WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Dune, now playing in theaters and on HBO Max
Dune is a largely faithful recreation of the original novel by Frank Herbert, focusing on the adventure of Paul Atreides as he tries to survive his planet's ascension to the stewardship of the dangerous world Arrakis. The world of Arrakis, the scope of Paul's adventure and the fall of House Atreides is recreated with a keen eye by Denis Villeneuve -- whose previous work with projects like Blade Runner 2049 and Arrival were good indicators of the clear eye he'd bring to Dune.
And problems with the film have nothing to do with how the story is recreated, with many elements of the original novel brought to life very well. Instead, what makes Dune difficult to watch and enjoy compared to other sci-fi epics is the general lack of character at the heart of the film. This makes it hard to care about the grand visuals playing out on screen.
From a visual standpoint, Dune is a triumph. It has the distinct look of a weirdly massive yet naturally intricate setting, a place where sands can go on forever until the Sandworms (treated more as living earthquakes than actual animal lifeforms) swallow you with little warning. The look of the film is quite impressive, with Villeneuve and Academy Award-winning Cinematographer Greig Fraser giving the sci-fi epic a massive and memorable canvas. But all the gorgeous sights are perhaps the only thing notable about the film, which trades away time and focus with the characters to allow for the exposition necessary to explain the bizarre sights the film employs.
Even compared to Villeneuve's other work, Dune feels unnecessarily cold and dispassionate. Blade Runner 2049 embraced a similar aesthetic, priding itself on bold imagery that recreated and recontextualized what came before it. But the relatively leaner cast (and subsequent tighter storytelling) helped elevate the film. The story of K (Ryan Gosling) was a more fleshed-out narrative and growth as a result of the increased time spent with the character. This could be partly because Blade Runner 2049, as a direct sequel, didn't need to spend as much time world-building. Dune, by contrast, is forced to halt Paul's narrative multiple times to deliver swaths of exposition and background. It's a movie that often works great when it's silently observing the world around it, and yet can't stop having to stop and explain things.
The most disappointing aspect of this is that the sequences that do focus on the characters are actually fairly strong. Paul's interactions with his father Leto (Oscar Isaac), his mentors Duncan (Jason Mamoa) and Gurney (Josh Brolin) and his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) all have relatable and charming undercurrents, each of them seeing the quietly rebellious but inherently noble Paul in a different light. If the film had been more grounded in Paul's development and the lives of his loved ones instead of explaining further space politics or rushing through character introductions, it could have made the eventual fall of House Atreides a genuinely heartbreaking sequence. Instead, it's a cacophony of impressively bright explosions and loud explosions with little reason to genuinely care for the characters involved.
Because the film is so focused on bringing the world to life, Dune doesn't really focus as much on the characters that inhabit it. For all the criticisms of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, those films have always placed an emphasis on character work above almost all else, with each film clearly constructing a character and their arc around the sometimes interchangeable elements of the narratives. This means for all their faults, the MCU characters are ones audiences can connect with, regardless of how bombastic and epic their adventures become.
What Dune could learn from that is the importance of making the audience care about the events playing out on screen instead of just being impressed by the sight of it. Grounding the epic scope with genuine characters audiences can care about would have greatly improved the experience of taking in this epic.
To take in Dune's massive scale, the film is in theaters now and streaming on HBO Max.