Everything is rushed. The rythm of the narrative arc is not consistent with lil' Timothée growing from desert stranger to <spoiler>master of the Universe</spoiler>. The rushing is made pretty obvious by the number of little things that left unexplained (the spy who gets carbonized), that surely are well developed in the novel, but that the screen-writers decided to just have 20 seconds of. This should have been a mini-series.
The power dynamics and war strategies are either inconsistent or not well-explained enough for me to understand. The Fremen are very well-armed and technologically advanced; this is not asymmetric warfare. They can even pretty much destroy everything by riding giant worms. Why are they acting as weak undercover resistant? Then suddenly a change in Harkonnen leadership makes the Harkonnen know where the Fremen are and bomb them? (The previous leader already wanted to go full genocide.) In retrospection, it makes me wonder why the Atreides could be defeated in one night if even the Fremen are that good. Or, for that matter, why battle on air, water, or desert, is relevant at all, since all those guys have giant spaceships all over the fucking planet. Why are we watching people fight with swords on the desert?
Anyway action sequences are nice and Denis Villeneuve succeeded in making a worm-riding scene compelling and spectacular (which, let's be honest, had a very high potential for ridiculous-ness). Zendaya could expand her range beyond the constipated face.
Two things that really bothered me were:
Everything is rushed. The rythm of the narrative arc is not consistent with lil' Timothée growing from desert stranger to <spoiler>master of the Universe</spoiler>. The rushing is made pretty obvious by the number of little things that left unexplained (the spy who gets carbonized), that surely are well developed in the novel, but that the screen-writers decided to just have 20 seconds of. This should have been a mini-series.
The power dynamics and war strategies are either inconsistent or not well-explained enough for me to understand. The Fremen are very well-armed and technologically advanced; this is not asymmetric warfare. They can even pretty much destroy everything by riding giant worms. Why are they acting as weak undercover resistant? Then suddenly a change in Harkonnen leadership makes the Harkonnen know where the Fremen are and bomb them? (The previous leader already wanted to go full genocide.) In retrospection, it makes me wonder why the Atreides could be defeated in one night if even the Fremen are that good. Or, for that matter, why battle on air, water, or desert, is relevant at all, since all those guys have giant spaceships all over the fucking planet. Why are we watching people fight with swords on the desert?
Anyway action sequences are nice and Denis Villeneuve succeeded in making a worm-riding scene compelling and spectacular (which, let's be honest, had a very high potential for ridiculous-ness). Zendaya could expand her range beyond the constipated face.