One of the greatest works of modern literature, Frank Herbert’s novel series Dune, the first of which was published in 1965, the unfortunate fate of Dune on the screen and the longing for a deserved adaptation always remain on the table as the topics that are not missing from movie conversations. Alejandro Jodorowsky’s hugely designed adaptation project, which he never shot, or David Lynch’s unfortunate adaptation of 1984 (with a lesser fanciful audience), which saw the bottom of his career, turned the classic work into a strange curse for filmmakers and moviegoers. Now we are again at that point in the history of cinema, where a big new adaptation that has been mentioned for a long time is reflected on the big screen: Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Desert Planet – Dune is an epic that will obviously be serialized in different formats, carefully designed under the shadow of all these years of disappointment and anticipation. As the first part of the adaptation, it is finally in front of its fans.
For Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, whose career has risen and grown with a rapidly rising momentum in the past ten years and has suddenly reached the level of “wanted person”, attempting to adapt the novel he admires with the task of breaking his curse on the screen is undoubtedly difficult, but it is also great in terms of creating a world from the beginning. an opportunity. The director, who has had a similar experience in his interpretation of the sequel to Blade Runner, one of the greatest classics in the history of cinema, this time sets up his sleeves for an epic series with a much larger project. From this point of view, it is possible to say that it is a chosen project, directed by a chosen one, telling the story of a chosen noble, for Dune, who has taken on another responsibility with the expectation that the work will be the savior of movie theaters in the post-pandemic period, independently of itself. Stating that he designed the adaptation as a trilogy that will cover the first two books of the series in total, the director is busy with introducing the Dune universe he created in the first movie, which serves as an opening, to the audience and building this new world with every detail.
Dune: Cautious Epic
We begin to listen to the story at a point where there are very active developments regarding the political agenda of the galaxy, from an angle where the Atreides family, one of the main dynasties that make up the Dune universe, is located at the center. The atmosphere heats up when the Emperor takes control of the harvest of the planet Arrakis, where the spice is sourced and processed, from the Harkonnen family, whom he suspects of conspiring against him, and gives it to the Atreides. Among the conflicts we will witness between dynasties over the balance of power is the main hero of the story, Paul Arteides, the future hope of the entire planet. But there is a huge world surrounding it. Throughout the film, we learn the basic features of the clans, each of which has a deep history and culture, detailed with the combination of dozens of historical, religious and political references in Herbert’s novel, which we need to know for now, and where they stand in the story. The place of the straightforward plot, which progresses in a simple channel, is almost drowned in these introductory sequences. Despite being watched with the awareness that it is a prologue aimed at preparing the audience for the continuation of the series, Dune turns into a detached and very long promotional trailer that makes us feel as if we are watching the character posters of the movie in motion after a point.
It’s not because it’s a piece of presentation that the film lacks fluidity or a narrative that can build up by overlapping with the presentation of all its characters. Unfortunately, there is no script that has been matured enough to drag the audience after it, even when evaluated on its own and the sequel is unknown. For example, The Fellowship of the Ring, the first movie of the Lord of the Rings series, which we can sense from every part of the project and all the marketing strategies that it wants to proceed on the same path and is sometimes compared with itself, for this reason, while building its world in the same way, it also shines the heroes of its story one by one and continues. It was a very mature presentation film that could be watched independently of the films and could immerse the audience in their world. However, in Dune, the attitude that emphasizes “we have witnessed very few of them” at every opportunity we encounter is met by refraining from touching many important issues in the rich content of the original work.
As the sequels and other projects that will complete the series come, it will be possible to interpret the adaptation created by Villeneuve more clearly, of course, but when evaluated alone, we have a very controlled first film that cannot fill the design that was created with a thousand and one care. While developments that lead to vital changes for the universe he deals with take place, he prefers not to touch the water and soap, as in Lynch’s adaptation, which has been criticized for almost the same issues.
He refrains from his audience, or, let’s say, leaves it to later films, much that he could say about the future of the empire, the inter-dynastic struggle, a natural resource for which wars are fought, the savior of peoples, and the Fremen’s position in them, which might find a response in today’s political world. As such, Dune was designed to be very large in response to very high expectations, depicted in a very large painting and served in a very large package; it is just an adaptation of a great work that speaks in a very low voice.
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