Asking the Wrong Questions

This is going to be less a review as an I told you so. When I reviewed the first part of Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of Frank Herbert's psychedelic space opera three years ago, I offered praise mingled with skepticism. I admired the film's stark, gargantuan visuals, but also observed how its monochromatic palette felt almost like a panicked reaction to the campy visual excess of David Lynch's 1984 film version. I praised some of the decisions Villeneuve and co-writer Jon Spaihts made to the novel's lumpy, problematic plot—and more importantly, their willingness to make those decisions and make the story their own—but also observed how they tended to file off anything that was too weird or creepy about the original story, streamlining it into a familiar, Game of Thrones -style tale of palace intrigue and squabbles between royal houses. There was something about the first Dune that seemed almost respectability-obsessed. It left me wondering how this would team han...

For as long as we've been waiting for Denis Villeneuve's Dune , a period made even longer by the vicissitudes of the pandemic, one question, it seems, has occupied fandom: will they get it right? After two failed adaptations (two and a half if you include Alejandro Jodorowsky's never-realized, and thus never disappointing, vision for the film), would Dune , a novel decreed "unadaptable" by some, finally get the cinematic treatment it deserved? David Lynch's 1984 debacle was star-studded (Kyle MacLachlan! Patrick Stewart! Dean Stockwell! Brad Dourif! Virginia Madsen! Sting!) and visually lush, but also a cursed production that yielded an incomprehensible mess, so much so that the film has two versions, one bearing the infamous Alan Smithee credit because it was recut by the studio without Lynch's input. (For the record, the Lynch version is better, though neither is what you might call "good".) And then there’s the 2000 SyFy/Hallmark miniseries, m...