I'm going to write this as a review for both Dune movies, so I'll include my thoughts about Dune part one throughout. For me, the most difficult part about rating these movies is trying to judge them as they stand on their own without comparing them to the original book.
As movies, I think both are great: the cinematography is amazing, the sound design is good, the acting is good, I liked the visual style and how they interpreted the various technologies of the world of Dune. The soundtrack is good, it can be a little overbearing at times but the music in part two felt like an improvement on this from part one. One of the biggest complaints people had with both movies is the pacing, saying that the first movie was dragging and the second was rushing. I agree with the sentiments about the latter, but personally I enjoyed the slower pacing of the first Dune movie. The second movie definitely moves quickly through its first half, then it slows down a lot in the second half before rushing to its conclusion.
The casting is good for the most part, I personally disagree with casting Rebecca Ferguson but I'll get into that more later. In the first movie I wasn't especially impressed with Timothée Chalamet as Paul but I think he does better in the role in the second part. Jason Momoa was a perfect pick for Duncan Idaho and Oscar Isaac did a great job as Duke Leto. Stellan Skarsgard was a good choice for Baron Harkonnen but I think he could have been written better. I was really looking forward to seeing Christopher Walken as the Emperor Shaddam but unfortunately he felt pretty lifeless and didn't bring very much energy to the scenes he was in.
Overall, as they stand on their own, the Dune movies are great films. I don't know if I'd call them the defining sci-fi movies of the 21st century like other people are saying, but they're still very good, definitely rewatchable, and I would recommend them.
Now, moving on to comparing them to the books, because once you start doing that you get to the more disappointing side of these movies. One of the biggest issues with both movies, especially the second, is that they almost completely leave out the ecological message of the book. This is a book that has been used as a textbook in environmental science classes, but I guess the filmmakers decided that message wasn't important enough. The Fremen are shown to be working towards terraforming Dune into a green world, slowly but surely making wind traps and planting grasses to fix the dunes in place. It's a goal that they are working towards with total commitment even though they know that it won't be realized for several generations. That's a powerful message that I think a lot more people need to hear nowadays, especially in reference to the issue of climate change. The movie barely mentions this goal at all, which I think is a disservice to the original story, and it diminishes the Fremen as characters.
I think the fundamental issue that these movies have with their adaptations is an understandable one, but that it could've been solved in a better way. The main issue with adapting the book is that the characters are very difficult to relate to: most of them are superhumans who have insane abilities. For the movies, a lot of the main characters are altered to make them more relatable to the audience, which is an understandable change. For some characters, this greatly improves them from the book, such as Duncan Idaho and Duke Leto. For others, like Chani and Jessica, it reduces the strength of their characters, which I'll explain more later.
Additionally, the book has a lot of complex concepts and story plots that it never stops to fully explain to the reader, you're just supposed to pick it up as you go along and reread it to understand, making it a little obtuse. Dune is very dialogue-heavy, with a lot of the action happening in the background or only described briefly. To remedy this, the movies remove some of the more complex topics and add more action scenes, which are exciting and well choreographed, but in the second movie they start feeling repetitive and redundant, and they overpower the more intricate plot points.
While the first movie cleverly managed to insert a lot of exposition without feeling like it was constantly lore dumping, part two feels like it's more afraid to explain things than the first, possibly because of complaints that "nothing happened" in the first movie. The result of this is that the second movie is much more action-heavy, but it still wants to include the complex topics from the book, so what we get is a bunch of action sequences with scenes of political complexities strung in between them, but without the full explanations necessary to clarify them. It's easy to understand why people who haven't read the books would feel confused by this, the movie barely takes the time to explain what's happening before it's moving on to the next scene of Fremen blowing up spice haulers.
Getting into direct comparisons to the book now, and starting with the first movie: my two biggest issues with the first movie was how they changed Jessica and how they dumbed down the mentats. Starting with mentats, they are a hugely important part of all of the Dune books; Thufir Hawat is essentially a main character in the first book, and Peter de Vries is a terrifying mastermind behind the Harkonnen plans. Part of what triggers Paul's first vision of the coming Jihad in his name is that his mother tells him he was trained as a mentat from birth without his knowledge. In the movie, the word mentat is never said once; Paul's mentat training isn't brought up; Thufir Hawat is just a guy who rolls his eyes back in his head, says something smart and then disappears at the halfway mark; and Peter de Vries dies of poisoning. How disappointing.
But what I think is the worse change that they made from the book is how they changed Jessica's character. While the Dune books get much more feminist as they go on, the first book has very few female characters. However, Jessica makes for a very strong main character: she has complete control over her mind and body, and through her Bene Gesserit training she has almost superhuman strength, speed, and can control others with the Voice. Her internal monologue also shows that she's almost always two steps ahead of everyone except Paul. In the movies, Jessica feels much weaker. In the first movie she's almost always crying or on the verge of tears, which makes it a lot believable when she starts killing Harkonnens with her bear hands, and it makes the scene in the tent when Paul gets his vision (the only part of the book where Jessica openly grieves) much less powerful.
