Just got back from seeing this and holy hell, and not in a good way.
I'm not as susceptible to ending fatigue as a lot of people seem to be – Return of the King extended edition is fine by me – but that needed to end like an hour sooner. I really thought we were at the climax with
but then it kept going. And going. And going. And I couldn't care about learning the ways of the Fremen hierarchy after I'd just digested 90 minutes of space empire politics and at one point I started thinking about what I need to do at work on Monday before I realized Paul was fighting some guy, which is not a good sign to put it mildly.
Unfortunately, this adaptation underlines that problem I had with the book and the Lunch adaptation, which is that Paul just isnt a very interesting character. Up until he joins the Fremen, he's basically a Macguffin to be kicked around and talked about by the other characters. He has no goals of his own, no plans, so apparent desires outside of going along with whatever is happening around him, and I wondered at multiple points why he needed to be our viewpoint character at all. There's plenty of other characters with more agency than him who could serve. Duke Leto, for example. Or Lady Jessica. I know the story is supposed to deconstruct the "chosen one" archetype, so having him be passive and easily manipulated is the point, but it's not fun or engaging to watch. It's no coincidence that my favorite part of the movie was House Atreides trying to get Arakkis under control because Paul was barely on screen.
Denis has said in interviews that he learned a lesson from Blade Runner 2049 about how not to make more of a crowd pleaser in Dune (paraphrasing because I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was about avoiding another BR2049 box office failure), but I could not disagree more. Dune is everything that people accused BR2049 of being – overlong, self-indulgent, dull. A big step backwards for Vellenuve, unfortunately.
I'm not as susceptible to ending fatigue as a lot of people seem to be – Return of the King extended edition is fine by me – but that needed to end like an hour sooner. I really thought we were at the climax with
the attack on house Atreides, Paul and his mother lost in the desert, and Duncan's unknown fate
Unfortunately, this adaptation underlines that problem I had with the book and the Lunch adaptation, which is that Paul just isnt a very interesting character. Up until he joins the Fremen, he's basically a Macguffin to be kicked around and talked about by the other characters. He has no goals of his own, no plans, so apparent desires outside of going along with whatever is happening around him, and I wondered at multiple points why he needed to be our viewpoint character at all. There's plenty of other characters with more agency than him who could serve. Duke Leto, for example. Or Lady Jessica. I know the story is supposed to deconstruct the "chosen one" archetype, so having him be passive and easily manipulated is the point, but it's not fun or engaging to watch. It's no coincidence that my favorite part of the movie was House Atreides trying to get Arakkis under control because Paul was barely on screen.
Denis has said in interviews that he learned a lesson from Blade Runner 2049 about how not to make more of a crowd pleaser in Dune (paraphrasing because I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was about avoiding another BR2049 box office failure), but I could not disagree more. Dune is everything that people accused BR2049 of being – overlong, self-indulgent, dull. A big step backwards for Vellenuve, unfortunately.
