Dune 2 is officially happening
polygon.com
polygon.com
Edit: For the record, I really liked Part I. How many people here watched it and were expecting to here people's mental dialogue jump on the sound track at a few points?
But I'm not in the film industry so perhaps I'm wrong!
However it is hard to say if they really didn't have it planned from the start. Both is possible and likely.
Villeneuve's film definitly was a risk from a film producers standpoint. The director is not known for compromises and the material he worked with is not known to automatically lend itself to be filmed easily — historically these have been the key ingridients for catastrophic productions. So given the risk I wouldn't be surprised if they really didn't plan for part II from the start.
But my feeling is that they already decided for part II to exist before the movie hit the box office (which is why the movie feels like it needs a part II)
I think maybe you are used to a certain style of movie that Dune differs from, and thus have a hard time with it?
It wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't good.
> A better style of movie
> It wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't good.
I think it was great.
I love the setting, but it just doesn't translate very well to the big screen at all, and I agree with you a long form TV series in the GoT style would have been much better.
If a movie just throws you into a new place of course that new place feels foreign and might be hard to read, but if I wanted a known thing I wouldn't go and watch a new movie in the cinema, right?
For me the weak part was the casting of several of the supporting actors. Several of them just didn't work for me, and it felt like they were included more for their name than fitting the role.
I had no trouble following the story and I had both never read Dune before (yeah I know) and English is not my first language. The story lets those who want to dive into it do just that, but it is never spoonfeeding the audience, which is just too common and throws me off in so many movies because instead of feeling something that has been motivated by some inner forces of the world I am watching it feels like something just done to tingle my feelings in often very predictable ways.
Just like in everyday life emotions are not a 100% explained but there is nothing arbitrary in that movie. E.g. the way Paul's mother acts is unexplained more or less, but it isn't unexplainable. By explaining this for example, the film would loose parts of what made it great to watch in my eyes. But tastes differ of course.
Whether Paul or his family works as a projection surface for the viewers or not seems to be a bit of an individual topic. I personally didn't feel unable to empathize with the protagonists. If anything the untypical impending doom (like in a greek tragedy) that is so rare in hollywood cinema nowadays made me care in a different way. Yeah, Paul is the hero, but you can't shake the feeling it is not gonna end well. Instead it made me ponder more about the world and society that produces such fates and where one would find parallels in our time (opiates in Afghanistan maybe?)
I like it when the filmic world is the protagonist before anybody in it and these films are sadly quite rare, especially with a decent production.
In my estimation what we end up missing as a result of this economy in storytelling is the feeling of "living" in the scene. There are few, if any, opportunities for the film to slow down and allow the viewer to immerse themselves in the gravity of each scene. What's missing is the opportunity for the viewer to reflect upon the information they are receiving and to figure things out as the characters are figuring them out, or before they do. There is little in the way of quiet moments that allow the viewer to process and come to certain realizations themselves. Unfortunately this is not a luxury that this movie is able to provide without making for a very long film.
That said, I still love it.
It felt like reading a Brian novel - a bunch of weird stuff that didn't have any heart or feeling.
I watched it and will watch it again and maybe I'll change my opinion but it wasn't the savior of the Dune world story. I'll even pay to see it in a theater even though I saw it free on HBO.
The new Dune relied on mostly the same key scenes, and lifted dozens of shots directly from Lynch's Dune. Villeneuve isn't enough of of an artist to imagine his own film, so we instead got a watered down version of Lynch's Dune.
Baron Harkonnen was properly villainous in Lynch's Dune. In Villenueve's Dune we got a fat guy in a mumu, and Gurney had to explain to us that the Harkonnen's are "brutal", because no actual brutality made it to screen.
The new Dune had way more expository talking heads than the old Dune, yet I still managed to lose the plot. The battle sequences looked like something you'd see on the history channel. They sent a full crew out to the Wadi Rum desert and somehow managed to make it look like the rear-projection set of The Mandalorian.
I loved Blade runner 2049, but I suppose with that film Villeneuve had an established style guide to work from, and understated performances fit with the tone of the film.
Dune is a different beast, and Villeneuve doesn't have the chops, unfortunately.
The novels were largely written by Kevin J. Anderson, who also was in the credits for the movie as a "Creative Consultant," so make of that what you will.
I agree with your feeling, though; the metaphor I keep coming back to is that it was a tapestry that was reduced to a thread: Paul's rise.
It felt like all the supporting characters and their motivations, which form a part of the tapestry of time that the entire Dune series covers, were reduced to steps that Paul is climbing to the top.
This is anecdotal evidence, but I found that online (Discord chat, reviews...), most people who had no prior knowledge of Dune, seemed to have enjoyed it more than the people who had prior book knowledge.
