Friday, October 15, 2021

Anticipating "Dune"

I'm really looking forward to this. Such a good sci-fi story!:
Villeneuve, a true devotee of the book, does not repeat the same mistakes. No one is going to make it rain this time around, and the script repeatedly makes clear—as Herbert’s book did—that the religious beliefs that lead the Fremen to recognize Paul as a messianic figure are lies seeded by outsiders for the purpose of political manipulation. Paul—here played by Timothée Chalamet, who actually looks like a teenager—is callow, stubborn, argumentative, and possessed of a superficial idealism that can easily slide into cynicism. In short, he is a budding false messiah, and while Villeneuve has chosen to adapt only the first half of the novel (it remains uncertain whether the second half will be greenlit, though it would be criminal if it isn’t) in order to give all of its complexity room to breathe, it should already be clear to a careful viewer that things are not going to end happily ever after for Chalamet’s Paul, or for the universe he’s destined to conquer.

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