Film Review: DUNE: PART 1 (2021): An Entertaining Scifi Movie Combining Style, Originality, & The Best Adaptation of The Source Material

Dune: Part 1 Review

Dune: Part 1 (2021) Film Review, a movie directed by Denis Villeneuve, and starring Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Zendaya, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Stephen McKinley Henderson, David Dastmalchian, Chang Chen, Oscar Isaac, Timothée Chalamet, Jason Momoa, Dave Bautista, Stellan Skarsgard, and Charlotte Rampling.

The sections of this review and analysis:

• Initial Thoughts
• The Little Things
• Widescreen Scope to Visuals
• The Tripod
• Lady Jessica’s Use of Voice
• The Sardaukar
• Idaho’s Corridor Battle
• Dr. Keynes, the Sardaukar, and The Maker
• The Jamis Duel
• In Closing

Initial Thoughts

I have seen all three big and small-screen adaptations of Dune and the third adaptation, director Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation, is the best film based on the Frank Herbert novel (with the TV mini-series being the most faithful to the source material). Villeneuve’s Dune: Part 1 makes a movie of the source material instead of being married to it. Showing a fervent lack of constraint by it, Villeneuve’s Dune is not the best literal translation of the source material but by not being so, Villeneuve is able to make the story-line far more accessible.

Like the TV mini-series, Villeneuve’s Dune takes big liberties with the source material, adding new things, taking risks. Just enough of the source material is present to give the viewer the broad strokes of the book’s immense and complex story-line. As it says in the book (to paraphrase): “There are plans within plans within plans” and this film does a good job of placing the most important plans (story-lines) on-screen while jettisoning the others.
There is criticism that the film is heavy on style, light on substance. That argument is not baseless on its surface. The story-line of Dune: Part 1 is extremely simplistic despite its visual grandeur. What the other reviewers do not acknowledge, don’t realize, or do not care about is that this was done on-purpose. The book’s complex plot-line is dumbed-down so that it can be easily consumed by the uninitiated. The book’s large narrative is truncated so that the main storyline can flourish on-screen and not be bogged down by half a dozen subplots, side characters, Dune-specific vernacular, and heavy-world building. If Villeneuve had kept even a third of the source material in his film, Dune: Part 1 would be slow, boring, and it would lose people.

Villeneuve wisely chose the streamline approach, while throwing in nuggets for the book readers throughout the film e.g., the head of the bull that killed Duke Leto Atreides’ father. The cost of that approach is the aforementioned “light on substance” veneer, and in some instances, superficiality, but Denis Villeneuve is balancing not just this film, but future Dune films. Going plot-heavy in Dune: Part 1 would have cost him story-line alacrity and audience engagement.

Those pluses, however, are not without their minuses. Dune: Part 1’s superficiality rears its head with Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet)’s characterization. Paul is virtually an empty character and he is the lead protagonist in the film. The only character of depth in Dune is Lady Jessica, thanks to Rebecca Ferguson’s performance and the specific character-building scenes she is given.

Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 did a better job of making its down-trodden lead character sympathetic. Since Dune: Part 1 is only the first part of a two-part story, it is unfair to judge Paul Atreides’ incomplete character-arc, but I am obliged, since this is a review, to comment on what is currently on-screen and available to be seen.