I do not normally consider time wasted so long as it didn’t have a negative impact on my life. Sure, doing my taxes isn’t fun and is usually very stressful because I get a clear picture of how much debt I still have, but it’s not a waste of my time. Cleaning my apartment isn’t a waste of my time. Commuting isn’t a waste of my time. Writing detailed notes to myself about things I’ll definitely remember isn’t even a waste of my time. The two Dune movies, though, are definitely a waste of my time. I didn’t dislike them so much that I consider all five and a half hours I’ve spent watching them both a full waste of my time, but it’s difficult to feel like they were anything but that when each of them was at least an hour too long. I think they could have trimmed at least that much out and wound up with a pair of movies that would have been better for it. I mean, there were definitely some enjoyable bits in both of those movies (way more than in the books, my review of which is going to take a while longer to write since I don’t feel particularly motivated to write more about it than I already have even if I feel like it would do me some good to get the thoughts out of my head and written down somewhere) but as I only slightly jokingly told a coworker today, Zendaya can’t carry a movie that big all on her own.

First and foremost, I can tell that the movies tried to stay faithful to the book. Unfortunately, they also tried to make it into a set of modern action movies and that failed miserably because the book they’re pulling from is a political thriller. The whole movie felt like it was full of moments I only properly understood because I’d just read the book and could fill in the absent internal narration as they characters explained to themselves (and the reader) what their motivations were. Which could be an incorrect impression formed because I’d just read the book and could easily remember everything that had happened around the equivalent scenes in Herbert’s Dune. I genuinely can’t tell if my fresh and sharp knowledge of Dune helped or hindered me. It’s entirely possibly I might have enjoyed the movie more without knowing what the book aspired to be (the story I could see behind all the unsubtle writing, horrible narratorial opinions/descriptions, blatant racism/eugenics, etc.), but going through all of them in quick succession made it impossible to set aside the book I’d read because the movie was trying so hard to stay faithful to said book without quite as many egregious issues as the original text had.

One of the things that happens when you create a story is that you have an understanding of the text (and everything depicted within it) that your eventual audience will not have. It is easy to forget to include important details or context because its something you, the creator, know and that seems like it should be obvious to anyone reading the story. Outside editors can help address this problem since they’ll lack the context and can usually point it out, but they can’t really help with something that is as culturally monolithic as Dune. I mean, most people my age might not have read Dune, but I bet all the people associated with making the movie have, including the editors, which is why it probably feels the way it does to me: like it’s a companion to the original text rather than entirely separate from it. It feels like half the movie is a series of easter eggs pointing at things from the book but never doing the work to independently establish what is supposedly going on behind the scenes there.

The reason I can’t disentangle my experiences is because of just how many moments there were in both the first and second movie that only really mattered in the larger context of Herbert’s Dune. I genuinely think that the movie would have better if they’d cut them and not just because the movie would have been shorter. For instance, the attempt on Paul’s life only really matters when it was part of building up Leto Atreides’ mental fatigue to make him and his circle begin their inward suspicion which, in turn, started a cycle of mistrust that lasted until the end of the book. In the movie, it didn’t matter at all because the Harkonnens conquered them by force and betrayal rather than the subtle intrigue picking the Atreides apart so that the Harkonnens could quickly sweep them aside and there was no one left to express that mistrust at the end, anyway. So much of Paul’s refusal to head south and begin the holy war doesn’t matter at all because, instead of seeing him forced to give ground by inches, a switch suddenly flips and he’s going from refusing to head south to heading south and setting himself up as the leader of the entire planet. Why do all that build up to this moment if the fact that he regrets his decisions never comes up in the movie? So much could have been cut if they’d focused on making a clean story rather than trying to make the modern action equivalent of the book.

Aside from that (which was enough to doom my ability to enjoy the movies on their own since I went in dreading their length), some of the choices they made that differed from the book felt weird. I mean, Stilgar never being a friend to Paul and always being a worshipper feels like a significant loss, especially because the point where Stilgar turns from friend to worshipper in the book marks the point where Paul has officially tipped the balance of things such that the future of war and bloodshed he foresees is no longer preventable. In the movies, Stilgar is always a religious zealot and it makes it feel less like Paul actually does anything and more like everyone is just looking for ways to say he has met all the required signs. Which feels silly since there’s actual magic and prophecy, so why do they need to do the work of showing religious zealotry when Paul being this (white) savior figure is an established fact. Then there’s Jessica and her fetus, which seems to have gained all the power that Jessica was supposed to get since Jessica frames every strange and startling insight or declaration of future events as coming from her fetus rather than something she foresaw or magically understood herself. It’s weird. It makes her much less threatening and much more unsettling in a way that feels like an uncomfortable commentary on people who have severe mental health issues. It was unpleasant for a lot of reasons.

I don’t know if I’m going to watch whatever movie comes next. I’ve already committed to reading the next Dune book, so I might wind up watching the next movie whenever that comes out, but I’m going to try to avoid it. I have little hope that the next movie will be short enough to be enjoyable and while I could certainly tolerate it, I’m not sure I’m willing to spend my limited time on this earth with a three-hour movie I can only just barely tolerate. At least with a book I can put it down or critically engage with it as I’m reading the text. With a movie, I just want to not think about it. Which I’m looking forward to doing now that I’ve gotten all my main thoughts out of my head and written down somewhere.

Ultimately, I do not recommend these movies. I’m sure plenty of people enjoy them and they have spectacle enough for someone who just wants to fill their time, but there’s enough CG that it never really felt real to me. You can watch it if you want and I hope you enjoy it, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I’m sure you could find a better way to spend two and a half to three hours (per movie) of your day.