The film opens with Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) and his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) being accepted into a tribe of Fremen, the human natives of the planet Arrakis. Arrakis is the only planet that can produce Spice, a compound that makes the complex mathematics involved in interstellar travel possible. Paul’s father, Duke Leto, had been tasked with overseeing spice production by the Emperor, taking the powerful and profitable role over from the decadent Baron Harkonnen. Unbeknownst to Leto, however, it was all part of a plan for the Emperor to rid himself of House Atreides, with the Harkonnen’s attacking and slaughtering all of them on Arrakis with only Paul and Jessica managing to escape.
The Fremen wish to drive the Harkonnen’s off of their world so that they can reclaim it as their own. Some Fremen, led by a warrior named Stilgar (Javier Bardem), see Paul as a prophesied messiah whose coming was foretold for centuries by the Bene Gesserit, a religious order to which Jessica also belongs. As Paul begins to lead the Fremen on guerrilla raids against the Harkonnen’s forces to disrupt the spice harvesting, he also starts to have visions where the Fremen’s fight could spill out across the galaxy. He is left to wonder if he is indeed the messianic warrior that Stilgar and others believe him to be. And even if he isn’t, can he still use that belief to take revenge on the Harkonnen’s for the death of his father?
Of course, Villeneuve is no stranger to high concept science-fiction. His 2016 film Arrival dealt with a first contact situation with aliens who perceived time differently than us humans. He followed that up with Blade Runner 2049 the following year, diving deeper into the themes of humanity that Ridley Scott had investigated in the 1984 original. Dune is very much a book about its characters’ interior lives as it about the galactic politics and plots going on around them. And in the first half of his Dune adaptation, Villeneuve deftly handled the novel’s themes of political power, religion and ecology. That same level of mastery is, unsurprisingly, on display here as all of those elements resonate within the story and have impacts with each other.
And that summary is very much a shallow skimming of what the film has to offer in terms of plot and characters. Herbert’s novel is characters and subplots, many of which are dependent on intricate world building for his story’s setting of eight thousand years in the future. It is a complexity that has kept a solid adaptation of the material from being made before this. But that is not for lack of trying. A number of directors had taken a run at the material, most notably Alejandro Jodorowsky in the 1970s. But all that became of his attempt was a rather interesting 2013 documentary on his attempt called Jodorowsky’s Dune. Director David Lynch got a version of the book made in 1984, but even at two hours and seventeen minutes of runtime, it wasn’t able to really grapple with the material in any deeply meaningful way. Even an alternate cut of the film disavowed by Lynch to expand it for four hours of television didn’t achieve much better. A 2000 Sci-Fi Channel miniseries adaptation ran almost four-and-a-half hours was able to handle certain aspects of the story better, but its small budget made it have to scrimp on the bigger visual spectacle.
Villeneuve, however, in the near six hours that both installments of his adaptation runs, has managed to mold the novel’s cerebral ideas into something that works as engaging visual cinema as well. Intricate world building is suggested in deft production design. Although rooted in some contemporary ideas, the technology of the year 10191 looks believable and relatable without actually looking like it might look like dated designs in a few years time. (See most pre-Star Wars futuristic science fiction of the 1970s.)
The novel Dune has much to do with its characters’ interior lives, and Villeneuve, along with co-screenwriter Jon Spaihts, work hard to bring the Paul’s visions to life. If anything, this pure cinematic approach may rob Chalamet some acting moments in favor of visualizing certain of these moments. Villeneuve does make up for that by allowing Bardem and Zendaya, as Paul’s love interest Chani, more room to work.
By now, movie audiences are used to seemingly non-stop barrages of action sequences and visual spectacle that only take a moment or two to acknowledge the characters involved and give them some rudimentary fleshing out. But Villeneuve never forgets that the characters are the prime motivations for the battles, and he keeps his vision firmly focused on them. It can be forgiven then, perhaps, that we don’t get to see more of the film’s big third act attack on the visiting Emperor and his ship as maybe we would like. Sure, more fun could be had watching all that mayhem. However, Villeneuve knows that all that violent chaos is just the prelude to the real, and ultimately far more satisfying dramatic climax between Paul and the Emperor and his allies.
Villeneuve has achieved what many thought impossible – bringing a sprawling story of politics, religious war, technology and revenge to the big screen in a way that balances the needs of the source material with those of creating a compelling motion picture. Well, two motion pictures. It is some phenomenal filmmaking and we may not see the likes of it again for some time. or maybe we will. Herbert’s Dune turned out to be such a success as a novel that he authored five sequels and then after his death his son co-authored over a dozen more books in the series. Villeneuve has expressed interest in continuing to explore this world, and moviegoers would be lucky if he gets the chance to do so.
