Forum Overview :: Peter Molyneux's The Movies :: Dune (2021)

[quote name="Rafiki"]I never read the book or saw the original movie, so I didn't really know much about Dune and had no opinions of it. After watching <i>Part One</i>, my impression is that the plot of the book could be summed up as: [quote]The most boring thing ever.[/quote] I could feel myself getting older watching this. It's like everything in this movie was focus-grouped to be as boring as possible. Ok, so the emperor manufactured a conflict between two houses so one would kill the other or they'd kill each other because he felt threatened by them. A young boy has magical powers and is The One who is prophesied to free everyone from the Matrix. Yes, I know, this book came first, fuck you. His house is attacked, then him and his mom are forced into exile and presumed dead. It took two and a half hours to get through this when it probably could have been told in 45 minutes. I saw in an old thread that people were complaining about the trailers making it seem like the battles were a main focus when they shouldn't be. Oh trust me, you'll be pleased that the battles are not the focus. The scenes are short and fucking boring. Since they were pretty obviously not trying to emphasize the battles or fight scenes, the fight choreography winds up being terrible and lacks any kind of tension, drama, or excitement. The technology and battle tactics of this universe confuses me. People have some kind of energy shield, so I guess that's why they don't use guns? Somehow swords can still get through this shield. 'Kay..... Paul's dad is shot with a poison dart....a projectile! The shield stops it, until it doesn't, and then the dart just continues on its normal trajectory and sticks in his back. What? If that's how projectiles react to a shield, then why not just shoot people with guns? The bullets would presumably just float in mid-air until the shield for some reason stopped blocking them and then they'd penetrate their target. At one point the bad guys have a laser that doesn't just burn through a giant metal door, but continues outward for like 500 feet and can even cut through stone. The good guys dodge around it giving the impression it would cut them in half. Why, then, wouldn't one guy with a laser just turn it on and sweep an entire battlefield, slicing entire militias in half? Because shields? The bad guys have space ships that can fire bombs and missiles that can penetrate shields around buildings, and presumably shields around people. Why even send in ground troops? Just fucking fire a billion missiles into the buildings and into the mass of defending troops who are on foot carrying shitty swords. Also, what is the point of shields again? Literally everything can defeat them. Maybe this wasn't played out in the 60s, but I am sick to death of tribalesque cultures invoking mint julep or koo nee-haw or shig-fartwarp as a challenge to leadership that results in a mandatory deathmatch. Maybe if said culture was portrayed as being retarded and fetishizing power, like some kind of space Q-Anon, but they seem pretty organized and sophisticated so I would kind of expect their political system to be above transferring power through ceremonial murder. Speaking of people dying, lots of different people get killed and characters seem to look sad about it but I could not give a <b><i>fuck</i></b> about any of them. I didn't feel anything about anybody. This is the least invested in a cast of characters I think I've ever been. The boy has the charisma of Agent K and mumbles every line in the movie with a dead lifeless expression. He seemed as bored to be in every scene in this movie as I was watching it. If you're going to make a 5 hour epic hero's journey, you might want your hero to have a personality. The movie is visually boring. I get that on a desert planet you're not going to get a lot of color, but you would think interior spaces would be decorated at least to break up the monotony for the audience. Nope, they're all just brown. Even on the Atreides home plant that has vegetation every scene is still drab. I was mildly interested in this movie because of how gorgeous Blade Runner 2049 looked, but even in 4K Dolby Vision this movie still looked like shit. In the year 10,000, every room is 45,000 square feet of mostly undecorated empty space. There was a big moment with a sand worm where it popped up out of the ground, but rather than it being shocking and iconic I was instead squinting through the blue-black of night. Way to ruin your big moment. I think the only positive thing I can say is that the kid's mom was pretty hot. And the girl he kept having visions.....wait... <i>*checks IMDB*</i> [quote]Born: 1996[/quote] <i><sub>2021 minus 1996..... ....venteen.....eighteen....nint....</sub></i> And the girl he kept having visions about was pretty hot. That's about the only part of the movie I enjoyed.[/quote]