Tag Archives: Denis Villeneuve

DUNE (2021) – Latest Film Version of Frank Herbert Novel Needs Spicing Up

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For a movie about spices, DUNE (2021) isn’t all that zesty.

Yes, one of the main plot points in DUNE is that the most valuable commodity in the universe these days is spices, mostly because in the future in which these people live, it’s the main ingredient in their ships’ warp drives, and so the races that control the spice trade have all the power. It’s the oil of its day.

DUNE is based on the celebrated science fiction novel by Frank Herbert, and it was filmed once before in 1984 by director David Lynch, with mixed results.

Denis Villeneuve is at the helm this time around. Villeneuve directed one of my favorite movies of the past few years, SICARIO (2015), which was my pick for the top movie that year. He also directed the well-respected BLADE RUNNER 2049 (2017). So I was excited to see what he would bring to this project.

And what he brought was a visual style and mood to this piece which plays out in a deliberate fashion that keeps this one intriguing yet low key throughout. I was always interested, but I was never excited. Not a good thing for a two and half hour movie.

The biggest problem with the story told in this version of DUNE is it’s all about potential and never really focuses on the here and now. It’s the story of young Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) who’s the son of Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac), whose people have inherited control over the much sought-after spice planet when the emperor rules that the current owners move out and Atreide’s people move in. Paul is the heir to the dukedom, but more so, he’s viewed as a “chosen one” by the indigenous race who lives on the spice planet who have been fighting their oppressors for independence for generations.

Amidst deceit and war over the spices, Paul is destined to emerge as an all powerful leader in the struggle for independence. But alas, that’s the story for another movie! As young Chani (Zendaya) tells him near the film’s conclusion, “this is just the beginning.”

Um, no it’s not. This is the END of the movie, sweetheart.

And that’s the biggest problem I had with this version of DUNE. The entire two hours and thirty five minutes are spent setting up the next movie. Why not just skip all this stuff and get to the part of the story you want to tell? I found this exceedingly frustrating.

The screenplay by Villeneuve, Jon Spaihts, and Eric Roth doesn’t help. Nearly every character in this movie is wooden and sleep-inducing, the situations slow and uninspiring, and the action scenes few and far between. This one could have used a heavy dose of some of those valued spices, that’s for sure! And these guys are seasoned screenwriters— heh, heh— with lots of credits. You’d think this screenplay would have struck gold. But it doesn’t. It’s all so bland.

The best part of DUNE is its cast, which reads like a who’s-who of tough guys and superhero movie veterans.

Timothee Chalamet gets the lead role here as Paul Atreides, and he acquits himself quite well. Chalamet has delivered strong performances in such films as LADY BIRD (2017) and LITTLE WOMEN (2019), but I liked him even more here as Paul Atreides. It’s a quiet understated performance, which Chalamet does well. I enjoyed his performance throughout the movie, but I just kept waiting for him to do something, which again is the main problem with this movie. Chalamet provides some great acting with an interesting character, but if you want to see him do something significant, you will have to wait until the next movie.

Oscar Isaac is very good as Paul’s honest and well-respected father, Duke Leto, who rules with great integrity. Which means he doesn’t stand a chance in this world of brutal and vicious dictators. Isaac is an excellent actor who played Poe Dameron in the new STAR WARS trilogy, but he’s delivered far more notable performances in such films as EX MACHINA (2014) and OPERATION FINALE (2018). Isaac turns in another solid performance here.

Rebecca Ferguson is on hand as Paul’s mystic mother Lady Jessica, and she’s very good as well. While not as memorable as she was as the menacing Rose the Hat in DOCTOR SLEEP (2019), she does achieve better results than her last turn as Mae, the mysterious stranger who walks into Hugh Jackman’s life in the recent subpar science fiction tale REMINISCENCE (2021).

Jason Momoa, Aquaman himself, plays Duncan Idaho, a loyal warrior for the Atreides family. Momoa as he almost always does imbues his character with a charismatic personality, so much so, that it’s too bad he’s not in the movie more. He gets some of the film’s best scenes. He’s not in this one nearly enough. It was good to see Momoa on top of his game again, after seeing him in the pretty lame actioner SWEET GIRL (2021) earlier this year.

