Denis Villeneuve’s Dune

Wombatman · 24-10-2021 1:05am

Loved it.

I believe Villeneuve did as well as could be done adapting difficult material for the big screen. The essential elements of the book are retained.

Almost everything felt right. The design and cinematography is brilliant. The score augments the visual brilliance. The casting and performances were on the mark.

The austerity befits the backdrop of Arakas and the desolation felt at the annihilation of House Atreides.

If I had to nit pick I would say the character development was too superficial but if it were to be any deeper the movie would have run for 4 hours.

10\10. A first from me on here I think.

EltonJohn69 · 24-10-2021 1:27am

https://youtu.be/zZD99X_S7SA

which movie had the better intro ? I think Lynchs might take it mainly due to the Toto theme…. And a beautiful space queen…

I think I might have to watch the David Lynch version again…

24-10-2021 6:54am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118063925#Comment_118063925

Exactly how i felt about it. Looked incredible. But could not connect emotionally other then sheer awe at the visuals and the worm.

skaarsgard was really the only character in it that i found intriguing.

24-10-2021 10:55am

Skaarsgard was channeling Colonel Kurtz in this role. Great stuff all round.

The Raging Bile Duct · 24-10-2021 10:58am

I wasn't really paying much attention to the soundtrack until the wife turned to me and said 'It sounds like an ominous Lion King'. Couldn't get past that after she said it.

24-10-2021 11:22am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118065459#Comment_118065459

Zimmer has been phoning it in for years if you ask me. Regurgitation is his calling card. He was never near the level of the greats, Morricone, Goldsmith, Williams.

But I expect he has a lot of credibility in the industry for his ‘Ronseal’ approach to scoring films.

24-10-2021 11:54am

Kermode said that Villeneuve didn't want any narration over the film so used Zimmer for that aspect. Make of that what you will. Didn't think it was too bad.

breezy1985 · 24-10-2021 12:59pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118064931#Comment_118064931

I'm not a fan of the floaty head or the incredibly cheesy fade out

Tar.Aldarion · 24-10-2021 1:44pm

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sQOjokdp5Co

Good review of it here, really Dune is very hard to film, with the constraints of time, too much for a movie or two, not really suited to episodic.

pixelburp · 24-10-2021 1:56pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118064931#Comment_118064931

It's a terrible way to set the world though. I have a huge soft spot for that 1984 mess, but simply talking at the audience to get them up to speed is amateur writing.

And the truly crazy thing is this exposition still wasn't considered good enough, with patrons in 1984 handed pamphlets as they entered the cinema, the pages explaining the background;

https://www.reddit.com/r/dune/comments/ccunms/lynchs_dune_theater_handout_found_inside_a_used/

DoctorEdgeWild · 24-10-2021 1:56pm

Saw this yesterday at the Leicester Square IMAX (first time for me, bloody huge!!) and absolutely loved it.

Didn't dumb things down and have clunky 'explanation' scenes, which I see a lot in any modern sci fi films. Will definitely see it a second time before it drops out of cinemas.

Slydice · 24-10-2021 2:44pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118066038#Comment_118066038

lol, petition to rename the thread Dune [dot] [dot] [dot] if no part 2 is greenlit 😁

Kermode also saying to see the film in a cinema with a cinema sound system... right think that's enough of me feeling guilty about not pointing out Villeneuve saying it in that interview he did at the premiere in the Canadian IMAX

johnny_ultimate · 24-10-2021 2:52pm

Would have to disagree that there’s no explanatory scenes here. The film still opens with an extended, lore-loaded narration, and there are two separate scenes where a literal talking textbook explains everything we need to know about a particular planet.

It may be less clunky than the Lynch version when it comes to this stuff, but it certainly ain’t elegant. Maybe it just something that comes with the material, but there’s plenty of pretty tedious ‘lore’ to get through with Dune before anything kicks into gear.

