A Beginning...

 

I have long loved Frank Herbert's Dune, and was very excited when I heard that Denis Villeneuve was announced as the director for the latest attempt to make a visual presentation of the story. David Lynch produced a flawed masterpiece (with a superb soundtrack from Toto). The SciFi channel produced two mini-series which are definitely worth watching (especially as the second one deals with the aftermath of seizing power from the books Dune: Messiah and The Children of Dune). They're on Prime at the moment in the UK.

Anyway, back to Villeneuve; as a director, his visual style is probably second only to Ridley Scott's (which was probably why he ended up as the director for Bladerunner 2049) and he's produced a number of engaging and visually superb films (Sicario, Arrival, Bladerunner 2049) that I've loved. It soon became clear that the story needed two films to make it work, and Warner Brothers weren't willing to commit to the second until they saw how the first landed.

So, this weekend I went to see the first part of Dune.

It was awesome; I enjoyed the preamble on Caladan and other planets, but it grabbed me and dragged me in when the Atreides landed at Arrakis. Yes, I knew what was coming, but that just added to the fun. It was as visually stunning as I expected, and the music was intriguing. There was huge ambient sound (reminiscent of Bladerunner 2049) except when they got into elements around Dune itself or Paul's future and visions, when the music went much more melodic.

At two hours and thirty four minutes, it was a challenge to last through, but I made it! It's definitely a film I'd love to see again at the cinema, ideally at an IMAX to be even more immersive. Fantastic, and I hope that it does well enough for the second part to be made.

25 October 2021

Spoilers after the jump...

I only saw a few plot lines that seemed to be dropped; the visit of Princess Irulan and Thufir Hawat's suspicion that Lady Jessica was a traitor. The Spacing Guild was pretty absent in the plotting (with their fear of the ending of spice production with events they cannot see) and Count Fenring didn't make an appearance. However, on a project this size in a new medium, I'm more than happy with the changes.