At last, an adaption of ‘Dune’ to inspire awe

• Big expectations are riding on the fourth adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 science fiction epic

Frank Herbert’s 1965 science fiction epic Dune has had an uneasy time when it comes to on-screen adaptation. The book set the standard for the subgenre of ecological science fiction; envisioned such a carefully thought out and created literary universe as to make it to the genre what Lord of the Rings is to fantasy; and became the bestselling science fiction. One would think that it would have been an early candidate for bigscreen adaptation.

Instead, Herbert’s magnum opus has been unfilmable in the case of cult occultist Alejandro Jodorowsky’s fabled, carefully planned but ultimately unsuccessful 1970s’ adaptation; badly filmed, in the case of David Lynch’s much maligned 1984 adaptation — a train wreck which the legendary director still doesn’t like to talk about; and messily mangled in 2000 for a William Hurt-starring miniseries adaptation, which only served to enrage Herbert’s legions of devoted crossgenerational fans even more than Lynch had.

Enter present-day science fiction film’s savant genius, Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, a filmmaker with a keen sense of how to create mammoth big-screen sci-fi blockbusters that have some profound things to say beyond spectacular trickery and effectsladen bombast.

Through a series of unforeseen circumstances, Villeneuve’s Dune arrives with more than just the expectations of diehard fans riding on its shoulders. It is, more than any other title, the litmus test for the ability of big-screen epic film to lure audiences back to cinemas in the wake of the chaos of the Covid-19 pandemic.

With an eye-watering $165m budget, a star-studded cast and a 155-minute running time that covers only half of the plot of the novel, Dune was always going to be a gamble, no matter the real-world circumstances of its arrival. And arrive it thunderously does, with a boneshaking wall of surround sound, awesome epic vistas of the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan care of cinematographer Greig Fraser and a suitably grandiose score by Hans Zimmer.

This is a love letter to the escapist magic of the big screen with the breathtaking desert wonder of David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia and the intergalactic majesty of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey clearly in its sights.

Villeneuve’s avowed dedication to Herbert’s source material manages to keep his adaptation from getting so lost in the wonder of its visuals as to lose sight of the themes and characters that drive it and make it dramatically compelling and satisfying.

Many millennia in the future the galaxy is divided into a feudal conglomeration of interplanetary states ruled over by a mysterious emperor. He taps the spartan militaristic House Atreides on the shoulder to take over the task of mining the vital resource “spice” on the desert planet Arrakis (known colloquially as Dune) from the vampiric, brutal House Harkonnen, who have made fat profits for themselves and the empire during their decadeslong tenure.

Atreides’ leader Leto (Oscar Isaac) is rightly trepidatious about what this new posting will mean and holds vain hopes of perhaps being a beneficent coloniser of Arrakis and its legendary guerrilla fighting desert people, the Fremen. His son Paul (Timothée Chalamet) is also unsure but thanks to his mother — Leto’s concubine Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) and a member of the female spiritual sect the Bene Gesserit — he’s been trained in the arts of the sect who have been grooming him to become their longawaited messiah.

Cue the hero’s well-trodden journey as Paul, through a series of unfortunate events precipitated by the powerplay machinations of the emperor, finds himself learning very quickly to fend for himself and his mother as they land up in the hands of a band of Fremen under the leadership of Stilgar (Javier Bardem), which includes the elusive but alluring Chani (Zendaya), who Paul knows will shape his destiny in as yet not completely revealed ways.

What happens to Paul, Lady Jessica, Chani, the Fremen, Arrakis’ spice and its terrifying sand worms remains to be explored in Villeneuve’s planned Dune: Part Two.

For now Dune: Part One is an adaptation that fans can get behind and newcomers should be awed by. It’s beautifully and carefully realised in all its elements, from its too-goodlooking-for-this-planet but excellent cast members to its dazzling technological creations, satisfying fight sequence, futuristic modernist set design by Patrice Vermette and the elegant costumes created by Robert Morgan and Jacqueline West.

FOLLIES AND DANGERS

DUNE WAS ALWAYS GOING TO BE A GAMBLE, NO MATTER THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF ITS ARRIVAL

In a time when the world has been closed off to most and billionaires have shot themselves into the heavens, the film’s concerns with planetary sustainability, the follies of colonial expansion in the service of profit and the dangers of religious zealotry remain as relevant to us now as they did during the period of oil-hungry American imperial expansion that consumed the world in Herbert’s time.

Villeneuve has produced a marvel of epic science fiction that manages to be true to its source material while also offering a singular on-screen vision of its complicated world and characters.

It’s now up to audiences who hold the fate of big-screen spectacle and this Dune in their hands, to go to the movies and ensure that neither of these becomes a thing of the past.