Director – Denis Villeneuve – 2021 – US – Cert. 12a – 155m
*****
A powerful family is exiled to a desert planet populated with giant sandworms as part of an interplanetary conspiracy to end their dynasty – back out in cinemas from Friday, February 8th 2024
Frank Herbert’s sprawling novel Dune (1965) was read in the late 1960s and 1970s by any teenage boy with the slightest interest in science fiction and fantasy. It had (a little) space travel but more significantly it had alien worlds, notably the desert planet Arrakis on which 95% of the action takes place, and so ticked the SF box.
Then it had a whole ecology involving the planet’s occupants the Fremen, a drug known as ‘the Spice’, and giant sandworms, so it also ticked the fantasy box.
On top of this, it pitted dynasties – ‘Houses’ – against each other in a tale of interplanetary political intrigue.
The plot was unbelievably convoluted, spawning a lengthy series of sequels. I gave up around the fifth or sixth book. And yet, the first book possessed an almost mythic quality that my diminishing interest in the later volumes was unable to dispel.
The sheer quantity of plot was always going to be a challenge for a standalone movie.… Read the rest