Moving on to the second movie is where the changes get more disappointing. The movie begins with Paul, Jessica and the Fremen fighting the Harkonnens in some battle between the fight with Jamis and them getting to Sietch Tabr, which wasn't in the book and felt like it was added for the sake of starting with an action sequence. After the fight, Jessica throws up involuntarily --- again, as a Bene Gesserit she should have total control over her body and it doesn't make sense for her to do that, even though she's pregnant.
Speaking of Jessica's child, Alia isn't really a character in this, at least not like she was in the book. I can understand this, I had no idea how they were going to handle having a toddler who walks and talks like an adult and kills a man, and they handled it by having Jessica not give birth during the movie. They also don't really explain how Alia is pre-born, which is a piece of information that people who didn't read the book could probably use.
Once Paul and Jessica get to Sietch Tabr, things feel a lot different. The book describes the interiors of the Sietch as being covered with drapery, rugs, and cushions. There are classrooms, plastic factories, and workshops. The movie doesn't show this at all: the Sietch interior is all smooth, carved stone rather than natural rock walls, there's no textiles to be seen, and essentially only the water reservoir is shown. In general, the depiction of the Fremen in the movie is much worse than the book. The Fremen are a very tight-knit community where people understand each other's needs so well that they don't even need to communicate them out loud. When Jessica feels like she needs a coffee, a Fremen with coffee simply appears without her giving an order. In the movie the Fremen are three things: good at stabbing people, fanatic believers in Paul, or people who hate the Mahdi prophecy and don't believe in Paul. In the book, this dissenting faction against Paul isn't really present, and Chani definitely isn't part of it. I can understand that the filmmakers probably added it to help drive home the anti-hero worship message which a lot of people missed from the book, but it could have been executed better.
I also disliked how they changed Chani. In the books she very easily falls for Paul and gives him unwavering support, and I think it's fine that they wanted to make that more nuanced for the movies, but I don't like the way they did it. The movie wants us to think that they love each other even though it constantly shows Chani ranting against the prophecy and disagreeing with Paul's actions. In the end, she leaves Paul after he agrees to marry the Emperor's daughter Irulan (even though in the book he makes it clear that he is only marrying her for politics, refuses to even touch her, and has three children with Chani instead). This ending will definitely complicate things if they do go through with adapting Dune Messiah to complete the film trilogy.
I'm running out of room to write, and most people probably won't read this anyway because of the length, so I'll just say again that I enjoyed the movies and think they're good, but some of the changes they made, especially in part two, were disappointing and could have been executed better.
As movies, I think both are great: the cinematography is amazing, the sound design is good, the acting is good, I liked the visual style and how they interpreted the various technologies of the world of Dune. The soundtrack is good, it can be a little overbearing at times but the music in part two felt like an improvement on this from part one. One of the biggest complaints people had with both movies is the pacing, saying that the first movie was dragging and the second was rushing. I agree with the sentiments about the latter, but personally I enjoyed the slower pacing of the first Dune movie. The second movie definitely moves quickly through its first half, then it slows down a lot in the second half before rushing to its conclusion.
The casting is good for the most part, I personally disagree with casting Rebecca Ferguson but I'll get into that more later. In the first movie I wasn't especially impressed with Timothée Chalamet as Paul but I think he does better in the role in the second part. Jason Momoa was a perfect pick for Duncan Idaho and Oscar Isaac did a great job as Duke Leto. Stellan Skarsgard was a good choice for Baron Harkonnen but I think he could have been written better. I was really looking forward to seeing Christopher Walken as the Emperor Shaddam but unfortunately he felt pretty lifeless and didn't bring very much energy to the scenes he was in.
Overall, as they stand on their own, the Dune movies are great films. I don't know if I'd call them the defining sci-fi movies of the 21st century like other people are saying, but they're still very good, definitely rewatchable, and I would recommend them.
Now, moving on to comparing them to the books, because once you start doing that you get to the more disappointing side of these movies. One of the biggest issues with both movies, especially the second, is that they almost completely leave out the ecological message of the book. This is a book that has been used as a textbook in environmental science classes, but I guess the filmmakers decided that message wasn't important enough. The Fremen are shown to be working towards terraforming Dune into a green world, slowly but surely making wind traps and planting grasses to fix the dunes in place. It's a goal that they are working towards with total commitment even though they know that it won't be realized for several generations. That's a powerful message that I think a lot more people need to hear nowadays, especially in reference to the issue of climate change. The movie barely mentions this goal at all, which I think is a disservice to the original story, and it diminishes the Fremen as characters.
I think the fundamental issue that these movies have with their adaptations is an understandable one, but that it could've been solved in a better way. The main issue with adapting the book is that the characters are very difficult to relate to: most of them are superhumans who have insane abilities. For the movies, a lot of the main characters are altered to make them more relatable to the audience, which is an understandable change. For some characters, this greatly improves them from the book, such as Duncan Idaho and Duke Leto. For others, like Chani and Jessica, it reduces the strength of their characters, which I'll explain more later.
