‘Dune’ Movie Review

By Tommy O’Neill//

“Dune,” released Oct. 22, is a movie adaption of Frank Herbert’s famous science fiction novel of the same name. The film covered the storyline of the first half of the novel, following Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), the son of a noble family that is thrust into a war for the inhospitable planet Arrakis. The planet holds the most valuable substance in the galaxy, called “the spice,” which extends human life.

The thing I enjoyed the most about the movie was the cinematography done by Greig Fraser. I would’ve been entertained watching the film on mute, just looking at the visuals of the different scenes. More of the budget went into creating high quality sets and using less CGI, unlike most science fiction movies.

 To get the best experience, I recommend going to the movie theater to see how well the movie was shot on the big screen. If you are a nearly broke college student like me, Warehouse Cinemas in Frederick sells tickets for only $7 on Tuesdays.

One of the things that I didn’t like was that the movie claimed to be featuring Zendaya, but she ended up getting the least amount of screen time out of any of the actors/actresses in the film. Apparently, her character will play a bigger role in “Dune Part Two” which will follow the second half of the book.

“A lot of people I know said it was boring, but I thought the story was so cool. It was slow-paced but extremely entertaining, the action was sick and the graphics were out of this world. I loved it,” junior Carina Perichino said.

Another issue I had with “Dune” was how difficult the plot of the movie was to follow. Without having any prior knowledge of the story, I felt a little lost.

Frank Herbert, author of “Dune,” puts you into a story without much context to go off, so you need to understand the terminology being thrown at you while trying to grasp what is happening in the story. That’s what made the book a little bit difficult for me, but once you get to the middle of the book, I’ve heard that things tend to pick up and start to make more sense.

However, I recommend the novel to anyone who is a science fiction buff like myself. Many of my peers have read the entire series and enjoyed every page. Herbert even provides a dictionary of terms in the back of the novel, so make sure to study up before you begin reading. Having to read a glossary of terms to understand the story isn’t exactly my cup of tea, or anyone’s in my opinion.

I give the movie a 9/10. I took a point off because of the story being on the confusing side, but overall, the movie was fantastic in every way.