As someone who was a fan of the movie that came out in 1984 but was too young to really grasp the full scope of it, I am a bit surprised at myself that I am just now seeing this for the first time 3 years after it was released. I had played some of the video games as well in the 90's but was never one of those guys that read all the books and it is my understanding there are a lot of them. Maybe we'll get around to that one day, I dunno, it might be too daunting of a task.
Anyhoo, I switched this on the other night when I noticed it was in the Plex server that I am now a member of and even before finding out that it is a two-part movies, which they kind of tell you at the beginning of the film during the opening credits, I found it to be excessively long.
I suppose this film doesn't really need much of an introduction because people either already know the story from their own nerd-dom or it is painstakingly spelled out for you while the film is going on. The "spice" that this one planet Arrakis contains is the most valuable resource in the universe and everyone wants it. There are two major houses of Harkonnen and Atreides, and the former is the bad guys and the former are the good guys. This is quite evident just by seeing their mannerisms but it is spelled out for you during the movie anyway.
It is no real mystery of what is going on and I think that they did a good job of summarizing things for new viewers in the opening 30 minutes or so in order to make this film more digestible by mass audiences.
Arrakis is a desolate planet that is very unforgiving to offworld people, regardless of their biological makeup because there is very little water on the planet at all. Again, this is spelled out as the story progresses, sometimes in excruciating detail that I found a bit annoying. It must have been a bit tough for director Denis Villeneuve to make choices about what to show and what not to show in this one. Tell us too much and people are upset that there has been nothing left to discover, tell us too little and everyone who isn't a fanboi is super confused. I think they did a decent job of this although some sections are in my opinion too long by design in order to make this a two -part feature.
Your are going to notice almost right from the start that there are a lot of faces that you recognize in the cast and I found this refreshing. While there are some big names in this they stayed away from putting anyone TOO big in the cast to avoid it becoming say, a Brad Pitt movie. This film was meant to be a Dune Movie not a movie that was successful because they paid The Rock 20 million dollars.
This film, just by watching about 30 minutes of it, was obviously extremely expensive to make and having looked it up they were able to keep it under $200 million, but only just. When all the receipts are totaled up from around the globe, the take at the box office was just over $400 million, so it didn't perform nearly as well as the studios would have hoped when you consider that between the cost of making the film and marketing budget, they may have just barely made any money on this entire thing. Covid can be blamed a bit for this but they also might have over-estimated how many people were actually going to be interested in seeing a massive sci-fi film that wasn't Marvel or Disney.
The 2nd installment is set to be released in March of 2024 and this time I will make a genuine effort to go and see it in cinemas.
The movie is visually very appealing and this was recognized when they were nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won 6 of them. I think them being nominated for "Best Picture" is a bit of a stretch though, and I say this as someone who is a lifelong sci-fi fan. Go ahead and attack me for this but I don't think this is best picture material even though it is a visual treat complete with a captivating Hans Zimmer soundtrack.
I feel as though they did a good job with this one and perhaps I was just a bit impatient and I wasn't really feeling up to a 155 minute epic film which I believe much of it was made intentionally long so that they could justify releasing this in 2 parts instead of just in one film. Gotta make them dollars ya'll!
Should I watch it?
Absolutely, yes you should. It is a visual masterpiece and is one of the best science fiction films ever made by mine and many other people's opinion. My criticism about it being too long will likely be shared by others and therefore I encourage you to watch it in an environment where you aren't going to be tempted to look at your phone or other distractions because the story of Dune is quite complicated and if you are screwing around on social media while this film is on in your living room, you are going to find yourself very lost, very fast.
I do not think you need to be a fan of the books, the 1984 film, or even science fiction films in general to enjoy this movie.
