In 2021 I saw Dune Part 1 with Bryan. Here's what I wrote about it then:
Broadly speaking, I thought Dune was an excellent capture of the essence of the book. I realise if someone hadn't read the book then it might be hard to follow. But, you know what, the book was published over 50 years ago so people have had plenty of time to read it. For once it was nice to watch an adaptation that didn't dumb it down for the non-reading masses. My only criticism was that it had a score by Hans Zimmer, whose one trick is big, blaring atonal noises to signify vastness. It could have done with more subtlety, because everything is vast in the Duneiverse so there were lots of atonal blarts throughout the film.
Now, after several delays and changes in release date, Bryan and I have finally seen part 2 of Dune. I have a few thoughts about it. Spoilers follow below the image...
Part 2 picks up where Part 1 left off. Paul Atreides and his mother, Jessica, are fugitives in the desert, seeking asylum with the oppressed indigenous Fremen after the massacre of their people. This is quite an early point in the book so there was a lot more of the story to pack in to the second 'half' including Paul's growth into Muad'Dib, the messianic guerrilla leader foretold in Fremen prophecy.
In among all this is galactic-level intrigue and power politics. Dune Part 2 manages this quite nicely by actually turning the Princess Irulan into an actual character with something to do. In this case, exposition. But sometimes a bit of exposition works, and this is one of those times.
In contrast, the character of Feyd Rautha is rather diminished. In fairness, Feyd is played in this film with a level of intensity that would almost be impossible to sustain for long without it slipping into parody. Maybe the director could have made him more subtle, and his true malevolence be less immediately obvious. It's a bit heavy-handed giving him a cannibal harem.
I read one comment about the film saying there seemed to be no suspense. When Paul sets out to ride a sandworm, we all know he is going to succeed. There wasn't any jeopardy. But I think that's the perspective of someone who hadn't read the novel. As a reader of the book, I already knew he would ride the worm and I knew why that was important in the development of the story.
I guess that's one thing about going in knowing the story - I was more interested in how they told it. Did they show the mechanics of worm-riding? (Yes, they did.) How much exposition would that need? (Turns out, none.) Is the director's vision of what Fremen riding giant sandworms would look like match my idea of what that would look like. (Yep, it was close.)
Of course, knowing the story has its drawbacks. One major divergence from the book is the time-frame. The desert war goes on for years in the book. Paul's sister, Alia is born and is sort of a superhuman because her mother, Jessica, drank the Water of Life while pregnant. Paul has a son with Chani. The reunion with Gurney Halleck is after some years apart, not a couple of months. And so on...
I was left feeling a bit nonplussed by the ending which felt like it was setting up a third movie. That has apparently been mooted and presumably will be based on Dune Messiah. Fingers crossed it will get made. The first two have been massive box office hits, so it seems likely to get greenlit.
I'd also repeat the point I made about the score for the first one. Hans Zimmer only seems to have one trick - very loud atonal blasts. For everything. Shai-halud breaks the surface. ZIMMERBLAST! A spice harvester explodes and crashes. ZIMMERBLAST! An atomic bomb goes off. ZIMMERBLAST! Sometimes less is more, Hans.
But overall, it was very good. It's brave to take on a novel that's often been described as unfilmable, and when previous attempts have had a mixed reception. Again, I have no complaints about the opacity of the story. It feels like it was done for people who know it already and its nice, for once, not to have something diluted for people who don't care about it.
I disagree on the music. I felt it was very effective and worked much better than in Part 1. And, having talked with my brother and a number of co-workers, yours is the first negative comment I've heard on it.
ReplyDeleteThe films do seem to work well enough for both people who know the book and people who don't (one of said co-workers, who I gather hasn't read the book, said it was the best film he'd seen in five years).
I first watched Part 1 on a plane, and felt it was well done and handled the source material well, but still didn't grab me. I had put that down to a non-optimal viewing environment, but watched it again a few days before watching Part 2 and had the same impression of it. Part 2, on the other hand, did grab me. Yes, there were deviations from the source and many things I could nit-pick, but overall it just worked.
I agree on the worm-riding. To me, the biggest thing I wanted to see carried across was the feel of the planet as a place where water was everything, which was one of my biggest impressions from the book, and again, things I could nitpick but I think both parts achieved that. Second most important for Part 2 was Paul's prescience and how the worry about impending jihad affected him and how it was shown, and again I think it was done pretty well.
I enjoyed Dune Messiah as well, and am curious to see how Part 3 will be handled (assuming it goes ahead, which as you say seems likely). Personally, I feel the prescience in there will be even harder to convey on screen, but will wait and see.