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Timothee chalamet in denis villeneuve’s ‘dune’: film review | venice 2021.

Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi classic gets epic screen treatment, with an all-star cast that also features Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa and Zendaya.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Unless you’re sufficiently up on Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi classic to know your Sardaukars from your Bene Gesserit, your crysknife from your hunter-seeker, chances are you’ll be glazing over not too far into Dune . Or wishing that House Atreides and House Harkonnen would kick off a vogue ball.

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Venue: Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition) Distributor: Warner Bros. Production companies: Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Pictures Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgard, Dave Bautista, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, Chang Chen, David Dastmalchian, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem, Babs Olusankokum, Golda Rosheuvel, Benjamin Clementine Director: Denis Villeneuve Screenwriters: Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, Eric Roth, based on the novel by Frank Herbert Producers: Mary Parent, Denis Villeneuve, Cale Boyter, Joe Caracciolo Jr. Executive producers: Tanya Lapointe, Joshua Grode, Herbert W. Gains, Jon Spaihts, Thomas Tull, Brian Herbert, Byron Merritt, Kim Herbert Director of photography: Greig Fraser Production designer: Patrice Vermette Costume designer: Jacqueline West, Robert Morgan Editor: Joe Walker Music: Hans Zimmer Visual effects supervisor: Paul Lambert Special effects supervisor: Gerd Nefzer Casting: Francine Maisler, Jina Jay

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Dune review: Denis Villeneuve's starry sci-fi epic is breathtaking, and a little bit maddening

Earlier this summer, director Denis Villeneuve made news for insisting that watching Dune on television would be like "driv[ing] a speedboat in your bathtub." To some people, it sounded like the petty grievances of an out-of-touch auteur — or worse, a fundamental misunderstanding of the way post-pandemic Hollywood operates: any which way it can.

All that might be true, but it doesn't mean he's wrong. In fact Villeneuve's new adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic 1965 novel is exactly the kind of lush, lofty filmmaking wide screens were made for; a sensory experience so opulent and overwhelming it begs to be seen big, or not at all. That the movie (which premiered Friday at the Venice Film Festival, ahead of a theatrical and HBO Max release Oct. 22) seems to have room for only half the story — and that its emotional palate is considerably more limited than its artistic one — feels relative in many ways to the fandom. If you're already knee-deep in Herbert mythology, you'll thrill to every whispered word; if you come in not knowing the difference between a Holtzman shield and a hole in the floor, it's a longer walk.

The introduction, in any case, wastes little time on exposition: The year is 10191 and Duke Leto Atreides ( Oscar Isaac ) has come with his longtime concubine, Lady Jessica ( Rebecca Ferguson ) and their grown son, Paul ( Timothée Chalamet ), to oversee the colonized planet of Arrakis — a harsh, arid place whose lone prized export is a shimmery dust called Spice. The natives who manage to scrape out a subsistence living farming it there are known as Fremens, their Listerine-blue eyes and Mad Max -style compounds necessary adaptations to the unforgiving climate.

Paul is soon visited by dreams of one Fre-woman in particular, Chani ( Zendaya ), disturbing visions that come to him unreliably and often without context but seem to portend real future events. To Lady Jessica, a member of an ancient all-female order known as the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood, it's further proof that her child may in fact be the one chosen to save them all — centuries of selective eugenics finally come to bear in the body of a boy whose gender just happens to be wrong, or at least not what the Sisterhood planned for.

She's not the only one to take note of his particular gifts: The leader of Atreides' born enemy, the slug-bodied Baron Vladimir Harkonnen ( Stellan Skarsgård ) feels the ripple of his presence and the Fremens do too — even if loyal foot soldiers of his father's, including Josh Brolin 's taciturn weapons master Gurney Halleck and Jason Momoa 's cheerful warrior Duncan Idaho, continue to treat him like an essential if ordinary heir, to be trained and mentored and kept safe in the line of succession.

There are, you may have already sensed, no small actors in Dune , even in small parts: a veiled, imperious Charlotte Rampling as the Mother Superior who puts Paul to a memorable test; Javier Bardem as a terse Fremen chieftan; Dave Bautista as the Baron's brooding bull-necked nephew. Zendaya's Chani, who appears far more verbal in the trailer than she does in the actual film, moves through most of it as a sort of teasing apparition, less fully fleshed character than elusive spirit guide-slash-dream-key to Paul's destiny.