EltonJohn69 · 24-10-2021 3:24pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118065866#Comment_118065866

Fade out and then fade back in because they forgotten to mention something….

EltonJohn69 · 24-10-2021 3:26pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118066301#Comment_118066301

Denis veal-a-nuv did say part 2 will be a lot more action because a lot of the world building is done

Sad Professor · 24-10-2021 3:32pm

I think the exposition and world-building is handled extremely well. Many people have trouble understanding the plot of the book without referring to the appendix. The film establishes everything very efficiently.

Tony EH · 24-10-2021 3:35pm

Agreed. I think the set up was handled pretty well. But I also think that a little familiarity with the source material definitely allows one a better insight into what's going on. I have no doubt that there were many in the audience that had a good bit flying over their heads.

Dune is just one of those stories.

johnny_ultimate · 24-10-2021 4:07pm

I haven’t read the book, but from seeing the two films Dune has that very particular brand of storytelling that is simultaneously simple and convoluted / complicated. The actual main thrust of the story couldn’t be more straightforward, but there’s just a plethora of side characters and proper nouns to keep track of.

Varik · 24-10-2021 4:13pm

They skipped too much world building and a lot of the characters development.

No where is this more apparent than Yueh where we don't get the scope of what happened, and then Leto just looks like the chivalrous idiot with little to show on why the Atreides were really a threat to the emperor. All we get is that Emperor has it out for them, they know it's a trap, and Atreides security kind of sucks.

The books tells you what's pretty much going to happen at the start of each chapter with the historical quotes, and then the characters reveal their plans ( both protagonist and antagonist) which we get to see how it all plays out. The books have the Baron reveal his full plan and we then get to see why it does and doesn't work and why the Atreides weren't able to foil it.

Tony EH · 24-10-2021 4:16pm

@johnny_ultimate

I haven’t read the book, but from seeing the two films Dune has that very particular brand of storytelling that is simultaneously simple and convoluted / complicated. The actual main thrust of the story couldn’t be more straightforward, but there’s just a plethora of side characters and proper nouns to keep track of.

Sure, the main thrust of the story is easy to get. But understanding each house and what motivates them can be rather difficult to grasp if you have no idea about them.

For instance, the Bene Gesserit in this film are obscure to say the least. They are filtered down to Charlotte Rampling really and she has dealings with both the Atreides and the Harkonnen. Without knowledge of what they are, it can be difficult for average Joe moviegoer to understand why. And the Imperium are nowhere to be seen, yet they are orchestrating a lot of the events that are happening.

Again, I'm sure a lot of folk walked out of the cinema asking themselves WTF was going on in what they just saw. I overheard a number of people asking what was happening when I watched it. "Why is there a battle?" "Who's fighting who?" "Who's that guy?'

It's the kind of story that you can watch in an offhand way and follow the immediate characters on the screen, but if you're not watching relatively carefully, much of it can fly by you.

titan18 · 24-10-2021 4:22pm

Tedious is subjective, I certainly wasn't bored watching it. You can't do something like Dune without world building and explaining some lore tbh unless you were going to have an extremely high budget TV show/mini series (and even then it's tough imo).

I thought it was great anyway and thought the run length flew (in comparison something like No Time to Die was a bore), and the only real issue is the wait for part 2 cos this is an incomplete film and when you compare it to something like Fellowship of the Ring, it didn't even have a strong climax like the Balrog to carry it as a standalone film.

Part 2 will have a lot more happening and I'd say Feud Rautha is the only major character to introduce (there's a few others I'd consider minor for the film).

accensi0n · 24-10-2021 4:30pm

Thought it was pretty good, not amazing.

Anyone else just see Nick Nolte every time the army leader guy was on screen? 😂

Tony EH · 24-10-2021 4:32pm

Well there's also the Emperor to get to as well and doesn't Irulan have a pretty big part to play too?

