summerloud
Joined Oct 2002
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summerloud's rating
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summerloud's rating
If you are reading this, you probably already heard a thousand times that the movie is visually stunning, and while i agree (that's why I am giving it 7 stars, despite all the criticism below), it puts visuals above everything else, killing logic and storytelling in the process.
The stark, sometimes almost monochrome visual style, is very much contemporary, and I dare to say that it will not age well. At least I hope so, because it will mean that people will rediscover colors.
Everything has to be black, white and one additional color. This means everything on Dune consists of bare stone walls an sand. People are living this way? No furniture, no textiles, no food. Sand and stone. No life!
Everything has to be black, even the good guys. Even the Fremen stillsuits are black, which is the worst possible color to pick for a suit that is supposed to help you survive in the desert.
The lifelessness does not stop there - even the emperor of the galaxy is a bland lifeless colorless type, that looks like he just stepped out of a retirement home (maybe that's some kind of intented political message?)
My second biggest gripe is also a very contemporary problem - Paul, the ubermensch messiah, can't do a single action scene without looking for his girl to support, because the message that she is as strong as him, powerful, independent, etc etc, of course has to be driven home, as is customary today. They even sacrifice the original plot (where she is a mother), in order to have her be a kick ass fighter, because we surely don't get enough female fighters in nowaday's cinema.
All in all, I liked the books ok, but let's face it: Dune did not age well as a story. It's too complex to be popcorn SciFi like Star Wars, and too illogical to be taken seriously. Nothing in the story makes sense, the whole setup is completely ridiculous. Unlike Star Wars, it also completely fails to make the universe feel big, filled with life. Even the major houses feel like a joke - we get these battles between the supposedly most powerful players in the galaxy, and it's like a hundred dudes killing each other with knives.
In my opinion, the only one who could have ever really made a good movie out of Dune was Jodorowky. At least that would have been psychedelic, which is another aspect this movie is completely lacking. The main point of the movie is a drug that lets you bend spacetime and see the future, and we do not get a single psychedelic shot in 6 hours?
To sum it up, it feels like Villeneuve made a movie that is so visually stunning that you hardly can not like it at all, while completely missing the point of a book, that aged badly in of itself.
The stark, sometimes almost monochrome visual style, is very much contemporary, and I dare to say that it will not age well. At least I hope so, because it will mean that people will rediscover colors.
Everything has to be black, white and one additional color. This means everything on Dune consists of bare stone walls an sand. People are living this way? No furniture, no textiles, no food. Sand and stone. No life!
Everything has to be black, even the good guys. Even the Fremen stillsuits are black, which is the worst possible color to pick for a suit that is supposed to help you survive in the desert.
The lifelessness does not stop there - even the emperor of the galaxy is a bland lifeless colorless type, that looks like he just stepped out of a retirement home (maybe that's some kind of intented political message?)
My second biggest gripe is also a very contemporary problem - Paul, the ubermensch messiah, can't do a single action scene without looking for his girl to support, because the message that she is as strong as him, powerful, independent, etc etc, of course has to be driven home, as is customary today. They even sacrifice the original plot (where she is a mother), in order to have her be a kick ass fighter, because we surely don't get enough female fighters in nowaday's cinema.
All in all, I liked the books ok, but let's face it: Dune did not age well as a story. It's too complex to be popcorn SciFi like Star Wars, and too illogical to be taken seriously. Nothing in the story makes sense, the whole setup is completely ridiculous. Unlike Star Wars, it also completely fails to make the universe feel big, filled with life. Even the major houses feel like a joke - we get these battles between the supposedly most powerful players in the galaxy, and it's like a hundred dudes killing each other with knives.
In my opinion, the only one who could have ever really made a good movie out of Dune was Jodorowky. At least that would have been psychedelic, which is another aspect this movie is completely lacking. The main point of the movie is a drug that lets you bend spacetime and see the future, and we do not get a single psychedelic shot in 6 hours?