To be fair, it's hard to imagine a mortal movie star who wouldn't be dwarfed by the exquisite, elaborate world-building happening on screen. As he proved on projects like Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 , Villeneuve's gift for visual storytelling can be genuinely breathtaking — vast desertscapes unscrolling like oceans and helicopters with dragonfly-wing blades where the rotors should be; the kidney-piercing resonance of Hans Zimmer's soundtrack poured over sets of towering, planet-scaled enormity. (Speculation that Dune 's M.O. would be " Star Wars , but make it fashion" is not completely off-base.) If anything falls short of Herbert's particular vision it's the movie's sandworms, who for all their faceless foreboding mostly register as super-size CG tubes; colossal, unwieldy vacuum-cleaner attachments gone rogue.

Dune is so aesthetically rich and monolithic that a few brief, misguided stabs at Marvel-style humor early on feel almost like blasphemy. The script seems to know it and soon settles into a kind of grim grandeur, each turn a building block to nothing less than the interstellar fate of the free world. Chalamet aptly channels the ethereal beauty and conflicted psyche of a reluctant savior, his troubled, tender Paul a sort of sci-fi Hamlet forced by fate and circumstance to bear the full weight of history, and Isaacs' Duke is both a noble warrior and a father so lovingly supportive he belongs in the Call Me By Your Name dad hall of fame . At some point, it is virtually guaranteed that they and nearly everyone else on screen will appear in a visual tableau worth gasping over.

The sheer awesomeness of Villeneuve's execution — there might not be another film this year, or ever, that turns one character asking another for a glass of water into a kind of walloping psychedelic performance art — often obscures the fact that the plot is mostly prologue: a sprawling origin story with no fixed beginning or end. (The director has said that he only agreed to take on the project if the studio let him split Dune 's narrative into two parts, and that he's still "very optimistic" the second will get made.) Minus the fuller context that Herbert's extended universe and dense mythology provides, the meaning of it all feels both endlessly beguiling and just out of reach: a dazzling high-toned space opera written on sand. Grade: B

Review: Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Dune’ is a transporting vision, but it could use a touch more madness

Two men cling to a futuristic craft in the movie "Dune."

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The story in “Dune” is set in motion by an ambitious, unwieldy and ill-advised transfer of power — an undertaking that extracts a terrible cost and seems doomed to end in frustration and defeat. Something similar might be said of the previous major attempts to wrest Frank Herbert’s 1965 literary colossus to the big screen, even if recent history has sometimes looked back on those failures with a forgiving smile. Alejandro Jodorowsky’s assuredly trippy, never-completed version has become a much-mythologized cinematic ruin . David Lynch’s 1984 flop, reviled by many (including Lynch himself), can still inspire spasms of admiration for its mix of narrative intransigence and visionary strangeness.

Still, to the extent that “Dune” endures, it does so on the strengths of Herbert’s extraordinarily prescient work — its echoes of a real world ravaged by oil wars, climate change and other consequences of human greed — rather than anything to do with its dubious cinematic legacy. Not least among the book’s mysteries is that it has shaped the iconography of so many classic science-fiction and fantasy films — most obviously, though not exclusively, “Star Wars” — without yielding a classic of its own. Conventional wisdom has long held that “Dune” is unfilmable , that its interlocking parables of colonial oppression, ecological disaster and messianic deliverance are too vast to be contained within the flattening parameters of the cinema screen.

The magisterially brooding new “Dune,” just unveiled at the Venice International Film Festival and slated to reach U.S. theaters and HBO Max subscribers Oct. 22, boldly seeks to reverse that prophecy. With methodical poise and seat-rattling spectacle, the French Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve (who wrote the script with Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth) draws you into an astonishingly vivid, sometimes plausibly unnerving vision of the future. If those cursed earlier stabs at “Dune” were examples of what the French call a “film maudit,” this imposing new vision aspires to be the opposite: perhaps a “film Mahdi,” to reference the Arabic word often hurled at the young savior-to-be, Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), as he embraces his destiny.

Caption: ZENDAYA as Chani in Warner Bros. Pictures' and Legendary Pictures' action adventure "DUNE," a Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary release.

‘Dune: Part One’ ending explained: Where could a sequel go from here?

