Ben Walker

Woke rubbish these days. Such a whining lecturing poor storyline bbc box tick exercise

Unfortunatley you'll see a lot of media bots or wannabee reviewers singing this films praises. ( and all liking each other’s puff price articles ) Sadly Dune is a huge dissapontment as with so many films these days. I've read Dune so want to split this into 3 reviews so not appear as some pure story zelot, Its also far from comprehensive im just giving you a flavour. As a movie it's typical of Denis Villeneuve style of hanging the carcass up to let all the colour and vitality to drain from it's body. Its grey, so grey and he fails totaly to give the impression of intense oppressive heat. (if you have to keep telling us its hot I guess your actual images are not working?) Its also too long and the third act drags and i was starting to think wrap it up were getting nowhere now. The designs are unimagnative. Big spheres and blocks as spaceships is so turn of the century. It's been done. Star Trek did it in 1986 with the Voyage Home and so did Villeneuve himself in 2016 Arrival. Its plug and play visuals for our time, nothing new or imginative. I actualy would like to know where the money went making this beacuse every planet architecture appears to be the same. However the sand worms look amazing! As a Dune book adaption its missing the mark in so many ways, Major characters are almost removed, others made more important. Nothing wrong with taking a book and spinning it but don't just take out great world building ideas and just put in the standard tropes. The whole crux of the reason for spice is that it allows the guild navigators to fold space and travel light years in a second. But we see no navigators or any actual folding of space. Kinda leaves many people thinking why is the slice relevant? Finaly as a technical piece you can't see it. In the cinema its blurry. Don't buy into this "see it on imax noncense". I'd love to know its format because the clips on you tube are crisp and colourful. On the big screen its so dark in certain events i can't see anything. I feel this was always pitched to the HBO, Netflix world. I given it a "only just" 3 because the cast are great, Stilgar character is the best but all make a good effort with their hands tied behined their backs So in summary - a washed out, blurry, paint by numbers effort that misses big ideas in the book and doesnt replace with any of its own. This is no lord of the rings for the 2020's which as a Dune fan i'm so sad to say.