to be good. Forget trying to find a deep motivation to any character, a base fear you could build around, or even an enneagram personality type to assign any one of them. The characters that appeared on screen were as flat as Joe Biden’s brain scan. Flat characters lead to flat acting, flat acting leads to effect-driven movies, and effect-driven movies lead to snores in the crowd.
Paul was the only character that I could assign a personality type. He was a Type Four Individualist, on the search for his purpose. But his personality type was not completely a Type Four….just a sprinkle of it. You won’t find Type Fours leading a war, or taking charge. They are usually introverted, not team players, characters who work in the shadows, and quite often, strike out on missions by themselves – such as the Winter Soldier.
A note here on the acting in this movie. It was great. But the actors were NOT given much to work with, and most likely had to create their own motivations, their own characters, in their heads, to breathe life into poorly written flat characters. Flat meaning, they have one emotion, one purpose, and that’s it.
And the problems just didn’t end with the characters. This script also failed to communicate the storyline effectively. At some point in the movie, it felt as though I was listening to an air traffic controller talk to a pilot. I had an idea what was going on, but there were terms, names, that just threw me for a loop. There is definitely a “Dune vocabulary.” And, these screenwriters expect you to know “Dune vocabulary” from the very beginning, and didn’t attempt to educate the audience.
Effective storytellers are efficient storytellers. Efficient storytellers can captivate a crowd, even if the topic is boring. Effective storytellers can literally make rocket science understandable for the masses. There wasn’t much of that “effectiveness” going on here. I literally had to learn about these characters through my friend, who saw the 1980s movie. You know a script is written poorly, when a major newspaper has to explain the holes in the script, to defend “its greatness”.
It was the story structure for Dune, that ultimately failed. Most movies have three acts, a beginning, a middle, and an end. For Dune, it felt as though the entire movie was the first act, and every storytelling element that happened in this movie, over the course of two and a half hours, could have been told in thirty tight minutes. There was a turning scene, which was the big epic battle, and then we got a taste of the second act.
This is storytelling at its worse.
GRADE: Zzzzzzzzz
DENIS VILLENEUVE IS NOT A GOOD DIRECTOR
I’m not sure why Denis Villeneuve is considered a great director. His movies are known to be visually stunning, but shouldn’t we credit the cinematographers for that? Personally, I think his movies are mind-numbing boring. Sicario was a movie that I really hoped would be great, but that was boring. Villeneuve had the talent to turn a movie about a hitman with a conscience, into a boring movie. Arrival was probably one of the dumbest third encounter movies I’ve ever seen, and yes, it was boring. I mean, in that movie, aliens literally travel across the universe to teach a woman calligraphy, which is the answer to all things…..what? I didn’t see Blade Runner 2049, but someone told me it was a snooze, but nice to look at. I have it on HBOMax, but I think I learned my lesson, it’s a no for me.
The problem with Dune was that Villeneuve tried to make everything a bit too epic. Everything from a door opening, to slow-motion shots of Xendaya walking in the sand, why did everything have to be so epic? I mean, if a character ate dinner, that had to be an epic shot, a cinematic experience, with dramatic shadows, surround sound, scored dramatically by Hans Zimmer…. Can this guy direct c-span, rather than ruining Dune?
And I feel as though he focused too much on creating a visually epic movie, and skipped over telling a great story, with a VERY INTERESTING LORE. Dune’s lore is literally plagiarized by writers who don’t know any better. But their plagiarized material is better explained, than the lore of Dune, in this movie!
That’s bad! Horrible!
For example, did you know that the sacred spice that they were mining on the planet is used to create a drug called Melange? This drug unlocks the physical potential in humans, making them live longer, think faster, smarter. For some, melange unlocks their “prescience” or ability to see the future. This can make them more efficient fighters and better pilots as they have precognitive abilities. Melange is not perfect, it’s highly addictive, and withdrawal is fatal. Now, this is good stuff to put in this movie. It’s interesting. It’s canon to the book. But did Villeneuve put it in the movie? Nope. That’s a bad directing choice.
Dune, the book, is rich with story. And none of that richness made it to the screen.
A lot of elements of Dune went unexplained. That’s not good. Directing is the equivalent of a business owner having a conversation with a clueless customer. In this case, the director needs to explain CLEARLY, what’s going on. Who the characters are, who the Emperor is, who the Dukes are in relation to each other, and their role in the galaxy.
For me, the Director missed the opportunity to develop an interesting backstory to Paul’s character. But instead, we were fed the generic, often self-projected personality type, of the hero who needs to find themself, their identity; and the movie was basically about the journey. By the way, this is how most artists feel about themselves, which is why we see it onscreen over and over again. This is the Type Four Personality type on the Enneagram, and it is overused. There are at least eight other different personality types to choose from, and writers always manage to write about themselves, these days.
Oh, let’s skip to the scoring for this movie. Hans Zimmer, who is renowned, failed in this movie. It seemed as though every ship that launched, was accompanied by a woman that screamed vowels. That’s just weird. It sounded as though I was listening to a new song, from the group Enigma.
Click here to listen to what I’m talking about
That voice went on throughout the entire movie. I went to take a piss during the movie, and I literally heard that lady screaming through the walls, as I used the urinal. Which made that experience – interesting.
By the way, Denis Villeneuve is the director and writer of Dune.
The primary job of a director is to entertain their audience, and if one-third of the theater is literally snoring in the theater, Houston, you have a problem.
GRADE: Zzzzzzzzz
Steve Young
