Recensioni de* critic*

The most daring aspect of Dune is not that it only tells half a narrative, or that it opts to immerse its audience in its richly rendered universe, assuming they can keep up without guide ropes... No, the most daring aspect of Dune is how much unease it creates around the idea of a chosen one, from the Leni Riefenstahl–inspired military ceremony in which Leto and Paul receive their commission to take care of Arrakis to the fact that Paul is the product of eugenics.

It’s probably David Lynch’s fault. His quirky Dune is still remembered as a turkey of Baron Harkonnen proportions, so the only direction Denis Villeneuve could have headed in with a new take on Frank Herbert’s novel was to drain it of any possible joy. His Dune... is so serious that it’s almost funny at times – every sentence is full of meaning, every frown on Timothée Chalamet’s forehead seems to suggest future burdens, and the soundtrack just won’t quit, huffing and puffing, pointing out every step of the way that this is a very respectable movie indeed.

This is sheer science-fiction spectacle the likes of which hasn’t been seen in a long time, marrying the stark cinematography and eerie scoring of Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 with complex worldbuilding mythology based on Frank Herbert’s notoriously prickly space epic. Villeneuve has always had flair, and Dune might be the biggest arena he has played yet.

He has constructed an entire world for us here, thick with myth and mystery, stripped of narrative signposts or even much in the way of handy expositio

Throughout, the filmmaker, working with amazing technicians including cinematographer Greig Fraser, editor Joe Walker, and production designer Patrice Vermette, manages to walk the thin line between grandeur and pomposity in between such unabashed thrill-generating sequences...

“Dune” is out to wow us, and sometimes succeeds, but it also wants to get under your skin like a hypnotically toxic mosquito. It does…until it doesn’t.

For all of Villeneuve’s awe-inducing vision, he loses sight of why Frank Herbert’s foundational sci-fi opus is worthy of this epic spectacle in the first place. Such are the pitfalls of making a movie so large that not even its director can see around the sets.

Replete with stunning visuals, the film, which is the first of two planned instalments, makes no apologies about its swaggering ambitions — or its grimly brooding tenor.

When Villeneuve announced recently that this was a movie that demanded to be seen in the cinema, he wasn’t exaggerating. (Your. Jaw. Will. Drop.) What he didn’t reveal, however, was that Dune is also kind of boring.

This new adaptation of the 1965 Frank Herbert novel from Denis Villeneuve... is science-fiction at its most majestic, unsettling and enveloping. Watching it feels like wandering through some enormous, otherworldly structure built in honour of higher powers you’ve never heard of – and, from the look of the place, rather hope don’t actually exist.

Dune lumbers with such aloof, uninviting self-seriousness that it’s hard to love, hard to even celebrate as an assured piece of tentpole authorship. In all its marvel, Dune forgets to do basic things like give us someone or something to root for, or feel for, or think about for longer than the stretch of the film.

Perhaps it’s the way Villeneuve’s film introduces each faction and world with such precision, or that in a post-Game Of Thrones world mainstream audiences are more primed for this kind of grand-sweep storytelling than ever before — but Dune is never as formidable as it threatens to be.