Directed by the aforementioned Villeneuve, Dune is a movie that takes on a challenging and numerous amount of tasks all at once. It’s adapting a story of six – part sci-fi novel epic, the same novel which was actually the greatest selling sci-fi novel of all time, and also aims to fix and erase the original Dune film released in 1984 and other adaptations that have tried to exist of the source material. It’s no easy feat, but thankfully this movie does that part mostly well. It stars Timothee Chalamet as Paul Atriedes , a Prince to a kingdom in a multi-planetary space empire. He is incredibly gifted and wise, but burdened by the responsibility of succeeding his father to the throne as well as inheriting the psychic and metaphysical powers of his mother, one of his father’s concubines. Add in mysterious visions of the future in a time when everything is politically unstable for his family and you have what might seem like a boring coming of age story with space politics thrown in but instead it’s a nuanced and complex tale on race, personal growth and even faith that only gets bolstered by the cast on display. Chances are you’ve already seen Zendaya and her character Chani on a lot of the promo material, but move beyond that and you have the always amazing Rebecca Ferguson, Aquaman/Jason Momoa as the loveable and incredible soldier Duncan, Oscar Isaac’s Leto Atriedes, Thanos/Josh Brolin as General Gurney Hallek, Dave Bautista as the fearsome grunt Glossu while Stellan Skarsgard is the main villain Harkonnen and you can basically even forget that actors like Javier Bardem, David Dastmalchian and others are part of this huge cast because really, almost everyone is here. And somehow almost all of them bring their A-game as well.

Isaac’s Leto and Momoa’s Duncan are easily standout characters right from the start, being people you genuinely want to root for and admire right from the beginning. Momoa’s Duncan especially is basically reliant on the character’s natural charm, being a source of levity and casual escape for Paul who (along with the audience honestly) feels trapped in the political and traditional bureaucracy of his family more so than he would like to be. Only Zendaya’s Chani feels like a bit of an upset here, as despite being sold right next to Chalamet’s character in all the movie’s promo material, she’s rarely in the actual fil outside of in the form of a vision Paul keeps having. Still, unless you specifically come looking for her character , you likely won’t miss her too much. Especially as there’s always something else going on that definitely requires your attention.

And when you’re not paying attention to the movie’s characters you’re definitely paying attention to something else; it’s sheer sense of scale. Lots of movies know how to communicate how big their general world is, and movies like Star Wars literally have planet destroying weapons. However Dune has a way in punching up some of the biggest aspects of it’s world-building to create moments where you really feel how large a ship or the iconic sand worms are. Combined with the sound design, there are literally multiple scenes in which a large object is approaching, and if you’re watching it in a cinema, the perfectly tuned speakers will vibrate and output sound in just the right way for you to feel how the ground would shake as a giant monolithic ship approaches you. This translates into the more bombastic actions scenes as well, where explosions and multiple objects being flung across the screen feel more tactile as well as the sound basically tells you which direction they are coming from.

This doesn’t mean the smaller moments don’t matter however, including the action ones. Dune has this very specific world it’s created where races all have vibrational shielding technology that essentially would stop things like bullets used in guns today, but can’t block a relatively slow moving sword or other bladed weapons, meaning there’s a lot of hand-to-hand sword fights that tend to be well choreographed especially in cases like when Momoa’s Duncan is in a fight.

The only areas that Dune seems to struggle in are the ones that seemingly are right at the surface . The first one is definitely the villains. While both Skasgard and Bautista play imposing and fearsome characters, we never get to know them like we get to know almost all of the heroic characters. Bautista’s glossu for example seems to hint at being far more than just the imposing general he’s shown to be, but we barely get to see that and are left wondering why he has so much pent up anger . It’s likely something that will get addressed in the second and third films, but here it seems like an odd inclusion. And in fact that leads us into our second big issue, which is the fact that for all it’s runtime (156 minutes to be exact) , Dune feels incomplete. It spends too much time on building the world around the characters and explaining it to the audience but doesn’t really do much to create an arc that begins and ends within just this movie. And yes, it’s known that it’s the first part of a trilogy, and in some ways Lord of The Rings was the exact same way. However in a time where movies like Avengers: Infinity War and even Pirates of the Caribbean : Dead Man’s Chest were all one part of a larger story yet they still managed to tell some version of a cohesive story while Dune essentially makes it a point not to. Simply put, this movie is amazing and worth watching, but it’s not exactly a “go with your friends to hang out” kind of flick either. It’s a preference type of problem, and chances some of you won’t even mind it if u know what exactly you’re getting into. However, it’s definitely something that should be pointed out.

And that’s where we end up with Dune. It’s a movie that feels as large and as potentially influential as the original books were. It has an amazing cast and a lot of amazing story concepts at play, and honestly, I think it’s the first part of a franchise that may be regarded as classic when complete. But at this moment it isn’t complete, and that’s ironically it’s biggest flaw: that the other two films aren’t out yet . Still, it’s definitely a journey worth starting. Now we just want it’s other chapters to get here already.

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