Raiding the other guys’ planets is evidently kosher in a house-to-house vendetta (so the emperor could not have commanded the Harkonnens to leave them alone) but you may be right that it is not clear from the film— I do not remember if the film mentioned the Atreides destroying the Harkonnens’ spice stockpile as an example of a legal action.
We finally saw it last night. Having read the book too many times to accurately count, I enjoyed just sitting back to see what visuals and plot changes Villeneuve had come up with.
As expected, the visuals were terrific - sometimes it had a genuine Lawrence of Arabia feel - and he gave it a wonderful sense of scale (seeing massive equipment/thopter areas repurposed for cooking and meeting was a great touch). He also likely made the right call on not fulling masking everyone all the time, though I had an occasional chorus in the back of my mind calling out the anti-maskers for exposing their faces to the desert. “It goes over the nose or it’s just a chin diaper!”
As negatives go, he spent too much time with Paul’s visions and dreamscapes, which is time he could have spent with, say, Yueh. I get it’s important to establish Paul has some prescience beforehand, which then gets massively enhanced by spice, but I’m not even sure that came through clearly for a non-reader.
All the casting was fine for me, better than the 1984 version, even Paul (yeah Timothee’s too old, but that’s not uncommon in films). Rebecca Ferguson is always good, she’s an ideal Jessica from my perspective, and Momoa was also a perfect match.
I agree with some of the comments upthread that it might be unfilmable as a platform release. I do think that something could have been done similar to Game of Thrones, a long-running series that would have given enough room to explore all the nuances that happen in the book. But, as Ebert said, review the film you saw, not the film you wish it’d been.
Having read the book once, 40 years ago, i was delighted that i could follow the story. Yes, i remembered bits and pieces from the book. Not as much as I’ve learned from reading this thread. But the story pretty much worked.
Oh my God yes! It was gorgeous. The desert scapes looked real. The ornithopter didn’t look like it should work, but it looked real. The sandworm was perfect.
Yeah, agree on both counts. Seeing so much of their faces might not have bothered me so much if i hadn’t been wearing a mask myself for the past two years. But it’s hard to act under a mask.
I saw that at the time, and didn’t much like it. My comment then was “good illustration, doesn’t work as a stand-alone movie”. Even having read the book somewhat recently, then, i found it confusing.
I suppose i don’t remember the casting of the 1984 version. But this was SO much better as a movie.
That may vary from theater to theater. I’m often bothered by movies being too loud, but this one was fine.
I’m looking forward to part 2.
I just watched the 1984 version a couple days ago. Certainly for the first time as an adult, and possibly for the first time ever (I’d definitely seen fragments of it growing up, but I am not confident it ever managed to keep my attention for its full runtime). It’s like a connect the dots without enough dots to produce a discernable image. The final 30 minute or so especially. It takes what is two of three installments of the miniseries (3 to 4 hours) or what will here be the second film (two hours at least) and crams them into 30 minutes. The fremen just sort of appear, accept Paul, accept Paul’s guidance, and then “two years later” (montage!) gladly follow him to an uninspiring climactic battle against the Emperor and House Harkonnen (and the battle itself spends way too much time lingering on things I just don’t care about–like their stupid acoustic weapons, or the creepy sister’s interactions with the Baron).
And it’s not like everything before that was good, either. Like, I’m really not super interested in seeing the Baron rape and murder a young man by removing his nipple clips (okay, okay–not a nipple clip, but a pre-installed heart plug that later dialogue was kind enough to explain is a “thing” the Harkonnen do to their people, because I really needed that information, both visually in gory detail and in later explanatory dialogue, more than I needed to see Paul interacting with his Fremen allies and realistically building a coalition).
Anyway, the 1984 version is an irredeemable mess. I get David Lynch didn’t have final cut approval, but that he even filmed certain scenes strikes me as highly questionable, never mind what ended up in the film and what ended up on the cutting room floor. While the 2021 (or 2020? 2019?) film certainly does have an abbreviated feeling to it as well–even allowing for the fact it tells only the first half of the story–its decision to zero in more on Paul and his mother and cut away large portions of the story dealing with the broader sociopolitical context and feud at least makes sense. Less of the Baron’s private depravations or the Emperors machinations, more of the conflict around Paul as Paul has a chance to perceive it. We at least get a clear picture of that.
