When watching movies, I always try to differentiate between my personal enjoyment and the inherent merits of the movies. There are a lot of bad movies, which I totally and thoroughly enjoy watching, and some really great movies, which I don’t enjoy that much, but still can respect/appreciate.
With this prelude, I totally do not get the positive reactions to Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies. At the time I am writing this question, part two has 94% critique and 95% audience score at Rotten Tomatoes, 9.0 at IMDB.
In my opinion, Dune 1 and Dune 2 have obviously high production values and good special effects. What I do not like is the acting, the pacing, the total flat/simple characters and the whole narration, which is for me a trivial love story between Chani and Paul, plus becoming a leader and get some revenge. I could simply replace the ‘Dune’ theme with a standard war theme and a few tribes, and I would have exactly the same movie. Also the battle scenes at the end of part 2, they are for me totally cookie cutter war movie/battle aesthetics. (Total waste: There are big Sandworms after all, and combat with personal shields etc.).
My question is, especially if you very much enjoyed watching the Dune movies:
- Why did you personally enjoy the movie?
- Do you think this movies have some inherent merits?
- How do you like the acting/plot/pacing?
Dune is a very hard book to put onto screen since there’s not a lot of action and a lot of extremely important details built into the narrative.
They aren’t the greatest since they need to try and remain faithful to the political and religious story arcs while keeping it interesting with the little lore there is so far.
I think the biggest issue with the current films is excluding the internal monologues. There’s so much going on that gets lost. That said, I like them