Josh Brolin, who played the most infamous Marvel superhero movie villain yet, Thanos, in the AVENGERS films, here plays Gurney Halleck, the Duke’s head of security. Halleck could have used some of Thanos’ superpowers in this one. And Dave Bautista, who plays Drax in the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY and the AVENGERS movies, plays Beast Rabban Harkonnen, one of the baddies, but Bautista is barely in this one and hardly makes an impact.

Faring better is Stellan Skarsgard as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, the main villain in the movie. Sure, he’s practically unrecognizable under CGI, motion capturing effects, and make-up, but he still delivers one of the better performances in the movie. Skarsgard is a superior actor with a ton of credits, who today is largely known for his role as scientist Erik Selvig in the Marvel THOR and AVENGERS movies.

The same can be said for Javier Bardem, who appears briefly as Stilgar, the leader of the indigenous race fighting for their independence on the spice planet. He only has a couple of scenes, but he makes his mark in each of them. Bardem is another superior actor with a long and varied career, and he played one of the more memorable Bond villains in recent memory, Silva, in SKYFALL (2012). Of course, for me, his most memorable role remains hitman Anton Chigurh, in the Coen brothers’ NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007) in which incidentally he also co-starred with Josh Brolin.

I also enjoyed Sharon Duncan-Brewster as Dr. Liet Kynes as she turns in a nice performance as a mysterious yet ultimately likable character. And Zendaya spends the bulk of this movie in brief snapshots from Paul’s dreams, and her character Chani doesn’t show up for real until the film’s conclusion. So, like everything else in this movie, if you want to know more about her, you’ll have to wait for the next film.

Visually, DUNE is satisfying, and you can’t go wrong with the cast, but the story is as flat as a deflated dune. A nice microcosm of this movie’s problems is there are these massive and dangerous worms that travel underneath the sand which makes spice harvesting dangerous. Do you think we ever get to see these monsters? Nope. That’s kind of how the entire movie plays out. There’s all this potential, all this talk about prophecies, the chosen one, oppressors, and fighting for independence, but none of this happens in this movie. It’s all a set up for the next movie.

DUNE is okay. It would have been better had the filmmakers paid attention to the movie they were making rather than the one they plan to make next.

And frankly, after watching DUNE, I can’t say I’m all that excited about sitting through a DUNE 2.

It was all just a bit too bland for my palate. Pass me the pepper and salt.

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BLADE RUNNER 2049 (2017) – Ambitious Sequel Overlong and Lifeless

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I guess I’m just not a fan of the BLADE RUNNER movies.

I was never all that into the original BLADE RUNNER (1982) film starring Harrison Ford and directed by Ridley Scott, based on the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? —- now, the novel I do like— that has a huge loyal following among science fiction fans.  The 1982 film just never moved me.

Now, here comes BLADE RUNNER 2049 (2017),  starring Ryan Gosling and again Harrison Ford, a bigger and badder sequel to the 1982 movie, receiving high praise from both critics and fans alike.

I’ve finally been swayed, right?  This film is so good I’ve finally overcome my apathy for BLADE RUNNER, right?

Wrong.

Which is why I said, I guess I just don’t like these movies.

“K” (Ryan Gosling) is a blade runner, the name given to officers who hunt down and “retire” (yes, that means “kill”) replicants, the artificial life forms that the powers that be fear because they are becoming too human.  His latest target is somewhat of an unusual one, and it leads him on a search for Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), the blade runner and main character in the first BLADE RUNNER movie, who’s been missing for thirty years.

Denis Villeneuve directed BLADE RUNNER 2049, which is another reason I’m surprised I didn’t like this one more than I did.  Villeneuve directed ARRIVAL (2016) and SICARIO (2015), two movies I liked a lot, and PRISONERS (2013), which was also very good.

There’s no shortage of ambition here.  This is a massive movie, filled with eye-popping special effects and a futuristic landscape that rivals the one created by Ridley Scott in the original.  All the technical stuff is there and works.