The new film “Dune” ends on a cliffhanger. With the second half of Frank Herbert’s classic story still to tell — not to mention all its sequels and prequels — where will the “Dune” universe go from here?

Oct. 24, 2021

The fulfillment of that destiny will have to wait; “Dune: Part One,” as it’s billed onscreen, is the first in a projected two-part adaptation, which means that any assessment of Villeneuve’s achievement must be provisional at best. For now, it’s hard to deny the excitement of feeling swept up in this movie’s great squalls of sand, spice and interplanetary intrigue, realized with a level of craft so overpowering in its dust-choked aridity that you may want to pull your mask up a little tighter in the theater. You may also feel a more qualified sense of admiration for Villeneuve’s efforts to preserve yet streamline the novel’s imaginative essence, to translate Herbert’s heady conceits and arcane nomenclature into a prestige blockbuster idiom.

Whether he succeeds — and for an impressive stretch, I think he does — his own meteoric Hollywood ascent has clearly prepared him for the assignment. This isn’t the first time Villeneuve has evinced a superb eye for the textural and chromatic nuances of sand, as the Mideast deserts of “Incendies,” the U.S.-Mexico border zones of “Sicario” and the Las Vegas ruins of “Blade Runner 2049” will attest. And like “Blade Runner 2049” and especially “Arrival,” “Dune” is an unusually philosophical speculative fiction that ponders the difficulties of language and coexistence.

As the movie opens, a superficial detente has been orchestrated between the warring royal strongholds of Atreides and Harkonnen, led respectively by the noble Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) and the grotesque Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (a prosthetically transfigured Stellan Skarsgard). “Dune” heads will know the rest: By imperial decree, House Harkonnen must relinquish stewardship of the desert planet Arrakis, a.k.a. Dune, which is at once inhospitable to life and a much-coveted source of it. House Atreides will assume control of the planet as well as its rich concentrations of spice, a drug-like substance whose life-extending properties have made it the most prized commodity in the universe.

**SNEAKS FOR FALL 2021 DO NOT USE PRIOR 8/29/21: Timothee Chalamet as Paul Atreides in "Dune."

‘Dune’ was long considered ‘unadaptable.’ The screenwriters explain how they tackled the sci-fi classic

Heralded as the best sci-fi novel of all time, previous adaptations of Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’ have fizzled. Now it’s Denis Villeneuve’s turn.

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Notably, these narrative preliminaries are laid out by Chani (Zendaya), one of the Fremen, the thick-skinned, blue-eyed Indigenous people of Arrakis. Long acclimated to the planet’s sweltering heat and deadly giant sandworms, they’ve suffered bitterly under their cruel Harkonnen overlords and have no reason to suspect the Atreides will be any different. Villeneuve’s sympathetic focus on the Fremen feels like an early declaration of principle, a promise that this “Dune” might radically reframe the story from their perspective. For much of the movie, though, Chani and her people remain fleeting presences, glimpsed only in the gauzy visions of Duke Leto’s son, Paul.

Chalamet, always good at suggesting both youthful callowness and limitless potential, proves an inspired choice for the role of a young man who is both a coddled heir and an intriguingly unknown quantity. On the Atreides’ home planet of Caladan, he is trained with avuncular affection by his father’s retainers, including the brilliant security expert Thufir Hawat (Stephen McKinley Henderson), the brawny swordmaster Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa) and the skilled weapons teacher Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin, not exactly the “ugly lump of a man” described in the book). Paul is also a source of pride and anxiety for the Duke, movingly played by Isaac as a leader who longs to do right by his family, his people and the Fremen, even as he suspects that House Atreides might be stepping into a carefully laid trap.

Timothée Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson in "Dune."

But Paul’s most important mentor is his mother, Lady Jessica (a superb Rebecca Ferguson), a member of a shadowy, oracular sisterhood known as the Bene Gesserit for whom Paul poses both a problem and a source of fascination. Led by an imperious Reverend Mother (a heavily veiled but unmistakable Charlotte Rampling), the Bene Gesserit are versed in many skills including “the Voice,” a form of mind control rendered here via menacing aural distortions that — along with the soundtrack’s low, ominous rumbles and Hans Zimmer’s pulsating score — make “Dune” a symphony for the ears as well as a feast for the eyes.

