My Review of "Dune (2021)"

Dune (2021) is the first part of a hopefully 2 part series. It is a very long movie but it is epic! The tone and pace of this movie are spot on and it kind of feels like this generation's Lord of the Rings. In some ways my review of this movie is probably heavily influenced since I reviewed Dune (1984) about 2 years ago.

This movie starts off with a narration to explain the Dune universe. It's basically your typical warring factions. You have your Atreides house and you have your Harkonnen house. The story heavily focuses on these houses but there are more factions that come into play. All you need to know is that the main character is Paul Atreides.

Paul's father is the head of the Atreides house and he's recently called for a truce with the Harkonnen house for the mining of spice on a world called Arrakis. You see Arrakis is rich with a spice that all the houses are after because basically it's like gold for this universe.

The problem with Arrakis is that it is a very inhospitable world. It's dry, full of sand and even giant sand worms. This doesn't have to be the case. There are ways to make Arrakis a livable land but because of the spice the warring nations refuse to fix anything on this world. The people of the land aren't too happy about that.

So of course with this Atreides and Harkonnen treaty there is obviously going to be some sort of double cross. That's a given and I think everyone knows something is going to happen but they all kind of let things run their course.

While all this is happening Paul is getting visions of this blue eyed girl, death and sand people on Arrakis. He doesn't know what this all means but soon it's revealed that his mother comes from a line of people that are pretty special. The sand people have a prophecy of some sort of messiah that will help them in their time of darkness. You can kind of guess where this is going.

It's interesting because this is known to be the story that a lot of fantasy and sci-fi movies are based off of but this movie comes out after all of those movies have already been released. I don't know if people will realize how revolutionary this story really was. Thankfully this movie is directed in a way that helps you get immersed in this two and a half hour first part epic.

The pacing of the movie kept me at the edge of my seat even when they're talking about political issues and world building elements. I think it kind of helped that I watched the 1984 version because it still mostly followed the same story flow of that original movie. There are a lot of changes but for the most part the main story is identical.

Gone are the fantastic art and design of the 1984 version and in is more of a minimalistic art direction. I still love the art direction of this version but I still have a love and appreciation for the 1984 version. In some ways the tone and feel of the movie felt a lot like some of the Zack Snyder DC universe movies. The color corrections are virtually identical and the music/sound effects are very reminiscent of those Zack Snyder movies.

I didn't like that they kept the whispering of the 1984 movie to this 2021 version. I thought it was even harder to decipher what they were saying because of the loud sound effects going on at the same time. At least in the 1984 movie there wasn't much sound so you could understand what they were saying. I felt I was saved in this case because I knew where the movie was going. Others that don't have any reference might get a little frustrated with these whispering moments or they might watch the movie again to get it.

I watched this movie late at night and it reminded me of 2001 when I first saw Lord of the Rings in the theatres. Another long epic tale that I fell in love for. 20 years later this is probably the Lord of the Rings of this generation. It's been a while that we've had such an epic chaptered fantasy/sci-fi tale be told to us.

Admittingly, I was 50/50 about this movie. I loved Villeneuve's sci-fi film Arrival however I wasn't a huge fan of Blade Runner 2049. This movie had the potential to fall into either category and thankfully it fell into a nice medium. Something that takes the best of both titles. The huge world building of Blade Runner 2049 is here but the pacing of Arrival is also here to offset the slow burn of the character and world development within the movie.

Overall, I loved this movie more than I expected to. This is the first time in a long while where I've watched a chaptered movie with huge anticipation for the second half. I'm even willing to watch this movie again with some friends. With that said, I have to give this movie an 9 out of 10. There is so much to love about this movie and I know I'm going to watch it again many times over.