Dune is ambitious, beautiful and successful…almost all of the time

It’s conventional wisdom in Hollywood these days that TV is better than movies. Look at something like Game of Thrones, which featured regular epic battles between dragons, zombies and massive armies. Why go to the movies when you can get this kind of grand scale at home on TV?

Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s new adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi novel, reminds you of what movies can do that TV can’t. The movie looks spectacular, from the sweeping shots of the desert to the dragonfly-like ornithopters to the fearsome, gigantic sandworms. The costuming is sumptuous, with long trains that flap in the desert wind and a sci-fi veil collection destined to inspire cosplayers for years to come.

And Villeneuve, a master of deliberate pacing in movies like Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, makes sure to savor all the right parts. For instance, we get very few clear shots of the malevolent Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård); he’s always menacingly obscured, by mist or distance or black running oil oozing over his skin. Timothée Chalamet is well cast as lead Paul Atreides, a young man with a great destiny and a faraway stair that makes you think he is thinking deep thoughts. And the presence of players like Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin and Jason Momoa gives the whole thing some larger-than-life big screen panache. In many ways, Dune feels like an old-fashioned Hollywood epic, a sci-fi Lawrence of Arabia.

What doesn’t work about Dune?

That said, it looks a bit better at a distance than up close. The movie is well over two hours long and only adapts the first half of Herbert’s book, which I figured would leave it the space it needed to unfold with elegance and grace. And often it does, but there are some parts where the plot moves forward in ungainly jerks, like when the Baron makes his move against his enemy Leto Atreides. Villeneuve has an artist’s slow sure touch — the movie is full of stirring shots of sand wafting over dunes and close studies of the human face, all of it punctuated by a score that knows when to ratchet up and back off — but this sequence felt a bit too much like just another sci-fi battle scene, even if it has more swords than usual.

Also, as someone who’s read Dune a couple of times, I was surprised by how much was cut. We don’t get the scene where Duke Leto hosts a gathering of smugglers, government officials and locals; this sequence has a bit of a Star Wars cantina energy in the book and could have helped lighten the story’s very serious tone. We don’t get the cat-and-mouse subplot where Team Atreides looks for the mole within their ranks, which provides some good dramatic tension.

But I can forgive stuff like that when the movie as a whole comes together this well. I was taken by Dune. I was swept away on the tide of Villeneuve’s ambition, the visuals, and the commitment of the actors; Paul is the star but it’s an ensemble piece, with Rebecca Ferguson making a particularly good impression as the conflicted Lady Jessica.

Sure, it’s a little frustrating that the movie ends only halfway through the story, but it did make me want to see the rest. Any time would be good to announce that, Warner Bros., just saying.

Grade: B+

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