Dune: What I’d Wanted For Almost 35 Years, Finally Here

Whatever else one might say about the new Dune, the sheer scale of it is impressive.

There is a scene in Dune, early on, where I realized that the movie was going to live up to the hype. For those of you know, it’s the Gom Jabbar scene. I won’t spoil it for those who don’t know. But, at one moment, Paul stops crying out and locks eyes with the Reverend Mother. The music comes up. Dazzling images and tantalizing flash forwards alternate with Paul’s stoic face and his mother trying to calm her fear. All of it lit with scalpel-like precision to draw our attention to facial expressions, clenched hands and the power dynamics of how the actors are positioned. The tension builds and builds until finally being released. And then, in the ensuing calm, we find out a little bit of what this story is really all about.

This was what I’d wanted for almost 35 years.

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Frank Herbert’s novel has been frequently proclaimed as “unfilmable”. There is some validity in this accusation. The novel itself is extremely complex, with much of its early chapters devoted simply to world-building. It deals with thousand-year struggles, destiny, psychic powers and religion. It takes familiar myth-arcs and bends them to serve a narrative that is concerned, first and foremost, with ecology. It turns narratives about declining empires on their head — it was partially inspired as a response to Asimov’s Foundation Series¹. And while the plot turns on battles and fights, it is ultimately decided by political strategy and superhuman abilities that transcend space and time.

Nevertheless, there have been attempts. In the 1970s, Alejandro Jodorowsky got to the casting stage on a planned 10-hour epic before the funding dried up. In 1984, David Lynch finally brought the story to the screen (complete with pamphlets explaining aspects of the movie that were handed out in theaters). But Lynch disowned it and the film flopped critically and financially. In 2000, the Sci-Fi channel produced a three-part, six-hour series. This was better received, becoming Sci-Fi’s highest rated showing, earning some awards and spawning a sequel Children of Dune. But it never resonated in the public consciousness the way fans hoped it would.

The David Lynch/Alan Smithee Dune, seen by some as a spectacular failure and others as a weird success.

When it was announced that Denis Villeneuve, maker of the critically acclaimed Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 was taking his shot at it, hopes were high. Perhaps Villeneuve had the right visual sense to make Dune work, not just as a good movie or TV series, but as the jaw-dropping epic it has long deserved to be.

Villeneuve made all the right noises about the scope and depth of the material. He drew together a cast that made fans hopeful. Hans Zimmer, a fan of the novel, eschewed other projects to devote himself to scoring the film. Epic trailers made fans hope. Early reviews were strong. And now the film is here.

And as someone who has been waiting for this a long time, I can say… Dune delivers.

The plot of Dune goeth thusly: many thousands of years in the future², the universe is controlled by an Emperor and many great royal houses. This universe depends on the spice mélange, a substance that extends life, expands consciousness and allows navigators to break the light barrier. And it is only found on one planet: the desert world of Arrakis. House Harkonnen has run Arrakis for centuries, but their management is failing due to unrest with the native Fremen. Their rival, House Atreides, is tasked by the Emperor to bring peace to Arrakis and make sure the spice flows. But Duke Leto Atreides suspects a trap.

Duke Leto Atreides, played by Oscar Isaac.

But to tell the plot is to miss the point. These seemingly simple feudal rivalries take place in an Empire beset by political intrigue not only from the great houses but from various orders of humans with exquisite mental and physical training. These orders have brought human abilities to unprecedented heights and there are prophecies that this will produce a super-being. It’s often unclear who’s on whose side or whose agenda is being pursued and why. And the hero, Paul Atreides, must navigate the thin line between salvation and catastrophe.

Maybe you can begin to see why people call this unfilmable.

The Lynch movie was my first exposure to Dune. Actually, no. My first exposure was the so-called “Alan Smithee” cut, which adds almost an hour of additional material, including an introductory voice-over that provides some much-needed exposition to set the stage. As I noted, Dune flopped on release, with critics deriding it as an incomprehensible mess. It made several “worst of the year” lists and many still regard it as a colossal failure.³

My opinion is much higher. While I can see the film’s flaws, I also see its strengths. The set design, costumes and score are good. The casting and acting are all top-notch. It incorporates many of Herbert’s themes and ideas, particularly the idea of winning battles through strategy, enhanced human abilities and political acumen. It tries, and mostly succeeds, in having an epic scope. And it makes the planet Arrakis feel like a real place, not just a plot device.

The Lynch/Smithee version is far from perfect. But when it works, it towers. It has a scale and a grandeur seen in few science fiction films. It was enough to make me watch it over and over again. And it was enough to make me read the books.

“World-building” has become a rage these days. With a culture now filled to the rafters with science fiction, fantasy, action and comic book universes that are the intersection of all three, one of the things that even general audiences look for is a universe that has put in the work. It was Neal Stephenson, himself a builder of intricate worlds, that first brought my attention to this during the Star Wars prequel trilogy. You could watch the movies as they were. But if you wanted the real experience, you needed to see the TV shows and read the books and play the video games that really fleshed out the universe and gave it depth and weight. If you just watched the movies, General Grievous was a cool cyborg who fought with four lightsabers. But if you’d watched the TV shows, you’d know he was the much-feared leader of the Separatists whose coming had been foreshadowed for a long time and whose appearance had not disappointed. A perfect intersection of these two was Grievous’ coughing: a quirky touch for the casual viewer, a nod to the devoted that Obi-Wan had force crushed his chest plate during a fight on Coruscant.