Additionally, the book has a lot of complex concepts and story plots that it never stops to fully explain to the reader, you're just supposed to pick it up as you go along and reread it to understand, making it a little obtuse. Dune is very dialogue-heavy, with a lot of the action happening in the background or only described briefly. To remedy this, the movies remove some of the more complex topics and add more action scenes, which are exciting and well choreographed, but in the second movie they start feeling repetitive and redundant, and they overpower the more intricate plot points.
While the first movie cleverly managed to insert a lot of exposition without feeling like it was constantly lore dumping, part two feels like it's more afraid to explain things than the first, possibly because of complaints that "nothing happened" in the first movie. The result of this is that the second movie is much more action-heavy, but it still wants to include the complex topics from the book, so what we get is a bunch of action sequences with scenes of political complexities strung in between them, but without the full explanations necessary to clarify them. It's easy to understand why people who haven't read the books would feel confused by this, the movie barely takes the time to explain what's happening before it's moving on to the next scene of Fremen blowing up spice haulers.
Getting into direct comparisons to the book now, and starting with the first movie: my two biggest issues with the first movie was how they changed Jessica and how they dumbed down the mentats. Starting with mentats, they are a hugely important part of all of the Dune books; Thufir Hawat is essentially a main character in the first book, and Peter de Vries is a terrifying mastermind behind the Harkonnen plans. Part of what triggers Paul's first vision of the coming Jihad in his name is that his mother tells him he was trained as a mentat from birth without his knowledge. In the movie, the word mentat is never said once; Paul's mentat training isn't brought up; Thufir Hawat is just a guy who rolls his eyes back in his head, says something smart and then disappears at the halfway mark; and Peter de Vries dies of poisoning. How disappointing.
But what I think is the worse change that they made from the book is how they changed Jessica's character. While the Dune books get much more feminist as they go on, the first book has very few female characters. However, Jessica makes for a very strong main character: she has complete control over her mind and body, and through her Bene Gesserit training she has almost superhuman strength, speed, and can control others with the Voice. Her internal monologue also shows that she's almost always two steps ahead of everyone except Paul. In the movies, Jessica feels much weaker. In the first movie she's almost always crying or on the verge of tears, which makes it a lot believable when she starts killing Harkonnens with her bear hands, and it makes the scene in the tent when Paul gets his vision (the only part of the book where Jessica openly grieves) much less powerful.
Moving on to the second movie is where the changes get more disappointing. The movie begins with Paul, Jessica and the Fremen fighting the Harkonnens in some battle between the fight with Jamis and them getting to Sietch Tabr, which wasn't in the book and felt like it was added for the sake of starting with an action sequence. After the fight, Jessica throws up involuntarily --- again, as a Bene Gesserit she should have total control over her body and it doesn't make sense for her to do that, even though she's pregnant.
Speaking of Jessica's child, Alia isn't really a character in this, at least not like she was in the book. I can understand this, I had no idea how they were going to handle having a toddler who walks and talks like an adult and kills a man, and they handled it by having Jessica not give birth during the movie. They also don't really explain how Alia is pre-born, which is a piece of information that people who didn't read the book could probably use.
Once Paul and Jessica get to Sietch Tabr, things feel a lot different. The book describes the interiors of the Sietch as being covered with drapery, rugs, and cushions. There are classrooms, plastic factories, and workshops. The movie doesn't show this at all: the Sietch interior is all smooth, carved stone rather than natural rock walls, there's no textiles to be seen, and essentially only the water reservoir is shown. In general, the depiction of the Fremen in the movie is much worse than the book. The Fremen are a very tight-knit community where people understand each other's needs so well that they don't even need to communicate them out loud. When Jessica feels like she needs a coffee, a Fremen with coffee simply appears without her giving an order. In the movie the Fremen are three things: good at stabbing people, fanatic believers in Paul, or people who hate the Mahdi prophecy and don't believe in Paul. In the book, this dissenting faction against Paul isn't really present, and Chani definitely isn't part of it. I can understand that the filmmakers probably added it to help drive home the anti-hero worship message which a lot of people missed from the book, but it could have been executed better.
I also disliked how they changed Chani. In the books she very easily falls for Paul and gives him unwavering support, and I think it's fine that they wanted to make that more nuanced for the movies, but I don't like the way they did it. The movie wants us to think that they love each other even though it constantly shows Chani ranting against the prophecy and disagreeing with Paul's actions. In the end, she leaves Paul after he agrees to marry the Emperor's daughter Irulan (even though in the book he makes it clear that he is only marrying her for politics, refuses to even touch her, and has three children with Chani instead). This ending will definitely complicate things if they do go through with adapting Dune Messiah to complete the film trilogy.
I'm running out of room to write, and most people probably won't read this anyway because of the length, so I'll just say again that I enjoyed the movies and think they're good, but some of the changes they made, especially in part two, were disappointing and could have been executed better.