I posted here that I quite liked Dune Part One when I finally got around to seeing it at home, and I think most reviewers thought Part Two was better. But I saw it on the weekend and had a somewhat cooler reaction.
It's not that I would say that it is bad in any particular way, and I'm happy to have seen it. It's just that, despite the spectacle, it felt oddly un-involving, and (to my taste) too relentless in its serious tone.
You could say the same about the tone of the first film, I suppose - although I think there was more emotional connection between characters in that one. Which is odd, given that Paul gets his love interest in this one.
I think also that a big part of why I liked the first one was that, from a visual world building point of view, it looked exactly as I thought the Dune universe should look, and sometimes that carries a lot of the appeal of a movie. But in the second one, the novelty factor of the world building has worn off. And, to be honest, I think some of the visuals in this one were too CGI looking. (I refer in particular to the crowd in that gladiatorial scene - they seemed to me to be moving in too similar a way.) But overall, that is a very minor quibble.
I did read a review that said it was strangely emotionally cold for what was basically a revenge story. I agree. And I hate to say it, because I feel guilty about dissing one of the few directors who likes making a genre I like to see made (serious science fiction), but I feel the film has sent me back to my old criticism of Denis Villeneuve - he does spectacle very well, and isn't scared to make movies about big ideas: but somehow he just doesn't manage to make me care enough about the story or characters. Here's what I wrote before:
In fact, having watched three of director Denis Villeneuve's films now, I recognise this as a constant theme in my reaction to his work - he's visually stylish, but always leaves me cold in any emotional connection to the material. I'm not entirely sure how he achieves that, but despite liking visually what I saw on screen for much of Sicario, Arrival and now this one, by the end of all I felt I had not really been convinced by the human story in any of them.
By the way, I know there is an interview out there that he did recently with Steven Spielberg, who apparently gagged over how great he thought the movie was. But Spielberg's a nice guy who is always praising other director's work. For me, Spielberg's science fiction has exactly what I find missing in Villeneuve's - an emotional and empathetic connection to character.
Anyone agree?
I liked neither film as both were different to the book.
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