Today I will be doing a spoiler-free review of Dune. This movie came out in 2021 and was a massive box office movie and was the first big movie that came out after the pandemic. The main story follows a young man named Paul Atreides who must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. Malevolent forces explode into conflict, however, all fighting over the planet’s exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence. I just recently watched this, and I was a major fan. This sci-fi/adventure movie reminds me a lot of Star Wars in certain ways. The world-building is top-notch and is the main focus of the movie so you understand what’s going on in this confusing and insane universe. The pacing is very good, and even though it’s a slower-paced movie, it still goes by very quickly and you definitely don’t feel the 2h 48m runtime. The characters are really great, and all of them were led by an all-star cast. The main character Paul Atreides is played by Timothee Chalamet, who absolutely knocks it out of the park and completely makes you interested in his character, and other characters around him. His dad, Duke Leto Atreides is played by Oscar Isaac, who I believe might be the most underrated actor in Hollywood, and he is fantastic here. I was a little disappointed with the lack of Zendaya, especially since they advertised her so much for this movie. His mom, Lady Jessica, is played by Rebecca Ferguson, who might be my absolute standout in this movie, as I knew nothing about her previously.
The villain in this movie is known as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen who rules from his homeland of Giedi Prime and exercises a tyrannical rule of exploitation and sadism over the lives of slaves. He is also the ruler of the opposing force trying to get the precious resource I was talking about earlier. Another villain, who works under the Baron is known as Glossu Rabban, played by Dave Bautista. I thought he was very good as well in his little screen time, and I hope to see him in the movie more in the sequel. There are also other major actors like Jason Mamoa and Josh Brolin who play smaller roles, but completely excel in the time they’re given. Even with all of this though, the cinematography in this movie might be the most impressive part of it. Every shot was absolutely stunning and it truly might have the best cinematography in any movie I’ve ever seen. They even won multiple awards for how fantastic the cinematography was as well.
I always rate the movies I watch and I rate them based on 10 things in the movie. Those things are action, acting, cinematography, pacing, score, characters, ending, plot, protagonist, and antagonist. I rate all of those pieces 1-10 and then after that, I add up the scores of all 10 of them and get a total score out of 100. I gave this movie a 92/100, and the only thing that brought the score down was the antagonist. The main villain wasn’t in the movie too much, and I understand it was because they were trying to focus on the other main characters, but it definitely took away from the villain a bit. There also isn’t much action in this movie as it is heavily plot-driven, but when the action was used it was very effective. In general, I think this was more of a setup movie than anything for Dune 2, which I will 100% be seeing in theaters on opening night.
