What about this film appeals to the humanity of a person? What connects your soul to this? Characters are expendable or completely change on a whim, and after spending 4+ hours with these people, I feel NOTHING when they abruptly transform. I am left seriously questioning Villiveneuve’s ability as a filmmaker and artist. Every frame is crafted to be as aesthetically pleasing as possible, seemingly without any thought put into them other than ‘make it look cool.’ This is clinical cinema, with enough money you can take beautiful pictures but what about this makes it art? 

This was enjoyable for significant spells, but that’s just not enough. Cool battles and fights are not enough to make this film great or even good. There’s no one to root for, barely anyone to root against even. Details are glossed over, everything is so easily achieved by the protagonists, there is barely a sense of tension to be found outside of a few scenes. 

I enjoyed the first half quite a bit, the characters were more appealing and human to me, there was some great set pieces, and the tortuous pace of the first seemed to be amended. But then it goes nowhere, there is no natural progression in the narrative or characters, nothing you haven’t seen a thousand times before on film. All of the strongest aspects of this come from it having a huge budget. 

These two Dune films, they’re nice to look at, they’re loud, and the second one has moments that are undeniably great, but as pieces of art, I extract minimum value.