Film Micrœview #836: Dune (2021)

Rating: Bad.

Haha. Well, I felt compelled to revisit the first Dune movie after seeing the second one in theaters. I was really not looking forward to the second one, given my experience with the first one. But people kept telling me it was good, that it was better, so I gave it a shot. And indeed it was alright. So I wondered… if I went back to the first one, would it be as bad as I remembered? And the answer was: sorta. It was indeed much worse than the second one. But the first time around I’d given it a Shrug rating. Well, now I’m prepared to give it a Bad, if only because I gave the second one a Shrug.

I came out of the second one feeling like I’d really been in another world, and for a day or two afterwards I couldn’t really shake it. But you come out of the first movie feeling more like Villeneuve has been grabbing you by the sides of your head, in your face for three hours, just gasping WOWWWW….. OMIGOSH…… INCREDIBLE……. Seriously, there’s just so much fucking slow motion and epic posturing. And OH, THE TEDIUM of all this slow motion and repetition (how many times do we see the fucking bloody hand?). He had the good sense the second time around to just let the world be, to just be able to exist in it, and only at key moments drop the epic signal bombs. And in the first one, all this fucking “desert power” callbacking, and the “it’s only beginning” cheese, and the space bagpipe in the big charge with the foreground central-composed explosion wipe… so cheesy.

It was interesting to be reminded that the plan to go for the Emperor’s daughter was announced much earlier. I’d forgotten about that bit. And I’d forgotten about the shield technology, only letting slow stuff through, that made the combat style believable.

One thing the first one has that the second one doesn’t is a slightly more tolerable Zimmer score. The Goranssonesque percussion is pretty sweet, I guess, but there’s none of that in the second film’s score. And the first one only uses that ultracheesy exotic vocal bit once, whereas the second movie uses it like 3-4 times.