Dune Review

Dune is a science fiction series written by Frank Herbert released 1965. This widely popular series has survived through the decades, gaining momentum with each generation and becoming a sort of holy grail of the sci-fi genre. The first movie adaptation of Dune was released in 1984, but unfortunately wasn’t a box office success. Recently, Denis Villeneuve directed a new adaptation of Dune starring Timothee Chalamet (Paul Atreides), Rebecca Ferguson (Lady Jessica), and Oscar Isacc (Leto Atreides). 

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie and the overall concept. It sort of has a hero’s journey feel to it where Paul is going through this internal struggle of whether or not he should “accept” his quest, in a sense. Going into this, I didn’t know what to expect, only having read the first 100 pages of the book. It was quite dense and had so many characters I didn’t know if I would be able to understand all the complexities. The movie did an astounding job of simplifying the world and enticing the viewer to maybe pick up the novel to see how it ends. The movie does leave the audience on a sort of cliffhanger.

My favorite scene in the movie was when Paul (Timothee Chalamet) puts his hand in a dark covered box and is supposed to act as a sort of cave of pain. Timothee’s expressions perfectly convey the intense agony his hand is going through, representing that it feels like his hand is burnt to a crisp. Why go through this pain? Well, because he has a poisonous needle known as a “gom jabbar” held to his neck to discourage movement . I also loved Lady Jessica’s (Rebecca Ferguson’s) performance during this scene, crippling in despair outside of the door at the possibility of the death of her son. 

This movie had breathtaking cinematography from the beautiful images of the dunes and sandy climate, to the crazy humongous man-eating worms that inhabit the planet. The music was good but not the best thing Hans Zimmer has done. I think this is just the beginning of the Dune series movies and I rate this a movie a ⅘.