Dune: Part One

Title: Dune: Part One
Directed by: Denis Villeneuve
Written by: Frank Herbert, really

Just to underscore how totally topsy-turvy our whole world has because of the whole covid thing, here’s a major Hollywood movie that actually came out here in Japan first, instead of six months later. Score!

Now I know some of us, me included, have been a little nervous about how this was being adapted for the big screen. You know, what got changed, what got cut, that type of stuff. Well, let me quickly reassure you:

It is TOTALLY long.

Almost three hours long. At last, a movie that delivers what the fans have always demanded: increased running time.

Real talk though, since movie critics these days are about as impartial as figure skating judges, you want to know if this movie lands the jumps or if it just whacks you in the kneecaps and calls it a day. And who can you trust if not some random dude online using an outdated medium to spew incoherent opinions? I got you, bro. Here’s the deal: It’s okay.

Everybody says the novel “Dune” is a tough movie to film because it’s so complicated, and sure that’s partly it, but the other part is because it’s hard to get a handle on exactly what it’s about. Not in the surface-level plot sense, but in the sense of, what is the point of any of this? Like there's stuff on ecology on there, a lot about expanding the limits of human capabilities with people who can navigate between stars or make super-fast calculations and people who can use their voice to subliminally control others and people with super-fast reflexes, then there's this whole thing about the dangers of a charismatic leader because the mistakes of the leader are multiplied by the number of followers they have and wow, it's all a bit much. And this movie never really gets to that. It’s all muscle, no heart; all plot, no point.

Before we go on with the plot breakdown though, spoilers for a book that’s now around 60 years old and has already been adapted for the screen twice, so if you need a spoiler warning then you are weak, your bloodline is weak and will be among the first to perish when the apocalypse comes. Okey dokey? Great, here we go.

If you were worried this movie was going to be a little dense and packed with all kinds of made-up names and stuff well then I gotta tell you buddy that is totally not untrue. Spot on really. Good call. The first third is disjointed almost to the point of incoherence, throwing scenes at you almost at random in the rush to set up all the storylines and characters, without making you really care about them.

First, we get a background exposition from Chani (Zendaya) about oppression, because oppression is HOT, though we’re going to be a little vague about it for the rest of the movie as we have all these other things we have to introduce. Cut to Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) heavily implying he’s part of the oppression and then there’s a made-for-movie yet largely unnecessary scene where his father, Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) is commanded by the Emperor to take over the planet Arrakis from their enemies, Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) and his bald albino friends. We take time out during this scene to meet Thufir Hawat (Stephen McKinley Henderson, an actor whose name is longer than his part is) who is a Mentat, meaning he’s like a human version of Excel. Pretty neat huh? Don’t worry if you miss it, this ability will never come up again.

We’re then introduced to the family retainers Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa), oozing Hawaii from every pore, Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin) and Doctor Yueh (Chang Chen) then there’s this neat scene where an old lady from the handover scene (Charlotte Rampling) comes back and makes Paul stick his hand in her box until he screams. Then she just suddenly leaves without being clear about what that was all about, so we can have Paul’s mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) shout the explanation to him in a rainstorm. There’s also a cool fight scene where we see guys in the future wear personal shields that stop any high-speed blow or projectile which seems like it would be highly effective in combat, only it later turns out it’s really not and soldiers get killed super easily.

Then it’s off to the titular planet, where Paul survives an assassination attempt with a mosquito-shaped drone, meets some of the local “Fremen”, and goes to watch a crew harvesting spice, a psychoactive substance that extends life and grants prophetic visions. A giant sandworm attacks, and it’s really cool, kind of shaped like a dick but with massive spiny teeth, like a vagina. What? Oh yeah and the spice starts giving him visions and he starts hearing weird voices telling him to fulfill his destiny which turns out to be kind of irresponsible of the voices because they distract him immediately before the giant sandworm attacks and you’d think him ending up inside the stomach of a mobile Sarlacc monster would slow you down in the destiny fulfilling department.

Then Doctor Yueh knocks everybody out, surprise, he’s a traitor, too bad we never had a scene or two to set that up, and he turns off the house shields so the Harkonnens can launch a surprise attack which consists of these kind of upside-down fireworks that look really, really cool. There's also a badass laser beam that just slices through half the city. Paul and his Mom escape, meet up with Duncan, escape again, and then meet the Fremen, there's a duel where weird voices try to get Paul killed again by trying to chat with him in the middle of a life and death situation, and the movie abruptly ends but not before Chani turns to the camera, winks and says “This is just the beginning.”

So you see it’s a pretty faithful adaptation, though even with the long running time we don’t really linger on anything. Were you upset they made Kynes a woman? Good news is, she’s barely in the movie. Unsure about making the only Asian character a villain? Good news is, he’s barely in the movie. Worried someone is going to ask you to spell David Dastmalchian’s last name without looking it up? He’s barely in the movie. Felt a little queasy about having Javier Bardem play a quasi-Arabic tribal leader? Good news is you get the idea.

Part One is very much the story of Paul, and if there’s one thing this movie gets right, it’s Paul. He is very much the reluctant hero, an artificially manufactured messiah thanks to a literal human breeding program. This movie really doesn’t do the emotion thing very well, but one or two beats that actually land are about Paul and his slow realization that yes, he’s bred to be some kind of prophetic messiah, but rather than this being cool and awesome, he’s a freak and it’s going to be absolutely horrific. The horror part is a little vaguely done, just impersonal stacks of bodies burning and armies cheering his name, but it’s shot in such a way you just KNOW some evil shit is going on.

The art direction isn’t quite as iconic as the 1984 David Lynch movie, but it’s kind of engagingly weird. Instead of the decadent opulence and HR Geiger techno-organic look of the former, we get kind of post-modern brutalism. Everything is huge and blocky and bulky and the human figures are little scurrying mice down at the bottom. Oh, and two insectile appendages way, way up to whoever designed the look of the ornithopters. Kind of these dragonfly-looking helicopters. Very cool.

Aside from being long, the other thing that this movie is, above all, is loud. Like, settle the fuck down Hans Zimmer, all this kind of alien didgeridoo and drumming and atonal chanting is atmospheric as all hell but it’s also kind of distracting. We’ll be BRAAAP having a scene BRAAAAAAP where someone is BRAAAAAAAAP experiencing a vis BRAAAAAAP ion or so BRAAAAAAP meth BRAAAP ing and the score will BRAAAAAAAAP be so loud BRAAAAAAAP you can’t hear a word. Thank god for foreign subtitles.

It’s a shame we’ve only got part one to go on, because the stuff that I think works best is the wrestling with the destiny thing and that barely gets going. I think Denis does a good job of undercutting the “Chosen One” trope and shows us Paul is both uncertain of and unready for his destiny, and frankly it’s kind of a bummer destiny anyway. Denis does a much worse job of humanizing the other characters or getting us to care about their fates. Visually it’s interesting, but I was never knocked out, musically it’s intriguing but intrusive.

So I’m going to stick with what I said up top.

It’s okay.