To sum it up, it feels like Villeneuve made a movie that is so visually stunning that you hardly can not like it at all, while completely missing the point of a book, that aged badly in of itself.
Helpful•55
This series starts nice enough, has great characters, good acting and a very nicely done 60ies/70ies setting which will leave you looking at the gorgeous backgrounds a lot.
However, after a couple of epidodes, I began to feel puzzled, as to what the makes actually wanted to accomplish with this. There is way too much chess, or people playing chess, throwing around of chess lingo, and after a time, this gets tedious and boring.
Especially since chess tournaments are completely misrepresented - for apparently dramatic reasons, they present them as consisting of single games between opponents, which always end in a win and a loss.
Most chess games end in a draw, and you always play multiple games vs an opponent, otherwise it wouldnt really make sense.
So why do a show that focuses so heavily on chess, if you then going to misrepresent it for dramatic purposes? Especially since it could be just as tense if you display it realistically - the viewer can't follow the single games anyways, but would be able to understand things like "I'm down one game now after losing with black after tying the first three", or whatever.
Apart from this, it felt like there just was not enough content to fill the 7 episodes. It's mainly people playing chess and the protagonist getting drunk.
It's still a nice watch, but it could have been better, and I feel like this show is overrated.
However, after a couple of epidodes, I began to feel puzzled, as to what the makes actually wanted to accomplish with this. There is way too much chess, or people playing chess, throwing around of chess lingo, and after a time, this gets tedious and boring.
Especially since chess tournaments are completely misrepresented - for apparently dramatic reasons, they present them as consisting of single games between opponents, which always end in a win and a loss.
Most chess games end in a draw, and you always play multiple games vs an opponent, otherwise it wouldnt really make sense.
So why do a show that focuses so heavily on chess, if you then going to misrepresent it for dramatic purposes? Especially since it could be just as tense if you display it realistically - the viewer can't follow the single games anyways, but would be able to understand things like "I'm down one game now after losing with black after tying the first three", or whatever.
Apart from this, it felt like there just was not enough content to fill the 7 episodes. It's mainly people playing chess and the protagonist getting drunk.
It's still a nice watch, but it could have been better, and I feel like this show is overrated.
Helpful•19
If you watch this, I hope you like WORDS. I cannot overstate the amout of dialogue this movie contains. A three hour movie with non-stop dialogue that constantly shifts between different timelines with almost every shot, requiring constant attention, and ideally, lots of knowledge about the subject at hand.
The amount of characters involved is equally gigantic, and while I contratulate the movie to decide not to drop major characters from the plot, the sheer amount of important people makes it impossible to actually build their characters - even in three hours - which again requires you to already know about this people, if you are to make any emotional connection at all to them.
Nolan requires a lot from his viewers in many of his movies, but this one takes the throne in sheer complexity, scale and depth. Even though it is done brilliantly, I cannot help but feel it is overambitious. There is only so much that you can cram into three hours. If the subject should really be tackled that extensively, maybe the format should have been a mini-series instead of a movie.
Also, the focus could have been much less on the court scenes, at the end, I felt like I myself had been interrogated for hours.
Despite its brilliance, I can therefore not really rate it any higher than 7/10.
The amount of characters involved is equally gigantic, and while I contratulate the movie to decide not to drop major characters from the plot, the sheer amount of important people makes it impossible to actually build their characters - even in three hours - which again requires you to already know about this people, if you are to make any emotional connection at all to them.
Nolan requires a lot from his viewers in many of his movies, but this one takes the throne in sheer complexity, scale and depth. Even though it is done brilliantly, I cannot help but feel it is overambitious. There is only so much that you can cram into three hours. If the subject should really be tackled that extensively, maybe the format should have been a mini-series instead of a movie.
Also, the focus could have been much less on the court scenes, at the end, I felt like I myself had been interrogated for hours.
Despite its brilliance, I can therefore not really rate it any higher than 7/10.
Helpful•42