Dune (2021): Big Film, No Big Picture

The newest film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune was big in just about every sense of the word. Big actors, big visuals, big budgets, big material, big director—big everything. With all of the work and money and talent poured into a single production, one can’t help but wonder why, after seeing the movie, it felt so underwhelming. 

The movie cannot be discounted for the quality of its visuals, its actors, or its directing. The quality of its special effects is beyond question. It’s art direction is incomparably better to that of its predecessors. By almost every metric by which one could judge a film, Dune passes with flying colors. But despite Dune’s many strengths, it fails to say anything meaningful. To illustrate this phenomenon, we can look at one of the strongest scenes in the movie (so of course, there will be spoilers ahead). 

The scene focuses on the dynamic between Paul Atreides, the movie’s protagonist and messiah figure, and Liet Kynes, a scientist sent to the planet to study the locals. The locals, called Fremen, are based on Wahabist religious zealots in the early 20th Century. The Fremen have many prophecies of a coming Messiah who will deliver them from oppression. Over the course of the movie, Kynes comes to believe in the Fremen prophecies and accepts that Paul Atreides is that Messiah.

In the climatic scene, Paul Atreides is cornered by his enemies. Kynes helps Paul escape, but becomes stranded in the desert where she is found by a detachment of invading Imperial troops. She uses a machine to attract what the Fremen call “Shai-Hulud”—a massive sandworm hundreds of meters in length, capable of swallowing entire factories, and believed by the local tribesmen to be a sort of physical embodiment of their One God. As the titanic worm swallows her up along with the soldiers who thought they had caught her, she states, “I serve only one master; His name is Shai-Hulud.”

This scene is well-shot, well-written, well-scored, well-acted, and it almost seems to be getting at a point—a woman renouncing her loyalties to a tyrannical and cynical conqueror, laying down her life for her friends (a greater love than this no man hath), and calling down the wrath of God upon wicked invaders. It almost seems like she turns away from the schemes, plots, and deceptions which make up the lives of the other characters in the film, and turns towards an authentic and unfeigned religious faith, making her out to be among the most authentic and “human” people in the movie. 

The problem is that the film does not seem to understand or consciously intend to communicate any of the ideas which one could read into the story. Kynes dies, and the movie moves on with nothing else to say. Everything about the film—from its expansive score to its wide shots of “the deep desert”—seems shallow. There are great visuals, but for what purpose? There’s political scheming, but why? There are battles and visions and love and all of the things you’d expect in a three-hour epic, but it gives the same feeling as hearing your friend telling you a long and intricate story with no point, or a long story that he doesn’t understand.

Even nihilist philosophers and authors who, when pressed, confess to believe that there’s no truth, beauty, meaning, or goodness in the world, they will still intend in their writing to communicate something. It seems like nobody ever would sit down and write a book intending to communicate absolutely nothing, but this seems to be increasingly the case with the triple-a films coming forth out of Hollywood. 

All in all, Dune is a status-quo film when placed in its current environment in Hollywood. When compared with films in general, it can be considered little more than hollow eye candy—little more than a CGI circus with words intended to tie together otherwise unrelated scenes directed to no end. If you’re in the mood for a quality epic, something like Lawrence of Arabia is more for you. If you’re looking for an excuse to watch something with your buddies, Dune certainly doesn’t need to be intentionally avoided.