Dune was one of the franchises I loved from a very early age. I was first introduced to it when I played the original computer game of it, that belonged to one of my mum’s boyfriends. And then I got the movie (on VHS, because I’m really that old) and watched that almost constantly. I read almost all the books in the series and watched both miniseries, as well as watching Dune Part One.

To be honest, I wasn’t all that impressed with this movie. Very similar to the first one, I felt that it dragged a lot where it shouldn’t…and rushed a whole lot that should have been slower-paced. I was really disappointed that Jessica spent the entire movie pregnant with Alia, who was a key figure in the first book.

I wasn’t exactly unhappy that Chani was portrayed as having no belief or trust in the prophecy, since it’s made clear in the original book and in this movie that the Bene Gesserit planted the seeds for the prophecy long before Paul Atreides was even born. So I did feel the way Chani’s opinions clashed worked really well. I did like her interactions with Paul…and I did feel that Timothee Chalamet did portray Paul fairly well.

I also quite enjoyed the scene where Feyd-Rautha is fighting in the arena. I thought that the scene being shot in black and white was a really neat, stylistic choice. And while Feyd-Rautha is a bad guy, it was interesting to see that he had some honour when it came to fighting; particularly when he got angry when one of the Harkonnen soldiers wounded the prisoner he was battling, despite the prisoner not actually being drugged.

I would have liked to see Irulan’s character explored a bit more in this movie. There were glimpses shown of her, but I definitely think her character could have been explored a lot more, considering she plays a fairly big part in the books, including having excerpts from her writings used at the beginning of each chapter.

There were some good parts to this movie, but I think that a lot was missed out that should have been included. And unfortunately, the movie dragged and was pretty boring in places. I was also frustrated that the ending of the movie set it up for a third movie, given that the point it reached was where the first book ended.

Visually, I do think there was a lot that was good about this movie…but as an adaptation of one of my favourite science fiction books, it was a disappointment to me. I will see the next movie, but that’s more because I enjoy the franchise as a whole. It’s not a faithful adaptation of the book…though it’s certainly not as bad as movies like Blood and Chocolate, and Secret of Moonacre.