Confining this to the story that I think is being told on-screen, since I don’t know whether you or others have read the books and I personally am super spoiler-averse:
I think Chalomet’s very restrained performance is part of the story that’s being told. I think you picked up on a very intentional thing that was left very ambiguous and unexamined. Not that I felt he was off the charts great or anything, but in particular, I think his emotions in that gom jabbar scene that you referenced were a specific choice by Villenueve. He sort of takes “show, don’t tell” to an extreme in some of his decisions, and this is probably one of them. But for what it’s worth, what I saw in that scene was that Chalomet is being specifically tested on his ability to control his reaction to fear and pain. An animal flinches back from pain reflexively, a human being is aware enough of the circumstances to make a choice about it, so are you a human or not, and all that. And Chalomet is so controlled and so aware of the test and its implications and the future that is going to result that he takes control of the test away from the Mother by the end. He passes in a way that she doesn’t believe he’s capable of. My take on the scene was he was so unafraid when the critical moment came that she ended up a little scared of him.
So when you see that there’s CGI stuff telling you that he’s in incredible pain, and then you see him responding just a bit, and then not at all, I think that’s the story the movie wants to tell you. Whether that makes his performance great or not, I think is another question, but at least I don’t think it was him failing to carry the story.
I’m on board with this.
These takes on Chalamet not reacting to the gom jabbar don’t resonate with me at all - he was clearly showing a lot of pain in the scene, as yes, the CGI shots were interspersed. Here’s a shot below as an example…what more would someone want in terms of emoting pain?
There’s also, interspersed, a few lines from his mom about how the goal is to let the fear (and presumably pain) wash over you, and wait until it has gone past, so that you can see clearly. I think that’s what the scene is: the pain hits him, he reacts, and he masters it.
I, also, thought that scene was well done.
I’d distinguish between Oscar Isaacs’s restrained performance, and Chalomet’s flat performance. The former was layered: he was clearly feeling strong emotions but for the most part holding them back. Chalomet didn’t feel like he was suppressing anything: I just didn’t get anything from him. It seems like a lot of viewers thought he was great, but a few like me and acsenray thought he was terrible. I don’t know how to reconcile that, except that I wish I’d thought he was great; his performance took me out of the movie on several occasions, where I found myself thinking more about his monotone than about the story.
Personally I was a little annoyed that it was Jessica reciting the Litany Against Fear rather than Paul, who recites it in the book.
It was strange to say the least.
They both say it, though he’s just mouthing it. Right or wrong, Villeneuve wanted to establish both the connection and the tension between them. Here’s his breakdown of the scene:
ETA: I guess the other thing I’d add, in a book it’s an internal monologue, so it might also play better to have her basically explaining to the audience what he’s mouthing, vs him chanting it out loud during the scene. (or even worse, having him do it in voiceover)
Damn, I thought that movie was sensational.
No, not every detail from the book made it. The ones that mattered did. The story and the fundamentals of the characters, THAT’s there.
I am always glad when some artist convinces some finance guy to throw $100 million + at his vision of the impossible-to-adapt Dune, and am glad we have every version we have, flawed as they all… almost by necessity… are.
My vision of Dune is going to be unlike any of yours, and vice versa. If I made a movie/series which was faithful for how I saw the source material, my God how some of you would howl! And the same if you made yours.
For example, there seems to be a clear divide as to TC playing Paul - some thought he was great, some did not. I thought he was fantastic because my vision of Paul was never this great Messianic warrior-leader who was the world’s greatest fighter, my vision of Paul was this dandy, rather fey kid… trained to be deadly, of course!.. who was largely at the behest of forces larger than him, with the only true decision being made by the character was whether he was to go to the Fremen (and fulfill the prophecy) or die in the desert (and save the future from his legions).
And that’s exactly what I got from Chalamet.
