Adapting books to movies is a difficult task and Frank Herbert’s novel “Dune” was one of hardest tasks. Director Denis Villenueve tries to make a film about the book and has successfully achieved this goal since the past few attempts of making this movie was not as good as the one Villeneuve directed.
They first introduce us to the main character Paul Atreides who is played by Timothee Chalamet. Paul is the son of Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) and Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson). Paul trained under the influence of high ranking soldiers and family friends. He is called to leave his planet and go to the most dangerous planet and confront his fears.
“Dune” has stunning visuals because the director is known for creating CGI that grabs the your attention. The designs of the castles, buildings, the interior and space ships are very detailed, especially the giant sandworm. and The color theme also played an important role in the movie because it created a certain mood . The planet of Atreides had colors that were different shades of deep blue along with black that had a misty atmosphere. The other planet was bright but had muted colors which tells us the planet is dry and barren and the family has a long way to go since it’s just empty land, along with the villain’s house. It had dark colors and little to no light which created a scary atmosphere in scenes where the villain holds Leto, the father captive.
The story of “Dune” has a good plotline in the movie, but there are scenes that come out of nowhere and I got lost because I didn’t understand why there were scenes that weren’t needed, to me it was like fragments of important details from the book but strung together where it didn’t make sense. The characters were casted as their personality traits were like the character’s personality traits in the book but with more depth and their personalities are more enhanced and became more real. This is normal for book and movie adaptations because you get to see the characters go through the emotion and have a better picture of what they’re feeling and how they interact with people.
The villains of “Dune” were really evil but they had no development and there was a lack of antagonists which weakened the conflict. You only get to see glimpses of the main villain Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) along with Glossu Rabban (Dave Bautistista). There were not that many scenes for the villains. It seemed like they were just added there for conflict but you don’t get to know the character, you just have a snapshot of how the villain is and that’s it.
There was good music, amazing visuals and great acting performance, and it all came together and was well done but it’s nothing special because there are many great movies with great visuals from CGI . Despite the flaws, the story has another upcoming sequel by setting up multiple predictions just from the ending of the movie. I’m pretty sure that there would be improvement for the next sequel and would be ten times more interesting and easy to understand.
