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Dune

So anyway. Dune.

Couldn’t get too into this one. Never read the source material, or saw the Lynch movie. Seemed like the movie was just there to set up the next one. Didn’t care for that. Even with Star Wars IV, Matrix, or Fellowship of the Ring; those movies still felt like they had endings, even though more story was obviously on the way.
 
saw this tonight (and saw it in them shaky rocking chairs, which weren't thate xciting). As a fan of the books I enjoyed it but I thought it left a lot on the table. I agree it didn't really have a very good ending. I don't know how people not familiar with the source material felt (aside from my SIL who was a bit confused and my brother who thought it was fine) about them not explaining a lot of the background stuff.
 
I caught in on a 3d screen last night and whew, I was underwhelmed alot by this. Visually it was impressive as fuck, an insane amount of money must have been spent on this to get this look and spectacle feeling down, but that's really all I got. It did make me want to go back and watch the original Dune film though to compare and contrast but this dragged on tremendously and ended like a brick falling off a rooftop....abrupt and without any build. I get the idea to seperate this into two films, but the second half better fucking pick up as this just felt drawn out just for the fuck of it. The dialogue and tonal shifts made this a bit hard to follow also, similar to the Lynch version.
 
Late to the party, but I feel like this may have been better as a mini. Not sure if that was realistic for the budget needed, though. I still liked it, but didn't love. The visuals and sound were stunning.
 
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Also, new trailer drops tomorrow.
 
Got my ticket to see it on Sunday but was underwhelmed by the first. Fantastic visuals but as somebody who hadn't read the book, I felt a lot of the elements were poorly explained at best or not explained at all so it made it hard to get as invested in the world/characters. I found an article where I can see the below thought process because it felt that way at times. I'm looking forward to Part 2 as I really liked Arrival and Bladerunner 2049 but I felt for such a big, epic movie... it needed to build up its world and characters better. Dialogue is a necessity and doesn't take away from a film's visual appeal. There's a reason lines become iconic arguably more so than specific visuals.

deadline.com

Denis Villeneuve: “Frankly, I Hate Dialogue. Dialogue Is For Theatre And Television”

"Frankly, I hate dialogue," Villeneuve said in a recent interview. "Dialogue is for theatre and television."
deadline.com deadline.com

"I don’t remember movies because of a good line, I remember movies because of a strong image. I’m not interested in dialogue at all. Pure image and sound, that is the power of cinema, but it is something not obvious when you watch movies today.”
 
On the flipside to HQ, I prefer it when worlds are explored via "show, don't tell" in cinema. There was just enough exposition in the first to matter, IMO, and I understood the world and its characters by how they all interacted with one another.

I'll be waiting for it to hit streaming, because I think the only movie I care to see in theater this year will be the new GB, but I'm looking forward to it.
 
Even though I really was underwhelmed by the first part, my thought is to rewatch the original, then rewatch the first part again, and then give this a shot after fully being engaged as much as I can in the lore and background of this story.

There has been really heavily strong reviews so far, been hearing early Oscar talk for 2025 even.

A bit bummed that they decided against doing 3d again for the second part, as I thought the 3D really added to the visual immenseness and immersiveness of that first part.
 
I liked this more than the first one but that's not saying a lot as I gave the first a 6/10.

I'd give Part 2 a 6.5 leaning 7/10. Its strengths are that it tells a better story, leaning into the religion imagery of the plot, with more interesting characters, and sets up the 3rd Movie pretty well. But it still had the same flaws as the first movie in that the editing was very choppy and the pacing was abysmally brutal in a bad way. There's a lot of stuff that happens and I was INTO it for the majority of the first 2/3rds then it starts
building up to the battle and doing the battle towards the end of the movie
and legitimately it felt like it was 45-50 minutes of the entire movie, not in a good way to the point I've forgotten several plot elements from the first half of the movie that I did like.

Austin Butler was really engaging/a movie stealer playing Feyd-Rautha and held my attention for most of the 2nd half of the movie. He deserves some recognition for his performance (reminded me a lot of Christian Bale actually from Thor: Love and Thunder) in that they were able to disappear into the character/emote effectively without needing a lot of dialogue.

I've accepted this series probably isn't for me so I'll wait for the 3rd movie to hit streaming, like I did with the 1st. I don't regret seeing the 2nd in theaters but it definitely could've been tighter from an editing standpoint IMO.
 
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