Review: DUNE (Streaming)

Latest Adaptation of Frank Herbert Hard SF Classic is Unmitigated Disaster

Story is everything, particularly when it comes to the so-called ‘hero’s journey.’ And any movie that doesn’t tell a complete journey… is the first episode of a streaming series. In Dune’s case it’s certainly not a cinematic epic befitting a hard science fiction classic novel nor a beloved prior film adaptation which, however flawed, came from possibly the greatest living visual artist on the planet.

Yes—from its charisma-free lead to its antagonist, a curiously flat and nonthreatening Baron Harkonnen (when and why did we change the pronunciation from long O to short AH?), to its incomplete nature and ugly appearance, from its dour tone to its lopsided pacing, Dune Part 1 offers viewers a dull train wreck of epic proportions.

If there’s one aspect of Canadian genre filmmaker Denis Villeneuve’s Dune (2021, delayed from 2020) which is welcome, it’s that suddenly the reviled-in-the-moment 1984 Lynch project now seems much better. Maybe Villeneuve so loved the Lynch that he set out to make his own version not to surpass its predecessor, but instead to bolster its reputation. Stranger things have happened, but in the sense of ‘bringing people back to the movies’ this approach is to no good end. (Nor from the plunging box office returns of the latest 007 caper was killing off James Bond, apparently, but I digress.)

From its sepia-sickening color palette to casting which makes the viewer long for Kyle McLachlan, Jurgen Prochnow and any number of other actors from the original, from its beat-for-beat remake first half to its turgid final hour, Dune’s partially epic story will no doubt land with an enormous thud. Audiences who make movies into all-timers need stories which resolve, not the first episode of a TV show. They can get that at home. Certainly after watching it at home, Dune’s day-and-date streaming premiere makes more sense than ever. And that’s really too bad, because HBO doesn’t have the rest of the ‘season’ ready to go.

via GIPHY

That’s right—by the time Dune Part 2 appears sometime in the future (will they call it Dune Messiah, even though it won’t actually cover the contents of that literary sequel?), those who remember how unsatisfying an experience watching the first half turned out for them may likely choose any number of myriad other sci-fi original series and adaptations available to them. The visuals in HBO’s Raised by Wolves Season 2 trailer, attached to the front of the Dune home presentation, underscore how imaginative just one TV series looks in comparison to this turgid, deathly serious ‘big-screen’ movie. Once this misfire dies a quick financial death the real question, I suspect, will be whether Part 2 will even be made at all. I doubt many will care one way or another. I certainly don’t.