Dune (2021)

Rewatched 2/24/24 (HBOMax)

It’s one in a million that this movie’s good. Heavy exposition, sincerity, scale, and what are now considered tropes are all working against it in the modern filmmaking landscape. And there’s a certain restraint applied to the pacing that somehow achieves both a static and epic feel at the same time. It’s a near impossibility that that works: blowing up the move from one planet to another by a bunch of rich people into a detailed journey of grand proportions with emotion somehow squeezed in amidst the chaos.

That Chalamet is able to channel what could on paper be a whiny rich kid into a hero to root for is even more impressive than Mark Hamill’s performance as a whiny poor kid in the original Star Wars. Both young performances require a certain level of immaturity and both actors somehow deliver this as underdog instead, setting the table for epic battles in their future installments.

We slow down so much to focus on Paul’s love for people in this first Dune—and it is certainly a feature opposed to a bug. Just as his father shows compassion for those in his house and on his new planet, so too does Paul to an even further degree. His boyish enthusiasm for the adventures of Duncan Idaho pairs nicely with his respect for the Fremen natives toward making him likeable for audiences. There’s another version of this movie where that isn’t focused on enough and we find ourselves not caring about Paul. That would be fine as the spectacle would still be enough to warrant a watch, but you need to have viewers backing the hero if you truly want your blockbuster to hold up and drive desire for sequels. Visuals can only take you so far.

But wow, how far they take this movie. As we slowly meet and develop our many characters, we are treated to a murderer’s row of set pieces that are as good as any that you’ll see in some of the best auteurs’ biggest movies. The ornithopter rescue, the assault on the palace, and Paul’s first kill are all on par with some of Steve Spielberg or Ridley Scott’s best action sequences. And they’re just BIG, with Villeneuve’s penchant for focusing on tension through faces deployed to dazzling effect. The guy has this backlog of awesome scenes such as the Sicario bridge shootout and the Blade Runner 2049 opening punchout that just demand open mouths—and he makes no exception to that rule for Dune.

I am beyond excited for Part 2–the most excited for a movie I have been since, well, Dune Part 1. The book is quite possibly the best book I have ever read, but this was always to me a series that demanded to be put on as big of a screen as possible and unfortunately David Lynch never quite achieved the lofty ambitions this story requires, so here we are and I’m pumped to cultivate more desert power.

10/10