Over the long weekend I watched Dune Part Two. You probably did too, if you have Max. It’s been hotly anticipated, and in order to really appreciate it I watched part one, as well as the rather odd 1980s version as well. Here’s the “tl;dr” of it all: I didn’t like it. Major spoilers to follow, since I don’t think I could really talk about what I didn’t like without them. So, you’ve been warned.
We tend to be pretty numb to good special effects these days. There was a time when that wasn’t the case, and I think if you’re able to put yourself back in that place, you’ll realize how absolutely amazing the effects are in this film. Specifically, they’re more than amazing, they’re flawless. Every grain of sand is where it should be. The worms seem as big as they should. There’s not even a slight hint of missed perspective in giant sweeping shots that include live action. If you didn’t know better, you’d assume all of it was 100% real.
I’ll also give shoutouts to cinematography and sound design. I think you have to look all the way back to Lawrence of Arabia to see desert cinematography that looks so grand. It can be very hard to shoot in the desert, and it’s amazing how well these shots look. The sound, which was very decent in the first film, seems even better defined here as well. The first film had certain bits that seemed a bit muddy or muttered, and you don’t see any of that here.
I’ll say again as I have said before that I am no fan of Austin Butler, Timothee Chalamet, or Zendaya. They are all three undeniably experts at their craft. They deliver performances that don’t seem like performances, and you buy who they instantly. But their performances didn’t land with me. I didn’t feel any inner conflict or interpersonal conflict. Some of that is due to the writing, which I’ll go into in another paragraph. But I can’t help feeling that other actors might have wrung a bit more depth out of these characters, who seem even more comic-book-ish and flat than they should.
I’ll say the same about the rest of the supporting cast, who generally had very little to do other than be props and spout exposition. There’s no inner pain to these characters, and I feel like there really could have been. The further away you get from Chalamee and Zendaya, the less you feel like these are people and the more you feel like they’re props.
Obviously when you have a story like Dune there are some things you have to acknowledge. The book was written well before Star Wars and Game of Thrones but if you didn’t know that, you’d assume that a lot of the plot of Dune was stolen from those two films. Dune is automatically going to feel less fresh because it bears such similarities to those other films. That’s not the fault of Dune, but certainly the film could have taken more time to build and highlight what makes this story unique.
My biggest problem here is that this is, at its heart, a fairly simple morality play. The Atreides clan is good. The Harkonnen clan is bad. The Bene Gesserit are sneaky. The Fremen are sturdy and righteous. Really that’s all you need to know. Is there no conflict within any of them for any reason? The script doesn’t show it to you. In fact, of all the characters, it’s Chani who gets treated the worst by the script. You can “hypothesize” that she is worried about the political ramifications of Paul getting too much power. But the script doesn’t show you that. The script shows you a female character who is irrationally upset given what they see in front of them. It doesn’t show you anything that makes this character a strong fighter or a positive influence.
This brings us to what I really didn’t like about Dune Part Two. None of the main characters ever seem to be in real danger. I never for a moment thought any of them would die trying to do something, and that made it hard for me to care about the story. The plot armor is pretty thick here, folks. Did anyone think even for a moment that Paul would fall off the worm and get crushed to death? Or that Austin Butler’s Feyd-Rautha would succeed in the end?
When you know the eventual outcome, you have a tendency to get impatient waiting for the film to get there. And, with a film that spans nearly three hours, there’s plenty of time to get impatient. I found myself checking the run time about every 10 minutes to figure out if it was almost over.
And when the end finally did come, it didn’t feel definitive. This wasn’t sold as “part 2 of 3” in the same way that a film like The Two Towers or The Empire Strikes Back was. Audiences largely came into part 2 with an expectation that this would be the end of the story, or at least a logical stopping point. What they walked out with was, at best, the end of a chapter. The film doesn’t take more than a moment to truly present the momentous nature of the Emperor yielding to Paul. There’s nothing like the moment at the end of Star Wars (the original) where you got to savor that victory. Instead, we rush quickly to the entire fleet going into space. There’s no explanation of whether or not the Fremen are on board the ships or anything about the intrigue of the other families unilaterally opposing Paul.
I mean, you don’t even get any sort of emotional beat where you see Paul as the only Harkonnen/Atreides hybrid. That should be huge. The film ignores it. Paul only reveals it to two characters who die anyway.
After three hours, the only question in my mind was how so much time could have been spent without any character or plot development. It’s not clear yet if there will be a part three. If there is, it will be years and years from now. I’m not sure if audiences will be there for it. Having some familiarity with the books, I don’t know if they’ll like what they see when or if they do show up. Oh well, that’s a story for 2029 or so, and if I’m still writing this series by then, I’ll tell you how I feel about it.
Dune Part Two is streaming on Max.
