Dune: From Unfilmable to Masterpiece

| By Nate Loken | December 6, 2021 |

Official poster for Dune (2021), featuring some of the movie’s talented cast (from top to bottom): Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Oscar Isaac, Rebecca Ferguson, Jason Momoa, Josh Brolin, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, and Javier Bardem. Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures.

Frank Herbert’s Dune had been widely considered to be “unfilmable” by the majority of critics since the release of David Lynch’s adaptation in 1984. However, on October 22, Denis Villeneuve released his adaptation and proved this belief wrong, proven by its 83% critic rating and 90% audience rating on rotten tomatoes.

However, the first question to answer is: why was Dune considered “unfilmable” in the first place? The justification for this claim is Dune’s extensive exposition. Frank Herbert spent six years researching and writing Dune and the universe he developed has levels of complexity that other franchises couldn’t hope to achieve. The extensive exposition tends to work better with books than it does with film, because of the limited run time of films and lack of engagement that exposition generally provides.

Second, much of the narrative style of the book is an inner dialogue from Paul Atreides, the main character. Many of the ideas in this book are never verbalized and remain thoughts inside Paul’s head. This style is difficult to utilize in films and is usually used as sparingly as possible, given that it can be unengaging for viewers.

Third, there is a lot of complexity in the interactions among characters and within characters. There is a significant amount of unsaid and nuanced communication in Dune that can be difficult to represent on screen. In addition, Paul’s non-linear perception of time due to his visions is complicated enough to understand even in the book; visually representing his perception of the world would present a very unique challenge to even the most experienced filmmaker.

Summary

Dune follows a young boy, Paul Atreides, heir of House Atreides, as his family accepts stewardship of the planet Arrakis in the year 10,191. Arrakis is an extremely inhospitable and dangerous sand-planet where “the spice,” a drug that holds the key to extended life, expanded mental abilities and space travel, is farmed. The movie explores the interactions of politics, religion, ecology, technology, and human emotion that overlap in the struggle for control of Arrakis. As Paul struggles to survive the challenges he confronts from Arrakis and others, he uncovers secrets of his identity that instill him with great power as well as great fear.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s examine why this film is spectacular in my opinion and where it falls short.

Pros

First, the cinematography in this movie is amazing. The shots are filled with vibrant colour and beautifully display the natural wonder of these new planets to which the audience is transported. In addition, they showcase the incredible scale of the geography and creatures, capturing the awe-inspiring terror of a 500-meter sandworm erupting from the depths of the sands of Arrakis and the vastness of the endless, sandy landscape.

In addition, the directors of this film put an incredible amount of intention and care into making the effects as authentic as possible by shooting much of the scenes on Arrakis in the deserts of Jordan, with temperatures reaching almost 50 degrees celsius. Natural lighting as well as organic interactions with the environment allow the scenes to be significantly more immersive and adds to a sense of realism throughout the film. The care put into these effects gives it an authenticity that films nowadays often lack due to the prevalence of green screens.

Second, the cast for this movie is phenomenal. Timothée Chalamet stars as Paul Atreides, Zendaya plays Chani, the Fremen girl native to Arrakis whom Paul sees through visions throughout the film and Rebecca Ferguson plays Jessica Atreides, Paul’s mother and a member of the Bene Gesserit, an exclusively female pseudo-religious organization involved in genetic experimentation, galactic political interference, and religious engineering to further its own agenda. Other notable actors include Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa, Dave Bautista, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Oscar Issac, and Javier Bardem.

Last, the film’s score is incredible. Hanz Zimmer composed the entire soundtrack and it isn’t unreasonable to say that the score is extremely unorthodox. Hanz Zimmer made use of synthesizers, the scraping of metal, Indian bamboo flutes, Irish whistles, seismic rumbles of distorted guitar and singing that defies Western musical notation as was reported by the New York Times. Zimmer explains his unusual approach to the score of Dune , claiming that he “wanted to make sounds no one had ever heard before” according to The New York Times Zimmerman told the Times that he “felt like there was a freedom to get away from a Western orchestra” in a recent interview at the Warner Brothers offices. Zimmer’s creative approach gives the film a tone of something unknown and unfamiliar, underscoring the foreignness of this world and its setting-- thousands of years in the future. One specific aspect of the score I really enjoyed was the different themes used for different groups of people and characters. Each group or character has vastly different instruments and emotions conveyed in the piece, all of which displays their distinct identities. An example of this is the layered voices used when the Bene Gesserit come on screen, creating a sense of ancientness and mystical power, compared to that of House Atreides, which employs the use of bagpipes to create a sense of military might and patriotism.

Cons

Starting this off is the lack of exposition in comparison to the books. Obviously the film had to remove certain elements of the lore to better fit the two and a half hour run time and excessive exposition can make a film much less engaging, however, there are significant amounts of information regarding the universe that make the film more difficult to understand. As someone who read the book, I didn’t have a problem understanding the story, politics and inner workings of the Dune universe. However, some friends of mine who hadn’t read the book felt they lacked some explanations of what makes this universe tick.

Next, we have the volume of the movie. This may sound a bit strange but Dune is a loud movie: at times the score suddenly erupts into seismic rumbles or booming throat singing. It can feel a bit intrusive at times, though this is clearly intentional on the director’s part. Despite the fact that this decision is an important part of the creative expression of the filmmakers, it can be a bit annoying and disorienting.

You may have noticed in the promotional videos, posters and other forms of media that Zendaya’s character Chani is given a lot of screen time. This could not be more untrue about the actual movie. Zendaya has around 15 minutes of actual screen time. Her lack of presence throughout the film is a bit of a let-down for a character who was so heavily promoted in the lead-up to the film’s release. However, it does give the audience anticipation for her appearance in the sequel, currently set to release October 20th, 2023.

Despite these small negatives, Dune is an incredible film that accomplishes what was considered to be impossible: taking Frank Herbert’s universe and masterfully converting it onto the big screen. I highly recommend you watch it. It can be enjoyed from the most die hard of fans to completely new viewers because of its immersive filmmaking which engages the audience with the universe and characters from the first minute.

Images taken from:

Hannah, Saab. Dune: 10 Most Beautiful Shots In The Movie, Screen Rant, October 20, 2021, https://screenrant.com/dune-most-beautiful-shots-in-movie/)

Official poster for Dune (2021), featuring some of the movie’s talented cast (from top to bottom): Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Oscar Isaac, Rebecca Ferguson, Jason Momoa, Josh Brolin, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, and Javier Bardem. Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures.