Dune, the French Canadian director Denis Villeneuve’s long-gestating version of the 1965 novel by Frank Herbert, is a deeply weird blockbuster. I mean that as a compliment; Villeneuve’s adaptation of what many consider to be the paragon of futurist sci-fi stays true to the book’s disinterest in pandering, but turns what could be impossibly tricky, alienating material into world-building at its finest.
The film is awash in strange, unnerving details – the black-oil baths and throat-singing on a rainy planet of mercenaries, human computers whose eyes roll back into their heads – whose utmost seriousness is compelling rather than off-putting. (Not that the Academy will account for this, but Dune is a great movie for memes.) In a gutsy move, Villeneuve chose to adapt just the novel’s first half before a second film was even greenlit, which results in a movie that defies the usual three-act structure and crashing resolution of the typical big-screen blockbuster. Instead, watching Dune is a submersion in several classic storylines – inheritance, political intrigue, resource wars, angsty coming of age – that slowly, richly unfurl in a society that actually feels alien.
