This would've made a really good silent movie. It looks like a silent movie epic, with gigantic sets (or the appearance thereof) and huge vistas with a cast of thousands (even though they're most likely mostly CGI). Also then the dialogue would be kept even more to a minimum, which, given its all-around clunkiness, couldn't be bad. I'm not saying the performances are bad - some of them are very good (although Aquaman isn't great, but he's about right for a character with the ridiculous name of Duncan Idaho (sounds like a knockoff Indiana Jones)). Probably the best is the least familiar face to me, the mother of Chalamet's Paul Atreides, who is a Swedish actress with a British name (thanks to her British mother) - Rebecca Ferguson.
Where to start with this film? Well, for one thing, it's obviously way too condensed (despite being two and a half hours long, and only covering part of the book). You barely get to know any of the characters, with the result that, despite the best efforts of the generally excellent cast, they appear like cardboard cutouts. Why didn't they Game-of-Thrones this? It's ideal for it. Hell, it's basically Game of Thrones in space (or, to be fair, Game of Thrones is Dune on the ground). As it is, we barely get to know Atreides senior (played by Oscar Isaac with a magnificent beard)
before [spoiler alert] he meets his end attempting to poison the odious Baron Harkonnen. (That's the other thing: this isn't exactly subtle: the goodies are beautiful (and mostly white), while the baddies are, yes, also mostly white, but it's a fish-belly kind of white, and they're just transparently evil and disgustingly ugly.
Then, of course, there are the natives of Arakis (aka Dune, pronounced like Lorna's last name), the "fremen" (yes, I get it, they're free men) who in this version are a mix of all races, although the boss is Javier Bardem
(sharing a movie with Josh Brolin for the first time since No Country for Old Men - now there's a movie), and the Princess Leia type, who appears ridiculously briefly in this film, presumably to figure more prominently in the sequels, is the ubiquitous Zendaya.
Positive things to say: the space ships and general art and design of the various uniforms and architecture of the different planets and factions is fantastic. One feels the thrill that one felt in the original Star Wars, of a real lived-in universe.
It's a bit less shabby (by design) than that, but the various vessels have real weight and heft. They feel massive. And as a result, the battle scenes feel much more real and threatening. And I love the little ornithopter things (basically dragonflies, or perhaps damselflies), although they look a good deal less practical than a good old helicopter. We don't catch more than a glimpse of the giant sandworms (although there is a hint of one being ridden right at the end, which is pretty cool), but their menace is vividly conveyed in several tense scenes.
Things I don't like: the mystical mumbo-jumbo. I don't particularly mind the Benne Gesserit (sp?) coven of witches, but it is a bit tiresome that their chosen one is male, when they're all female. Are they where George Lucas got the idea of Jedi Knights/Sith Lords? But the whole chosen one bit in general is a bit tired. Ditto Paul's "visions". Also, what the fuck is "spice"? Is it a drug? But then, how is it responsible for intergalactic travel? And is it just red stuff mixed in with the sand? Is it a mineral or organic in some way? Scratch that, I don't really need to know. But how many factions are there? It's not just the Atreides and the Harkonnens, is it? And where does the Emperor come in? And why, in whatever century this is, is there an Emperor? It's that weird Flash Gordon combination of past and future (compounded by the architecture, and the fact that everyone fights with swords (albeit with personal force fields (that don't seem to stop much, particular slow-moving things)). Again, Star Wars looks more and more like a rip-off. (Yes, I should know, but I'm one of the few people who has never read Dune. I swear I tried once: I was stuck on four hour bus ride through Dorset, stopping every ten minutes, with only Dune to read, and I still couldn't get into it. If the dialogue in the film is any indication of the repartee in the novel, I can see why.
Summary: a beautiful, engrossing spectacle, despite two-dimensional characters. You know, like Star Wars if Lucas had given a shit about making it look even slightly realistic (major point in Dune's favor: when they use lasers, they really act like lasers). Only the Han Solo character gets killed off in the first film rather than the seventh. See it on as big a screen as you can.
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