It is, admittedly, a rather monochromal feast, dryer than it is rich, notwithstanding a luscious early shot of the Arrakis dunes that brings to mind the crisped swirls of an overbaked meringue. Much of the palace intrigue plays out in muted tones and symmetrical compositions (the cinematography is by the great Greig Fraser), part of a rigorously color-controlled aesthetic that extends to Patrice Vermette’s futuro-brutalist production design and Jacqueline West’s slickly utilitarian costumes. A cold, fascist sheen seems to cling to the Atreides’ regal formations and their state-of-the-art ornithopters (like helicopters, but with blades that flutter like insect wings), all flawless design elements in a pageant of technological might and militaristic order.

Villeneuve means to subvert and disrupt that pageant, something he accomplishes in part by consciously elevating the women in this male-dominated story. Ferguson’s forceful presence in the expanded role of Lady Jessica is one example; another is the gender recasting of Liet Kynes (a striking Sharon Duncan-Brewster), Arrakis’ deeply knowledgeable planetologist. It’s Kynes who helps the Atreides adjust to their desert environs, at one point accompanying them to a spice-harvesting site where they get their terrifying first glimpse of a giant sandworm in action, its great maw swirling open like a raging quicksand vortex.

This action sequence and others are handled with masterly assurance, including several scenes of intimate combat performed with form-fitting, blood-concealing energy shields. But as ever, Villeneuve’s true talent is less in the staging of violence than in the queasy anticipation of it; he loves to linger in the looming threat of mayhem, in the tense moments before the (sand)worm turns. That gift serves him well enough in “Dune,” whose plot hinges on encroaching threats, assassination attempts and a series of devastating betrayals that send Paul and Lady Jessica fleeing into the desert where there await still more perils, possibilities and encounters with the Fremen (led by a sly Javier Bardem).

Caption: TIMOTHEE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures' action adventure "DUNE," a Warner Bros. Pictures release.

Why ‘Dune’ made these 5 key changes from Frank Herbert’s book

“Dune” director Denis Villeneuve discusses several significant departures from the sci-fi classic source material.

Oct. 21, 2021

Until the movie slams to an abrupt, unsatisfying halt halfway through the events of Herbert’s novel, there’s pleasure in watching this particular game of thrones play out, though perhaps more pleasure than depth or meaning. To call this “Dune” a remarkably lucid work is to praise it with very faint damnation. Perhaps reluctant to alienate the novices in the audience, Villeneuve has ironed out many of the novel’s convolutions, to the likely benefit of comprehension but at the expense of some rich, imaginative excess. Herbert’s more memorable flights of linguistic fancy, like “gom jabbar” and “Kwisatz Haderach,” are spoken once, with a faint air of embarrassed obligation, and seldom mentioned again. A more significant casualty is the book’s layered interiority, its skill at turning unspoken perceptions and motives into drama; the writers have managed this material without mastering it.

Lynch’s compromised version was similarly stymied and more clotted with exposition. But it also had the courage of its demented convictions, as well as a fearless commitment to feverish, pustular imagery that makes Villeneuve’s pristine filmmaking seem almost timid by comparison. Not for the first time, his craft seems to exist mainly for its own sake; it’s the hallmark of a filmmaker who’s more logistician than thinker, more technician than artist. As a visual and visceral experience, “Dune” is undeniably transporting. As a spectacle for the mind and heart, it never quite leaves Earth behind.

And perhaps that’s as it should be, at least at this early stage. With any luck, there will be more to see and much more to think about in “Dune: Part Two,” the completion of which will depend to some degree on this first movie’s fortunes. Will “Dune” conjure enough coin — the spice of the Hollywood realm — to see itself through to completion? I suspect it might, in part because I doubt Villeneuve, a filmmaker more dependable than he is interesting, has it in him to add to “Dune’s” string of memorably catastrophic failures. Dust has long been his truest cinematic habitat, and to dust may he return.

