Dune: Part One
Year: 2021
Rating: PG-13
Length: 155 minutes / 2.58 hours
Adaptations of beloved books can be a challenging endeavor. It’s not impossible, as we’ve seen with The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003), Harry Potter (2001-2011), or The Hunger Games (2011-2015) but there are certain traps that can doom a film version of a story to be hated by the community that loves the book. While Dune (1984) attempted to give this story life on the big screen, the special effects at the time and your opinion of David Lynch’s filmmaking may have tainted an otherwise “impossible” adaptation. When a new adaptation of Dune came along with Denis Villeneuve as its director, I had hope that he would honor the source material.
Villeneuve has proven himself to be a fantastic sci-fi director. From Arrival (2016) to Blade Runner: 2049 (2017), he has shown that he understands stories as much as aesthetics. The best way to honor Frank Herbert’s legacy in this adaptation of his seminal work was to split Dune (2021) into two parts. This gave 2021’s “Part One” enough room to establish the feel of Arrakis and the struggle of the main character of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) without needing to cram the entire story into a single film.
The fatal flaw of the two-part movie is that it ends with no fulfilling conclusion. Sure, there’s a natural breakpoint here, but then it feels like “Part One” is only a precursor and setup to a much more exciting “Part Two.” And that’s saying something because this movie has plenty of excitement. The special effects and storytelling are also superb enough for this movie to deserve its Best Picture nod (even if they snubbed Villeneuve for Best Director). Ultimately, Dune: Part One shows how to adapt a beloved sci-fi book correctly, even if it would have been better to create a four-hour long film with an intermission instead.
A superb effort by Denis Villeneuve to adapt the beloved Frank Herbert novel, I give Dune: Part One 4.0 stars out of 5.
