The Adaptation We Needed

Hello again, I’m back in action. I’m late to the party but I gotta write about Dune, ‘cause it’s a story I care about, and I can’t help but form some strong opinions about it. In one of my first blog posts I wrote about the original novel, I read it just a few years ago and loved it. I did and still do highly recommend it, whether or not you’ve seen the movie.

Now that I’ve finally seen the new Denis Villeneuve adaptation (had to wait a long time ‘cause there’s no movie theater here in Pichilemu), I can highly recommend it as well. It’s a really solid adaptation that makes the subject matter about as accessible as a film possibly could, and is just a blood-pumping visceral experience in its own right. From a certain perspective I would say it’s a nearly perfect adaptation… and yet from a deeper, more personal perspective, I have to say it misses the mark for me, as I shall explain.

It’s important to note that adapting Dune at all is an impressive feat unto itself. The novel is ridiculously complex. On top of the individual character arcs and relationships you have layers of political drama, and on top of that are more layers of science, philosophy, and spirituality, and underlying all of that you have this alien setting and otherworldly technology. Getting it all in a single film, or even a series of them, is a tall freakin’ order.

And not only did Denis Villeneuve get it all in there (for the first half of the story at least), but I’d say he threaded the needle of book faithfulness here—in that he was able to whittle down the first half of the massive novel into a viable two-and-a-half hour screenplay, without cutting away anything essential to the core of the story, or adding something superfluous to make a clean three-act structure.

I like that this movie has an odd rhythm (rather fitting, now that I think about it), it keeps you guessing all the time because it doesn’t just hit the same predictable beats as every other action/adventure movie. It takes its time to do what it needs to do, and I like that.

On the other hand, it does drag towards the end, and finishes abruptly, leaving an unsatisfying aftertaste. I read a comment that pointed out there is a more obvious place in the book to make a cutoff—before a big jump ahead in time, and after one major important scene that could have acted as a final climax of the film.

I do find myself disappointed the movie didn’t do that, it would have been a much more gripping ending, and a better set up for the next movie. Of course, this would have added another thirty minutes to the runtime, which would have made it a bigger risk for wider audiences… which brings me to the crux of my mixed feelings about this thing…

Villeneuve’s Dune is a perfect adaptation in that it managed to bring a very faithful form of the story to a very wide audience. This is a difficult story to put on film at all, let alone in such a broadly appealing way. The novel may be popular among classics and sci-fi readers, but I never would have guessed it could be such mega-blockbuster material.

The downside of which being that it had to be made in the style of our times, it still had to feel like a 2020’s blockbuster. It had to look slick and polished and clean, and that meant downplaying some of the weirdness. It couldn’t be as eerie or surreal or as disturbing as the book gets in places.

And that is what is disappointing for me, by a highly personal, subjective measure. The film does a good job of being ominous, but I wanted to be downright creeped out. It gets weird, but I wanted it to be frighteningly bizarre.

I’m frustrated by how clean everyone and everything is. Even after going through battles and struggling to survive in the desert—the most insanely dry desert imaginable—everyone still looks clean and groomed and well-rested. This is where I want more Spaghetti Western, they should look dehydrated and tired, they should be disheveled and streaked with dust and dry sweat.

The sets all have the right sense of scope, but most of them are so spare they feel kind of unused—I wanted more of that early Star Wars feel of everything being well worn-in. And I know this might seem like a bit of a contradiction, but I wanted the technology to actually be more sleek and more incomprehensible, more retro-futuristic.

Somehow this movie was both too realistic and too unrealistic at the same time. The tech and the architecture was grounded and tactile, while the scenery and characters remained inhumanly spic and span. If I could have my way, it would be an almost dreamlike civilization, but with real grease and dirt on it.

This artist Bruce Pennington pretty much nailed the imagery with his book covers from the ‘70s editions of the Dune series—in fact it’s likely that these covers got in my head before I read the book and shaped the way I visualized it. In any case, this is the kind of look and feel I wanted:

The soundtrack similarly felt a little too ‘soundtracky’. Parts of it I loved, and the main theme is great and really captures the right vibe. But at times it felt very predictable, even a little cliche. Here again, I would have preferred a little more Spaghetti Western, a few real instruments overlapping with sound effects rather than an over-produced Hollywood-orchestra. It should have been more melodic, more rhythmic, and a little less polished.

Of course I never expected the movie to live up to my personal ideals, I went in expecting that 2020’s blockbuster sheen. And in that sense, I think it delivered exactly what it tried to. This is a movie most people could at least enjoy, if not be fully drawn in and captivated by.

There is just one big mark against it, from a tent-pole perspective. The amount of information it throws at the audience is a bit ridiculous. It has a lot to explain, and also expects the audience to pick up on a lot more—which is decidedly a good thing, in my book, but it does mean that to someone who has not read the books it can be overwhelming. And when you have the constant sensory barrage on top of it, you could end up sort of numb to whatever’s going on—this was more or less my wife’s reaction, who has not read the book, and did not particularly like the movie.

Which is why I’m a bit surprised this movie did as well as it did at the box office. I’m surprised many non-readers were able to follow it. And as one of my favorite critics pointed out, if you don’t know where the story will go next then the ending probably feels like a major letdown.

But as someone who does know where it’s going, I am genuinely excited to see Part 2. If Villeneuve remains as faithful to the second half of the novel, then we’re in for a hell of a ride in the next one.

Alright, that’s my Dune medium-hot take! Do you agree? Do you think I would I like David Lynch’s Dune more? Or would Jodorowsky’s be the best, if it existed? Let me know in the comments!

Gibstronaut