I agree, great movie.
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I’m an hour in and so far I’m not impressed, I keep thinking that the book is far better. Maybe I’ll change my mind in the second hour…
Of course the book is better. You are watching an adaptation, a translation. There are things you can do in a book that really don’t work in a movie. Imagine how boring the movie would be if all of the philosophical, ecological and mystical exposition from the book would be narrated in the movie.
Enjoy it for what it is.
Of course a movie can do things a book can’t. I loved seeing Chalamet as Paul Atreides. Such a great fit. I loved the fighting, and how they managed to make the ornithopter flying machines look convincing enough. I loved the spectacle of it all.
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Just watched the rest and still ‘meh’ and they’ve chopped the book up?! Like with LotR FFS!! I hate when they do that just to make more money. It felt incredibly stretched and padded and they concentrated on all the wrong things, I mean no mention of Paul’s Mentat training and actually zero mentions of the Mentats other than seeing Howat and Piter. They were interesting characters in the book.
I understand about the differences of media from book to film but it came across to me like a wasted opportunity. Artistically amazing and a great sci-fi film though.
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I haven’t had time to view it yet. Saving for Sunday night. But watching some of the trailers again left me a little worried that the story might lack some complexity, for lack of a better word.
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Frankly, Dune is so dense it would’ve been better suited to a series ala Expanse or GoT than a film series.
While 2 films (figuring ~5 hours) gives it more space than previous efforts, at 500 pages it’s twice the length of most film novelizations that are little more than “here’s what you saw”. So I think giving it a minute per page would’ve been optimal, that’s how scripts are paced anyway. Figure 9 episodes running just under an hour not counting credits.
Compressing it inevitably leads to Tom Bombadil-sized holes in the book’s story to make it fit and paced well.
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I feel like it wouldn’t stand up to ground fire as well as an x wing
Defensive budget would be cheap.
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Having played with toy Orthinopters as a kid and seeing how fragile the various mechanisms are, I find myself a bit dubious about the materials and machinery necessary to survive the stresses on such a contraption.
But, the space cocaine that allows people enough precognizance to have the reaction times necessary to deal with FTL travel is within the realm of believability? 
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For me it’s kind of like an uncanny valley effect. The spice melange and navigators are so far beyond reality that you end up having to just shrug and accept it as part of the storytelling.
Ornithopters, on the other hand, are just realistic enough that you might be driven to wonder if such a thing might actually work. And since some early attempts at flight actually did have flapping wings, that makes you wonder even more.
Plus…
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Saw it today - never saw the old ones or read the books.
Epic visuals and audio - though was fidgeting a lot as it went on a bit.
Not certain I knew what was going on but overall pretty good - they make you wait for the action parts - was thinking is this Laurence of Arabia or even Star Wars Original Ep4.
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I loved it as an aural and visual feast. I was one of three people in the theater.
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You missed the 80s one? It’s worth seeing for all its flaws.
It’s VERY talky with a lot of narration. You get to know Thufir, Yueh, and Piter much better in that one. The score by Toto frankly outdoes Zimmer’s at every turn. Paul is too old, and the Baron is so fat from chewing all the scenery constantly, not to mention the bizarre sound-guns they substituted for the martial arts of the weirding way, but I think it’s a legitimate adaptation of the story, albeit very rushed to fit 500 pages in just over 2 hours.
I really hope they make Dune Messiah after part 2. I know he wants to make it, I just hope the money works out.
My wife also mentioned she thought this one dragged on a bit, but it’s a novel adaptation where the most action happens in the 2nd half of the book, as most books are. At least this one had the Harkonnen assault on Arrakeen around the midpoint. That assault was breezed over in the 80s film to save the budget for the big end battle (no spoiler there, of course there’s an end battle).
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I completely agree with these two points. Chalamet is a far superior Paul Atreides. Zimmer let us all down with his soundscapes. He should have made music with themes and such, not just loose noises that sometimes cohere into something resembling music. The sad thing is, Zimmer has done such great things. Gladiator, Interstellar, etc. There’s great bits of soundtrack in Dune too, like that awful sardaukar baptism, or the voiced bit during the desert scenes. Still, didn’t come close to Eno/Toto’s work.
That’s just my own opinion, but I think Zimmer’s score is much more interesting and brings more to the movie. It’s weird and alien; definitely not for everybody, but it truly brings you somewhere else entirely. If I come out of a theater, close my eyes and can still hear the music in my head… the composer has done a great job.
I’ve listened to pretty much everything Zimmer has done, and while I’m never going to say no to his trademark epic orchestral mix a la Gladiator… I’m glad he’s taking risks in trying new things. Toto’s score is undeniably amazing, but I would have been disappointed to hear something too similar in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune.
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I love the new music as well. As I understand (I just started reading the book and remember 3% of David Lynch’s), it’s a very faithful 1 to 1 adaptation save some small changes for brevity and clarity. However I think this is a book that needs more creative license to adapt for the big screen. I could understand this being a series a la GoT where each story arc can be developed into a big multiplot structure. I can see the first half of this book working as a less ambitious worldbuilding arc focusing on Duke Leto (also like GoT), only to unwrap into more interesting and convoluted arcs in the next ones. However, the way this film does it, it really focus on recounting (masterfully, no doubt, with beautiful imagery and sound) the book. What happens is that, without the internal monologues there is very little of the characters for us to get involved with, and empathize. I know Paul’s is the hero, but honestly, I don’t give a damn about him until the second half of the picture, when he stops watching the world around him and start making his choices. I think the beautiful and complex world ends up making up for it, but I felt watching a big series premiere in a movie screen instead of a Film.
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