With Dune Parts 1 & 2, I wanted to hold off on seeing those movies until the story was complete. Dune was a complete novel after all, and getting half of it without the whole thing would have been frustrating. It’s the same reason why I haven’t watched part 1 of Wicked as of this writing. Part 2 isn’t out yet, so there’s only half the story. I wanted to watch the story – but I wanted to watch the full story. So, once Dune Parts 1 & 2 were released on 4K, I felt it was time to sit down and watch them both together.
Probably one of my biggest immediate impressions of both these versions of Dune, aside from the films being visually stunning, is that this is also one of the best depictions of House Atreides. All the previous adaptations of Dune have tried to make the most of the ticking clock that the various members of House Atreides have, especially Duke Leto, to make them sympathetic enough characters that we mourn when they get picked off. Normally, this focus is on Leto, so we get sufficient motivation for Paul’s revenge, but generally, characters like Doctor Yueh and especially Duncan Idaho end up getting short shrift.
Of the past iterations, the Sci-Fi Channel miniseries generally had the best House Atreides, except for Duke Leto, where the David Lynch version had a better performance from Jurgen Prochnow, while the late William Hurt felt almost like he was sleepwalking through the film (though admittedly that’s something I’ve noticed with a lot of his performances – Hurt could be subdued to a fault). With this version, Timothée Chalamet feels right as Paul, and in the first film (and first half of the second) we get the sense of anxiety with the character, where he first feels out of place, both culturally and psychologically, with his increasingly prophetic dreams. Josh Brolin as Gurney Halleck has the right balance of grumpy curmudgeon and amicable old-guy.
Probably the biggest shift is Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho – he’s meant to be a mentor and big brother figure, and the badass that preserves a sense of hope when everything goes to shit – until he is finally killed by the Sardukar. Every other version of the character has him quietly killed offscreen during the attack, usually overwhelmed by Sardukar, but never really given his moment to shine. Here we get the sense, as in the book, that Duncan’s state is representative of how bad off Paul and Jessica are.
Stellan Skarsgård is alright as Baron Harkonnen, as he’s trying to channel some real Marlon Brando energy (in a good way), but doesn’t quite click with Ian McNeice’s – the Baron is a very theatrical (as in the stage) villain, and McNeice sticks the landing on that. On the other hand, Javier Bardem is the best Stilgar we’ve had of all the adaptations so far – able to move between grim and serious and amciable, as he becomes a surrogate father to Paul.
However, this does mean we have to get into some of the more dramatic changes from the story that come up more in part 2. Dune is a story about political machinations between those in power and those who get caught underfoot, and how they attempt to use the tools of those in power, and the implements of empire and religion to reclaim control of their destiny. In the process, it also gets into why being a messianic figure (or at least being thrust into a role of combined political and religious leadership) and having precognition is horrible.
Some of the ways this manifests in the book is the more subtle elements like the realization that the Emperor wanted Leto dead because he figured out where the Emperor was getting the Sardukar and how they were trained, so he and his entire house had to be wiped out basically because they knew too much. That led him to support House Harkonnen’s vendetta, which has apparently gone on for so long that nobody remembers how it started. And the Spacing Guild wanted Paul dead because, as the Kwisatz Hadarach, he was, without any deliberate effort on his part, fucking with their ability to control space travel. All these big things that combine make Paul feel and look (narratively) so small at the start of the novel, and which end up forcing him into becoming a monster of his enemies’ own making – the monster they sought to destroy before it could be born.
In the film, though, it’s all simplified to “The Bene Gesserit sought to wipe out House Atreides because Jessica gave birth to a Kwisatz Haderach they couldn’t control.” If you’re doing what the David Lynch version ended up doing, where you’re trying to cover everything in one movie, that’s an oversimplification that makes sense for the purposes of time. However, here there’s the time to get into the weeds, and to have Paul realize just what kind of clusterfuck his family and his house were thrust into, and how to turn that against those responsible for his father’s death. Here we eliminate the time skip, and hyper-simplify the back half of the story, while almost having as much screen time as the Sci-Fi Channel version.
This is even more frustrating because Denis Villeneuve is a screenwriter and director who I go to for nuance and depictions of complicated concepts. Seeing him basically simplify the themes to what is effectively “Religion Bad” is disappointing. Combine that with an ending where I’m not completely sure how you get to Dune Messiah and Children of Dune from here, I’m not sure what to think about this. I enjoyed the film, I’m glad I watched it, but I found the ending disappointing.
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