My main concern going in was the 3rd act (or lack of one) but I was already fully expecting it, so I had no issues knowing it was only part 1.
The effects certainly helped; the sheer size of things was amazing.
It's my opinion that Dune is the seal to Villeneuve's fall from grace. His early career was studded with greats like Sicario, which explored the deep vulnerability of a powerless female lead outflanked by the violent potential of the professional men in her company; and Enemy, a psychotic allegory for fear of real intimacy. Villeneuve was a rising star, I couldn't have been more excited for where he was pushing film together with his often companion, Roger Deakins.
Dune is nothing more than beautiful scenery with airbrushed beauties vaulting through bedecked spaces. The dialogue could have left the lips of anyone in any scene with as much impact as the platitudes of a college freshman.
There is good cinema within our generation but it is startlingly rare. Most of what makes it to the theaters is bloodless, drained of anything to say about anything at all. Villeneuve's new Blade Runner 2049 was a visual feast as equally as bankrupt. The passage from Nabokov's Pale Fire that Gosling was allowed to develop into the film's baseline test appears as a kind of last, bare rebellion from the director against the powers of Hollywood like Sylvan Esso's pop track Radio, 2 seconds longer than the mandated 3.30 of a real radio hit.
I also found myself considering coloring my eyes lol, it's been really long a movie has got me in that state of mind.
Apocalypse Now, which is amazing, in my opinion, didn’t get amazing reviews upon release.
Fall from grace means you didn’t like Arrival too much either? I loved Arrival as I loved Sicario and Enemy.
> Alien or Blade Runner?
I love the concept of time so personally I enjoyed Arrival more than either of these. Same with Ex Machina, Annihilation, Primer, and Upstream Color. I also think these films are better too. I admit I must have a bias against glorifying the classics because of it being done so much. Obviously everyone has biases.
> There is good cinema within our generation but it is startlingly rare. Most of what makes it to the theaters is bloodless, drained of anything to say about anything at all.
Yes. This is the easy way out. Revering the old is easy. In 40 years people will be saying how new films don’t compare to Dune (2021) or Blade Runner 2049.
You said what makes it to theaters. Not wide release films. That would include a lot of indie and other films. In that case, I completely disagree. I believe it has gotten better. I get to see movies with a wider range with the easier access and technology for smaller films that get to be made. Same with music.
> This is the easy way out. Revering the old is easy. In 40 years people will be saying how new films don’t compare to Dune (2021) or Blade Runner 2049.
Startlingly rare within our generation means what I say. I would expect there to be a strong corpus this round given film history but it defied my own expectations. That doesn't mean I don't think good examples exist just that they're, well, startlingly rare.
Upstream Color was courageous I'll give you that. But I think it took real moxy from Carruth to make it happen: he did the music, shot the film, wrote it, directed it, and starred in it and for basically no money just like Primer. And I think directors like Ana Lily Amirpour who did A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night are the courage we need to see. The problem doesn't appear to be a lack of directing talent so much that the media machine takes that talent and corrupts it absolutely.
Look what happened to Ridley Scott or Taika Waititi. They became owned and operated by the industries behind them which must ensure a broad appeal for the highest ROI. It's market forces at their most efficient at a global scale we've never seen before.
[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DismantledMacGuf...
Most of modern life for most people in the west and even beyond is relatively bloodless. At least not bloody filled :p.
I enjoy films that are slow paced and stick closer to reality. So usually I’d prefer them not to be so dramatic. But I get you mean bloodless in how simple Arrival was too.
I don’t disagree at all with those points about Arrival. However Denis didn’t write most of his films any way, no? I enjoy the concept of time a lot so really just that combined with the visuals are enough for me to love the film. You’re def right on the massive weaknesses.
I gave only a few examples. I don’t pay too much attention to what is the major film in theaters. There’s only like 2 major releases on average per week. Even if it’s 3. That’s only 150 films. There are so many good films put out.
I think modern day stacks up if not exceeds past days especially when you don’t look at the major wide releases that are in thousands of movie theaters.
I think we would end up disagreeing on how good current films and old films are. I would not think of old films as good as you would, etc. if we were to begin listing a bunch out. This same sort of thing has happened with me with friends and music before.
To throw two recent films I watched. Though they aren’t new. The Lighthouse and Midsommar. The latter especially stacks up with how so much coverage of it was framing it as a happy story with a happy ending…when it’s a psychological horror film where every protagonist loses.
It’s also harder to compare only films. TVs golden era is arguably happening now. There’s a lot of very high quality awesome TV. Notably thanks to HBO, Netflix. I think one of my favorite shows, Rectify, was on IFC. Pretty obscure. This takes away from films as people can only multi task so much.
Although I do look forward to watching Dune.