Finally saw it – theater, not IMAX (I appreciate not having to put my head on a swivel) and definitely the scale does call for something better than your TV. Liked it quite a bit, worth the ticket. As a production, done on the scale you want for a Dune. It also, from what we are able to see, has a good sense of in-universe styles without being too over-the-top.
The spacecraft that different entities use look characteristic and there’s for instance the nice detail that the Atreides’ spaceships have visible anchors, for when they are afloat in Caladan. (And speaking of that, we see Atreides do a MacArthur/Short and park all their big spaceships close together in neat rows for easy destruction by bombardment. Guess some things don’t change.)
The Baron flies but is threatening, not ridiculous. Rabban’s is portrayed as violent first, not just dumb. Bardem is a good Stilgar, tough but wearied. Could have seen more of Brolin as Gurney. Momoa as Duncan… well, he did project the character of a superb swordsman who’s loyal to Atreides to the end. At least it’s a character that you can imagine (spoiler for the later books and movies 3+ if there ever are) someone later wanting to clone and bring back. As for Tim C. as JohnT puts it, in this stage of the story, Paul still has not got properly toughened, still confused about what those dreams and visions really mean. Isaacs does a good job casting Duke Leto as a father. Kynes’ part is very brief and her turn-to-ally as mentioned kind of just happens. Not enough of Zendaya actually playing her character to judge.
OK, so at this point, in this part we cashed out Duncan, Duke Leto, Kynes, Yueh, deVries and had a short explanation of what the BG are up to. This opens up room for Feyd, Shaddam, Irulan, the Guild to be visible in Part 2 I suppose.
As mentioned before a number of things are put forward a little too “just so” or even not at all. e.g. Yueh becoming just a run of the mill traitor (not going into the Suk training), the Mentats being reduced to just top lieutenants (I don’t recall we even see what happens to Hawwat).
Some things are brought up but you gotta be paying attention e.g. “you were supposed to have a daughter” and that the BG were breeding other candidates; or that the BG seeded their own angles into the legends and myths of the population so they could take advantage of them.
So there are callouts to the people familiar with the source material. Just that it is nonessential to dump the whole megillah into the movie, if you intend to make something people will live to see the end of.
Oh, of course, many will welcome the absence of preposterous hats, a common stylistic critique of the SyFy miniseries (though I had a place in my heart for the Sardaukar beret). Meanwhile, OK, OK, we get it that Arrakis is a desert, but do we need to show everyone on every other planet getting soaking wet?
In that same exchange (the “squeeze” dialog, with the Baron in the dip) he mentions to resume shipments but not so fast that prices drop. But again it is just so quick that yes, be distracted a half second with some other detail and you miss it.
For that matter, isn’t Salusa Secundus also a desert planet in the books? ISTR it being a plot point that the planet’s harsh environment is a contributing factor to the Sardaukar being as inimitable in combat as they are, and Paul realizing that the similar conditions on Arrakis mean the Fremen have the potential to beat them. I liked the aesthetics of the scene with the men crucified upside-down and the soldiers being marked on the forehead Ash Wednesday-style with their blood while the chanter was throat-singing on his podium, but the pouring rain just felt off to me.
Salusa Secondus was described as a “Death World” and IIRC was a jungle planet where everything tried to kill you.
It recently occurred to me that the filmmakers missed an opportunity to introduce Feyd Rautha. While I am grateful when I pull up Media Stinger as the credits roll and see I don’t have to manage my bladder for another 10 minutes, there was the opportunity for a stinger introducing Feyd. Perhaps the scene from the book where the Baron explains the plan to start with the Beast and send Feyd in as the savior. Have Feyd in the scene with his back to us and when the Baron gets to the line about how the people will love Feyd, the camera zooms over, Feyd turns around, and its…
Justin Bieber!
Ok, maybe not.
It also at least gives us a hint at a distinct Sardaukar “culture”. As usual in the different representations we don’t really see the recognizable fighting stye(*) so at least we get the hint of “yeah, there’s a reason they’re so feared”.
(* nor do we really get to see much of the BG style when Jessica bests Stilgar – I suppose they’d wanted to avoid a “what, mind control AND wonder-kung-fu?” reaction)