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    Dune

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

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    In my days as a film enthusiast, I’ve seen all kinds of films. The memories I have of “Dune” will live on for a long time because it is not only bad, it’s LEGENDARY in its whopping 137 minutes of awfulness. I should preface by the fact that I have not read any of the books, so I’m sure some people out there are able to make sense out of all this, but that’s because this is a film that requires you to do homework in order to enjoy it. I don’t know about you, but I don’t consider movies work, I consider them entertainment. As such, the plot is a near incoherent mess filled with bizarre names, but I will do my best to describe to you what happens in this film. It’s set in the far future, where the known universe is ruled by an evil emperor. The most important substance in the entire universe is “Spice”. Spice is not actually something you put on your food, it’s a substance extracted from the planet Arrakis (dubbed “Dune”) necessary for instantaneous space travel, is a key ingredient in expanding your mind and mental capacity and can extend your life indefinitely. Duke Leto Atreides (Jurgen Prochnow) is secretly amassing an army and the Emperor suspects that this will threaten the production of Spice. He comes up with a plan to pit the house of Atreides and Harkonnens against each other so that Atreides will be annihilated. What the Emperor doesn’t realize is that Leto Atreides has a secret son. Paul Atreides (Kyle MacLachlan) was conceived by a member of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood (I had to look that one up), a group of female mystics who are awaiting the birth of a prophesized chosen one called the Kwisatz Haderach. It’s bad that she gave birth to a son because Duke Atreides was supposed to have a daughter in order to marry her to another one of the big space families and forge a political alliance. Evil blob-like aliens want Paul dead. About an hour into the movie, the plot kicks in and the Harkonnens attack the members of Atreides, who are on Dune, supervising the production of Spice. Things don’t go very well for house Atreides, but Paul Atreides, along with Leto’s concubine Lady Jessica (Francesca Annis) manage to escape. After encountering the Fremen, the Dune-ians who is forced to harvest the Spice but are planning a rebellion against the Harkonnens and the Emperor, Paul is poised to become their super special awesome leader known as the Muad’Dib and stand up against the bad guys. There are also gigantic creatures called sandwurms, who are like the graboids from “Tremors” but about 300 times longer that might cause a problem for our hero. Also, young love, betrayal, spiritual enlightenment after the usage of Spice and more!

    What’s frustrating about the movie is that once it’s all done, the story really isn’t that complicated, but when the movie is playing there is no way you can understand what is going on. You’re struggling to understand the dozens of weird terms the movie throws at you and it’s impossible unless you’re already familiar with the material (I’m guessing) It’s like the movie goes out of its way to make itself incomprehensible. Take the planet the bulk of the film is set on for example. Dune is a word that’s memorable and easy to understand, but throughout the film the characters almost never refer to the planet as Dune, choosing the proper name of Arrakis instead. That might sound like nitpicking, but when you have to remember the dozens of weirdo names like “Feyd-Rautha”, “Caladan”, “Atreides”, “Harkonnen”, “Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV”, “Muad’Dib”, “Sardaukar”, “Chaaksa”, “Glossu Rabban”, “Gom Jabbar” it becomes really difficult. Even more difficult is the fact that these names are just tossed around casually as if the audience knew what the characters were talking about already. The super special awesome leader of the rebels couldn’t just be “The Chosen one”; he has to be the “Muad’Dib”. “Dune” really makes you appreciate “Star Wars” a lot because not only did that series have names that were easy to understand and remember like say... “Luke Skywalker”, “Death Star” or “Lightsaber” but it also had a character that was a fish out of water, a regular guy whom the other characters had to explain things to while the audience eavesdropped. This movie feels like the third or fourth chapter in a long series because they barely explain anything. Oh, my mistake. They try to explain the plot to the poor audience, but they fail spectacularly. The beginning of the film features not one, but two different characters introducing the different planets, characters and set of the movie, one after the other! It fails to illuminate anyone as to what exactly we can expect to see because they toss complicated words and within a few minutes you just give up and hope that when the movie plays out, it will make more sense.

    Maybe you regard yourself as someone particularly intelligent and think that the crazy concepts and bizarre names won’t be a problem. Will you be able to enjoy this film unlike those dummies who weren’t able to follow? Well no, you won’t because this movie is not only confusing, it’s boring. “Dune” feels like it’s drifting aimlessly, giving us details we honestly don’t really care about for about an hour and a half... and then the ridiculous climax begins. The finale of “Dune” is a big epic battle with monsters and spaceships and even then it’s totally underwhelming. It involves characters you don’t feel invested in at all (because they act more like strange aliens than actual human beings) and even the big showdown with the main villain isn’t satisfying. It should have been awesome because the main villain of the movie is a disgusting, red-haired, flying greasy weirdo with terrible bubbling sores on his face. Kenneth McMillan plays Baron Vladimir Harkonnen and to be honest, I didn’t piece together what his character’s name was until this instant when I looked it up. Our villain is introduced and instantly you want to see the guy dead. You would want to see anyone who has dialogue that includes “I want you to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze! ” dead, but I’m sorry to say that you won’t get much satisfaction out of his ultimate fate.

    Even as a movie, this sci-fi would-be epic is badly made. “Dune” repeatedly breaks one of the sacred rules of cinema: Show, don’t tell. Psychic characters are often narrating to themselves what is going on in a way that becomes increasingly tedious and the dialogue is extremely clunky. Most of the film is simply official-sounding characters exchanging explanations of what is going on. When 42 minutes into your movie a scene begins with the narrator informing us that “House Atreides took control of Arrakis 63 standard days into the year 10,191. It was known that the Herkonnens, the former rulers of Arrakis would leave many suicide troops behind. Atreides patrols were doubled” or at 100 minutes in it features a training montage, you wonder if maybe the film could have cut down on some of the boring exposition and actually show us some action.

    The bottom line is that I’m sure some people have affection for “Dune” but if they do, it’s only because of the source material. It’s an ugly, boring confusing mess. 5 minutes in, I realized that this was an irredeemable jumble and I was praying that I was wrong. Even the slightly même-worthy moments of the film just sort of come and go, so you can’t enjoy the film in an ironic way. It’s kind of a pathetic attempt really, trying so hard to be this epic story with this fleshed-out world but you just won’t care at all. I’ll admit that some of the special effects were good, but they are in the service of absolutely nothing. With every newly-introduced idea, the rating of this film just kept getting lower and lower until we’re left with my final verdict. The film earns itself a most generous 0.5/5. Even then, I am tempted to lower it more because I absolutely hated it. (On Dvd, June 14, 2014)

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    adamwatchesmovies@  3.8.2015 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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