Tar.Aldarion · 24-10-2021 4:50pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118066589#Comment_118066589

Aside from all the characters, of which all are important and can't each be treated equally for a film, unfortunately the books are nearly all internal dialogue, which is excellent, and quite unfilmable. Stuff that make things more warm like say showing more of the local city or populace are barely mentioned, unimportant. The little tricks they did with the hand gestures and speaking another language do not exist in the book and were clever ways to at least get some of that eternal dialogue out in a way, otherwise it had to be done with looks and the score.

breezy1985 · 24-10-2021 5:12pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118066698#Comment_118066698

Don't think Irulan actually does anything other than stand round looking pretty in Dune

conorhal · 24-10-2021 5:27pm

Dune 2021 just left me cold. I can't believe I'm about to say this, but for all it's very obvious flaws, Lynch's version is the better film (at least the first half of it anyway). Love it or hate it, at least Lynch's version is memorable. This however was just empty spectacle.

Villeneuve, with twice the length of time offered to tell the story that Lynch did, still manages to make a film that seems to offer less in the the way of political scheming and universe building. I really don't find the dull brutalist architecture that dominates his sci-fi to my taste in any way. Especially when compared to the rich lived in universes of Ridley Scott or David Lynch, his worlds feel empty (a complaint I had about Bladerunner 2049 also) and just like his bare concrete edifices, he's characters are also devoid of any actual 'character'. Literally everybody speaks in the same restrained monotone and I found that really irritating. None of the supporting characters (bar, to my surprise, Jason Momoa's Duncan) make an impact or seem to display a single genuine emotion as they all blur together. I remember hearing the actors in Starwars complain that whenever they asked George Lucas for some direction regards their character, all he would ever say was 'faster and with more intensity!'. I suspect that when asked for any input, Villeneuve's only instruction to his actors must be, 'slower and with less emotion'.

The film is full of clunky exposition, half an hour in Jessica tells Paul his entire purpose, delivering this information with all the importance of a shopping list and Paul has literally no reaction to this information, it's just strange. The antagonists are barely present and the emperor makes no appearance at all which leaves the film feeling like it has no stakes. It's full of baffling choices, like how Paul's dreams are represented and the film feels like it gets so much wrong in terms of basic storytelling that I have to wonder if Villeneuve bit off more then he could chew with this one.

The spaceships look cool, and the cinematography is quite nice but that's about it. Zimmer's score didn't irritate me they way it seems to have irritated some people, but is leaves no impression and adds nothing to the film either.

5/10

breezy1985 · 24-10-2021 5:36pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118066615#Comment_118066615

It could have just as easily been "random soldier no.2" that betrayed Leto.

So I think you are spot on with Yeuh

They done the opposite with Idaho who I felt was a nothing character in the books but in this his story means something

breezy1985 · 24-10-2021 5:37pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118066860#Comment_118066860

The hand gestures and language are in the book. It's called Atreides battle language

Tar.Aldarion · 24-10-2021 5:43pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118067226#Comment_118067226

If you think people showed little emotion wait til you read the books (if you didn't), Jessica has way more emotion in this for example, she has nearly 100 percent control over every muscle in her body (bene gesserit). Similarly Paul has this training and all his reactions are internal. When people were describing it as cold in the Dune subreddit the fans were like great, it sounds accurate. It's a pretty faithful adaption and as you alluded too, that doesn't make it great in many ways for a movie. He had a hard job of it to adapt this, if it was even more accurate we wouldn't see worm riding etc, and showing the emperor and such just doesn't exist in the source material, so he'd just be making stuff up when already so much has to be cast aside. It would have been nice to give the characters more life but it would need to be 5 hours long. Liet got done dirty for example, cool character in the book, now gender swapped and nondescript. Same with most characters, just not time to show anything.

pixelburp · 24-10-2021 6:22pm

Deadline is reporting a domestic opening weekend of $40milllion, which is ahead of the projection of $30-35 million Warners had set. There's no data how well the concurrent HBO Max release has itself done.

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune

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