The post STREAMING SATURDAY: Dune Part Two (the unpopular view) appeared first on The Solid Signal Blog.
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Let’s start with the things I did like
We tend to be pretty numb to good special effects these days. There was a time when that wasn’t the case, and I think if you’re able to put yourself back in that place, you’ll realize how absolutely amazing the effects are in this film. Specifically, they’re more than amazing, they’re flawless. Every grain of sand is where it should be. The worms seem as big as they should. There’s not even a slight hint of missed perspective in giant sweeping shots that include live action. If you didn’t know better, you’d assume all of it was 100% real.
I’ll also give shoutouts to cinematography and sound design. I think you have to look all the way back to Lawrence of Arabia to see desert cinematography that looks so grand. It can be very hard to shoot in the desert, and it’s amazing how well these shots look. The sound, which was very decent in the first film, seems even better defined here as well. The first film had certain bits that seemed a bit muddy or muttered, and you don’t see any of that here.
And then… the other stuff.
I’ll say again as I have said before that I am no fan of Austin Butler, Timothee Chalamet, or Zendaya. They are all three undeniably experts at their craft. They deliver performances that don’t seem like performances, and you buy who they instantly. But their performances didn’t land with me. I didn’t feel any inner conflict or interpersonal conflict. Some of that is due to the writing, which I’ll go into in another paragraph. But I can’t help feeling that other actors might have wrung a bit more depth out of these characters, who seem even more comic-book-ish and flat than they should.
I’ll say the same about the rest of the supporting cast, who generally had very little to do other than be props and spout exposition. There’s no inner pain to these characters, and I feel like there really could have been. The further away you get from Chalamee and Zendaya, the less you feel like these are people and the more you feel like they’re props.
So, the writing
Obviously when you have a story like Dune there are some things you have to acknowledge. The book was written well before Star Wars and Game of Thrones but if you didn’t know that, you’d assume that a lot of the plot of Dune was stolen from those two films. Dune is automatically going to feel less fresh because it bears such similarities to those other films. That’s not the fault of Dune, but certainly the film could have taken more time to build and highlight what makes this story unique.
My biggest problem here is that this is, at its heart, a fairly simple morality play. The Atreides clan is good. The Harkonnen clan is bad. The Bene Gesserit are sneaky. The Fremen are sturdy and righteous. Really that’s all you need to know. Is there no conflict within any of them for any reason? The script doesn’t show it to you. In fact, of all the characters, it’s Chani who gets treated the worst by the script. You can “hypothesize” that she is worried about the political ramifications of Paul getting too much power. But the script doesn’t show you that. The script shows you a female character who is irrationally upset given what they see in front of them. It doesn’t show you anything that makes this character a strong fighter or a positive influence.
The sound of inevitability
This brings us to what I really didn’t like about Dune Part Two. None of the main characters ever seem to be in real danger. I never for a moment thought any of them would die trying to do something, and that made it hard for me to care about the story. The plot armor is pretty thick here, folks. Did anyone think even for a moment that Paul would fall off the worm and get crushed to death? Or that Austin Butler’s Feyd-Rautha would succeed in the end?
When you know the eventual outcome, you have a tendency to get impatient waiting for the film to get there. And, with a film that spans nearly three hours, there’s plenty of time to get impatient. I found myself checking the run time about every 10 minutes to figure out if it was almost over.
The end?
And when the end finally did come, it didn’t feel definitive. This wasn’t sold as “part 2 of 3” in the same way that a film like The Two Towers or The Empire Strikes Back was. Audiences largely came into part 2 with an expectation that this would be the end of the story, or at least a logical stopping point. What they walked out with was, at best, the end of a chapter. The film doesn’t take more than a moment to truly present the momentous nature of the Emperor yielding to Paul. There’s nothing like the moment at the end of Star Wars (the original) where you got to savor that victory. Instead, we rush quickly to the entire fleet going into space. There’s no explanation of whether or not the Fremen are on board the ships or anything about the intrigue of the other families unilaterally opposing Paul.
I mean, you don’t even get any sort of emotional beat where you see Paul as the only Harkonnen/Atreides hybrid. That should be huge. The film ignores it. Paul only reveals it to two characters who die anyway.
After three hours, the only question in my mind was how so much time could have been spent without any character or plot development. It’s not clear yet if there will be a part three. If there is, it will be years and years from now. I’m not sure if audiences will be there for it. Having some familiarity with the books, I don’t know if they’ll like what they see when or if they do show up. Oh well, that’s a story for 2029 or so, and if I’m still writing this series by then, I’ll tell you how I feel about it.
Dune Part Two is streaming on Max.
The post STREAMING SATURDAY: Dune Part Two (the unpopular view) appeared first on The Solid Signal Blog.
Continue reading...
