Update: I’ll say this much — the coolest hombre in Dune is Jason Momoa‘s “Duncan Idaho, the swordmaster of House.” Moma is beardless here, and so he looks a bit heavyish — as if Joe Don Baker had succumbed to a cheeseburgers and beer and pasta diet after the success of Walking Tall. But Duncan has that macho mojo Han Solo thing going on. They should have ignored the Herbert narrative and kept him alive. Born in ’79, Momoa is no spring chicken but he’s got what audiences want.
Earlier: I’ve been watching Dune for 35 minutes, and it’s obviously an intelligent, expensive, thoughtfully composed film of its type. But within the first ten minutes I was dying within, dying of cancer and almost weeping with sympathy for poor Timothee Chalamet. Strange as it sounds, Dune made me want to shelter Chalamet and protect him from the sand storms of corporate boredom. Dune is so slow and suffocating that, even stranger, I almost wanted to forgive him for throwing Woody Allen under the bus.
Kill me now, Paul Atreides. Kill me now, sand worms. Suffocate me with spice, Denis Villeneuve. This is the equivalent of cinematic waterboarding. I just can’t stand the idea of watching another Joseph Campbell saga…a hero’s journey of self-discovery and heroic destiny…I’m choking on it.
George Lucas had obviously been influenced by Dune when he made Star Wars in ‘77, and that was 44, 45 years ago. The basic template has since been copied to death. It’s the same old Skywalker story, more or less. Only grimmer, and with ugly-ass worms, and from a political royal family perspective, and with tons upon tons of swirling dust storms, and actors dressed in olive drab sand rags.
155 minutes later, not counting phone breaks, food breaks, writing breaks and cat-petting breaks: Thank God it’s over. Yes, Chalamet’s performance improves as it goes along — the closer he gets to becoming “Paul Muad’Dib, the Fremen messiah”, the better he is.
I’ll never watch Dune again — that’s for damn sure. No way this thing becomes any kind of serious Best Picture contender…not a snowball’s chance.
