Dune (2021) Once again, I pride myself on being the very last person on planet Earth to see a huge, talked about movie and becoming the very last person on planet Earth to post a review of it.....
The advantage of waiting this long.......wasting little or no time scribbling out plot details, since you've probably already absorbed 5000 reviews and/or pieces of internet news about 'Dune'.
I'm aware this movie owes its existence to the fact that everybody agreed, including David Lynch, that Lynch's 1984 version of Frank Herbert's sci-fi epic sucked to high heaven.........for reasons too countless and boring to bother describing here.
Writer-director Denis Villaneuve solved one major problem right away......not trying to cram all of the Herbert book into one movie and only filming the first two thirds of it.
So for Act III of this story, we all have to wait for Dune 2......whoopa-dee-doo.
And Villaneuve doesn't worry too much about setting up 'Dune's storyline and its cast of characters. First above storytelling, he's all about the world-building, which this film does with a vengeance.
You want world building? Endless, lengthy CGI infused landscapes of the desert planet Arrakis? And with images pumped up by Hans Zimmer's expansive Middle-East wailing 'n bagpiping score? You got it.
Oh right, there is stuff going on here. Two big galactic royal clans vying for control of the planet, which features city-sized worms who produce some sparkly stuff called 'spice', which everyone in the Dune' universe uses as an energy source or a drug, or for all we know, cooking oil.
Good guys - the Atreides bunch, a handsome, stalwart group. Yay. Bad guys - Harkonnens, big fat and bald evil bastards. Booooooooo..........
Bad guys, who used to manage the planet before the good guys moved in, plan a comeback. This doesn't bode well for the good guys except their young heir Paul (Timothee Chalamet) and his mysterious mom (Rebecca Ferguson). Mom's part of a weird quasi-religious female cult who can sort of Jedi mind trick people by shouting at them extra loud.
Paul and mom, cast out into the desert during all the chaos, have to dodge those worms, who pop up like vacuum cleaner nozzles the size of aircraft carriers. Lucky they fall into the hands of the planet's hardy indigenous natives, the Fremen.....even luckier for Paul, that gang also includes Chani (Zendaya), the fierce warrior babe he's been psychically dreaming about.
And that's as far as the film's 155 minutes takes you.......we'll all just have to wait a couple years to watch Paul and Chani galvanize the Fremen and go out and kick some fat, bald Harkonnen asses. Woopadee-doo.
While I deeply admire Denis Villaneuve's dedication and artistry to meticulously evoke the Dune universe, the problem is we've seen all this before in various forms. That's because other filmmakers like George Lucas, James Cameron and a host of lesser talents used chunks of the "Dune" books as inspiration for their own assorted sci-fi.fantasy visions.
By the time David Lynch rolled out his blighted, star-crossed film version of 'Dune', it just resembled stale leftovers of tropes, characters and good-vs-evil struggles we'd already watched in the first three 'Star Wars' episodes. (and their many imitators)
But for all sci-fi-ers, the stunning visuals, matched by the equally powerful Zimmer score make 'Dune' essential viewing. (We've hardly mentioned the cast, fine actors all......but you know from the start that this is no movie to allow actors to impress, except maybe for Jason Momoa, who enjoys a bit of swashbuckling swagger in his battle scenes.)
I was leaning toward a 2 & 1/2 star rating, but any movie featuring a worm that looks like it could inhale Manhattan and still have room to suck in Staten Island for dessert is an automatic 3 stars (***). May the worms be with you.
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