Worms in the Suns: a review of Dune

Dune

by Frank Herbert

Produced by Denis Villeneuve, Mary Parent, Cale Boyter, Joe Caracciolo Jr.

Starring Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, Chang Chen, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem,

Cinematography Greig Fraser

Edited by Joe Walker

Music by Hans Zimmer

Production companies Legendary Pictures, Villeneuve Films

I decided to prepare for watching the Denis Villeneuve version of the Frank Herbert classic by watching the 1984 David Lynch movie of the same name.

Oh, dear.

I hadn’t watched the movie since it first came out 37 years ago because I was utterly furious at the ending. It just starts raining like hell, for no apparent reason. Hollywood has a bad habit to tacking on idiotic happy endings that don’t fit or even make sense, and I suspect that that’s what happened here. Lynch may have thought it would resolve the plot, although I can’t imagine Lynch being interested in resolving plots.

The brilliance of Herbert’s story obscures the fact that Arrakis has an utterly preposterous ecology, the most preposterous thing being that it has any ecology at all. At one point, the Imperial Ecologist, Liet-Kynes, cheerfully tells the Atreides contingent that the temperature is 300 Kelvin, but will be 350 by noon. Three hundred is an entirely reasonable 80 degrees Fahrenheit, Three hundred and fifty is a somewhat less reasonable 170F, perfect for slow-cooking pork (or humans). And while the descriptions of straining water out of the place are plausible enough, what do those millions of Fremen EAT? There’s only kangaroo mice and worms, even if the worms are a bit outsized. For that matter, what do those mice eat? Or the worms? They seem willing to expend megajoules of energy in order to acquire 70 kilos of alien meat. Jessica would be the dietary equivalent of an M&M. But I digress.

The elements of the 1984 movie that made it haunting are still there: the absurd steampunk costuming and sets, years before the term “steampunk” was invented. The grotesque Baron. The worms, which were an impressive technological achievement for the time. Those blue Fremen eyes, which look hokey now but were amazing back then. And there was enough of the plot to make it more than just your ordinary SF flick.

But this was an era when SF and Fantasy movie directors believed that in order to be taken seriously, the dialogue had to be stilted and extremely portentous, an affectation not helped by Lynch’s decision to use Herbert’s thought voiceovers, irritating enough in the book, unintentionally hilarious in the movie.

By about a half hour in, I was wondering why I wasn’t seeing the wisecracking silhouettes of Joel and the ‘bots on the screen. Perhaps MST3K did do a cover of it. I’ll have to look. It’s right up their alley. Between the stilted dialogue, the generally poor acting, and the often cheesy sets (landscapes by The Old Show) it was pretty dismal. And that horrible ending awaited. Not even Patrick Stewart and Sting could save it.

I figured the Villeneuve interpretation had to be better. After all, he did Arrival and Bladerunner 2049, and I liked both of those.

Turns out I was right. It’s FAR better. The difference is like The Expanse compared to the original Lost in Space. My Favorite Martian compared to Michael Valentine Smith

First, there’s the characterizations. Solid throughout, and fairly faithful to the Herbert originals. Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) was something of an Olive Oyl in the first movie, but is a stronger and more realistic character here. This Paul (Timothée Chalamet) is a bit paler and skinnier than I would have envisioned (those Arakkan suns will eat him alive) but he’s indisputably the better actor. The acting through the movie is both subtle and subdued, even Jason Momoa. You know they’re doing it right when you stop thinking of them as actors and start seeing them as people. Yes, even the Baron.

The Arrakis scenes were shot in Jordan and Abu Dhabi, and made for a more authentic rendition of the desert planet. The sets, while not as flat-out weird as those on the Lynch production, were arrestingly alien while remaining evocative of the Arabian sand culture from which Herbert drew much of his world image. The special effects—the guild ships and the sandworms—are utterly magnificent.

Wisely, Villeneuve isn’t trying to pack all of Herbert’s dense and multi-layered narrative into one two hour movie. This is the first of two movies, and ends (for those familiar with the book) with Paul’s ritual battle to the death with Jamis, (Babs Olasanmokun) which secures his entry into Fremen culture. It’s a sensible spot to break the story off.

Dune isn’t just a better retelling of the story; it’s a superior work, one that sets the stage for the second half, which hopefully won’t be too far in the future.