The story also has a lot to say.  Hampton Fancher and Michael Green wrote the screenplay, and it covers a lot of ground.  The best part of the Philip K. Dick novel is the exploration of the line between human and replicant, and the idea that a thinking sentient being, albeit an artificially created one, would fight for its own survival and not take kindly to the idea that it had an expiration date.  This has always been my favorite part of the BLADE RUNNER universe, and it’s more applicable today as great strides have been made in the field of artificial intelligence, and I believe that soon this concept will leave the realm of science fiction and become science fact.

And yet the problem I had with the original BLADE RUNNER, I have again here with BLADE RUNNER 2049, and that is the film has no soul.  It’s cold and lifeless, and its story, in spite of the scientific and ethical ramifications, fails to resonate.  Nothing that happens in this movie moved me one iota.

Which is too bad because a lot happens in this movie.  So much that it takes a whopping 2 hours and 43 minutes to tell its story.  That’s a long time to sit through a movie that doesn’t resonate, which is another reason I really did not enjoy BLADE RUNNER 2049.

There were parts I did like.  Its opening scene, for example, where “K” hunts down a replicant, Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista) is a good one.  The fight sequence between the two is a rough and violent as they get.

Nearly all the scenes between “K” and his holographic girlfriend Joi (Ana de Armas) are not only watchable but for me were flat-out the best scenes in the movie, but their storyline is secondary to the main one in the film.  The scene in particular where technology enables Joi to enter the body of a prostitute Mariette (Mackenzie Davis) so she can physically love “K” is probably the best scene in the film

And the first encounter between “K” and Rick Deckard is memorable, but it’s an hour and 40 minutes into the movie before this meeting takes place.

So, for me, pacing was certainly an issue, but the larger problem was that the story never grabbed me, the characters never won me over, and so I sat there for nearly three hours being visually stimulated but that was about it.  The story and characters fell flat for me and pretty much bored me to tears.

I like Ryan Gosling a lot, and he’s certainly good here, but “K” is just such dull boring character I just never found myself all that excited about him.

In a strange way, I actually enjoyed Harrison Ford more in this movie than in the original BLADE RUNNER.  It’s too bad he doesn’t show up until 1 hour and 40 minutes into the film.  He’s got some good lines, though, and his character is integral to the main plot and main mystery of this one.

But hands down the two best performances in BLADE RUNNER 2049 belong to two of the women actresses in the film.

First, there’s Ana de Armas as Joi, who happened to be my favorite character in the movie.  Joi is a holographic creation, and yet through de Armas’ performance, she’s more lifelike and possesses more genuine emotion than any other character in the movie.  She previously starred in WAR DOGS (2016) and HANDS OF STONE (2016),  a film about boxer Roberto Duran that was panned by critics but was one of my favorite movies that year.  Ana de Armas was excellent in HANDS OF STONE, and she’s better here in BLADE RUNNER 2049.

Then there’s Sylvia Hoeks as Luv.  She’s the most effective villain in the movie.  It’s a dominating performance, one that I enjoyed more than Jared Leto’s.  He plays the main baddie in the film, Niander Wallace, and he just doesn’t resonate.  While I enjoyed Hoeks’s scenes, Leto’s scenes sadly put me to sleep.

Robin Wright has a couple of compelling moments as the stone cold police Lieutenant Joshi, and there are some other veteran actors on hand who add to the mix as well. There’s Barkhad Abdi, the Oscar-nominated actor for CAPTAIN PHILLIPS (2013) who we just saw in GOOD TIME (2017), and there’s Lennie James, who plays Morgan on TV’s THE WALKING DEAD.

And both Edward James Olmos and Sean Young reprise their roles from the original BLADE RUNNER, but their presence is reduced to nothing more than brief cameos.

BLADE RUNNER 2049 is ambitious, cinematic, and loud, but it’s also cold, lifeless, and terribly long and dull, which is a shame because its main premise, the examination of the line between replicants and humans, and its exploration of the idea that artificially created replicants are so close to life that it’s nearly impossible to tell the difference between them and humans, which ultimately leads to the discussion of just what it is that constitutes life, is a thought-provoking idea that is worthy of an epic movie.

Unfortunately, BLADE RUNNER 2049 isn’t that movie.

And that’s because while technologically it scores points on all fronts, emotionally, it’s as barren as its futuristic landscape, filled with eye-popping visuals and ear-shattering noises, but without any life whatsoever.

The replicants deserve better.

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