Dune

I'll open by saying I am not a fan of Villeneuve. In fact, I think he's a hack whose only genuine talent is making stupid people falsely think they are actually quite smart. I am also a HUGE Dune fan. They have been my favourite series of books since I first discovered them as a teenager. So although I hoped for the best with this, I was expecting the worst. What I got was somewhere in the middle. It's an OK movie, not great, thankfully not terrible, but OK It got some things right the 1984 Lynch version got wrong, but still somehow managed to get other stuff wrong (including stuff Lynch got right). It was also a surprise how much Villeneuve just lifted directly from the Lynch film, both visually and auditorily. The wardrobe choices were a huge disappointment. If you didn't know the time setting, going just on the clothes in the new Dune you'd be forgiven for thinking it was set a mere forty or fifty years (if that) in the future rather than the twenty thousand years in the future when it's really set. The Lynch stillsuits look futuristic, unworldly, and something that really would keep you alive in the deep desert. The new desert wear looks like they are just going to go dirt biking for an hour or two in our present-day world. The casting (completely ignoring the pointless gender swap) was good, However, with the exception of Paul, Chani, and Rabban the original casting was all better. But the original (apart from the odd decision to use the totally unsuited Kyle MacLachlan) was a masterclass in how to cast the perfect people for the role. Anyway, enough of the comparisons, This film is about the first two-thirds of the first novel. I always thought the story would be better told via a big-budget TV series (or even mini-series) rather than a standalone movie. I still think what they tried to cover here was too much for a single movie, but it was a step in the right direction. The film mainly sticks to the book story but does make some needless changes, the most obvious of which being the changes made to both the gender and story of Liet Kynes, which in turn impacts the story of Chani. Most other changes are small and mainly insignificant though. The film being filmed in Norway, Jordan, and Abu Dhabi looks fantastic and very well suited to the large screen. And it's clear a great deal of time, effort, and money was put into the sets that looked equally good as the places they were meant to be. The acting was of a suitably high standard, but unfortunately, many of the Dune names and terms were horribly mispronounced. That and the Hans Zimmer fart that is played constantly throughout the soundtrack is likely to pull people out of their emersion in the movie. I was also somewhat surprised by what was left out, OK the source material is VERY dense and obviously some needed to be cut, but I don't really think it's made clear just how crucial melange is to the functioning of the empire and society as a whole. Also what (and why) mentats are is largely ignored, you may think that isn't overly important, but it is at the core of how many things are done in the Dune universe. Over all, it's not a bad movie. Despite its flaws, I still think the 1984 Lynch version is better though.