I was too young to see the Lord of the Rings trilogy when it hit theaters a little over two decades ago. When I heard that one of Hollywood’s finest working directors, Denis Villeneuve, would shortly be adapting Dune to the big screen, I was determined not to miss out.
After two years and four months’ wait, the most common criticism of Part One has been answered: The incomplete story set up in the first installment is now complete. We rejoin Paul (Timothy Chalamet), Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), Chani (Zendaya), and Stilgar (Javier Bardem) in the same stretch of desert where we left them over two years ago and follow them seamlessly to the climax where they confront the Harkonnens with an army of fanatical jihadis at their back. Two decades hence, no one will remember the supposed anticlimax of the first film — the two will run together in our collective imaginations.
Read Full Article »