Finally caved and saw Dune 2021:
-Lightskin Chani narrates the opening instead of Irulan. I’ve always loved “The beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care…”, the opening from the book. David Lynch kept it in his movie, and the monologue even shows up in the official movie soundtrack for ‘84 by Toto. The fact that it’s not here doesn’t bode well.
-I always thought Dune was a very Asiatic work of sci-fi. Caladan is Space-Indonesia with its islands and rice paddies. The Fremen are descendants of Muslims, and they practice a weird, syncretic version of Islam with bits of Buddhism in it. I don’t like how Timotheeeee’s house has a bonsai tree framed by Chinese Circle Doors and only Yueh is the lone Asian there as a healer. I feel like I’m with Donna Chang from Seinfeld.
-Ferguson was a good choice for Lady Jessica.
-Zendaya can’t play dangerous. What’d you expect from a Disney whelp?
-Caladan is so cold and gray, not like in the books. Thanks, I hate it!
-Oscar Isaac is light, but he’d have to have fucked a ghost if I’m to believe he could play Timotheee’s dad.
-Mohiam is pretty spot on.
-I hate this version of Caladan. It’s so cold, so unhospitable, even compared to Arrakis. The entire point of Caladan is that it’s a lush Eden.
-According to X-Ray, Atreides martial arts is based on Filipino fighting styles. Oh, like Thanos and Fauntleroy could ever.
-There are no upside down cows on Giedi Prime. Man-Spider? What are you talking about? There WASN’T a man-spider in this movie.
-Considering how…. light this movie is, I expected Denis to whitewash Dr. Yueh. Also, Yueh uses Mandarin to speak to Paul on the sly while he’s administering his Suk healer powers. It feels orientalist.
-The landers that descend from the Heighliner onto Arrakis remind me of the eggs from Arrival.
-Jessica and her attendants at the spaceport are gorgeous, although one can’t help but think of Padme and her girl gang in Episode 1.
-Thufir is black (SMH is really fair, even compared to Zendaya) and he calls Paul “Young Master” when he lands on Arrakis. The optics aren’t lost on me.
-The thopters are really sexy.
-Right after, there’s a scene of townspeople praying. If they weren’t wearing 3 burqas one on top of the other, it would look like home to me.
-Denis… he has a certain visual style. He loves bare concrete, pitted, monolithic surfaces. It feels like he’s using Voice on my eyes. Something about the lines, the starkness… You have to meet his style halfway.
-Jason Momoa shaves halfway. Like I said about unsettlingly bare surfaces.
-Zendaya, being Disney, can’t act. She is mostly here to tempt Paul in his visions. I mean, just like in the first third of the book, but… why not get someone who… let’s just say, doesn’t burn that easy out there to play Fremen.
-My image of the Sardaukar was always the Purge Troopers from Fallen Order. Here, they reminded me of Ronan the Accuser from Guardians Vol. 1, but dialed up to 90.
-The invasion… is slightly less awesome, because you don’t see Patrick Stewart as Gurney, running into battle cradling a pug.
-I want that bagpipe riff to play at my funeral.
-Ok, so to have Yueh, the lone Asian man, act not just a healer with strange powers, muttering in Mandarin, but also have him betray the good Atreides, was that Herbert being low key… you know?
-Also, I just realized they got rid of two important scenes: Jessica finding the Secret Garden, and the dinner where Leto’s guests, the rich townsfolk of Arrakeen, spill water everywhere to express their station. The palm tree thing drives the point of both home? A garden is visually too much for a Denis movie, though.
-They had to prop Leto in the altogether like that. Easier on the eyes than the Baron but like… really?
-The one scene that made me cry in the book, “His only regret was that he never made you his Duchess”, wasn’t here. Like Jessica cries in the tent, but… I just didn’t feel it.
-Kynes looking out at Arrakeen, similar energy to Leia’s death stare on Crait. The music in that scene, similar melody to the main theme from the 1984 movie.
-Kynes doesn’t get her trippy death involving visions of the previous Kynes. I liked it because it highlighted the strangeness of the desert, and stressed the environment-y themes.
-Timotheeee has to whitesplain how Fremen live to his mom after their thopter crashes. It felt… redundant. Jessica’s a Lady of a House and a Bene Gesserit. Shouldn’t she have done her Arrakis homework too?
-No one in the main cast has any experience speaking Arabic and it shows. I’m not watching the second movie if Timotheeee and Zendaya butcher the phrase “Lisan Al-Gaib” again.
-Nothing is more arrogant than ending your movie with the line “this is just the beginning”.
Arrival is one of my favorite movies ever. Blade Runner 2049 existed only to strip all ambiguity from the original. Dune errs… towards the latter. There’s a lot of care in every frame! And Hans Zimmer and those bagpipes! But the young leads are just so, so miscast. And I still stand by my original statement. Who are THEY to tell me that the apex of humanity is the whitest person alive? I know Duncan becomes the Chosen One in the later books, but that’s not the implication the movie and its marketing circus, both infinitely more visible than the sequel books, are giving me
