Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin
Have I Seen it Before: Never. See my remarks about my boneheaded Dune-related decisions in my review of David Lynch’s Dune (1984).
Did I Like It: It’s going to be difficult to find something to say about this film that isn’t immediately clear from being exposed to any piece of information about the film. It is a sumptuous production, being a nearly perfect fusion of modern special effects and epic filmmaking of old. The performances are finely tuned, with excellent performers managing to inhabit a space opera with not a single one of them looking embarrassed that they are taking place in the proceedings. Preceding decades may have been filled with varying degrees of false starts, but this is unequivocally the best possible adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel. It is all made more impressive by the fact that Villeneuve and company had to accept that they only had the resources to tell half of the story (to say nothing of the larger tale of Paul Atreides (Chalamet) and his heirs) with no guarantee that the film would catch on with audiences to necessitate the rest of the story going before cameras. It’s not a fair example, but the makers of Battlefield Earth (2000) made the same gambit and had it blow up in their face. This film had to be good, and it shows.
Had we been left with only this film, it might have been a supremely unsatisfying experience. What’s more, in stark contrast to David Lynch’s version of the story, much is left unexplained. I’m honestly surprised that the film did as well as it did, as the uninitiated might have found some of this inscrutable. Against all odds, I’m really glad that I read the book first. Take that to mean what you will.