A Review of Dune (2021)

Why I only want to go through this desert once.

The film Dune’s (2021) $165 million dollar budget, sci-fi bona-fides, and impressive cast of bankable Hollywood stars lead by Timothee Chalamet should have guaranteed a decent weekend opening. And it didn’t disappoint, bringing in $41 million in the US and $87.5 million worldwide, and topping the box-office the following weekend to boot. Which is why I cannot understand how I have come to the opposite conclusion, that the Dune experience is not built on solid foundations, but shifting sand.

Timothee Chalamet’s October 26th Twitter tweet showed a simple image with a fiery orange backdrop, and the words ‘Dune Part Two’ neatly printed in white in the foreground. At the time of writing, the reaction to this post numbers over 550,000 likes, 89,000 retweets and just under 10,000 replies. This kind of support for the sequel is nothing short of overwhelming. Rotten Tomatoes’ audience score, is a whopping 90%. And IMDB gives is an 8.2. And lest you think these numbers can be accounted for by the legion of Chalamet’s 1.8 million twitter followers, who presumably skew into the teen years, guess again, for according to IMDB, the average rating score (from 1-10, 10 being the highest), for every age cohort and sexes, are above 8 without exception.

Chalamet stars as Paul Atreides, the dauphin to his father’s house, a sympathetic character who harbors a latent power that he must develop if he is to survive to the trials ahead. Dune is the story of Paul Atreide’s journey, one caused by betrayal and overwhelming loss, but it failed on so many levels to draw me in and truly take me on that ride.

Compare Baron Harkonnen (played by Stellan Skarsgard), the main antagonist, to say, Marvel’s Thanos, and you get the sense that the former is a road sign (something you must regard and tolerate), while the latter is a map – much more interesting to follow as you traverse the peaks and valleys of their psyche.

The film opens up with a heavy learning curve. The first twenty minutes are a lesson in ‘tell’ not ‘show’, where facts and history are thrown at you in dense clumps and at break-neck speeds. I’d have been better prepared for this, had I brought a notepad, sticky tabs, and a few feet of colored twine to connect the dots. It’s never a good idea to have your audience confused before things start, and confused I was.

From there the story is quite predictable and very formulaic. Character development is quite sparse too. You don’t learn much about anyone’s history, nor their motivations, virtues or vices. The villains are, well villainous – crude, callous and nothing more. Compare Baron Harkonnen (played by Stellan Skarsgard), the main antagonist, to say, Marvel’s Thanos, and you get the sense that the former is a road sign (something you must regard and tolerate), while the latter is a map – much more interesting to follow as you traverse the peaks and valleys of their psyche.

Speaking of Thanos, Josh Brolin’s character, Gurney Halleck, is the only one that is remotely likeable or interesting, but he isn’t given much to work with. Probably the only one who came close, was Jason Momoa’s Duncan Idaho, a savvy fighter whose loyalty makes him endearing, but aside from wondering how Aquaman can thrive in a desert, I couldn’t muster much more curiosity about what makes him tick.

Chalamet indeed shows up for work in this film, but he only punches the clock, doing his job, and not much else to impress the studio bosses. His acting is not quite wooden, but more like a green sapling, swaying in the wind when he needs to and bending towards the light of the camera as he sees fit. Rebecca Ferguson’s Lady Jessica Atreides, Paul’s mother, also does her best to bring up the average, but her performance was marred by her incessant mumbling that unfortunately, seemed to be imitated by several others in the film.

Lastly, a significant number of people – Oscar Isaac (Star Wars), Jason Momoa (Marvel), Josh Brolin (Marvel), Dave Bautista (Marvel), Stellen Skarsgard (Avengers), all have starred in significant rolls in other big Hollywood sci-fi films which makes their appearance here somewhat distracting. But I could overlook this, except for the fact that these big-names were not needed since a cast of decent journeyman actors could have easily played these roles.

Who will like Dune? Apparently, a lot of people but I just can’t’ understand why. So, I will not proffer a guess but ask you! Tell me why in the comments.

1 Comment

One thought on “A Review of Dune (2021)
  1. perfect review ! I very much agree !

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