Stanley Clark

I read the Dune books (1 and 2) and thought how great it is that a new film is coming out. Firstly, the film really captures the large scale nature of things and the special effects are mostly good. I really liked the length of the first section and the meaning of spending time showing water that will be gone on the desert planet. The character of the second in command of the baron was great and full of emotion. Everything in the film was mostly just like I imagined it while reading the books which is fantastic. They didn't mention the word "crusade" yet instead of "jihad" but called it "holy war" which I guess is an in-between for appeasing Muslim haters while not deviating from the book entirely. Now what I have issues with. I don't think it's about the film but my issues with the book in general. The test to see if the human is an "animal" is hard to grasp and even though it was portrayed as being fundamentally important it is just not exciting at all. I still don't understand the emphasis on this scene or why taking your hand out of the box would make you an "animal". I guess I am not educated enough to understand. Then, the main character feels like he is depressed all the time. This is also the case when reading the book so they really captured this perfectly. The only time he comes close to smiling is when meeting Duncan Idaho. Other than that I grew sick and tired of his uncharismatic line delivery. This also has to be said of a lot of characters. There were only a few actors (kudos to them) who could take text written in a book and communicate this properly on the screen. Paul was not one of these people and that really is a shame. The dialogue always seems forced and feels directly read from a script. Finally, the ending camera work was atrocious with people walking in a line feeling like this was shot by a five-year-old. Not a grand ending and definitely not one that makes me want to see the sequel. In fact, after this film, I can only hope that Paul rots away somewhere dark and deep. I really have mixed feelings since the film was clearly high budget and meant to be grand with several IMAX shot scenes and yet it failed to deliver in the actual characters and excitement for someone who hasn't read the books before. I will probably still see the next film out of curiosity but I will not be recommending this to others.