Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, Chang Chen, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem, David Dastmalchian, Babs Olusanmokun, Golda Rosheuvel, Roger Yuan.

To adapt faithfully for cinema a novel so revered, covered in glory, and one that wears the word epic as if it were a robe sewn by hand for someone with more money than a small nation, is to perhaps court feelings of unrestrained excess, to forgo modesty in favour of magnified extravagance, and no matter how noble the intention, no matter how faithful, there on screen will be the accusations of pretension.

Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel, Dune, is no stranger to the large screen, and stands almost uniquely in the amount of attempts it has had to be produced and directed, all coming to naught till the 1984 release, and even then, as critics were wont to insist, it was a mess, overblown, and airing self-importance.

The issue was really down to timing, cutting the four hours of film down to a studio friendly two, and one that at least in the 2021 version has not had the interference and damnation attached to it, and in the first part release, the adaption and screenplay is at least perhaps what Frank Herbert may have envisaged, right down to the grey bronze and gold specks in the depiction of the world in which Paul Atreides finds himself immersed within.

It is down to the character of the watcher if whether they will have the strength of will in which to take on this supremely adult science-fiction epic with the determination afforded its production. Whilst the length of time of the first segment of the tale will undoubtedly put strain on even the most even tempered of moods, its overall length is only in comparison to that of the sum of its parts; it is needed to convey the sheer scope of the author’s imagination, and in that the time, the sweeping pulse of the film, is justified.

Whereas the first foray onto the cinema screen for Dune was in truth a voyage of excess, Denis Villeneuve’s touch is more gentle, less abrasive, it doesn’t require the film to be a study of modern Shakespeare, it acknowledges the effects and thoughts behind the film with a critical eye, almost as passionately as Frank Herbert would have done as he took his own distaste of government and the symbolism of spice, a replacement indeed for oil and the power struggle that comes with modern capitalistic values.

If you must adapt a classic, one in which in the past has received more than its fair share of troubles, then to do it well is a success in itself; often brutal, but never ashamed, the first part of Dune more than lives up to its billing and hype.

Ian D. Hall