‘Dune: Part One’

Rated: PG-13, for sequences of strong violence, some disturbing images and suggestive material Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes Playing: Starts Oct. 22 in general release and on HBO Max

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Dune review: Spectacular sci-fi adaptation is this generation’s Lord of the Rings trilogy

Denis villeneuve’s film is of such literal and emotional largeness that it overwhelms the senses, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Denis Villeneuve. Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Zendaya. Cert 15, 155 mins

In Frank Herbert’s Dune , we’re introduced to the fictional planet of Arrakis – an arid place, its winds so choked with sand that it seems impossible for any creature or person to dwell within it. And yet, from somewhere deep below, a rumble can be heard. Sandworms, both fierce and mountainous, move unseen but still felt. It’s an oddly accurate way to describe the fate of Herbert’s own book, widely recognised as one of the greatest pieces of science fiction, but absent from the popular consciousness to such a degree that George Lucas could pilfer its story of ancient religions and desert messiahs without much notice.

Meanwhile, Hollywood has come to consider the book as something of a poisoned chalice. Dune has already felled two great visionaries: Alejandro Jodorowsky’s psychedelic vision collapsed in on itself, while David Lynch’s typically absurdist take was reviled by critics. So there was an undeniable audacity to the decision by Warner Bros to revisit Herbert’s 1965 novel, placing it now in the hands of French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve and dividing it into two parts. But that risk has been richly rewarded.

Villeneuve’s Dune is the sandworm exploding out from the darkness below. It is a film of such literal and emotional largeness that it overwhelms the senses. If all goes well, it should reinvigorate the book’s legacy in the same way Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy did for JRR Tolkien’s work. Indeed, much like Jackson, Villeneuve has a certain pliancy to his vision that, in this case, has been his saving grace. Arrival and Prisoners , two of his previous films, may have possessed their own distinctive look but, when it came to Blade Runner 2049 , his belated sequel to Ridley Scott’s masterpiece, it spoke fluently in the language of what came before.

Dune , then, is firmly grounded in Herbert’s book. The author’s story of feudal nobles waging war over Arrakis, the only source of a powerful drug known as spice, is thick with conflicting ideas that academics are still unpacking today. For Villeneuve, his interests seem to lie mostly in where colonialism and religion collide, specifically in the weaponisation of belief in order to control a population. The film opens with a piece of narration from Chani (Zendaya), one of Arrakis’s indigenous Fremen, as she ponders over who will be the next to oppress her people. The cruel and ruthless Harkonnens have left their planet and given up control of the spice trade. In their place arrives House Atreides: Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac), his concubine Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), and their son Paul (Timothée Chalamet).

‘It felt like an independent movie’: The cast of Dune on making the blockbuster of the year

Jessica is a member of the Bene Gesserit, a spiritual order of witch-like women who have served as the guiding hand of history. Through the careful intermixing of bloodlines, they hope to produce the “Kwisatz Haderach” – a mind so powerful that it could bridge space and time, past and future. It’s becoming increasingly clear that Paul himself may be the fated being in question.

Centuries before the events described in Herbert’s novel, there was a revolt that destroyed all computers. Patrice Vermette’s production work and Jacqueline West’s costumes have thus eschewed many of the conventions of futuristic design in favour of something far more archaeological and symbolic. Painted Japanese panels sit beside Byzantine robes, with just a touch of the mechanical eerieness of artist HR Giger, once hired for Jodorowsky’s film. Hans Zimmer’s score, so dread-filled that it’s frightening, includes both throat singing and Scottish bagpipes.

Could Paul (Timothée Chalamet) be the all-powerful ‘Kwisatz Haderach’?

Villeneuve allows the terrible, suffocating weight of Paul’s destiny to infect every frame of Dune – from the sterile, muted palette of his homeworld Caladan to the gold-flecked haze of Arrakis. Figures traverse across vast landscapes, while miniature swarms of spaceships gather like invading insects. That smallness allows, too, for some humanity. There is a fragility to these characters, upheld by a cast of actors all too smart to be swallowed up by portentousness. Chalamet will always have his sheepishness, Zendaya a cutting clarity to her voice.

But Dune is a complicated book. It’s also a complicated film. There’s a real question as to why the Fremen – whose language, dress, and culture are so directly inspired by the nomadic, Arabic Bedouin tribes – don’t feature any Middle Eastern and North African (Mena) actors in speaking roles, their leader instead played by Javier Bardem in a shemagh-inspired headscarf. The casting choice is poor, and will only cause further problems if Villeneuve is able to make the second part of this story. It’s a small, but noticeable chip in the paint when it comes to Dune – a work that’s otherwise of such intimidating grandeur that it’s hard to believe it even exists in the first place.

