Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic scifi novel has been a long-awaited experience. It details the rise and fall of House Atreides when they're ordered by the Padishah Emperor to take control of the planet Arrakis, the source of the drug melange, also called Spice, which is the source of immortality and the only known catalyst of interstellar travel.
The book itself is a hefty meditation on power and when it should be wielded. It touches on topics of religion, holy war, imperialism, might over right and responsibility while still being a captivating scifi epic in its own right.
And I do believe that Villeneuve manages to capture about 95 percent of that. This is a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the original novel. So much so that I was genuinely impressed how much the managed to compress, combine and cram into this film. Sure, it's over two and a half hours long, only detailing the first half of the novel, but then again... it's a thick book, with lots of nuance. Easily in the same weight class as The Lord of the Rings.
The visuals are also... breathtaking... superb... out of this world... never before seen. It's hard to describe the feeling of seeing these images on the biggest screen possible, especially when combines with Hans Zimmer's score. It starts to approach something that could be called a religious experience. And this audiovisual experience is the main reason why I'm calling this the first proper epic of the 21st century. (Sure... Some of the LotR film were technically released in the first years of the 2000s, but I'm slotting those into the 20th century.)
It's grandiose, it's breathtaking, it's everything it absolutely could be. I'm dying to see the sequel. Please, go see this film.
The book itself is a hefty meditation on power and when it should be wielded. It touches on topics of religion, holy war, imperialism, might over right and responsibility while still being a captivating scifi epic in its own right.
And I do believe that Villeneuve manages to capture about 95 percent of that. This is a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the original novel. So much so that I was genuinely impressed how much the managed to compress, combine and cram into this film. Sure, it's over two and a half hours long, only detailing the first half of the novel, but then again... it's a thick book, with lots of nuance. Easily in the same weight class as The Lord of the Rings.
The visuals are also... breathtaking... superb... out of this world... never before seen. It's hard to describe the feeling of seeing these images on the biggest screen possible, especially when combines with Hans Zimmer's score. It starts to approach something that could be called a religious experience. And this audiovisual experience is the main reason why I'm calling this the first proper epic of the 21st century. (Sure... Some of the LotR film were technically released in the first years of the 2000s, but I'm slotting those into the 20th century.)
It's grandiose, it's breathtaking, it's everything it absolutely could be. I'm dying to see the sequel. Please, go see this film.