I watched the new Dune adaptation, directed by Denis Villeneuve. It was fine. This isn’t as much of a review as it is me trying to unpack what I like about Dune, both as a novel and a film. I’ll say up front that if you like sci-fi at all, you might as well go see Dune, or at least watch it on HBO Max at home. However, it wasn’t quite what I wanted it to be.
A few years ago, I read Dune along with a seminar on science fiction. I wasn’t in the seminar, mind you, but I chose to ride along by sitting in on discussions of a couple of books. That summer, I read Dune for the first time, telling myself it was just inevitable that I needed to experience the genre classic. I also read The Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer, which, if you’ve listened to the podcast, you know I love. Needless to say, one of these books stuck out to me more than the other.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t love Dune, though. Although parts of the novel might be dated now, Frank Herbert helped shape a whole generation (or generations?) of science fiction. If you’re a Star Wars fan, you also love Dune, as George Lucas seemingly lifted elements from Herbert’s masterpiece. Really love Tremors? I think there’s some Dune in there, considering the sandworms. It’s a classic for a reason, but it’s also over 1000 pages long, so...it’s a lot, too.
Famously, David Lynch attempted to adapt Dune in 1984, and, I mean, it was the ‘80s and special effects weren’t what they are now, but I think it was a great try to adapt something that has often been considered impossible. Special effects aside, the film tried to cram the extensive plot of the novel into a relatively short timeframe, making certain elements confusing for viewers. When I watched Lynch’s Dune with my husband (who has never read the novel), he expressed confusion at almost every aspect of Herbert’s world. Why were the navigators so weird looking? Why did the Freman’s eyes turn blue? Wait, they’re drinking their own recycled pee and poop?! Lynch’s film didn’t have time to explain much, or maybe didn’t want to explain much.
(HBOMax)
But I guess you’re here to hear about the Villeneuve adaptation, which came out earlier this month in theaters and on HBO Max. I opted to watch the film from home, and I’m glad I did, because without a craft to keep my attention I’m not sure I would have made it through the movie. I’m willing to admit that this is almost entirely based on my own personal tastes, and I’m very happy for all the Dune fans out there who got what they wanted. That being said, I didn’t enjoy Dune much. It was beautiful, sure, but something was lost in the way the film lingered on the mystical, mysterious Zendaya (without much context). There were also so many action scenes, which I don’t think is what Dune is about at its core.
Contemporary audiences want action in their big-budget blockbusters, and I’m sure that if Villeneuve proposed a Dune without epic fights in the sand and in spaceships, producers would feel hesitant to greenlight the film in the first place. Still, so much of what I remember from Dune is careful character development, a hero’s journey where the journey is really detailed every step of the way. I really wanted to understand Dr. Yueh’s impossible decision. I wanted to understand Paul’s careful training a bit more. Most importantly, I wanted more of what the film didn’t manage to provide in its first installment: information about the Fremen.
In Herbert’s novel, Paul spends an extensive amount of time with the Fremen, a desert-dwelling people who ascribe a divine quality to water and use complex suits to survive in the wastes. They ride sandworms. They live underground. They’re very cool. Paul and his mother just encounter their Fremen saviors at the end of Dune, entering into their culture after a fight to the death with a Freman challenger. In Lynch’s Dune, Paul’s time with the Fremen is mostly communicated through a montage of training, planning, and vast jumps through time.
To me, what’s most interesting about Dune is how Paul enters into the Fremen culture and learns their ways. Even though he’s spent time learning about Arrakis from books and videos (or holograms?), Paul doesn’t really know anything about the world -- no one does. So much of Paul’s journey involves secrecy and the uncovering of hidden truths, like his mother’s origins and the Bene Gesserits’ involvement in the sad state of the galactic order.
So, I didn’t really have a problem with Dune as I watched it late one Thursday at home. It was okay. Maybe it’s time to come to terms with the fact that I’m not going to get what I want from a Dune adaptation because what I want is lots of talking, exploration of weird space politics, and magic. Who knows--maybe we’ll get more of that in Dune 2 whenever it releases. Until then, I’ll just fangirl over Oscar Isaac’s lovely performance as Duke Leto.
I mean.