My Review of Dune: Part One (2021)

 

Written by Jon Spaihts And Denis Villeneuve And Eric Roth

Directed by Denis Villeneuve 

Paul Atreides: "That's the future. It's coming. Holy war spreading across the universe like unquenchable fire."

To venture into territory that has previously been ventured. Frank Herbert's reputable sci-fi book series has already been a previous big screen offering back in 1984 and a miniseries in 2000/2003. However this adaptation has managed to become the definitive take, in spite of it's release during the pandemic.

I've never read the book or watched the previous adaptations, so I'm going in blind with this one. Our lead protagonist, Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) has a destiny and one that he's not quite prepared for or even understands that much. During the first part of this saga though, he had a fair amount of shit to deal with.

First of all, he kept seeing a Freman woman named Chani (Zendaya) in his dreams but it wasn't until the end of the movie that he actually encountered her and the tribe led by ally Stilgar (Javier Bardem). I know aspects of their love story but here, it definitely did not seem like love at first sight between Paul and Chani.

Of course, the main plot of this movie involved spice and Paul's father, Leto (Oscar Isaac) being assigned the job ofreplacing Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) as the fiefholder of Arrakis and with that, came trouble. It didn't take long for Leto to become a casualty and it didn't take long either for both Paul and his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) to be almost taken out either.

Paul's relationship with his mother was the thing I found the most interesting from this movie. Jessica's a consort rather than wife to Leto and came from a sisterhood named the Bene Gesserit, who have their own unique abilities. It's also interesting that while Jessica was instructed to bear a daughter, she defied the matriarchal group by having a son instead.

There's a lot of characters and machinations to keep afoot with in this movie and it's cast are definitely it's biggest strength. There's strong supporting performances from the likes of Charlotte Rampling as Reverend Mother Mohiam, Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho, Dave Bautista as Glossu Rabban and Josh Brolin as Gurney Halleck to name a few.

- Sharon Duncan-Brewstsr appeared as Dr. Liet Keynes, a character who's usually male in the source material. 

- The Part One part of the movie was almost hidden from the marketing even though this clearly was meant to be a two part saga.

- The brief showing of sandworms did look cool as did that spider creature. 

- Chronology: Distant future, mainly on Arrakis.

I got to admit that my experience with Dune: Part One is something of a mixed bag. On a technical level, there's a lot to like with it. It looks stunning, the acting's certainly not lacking and the script tried to make the dense material accessible but there's something a bit cold about it that made me struggle to care as much as I should. 

Rating: 7 out of 10