Adaptations of beloved novels straddle this line the same way. A particular comparison for Dune that has leapt to many minds is The Lord of the Rings. Like LOTR, Dune faces the challenge of bringing a story set in a vast, meticulously crafted universe to the screen. And it uses many of the same techniques to get there.

Language, for example, can be a touchstone of a larger world. Just as hearing a few words in Elvish made the LOTR universe feel bigger and more complex; so too does hearing the guttural Sarduakar and secret Atreides languages make the Dune universe seem bigger and more complete.

Much was cut from the narrative to cram the first half of the novel into one film. The Harkonnens are barely in the movie and a critical character is not present at all. The Emperor is offscreen after being very much on-screen during the first two adaptations. Nothing is said of the absence of robots and computers being the result of an ancient jihad against thinking machines. And the schools of mental training that arose to replace computers are only hinted at.

But, like LOTR, these things are acknowledged in little touches. Thufir Hawat’s lips and the way his eyes roll into his head when he’s calculating. Wellington Yueh’s forehead mark. The few references to the off-screen emperor. These are just little details to the casual viewer; they speak volumes to the devotee.

The Dune universe is so complex that much can only be implied, such as the nature of Atreides mentat and Master of Assassins Thufir Hawat.

And much is said without being said. Gestures, looks, tiny snippets of dialogue and shot selection advance the narrative just as much as dialogue, action and explosions. One scene in particular embodies this: Paul and Jessica are brought to a research station — a vast cavernous building that was meant to collect water and revitalize Arrakis, at least before the spice was found. It stands empty and we contemplate this vast unused facility while unnamed Fremen make a tea by purifying their saliva in a small brewing apparatus. So much said; so little dialogue.

The Dune books are so deep in world-building that you really need more like three movies to get into it. Villeneuve has said that there will not be extended cut of Dune, that what we see is what he wanted to make. But his denials notwithstanding, an extended cut would not surprise me. There is so much to the Dune universe, you could easily add another hour to what already exists.

The TV version of Dune is, by necessity, smaller in scope. It never gives one the feel of being at the center of a galaxy-spanning epic. The effects often look cheap, and the sets suggest a small studio, not a galaxy-spanning empire. And while most of the actors are good, they give the kind of workmanlike performances you might expect in…well, a TV series, not an epic tale of empires and messiahs.⁴

However, what it lacks in grandeur, it makes up for in detail. The Harkonnens are given a far better treatment, shown as not just evil but intelligent and deadly. The court intrigues and mysticism take center stage. The series takes Irulan from a tiny role to a major player, our guide through the turbulent political waters. Fremen culture is fleshed out in far better detail. The story, given six hours, is allowed to sprawl.

It wasn’t quite the Dune adaptation I wanted. But it was good. And, when I’m in a Dune mood, either this or the Smithee version will do. But, like the Smithee version, the Sci-Fi series did not quite sate the appetite.

Villeneuve’s film is much more a spiritual heir to the Lynch version than it is to the Sci-Fi version. It favors scale and grandeur over narrative. And in this, it does not fail. Every scene feels big, every set feels epic. The initial flyover of Arakeen — the capital of Arrakis — show a city far less-confined than its predecessors, one that sprawls over mountains and through valleys, that has sub-cities and neighborhoods. As with the Lynch version, Arrakis feels like a real place with a history and an ecology.

Whatever else one might say about the new Dune, the sheer scale of it is impressive.

The cast is also up to the standards of the Lynch film. Ferguson, Isaac, Brolin, Skarsgard, Bautista and Henderson all excel as if born for their roles. I was pleasantly surprised at how good Jason Mamoa was, bringing a swagger and gravitas to Duncan Idaho that previous films had missed. The role of Dr. Liet-Kynes was recast from a white man to a black woman, and it doesn’t matter at all because Sharon Duncan-Brewster absolutely nails it.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. Good acting and good directing of actors has been a hallmark of Villeneuve films that gets missed with his visual flare and style. But for a film that depends so heavily on character, it is welcome. And it bodes well for the second, yet-to-be-greenlighted film that will depend even more on character.

Ah yes… and now we finally get to the worst part of the movie. The absolute worst part, the fly in the ointment, the turd in the water pipe… is that we will now have to wait at least two, possibly three years for the second part. We will have to wait to see if Villeneuve can stick the landing with the trickier second half of the book, that depends on both continuing to build the world and setting things in motion toward the inevitable apocalyptic conclusion.

Right now, there is no official word, but the strong box office numbers and hefty HBO Max streaming are good signs. Warner Brothers CEO Ann Sarnoff has come as close as possible to confirming the sequel without actually doing so. But the pandemic still looms over everything (the film was shot in 2019 before the pandemic started). The delay is not completely unacceptable — multiple years pass in the novel between the beginning and end. Hopefully we’ll get an official word soon.

But come what may, Dune Part 1 is the best adaptation we’ve seen so far and a damned good movie in its own right. And if you are vaccinated and feel safe going to a theater, it’s definitely something you want to see on the big screen. Because even those few who have derided the movie have admitted that the visuals, the music, the sound design and the feel of this film are overwhelming. As Peter Suderman wrote, this is a science fiction film for people who love science fiction. But I would add that it’s a science fiction film for people who just love movies.

1. Which is, coincidentally, also getting a visual treatment right now on Apple TV. It has been somewhat tepidly received.
2. The movie gives a date of 10191, but, in something only fans would know, that’s dated from the Butlerian Jihad against thinking machines, not from the birth of Christ.
3. Herbert himself was apparently pleased with it.
4. William Hurt, as Duke Leto Atreides, is particularly bad.