Dune, one of the greatest Sci-Fi stories ever told in books or displayed on the Screen. It was the foundation for many movies and concepts along with the newly released series “Foundation”. Most Sci-Fi series and or movies took elements from these two books and created their own universe from them. So the world of Star Wars and Star Trek fans owe a great many things to these two books. The story-line is so rich with meaning that you would spend years just explaining the politics and culture of Dune. The book, like most, already know …has an encyclopedia in the back of it just to explain the complete words, titles, races, and etc. When I first read the book, I spent more time going to the back of the book reading all the details and getting meanings of things I had no idea about just picking up the book. Part of that was because there was a whole other series and stories before Dune that took place hundreds of years before we meet Paul. So the world is so far-reaching in the past prior to Dune that anyone just picking up Dune by itself without knowledge is met with the challenge of catching up. I say this because as you already see the story of Dune is not just a 2-hour event. In fact, even the series that was placed on tv for weeks didn’t get a chance to scratch the surface of all the things about this “series”.
Hence the title. The problem with Dune, “the Movie event” …is that it shouldn’t have been a movie event at all. The series was meant to be told in multiple parts and the biggest mistake of the director is that he told it in the form of a series pushed into a movie event. If you were going to cram this into a movie it should have been rewritten and reedited differently so that there was a conclusion worthy of a movie ending. Pauls’s fight was not a big event. The war itself was bigger than the ending. And what you ended up doing is put viewers in an up and down emotional ride that pushed the viewers into a state of anticipation of something more or bigger …but bigger never happened. The director believed that he needed to retell the events but the problem is ..he did a poor job of doing so. Not enough info was shown about the houses, Paul’s connection to the princess he was supposed to be introduced to and other events that led to too many key players missing or unused properly like Paul’s mother. Pauls’s father played by William Hurt was far more adaptive and loving in his role years ago than Oscar Isaac was in this role. He truly didn’t fit nor did the Jason Momoa as Duncan. Paul and Duncan were way closer in age in the book and every series shown. I love Jason in every role he has played but this role just didn’t fit him. He looked closer to Duke’s age than Paul. Duncan should have been a 20-year-old lean male …not a 39-year-old Hulk. And finally, as with all movies and shows, Washing is needed, either Blackwashing, whitewashing, or femalewashing… one way or another they seem to have a need of replacing roles with unless washing of characters. So Dr. Kynes was replaced by a Black Female. Now, you can make a case that in the desert…black people would be more used for the proper look and all but Kynes was a man. The role transfer was useless and unnecessary. You already have powerful women in this series, so the need to remove yet another male role just further over pushes the biased feminist coloring of Hollywood unnecessarily when you have the mother….the whole race of Bene Gesserit ..not to mention the soon to be Sister born and Daughter twin born from Paul and finally the love of life. Plenty of chances to display any feminine empowerment needed.
If done right this Show as a series would have been the great series it should have been. At this time because of the lack of thought and lack of proper push and patience ….what we have is a rushed tv show that they made into a 2-hour movie and fans that are left hanging until the reported part two “movie” 2023! 2023….really people? If they had just taken their time and told the story the right way in the form of a series …so much more could have been exposed, adapted, and enjoyed. But as it stands now, all we have is a rushed job that left people feeling unfulfilled about one of the greatest sci-fi stories ever written. And that is unacceptable in my opinion.
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