Québec cinema’s greatest success story has probably been the rise of Denis Villeneuve as one of the most revered Hollywood filmmakers working today. After blowing everyone away with 2013’s Prisoners, he’s made some of the very best high-concept genre films of the last decade, including Sicario, Arrival, and Blade Runner 2049. Now, the 53-year old director is finally able to live out a dream of his since the tender age of 13, adapting Frank Herbert’s highly complex sci-fi novel Dune for the big screen. After Alejandro Jodorowsky failed to secure a budget for his adaptation and David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation was met with negative criticism, with the director even disowning the film when alternate cuts of it were released on home video, expectations are high for Villeneuve to not only deliver a faithful adaptation of the book but potentially launch the next big transmedial sci-fi franchise of our time. And that’s Dune (Part One)’s main problem: the film is so busy setting up the next big franchise with exposition-driven dialogue that it forgets to be a good movie in the process.
Describing Dune to a casual moviegoer may sound extremely complex, as the film never once establishes the film’s main conflict as an important one. The general throughline of the movie, however, is quite simple to follow: Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) of the planet Caladan accepts to become the ruler of the planet Arrakis, which holds the most valuable natural resource in the entire universe, known as “the spice.” Knowing it may be a trap, he takes his concubine, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), and his son, Paul (Timothée Chalamet), to Arrakis. Meanwhile, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) of House Harkonnen, sworn enemy to House Atreides, plans a coup in Arrakis to eliminate House Atreides and take control of the spice. This all happens while Paul has (sequel-teasing) visions of Chani (Zendaya) and his future at the hands of Stilgar (Javier Bardem) and the Fremen tribe. This is the movie’s main plot, but it doesn’t hold that much importance in the eyes of Villeneuve. Instead, he needlessly focuses his attention on constant exposition to set up the next scene, and the next, and the next, and the next, until the movie abruptly ends, without a clear-cut goal.
Villeneuve is so confident that everyone will like his movie and a sequel will immediately get greenlit afterward. Here’s a problem: if there wasn’t an absolute certainty (even if chances are quite high) that a sequel is going to get made, why spend most of your movie setting up the next one and a potential cinematic universe? Right from the get-go, none of the dialogue sounds natural. Everyone is a walking and talking exposition machine; saying things that may make sense to die-hard fans of the book who know everything there is to know about House Atreides, the Bene Gesserit, and House Harkonnen, but may confuse general audiences who are looking for something more substantial, with some emotional weight to the characters. If you make your protagonists’ pure exposition machines, chances are the audience will never invest themselves in them and the story they are in, rendering the film’s epic action sequences weightless and its main stakes quite stale.
This was a problem in many of Christopher Nolan’s movies. It seems like Denis Villeneuve has adopted from that lineage of having your characters spew exposition to sacrifice emotional weight for an all-too-complex plot with a heightened sense of style and visual-effects-driven action. Because Dune is an absolute technical marvel to look at. The film’s IMAX sequences are sumptuous, with some of the film’s best action set pieces taking full advantage of a gargantuan screen to fill our eyes in pure awe. I think of the air attack from House Harkonnen that’s not only visually arresting multiple times but is also intricately choreographed and could very well be Villeneuve’s best technical work yet, or the Sandworm air scene that’s just as epic as the trailer makes it look like it’s going to be. The use of IMAX cameras and its aspect ratio changes may be a tad distracting for some (as the film constantly changes aspect ratios every five or ten seconds, with Villeneuve never once lingering on his shots as Nolan does), but Grieg Fraser’s cinematography always remains immaculate and makes the audience want to soak themselves into the film’s diverse worlds. The same goes for Patrice Vermette’s production design, which establishes the vastness of Dune better than its script ever does.
Dune marks Villeneuve’s first script he’s written for a Hollywood production, to which he co-penned with Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth, but he seems more confident on establishing the story’s next chapter instead of staying in the present moment. Even if the acting is quite good and its A-list cast makes Herbert’s ridiculous amount of sci-fi gibberish sound serious enough, Villeneuve focuses too much on the next thing instead of fleshing out its characters and the worlds they live in. We only get glimpses of Caladan, Gidei Prime, and Arrakis while audience members explore surface-level characters saying the most ridiculous things. Paul is supposed to be “the one,” or as the Fremen call him, the “Lisan al Gaib” (the “voice from the outer world”), yet what causes him to be the one? We only have glimpses of the visions he sees, but the film never emphasizes Paul, or any other character for that matter, as important elements of Dune’s overall story. Scratch that, there isn’t that much of a story to tell since most of it is pure plotting for future movies.
It’s a good thing that the film’s actors are excellent. Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides gives a rather compelling performance, even if the material he gets is quite haphazardly developed. But I’ll admit I was way more interested in the film’s supporting characters than its lead, with Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, and Stellan Skarsgard being particular highlights here as Gurney Halleck, Stilgar, and Baron Harkonnen, respectively. The makeup work on Baron Harkonnen is insane, and you can tell how much fun Skarsgard is having in the role, as his caterpillar-like contraption and precise makeup produces a truly frightening figure, even if he’s only there to quasi-establish the rivalry between the Harkonnens and the Atreides without much development on his part. Bardem and Brolin have small roles, but they make a bigger impact than Oscar Isaac and Rebecca Ferguson, whom I feel are horribly miscast here. Isaac’s talents seem rather wasted in a role that doesn’t allow him that much creative liberty, whilst Ferguson plays a typical housewife character with barely any character growth from beginning to end.
Most actors are only here in small doses to establish Dune: Part Two, but if Part Two was never a sure thing, a streamlined, 3-hour epic adaptation of Dune would’ve worked. Villeneuve doesn’t need to painstakingly adapt every single detail and line of expository dialogue from Herbert’s book in order for it to be as faithful as possible. An adaptation must follow these two golden rules: respect the fans of the source material while simultaneously opening up to potential new fans of whichever property you’re adapting to the screen. And while Frank Herbert fans may very well think Dune is the greatest movie ever made, as one of the most faithful book-to-film adaptations ever created (especially when it was deemed “unadaptable” in the past), Villeneuve’s penchant for setting up a potential cinematic universe falters any investment in it, as its script is laden with endless exposition dumps and weightless action, that a weak screenplay, unfortunately, bogs down its visual mastery.
Villeneuve seems too overwhelmed with the responsibility of delivering Dune to the big screen that it honestly feels like his first unconfident film. His first misfire as a filmmaker since Un 32 août sur Terre, which makes me wonder that maybe Dune is indeed unadaptable after all, and even the very best filmmakers can’t make Herbert’s book work. Maybe it’s best that this potential franchise gets laid to rest before it gets even more convoluted with Part Two and its potential third film, Dune: Messiah.
