Dune Part One (2021)
Oct. 26th, 2021 02:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sasha_featherI saw Dune in the theater tonight with a couple of friends. We had a good time, and there were things I liked about it for sure, but overall my impression is negative.
Positives: Good acting, cool costume design, pretty cinematography. I loved the ornithopters the most, which are helicopter-like machines that look like dragon flies. I liked the grand brutalist architecture of the city. What politics we got to see, were interesting to me. I loved Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho.
Negatives:
You really don't have to be so faithful to the source that you include the egregious fat phobia, the hetero-centric quality, only men can lead, the white guy as savior, etc. I'm tired of movies in general, and SF in particular, that does this soft of thing. While a few characters were cast as people of color, mostly those people did not live.
It's 3 hours long, and tried to maintain tension throughout that 3 hours by using loud trombone-ish, slightly discordant music. It failed to hold tension and got boring and a bit silly to keep hearing the same refrain that apparently signaled nothing. It would have been great to have some breaks for levity and some change in the music.
Even in the theater and on the big screen, some scenes were too dark to really see anything clearly.
While I mostly loved the costume design, I did wonder at the choice of putting the Atreides soldiers in all black. An opportunity for color squandered, there, and it felt a bit fascist to have lines of men in black uniforms and little hats yelling "Atreides!". Perhaps that was deliberate, I don't know.
One scene in particular bothered me and I would like someone else's take on it.
Near the end of the film, Jessica and Paul are changing out of their regular clothes to put on still suits. They turn their backs to each other, but Jessica looks over her shoulder at one point to look at Paul's back.
What was the point of this? Is it meant to convey that she is thinking of saying something to him, but does not? If so, what? (And why when they are changing, as opposed to when they are in the tent?)
In most films that I watch, such a scene is a way of signaling that two people are having feelings about being naked around the other person, ie, it's a romance trope. It can also sometimes be used for humor or to convey character, think Parker whipping off her shirt in the elevator on "Leverage". Neither of these fit the scene in Dune, so I'm confused.
Positives: Good acting, cool costume design, pretty cinematography. I loved the ornithopters the most, which are helicopter-like machines that look like dragon flies. I liked the grand brutalist architecture of the city. What politics we got to see, were interesting to me. I loved Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho.
Negatives:
You really don't have to be so faithful to the source that you include the egregious fat phobia, the hetero-centric quality, only men can lead, the white guy as savior, etc. I'm tired of movies in general, and SF in particular, that does this soft of thing. While a few characters were cast as people of color, mostly those people did not live.
It's 3 hours long, and tried to maintain tension throughout that 3 hours by using loud trombone-ish, slightly discordant music. It failed to hold tension and got boring and a bit silly to keep hearing the same refrain that apparently signaled nothing. It would have been great to have some breaks for levity and some change in the music.
Even in the theater and on the big screen, some scenes were too dark to really see anything clearly.
While I mostly loved the costume design, I did wonder at the choice of putting the Atreides soldiers in all black. An opportunity for color squandered, there, and it felt a bit fascist to have lines of men in black uniforms and little hats yelling "Atreides!". Perhaps that was deliberate, I don't know.
One scene in particular bothered me and I would like someone else's take on it.
Near the end of the film, Jessica and Paul are changing out of their regular clothes to put on still suits. They turn their backs to each other, but Jessica looks over her shoulder at one point to look at Paul's back.
What was the point of this? Is it meant to convey that she is thinking of saying something to him, but does not? If so, what? (And why when they are changing, as opposed to when they are in the tent?)
In most films that I watch, such a scene is a way of signaling that two people are having feelings about being naked around the other person, ie, it's a romance trope. It can also sometimes be used for humor or to convey character, think Parker whipping off her shirt in the elevator on "Leverage". Neither of these fit the scene in Dune, so I'm confused.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-26 01:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-26 11:32 pm (UTC)A movie so long even the review neads an intermission.
We [saw the mid-80s David Lynch version](happily buzzed at a drive-in). I think that's an optimal way to view a Dune, no matter who's directing.