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‘Dune’ Wages an All-Out Attack on the Senses — and Wins

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

It’s hard to be a messiah. Even before he recognizes that this is what he is, the young Paul Atreides of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune , played by Timothée Chalamet , lets the grief of expectation seep into his body, down to the drowsed slump of his shoulders and the toneless, contemplative wariness of his voice. The actor’s charm is kept in check; his latent vulnerabilities are in overdrive. Paul is the heir to House Atreides, whose fief is the oceanic planet of Caladan, a stony, rainy, tumultuous world, limited in its purview and power. An unusual home for a family said to descend from the ancient Greeks. But it helps to explain why everyone seems a little down in the dumps.

In another kind of movie, this quality would maybe seem less worthy of remark. A moody teen. So what? But Dune , as Villeneuve has ambitiously sought to tell it, is above all a story of empire, to which Chalamet’s performance lends an interesting texture, soft and uncertain amid the movie’s hardness. This is Villeneuve, after all. The conspicuous sense of design, the brutalism of its sets and sounds (the latter coming courtesy of Hans Zimmer), the overwhelming aesthetics: N one of this should surprise us. Villeneuve’s Dune is a thick, loud, well-fed spectacle of a movie, towering over the people in it with a brooding sense of intention — even in its quieter moments, even when wrestling through the Herbert novel’s wide-ranging, learned, quirky mysticism. But Dune is not just about the bone-rattling heft of its flying machines or its labyrinthine palace interiors or the intergalactic tangle of its imperial politics. Villeneuve must also wrestle with the oddities of the Frank Herbert novel on which the movie is based: the Bene Gesserit witches and their strep-throat vocal manipulations; the Fremen warriors of Arrakis with their blue eyes and violent devotion to the land; the gigantic worms with their baleen-like mouths; the psychotropic desert crop called melange — a.k.a. t he spice . I will never be able to un-hear Kyle Machlachan, in David Lynch’s maligned 1984 adaptation, saying it this way, in a horny whisper that now plays like an early foray into ASMR: The spice . There’s an air of mystery to it when MacLachlan says it. Villeneuve’s take is, by contrast, far less weird. It takes seriously the challenge of adapting a seemingly unadaptable novel, and keeping all its big-picture implications in full view. It earns its distinction as a faithful adaptation — and proves a satisfying movie, too.

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Hero’s journeys are satisfying by design. But Dune — both the novel and this adaptation — has more going on under the hood than its veneer of hero-myth rehashing would suggest. Chalamet’s Paul seems to carry the weight of an empire on his shoulders because, well, he does. Heavy weighs the promise of his father’s crown, and an eminent war that Paul senses he will have to fight. Paul is prone to visions of the future in his dreams. But one needn’t have ESP to know that there will be a war between House Atreides and their foes, the monstrous House of Harkonnen. The Harkonnens’ longtime stronghold over the desert planet Arrakis — rich with that so-called “spice,” which happens to be essential to operating intergalactic machinery — has suddenly come to an end. This is a strategic play, apparently, the workings of an overarching empire that’s pulling the strings, and it is meant to set these powerful houses at odds.

There in the middle stands Paul, next in succession for the dukeship of the House of Atreides behind his father Leto (Oscar Isaac). It cannot be coincidence that Paul, with his long coats and inward-looking sorrow, appears onscreen in a crucial moment like a cinematic successor to Caspar David Friedrich’s “ Wanderer Above the Fog ,” a lone figure staring off into a void of clashing uncertainties. One gets the feeling, just from watching Paul and Leto interact, that no one is under the illusion that any particular reign will get a chance to outstay its welcome. That’s war-torn space imperialism for you. Leto’s father was a bullfighter. His reign was cut prematurely short by a bull that had the gall to fight back. So: a doomed legacy. It hangs over the wary Atreides clan with an undeniable sense of reality — literally. The head of that bull looms over the family’s long-tabled dining quarters, watching over them as they enjoy the spoils of their power.

You could say the bull has been conquered, being a trophy now. Funny how it doesn’t feel that way. To say Leto and Paul make for a reluctant line of hero-leaders would be an understatement. Villeneuve renders it overstatement. The movie’s flashy successes and curious lapses both, often enough, come down to this.

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Dune Reviews

With a tone and narrative that feels like a melting pot of some of the most beloved franchises in popular culture, it is not far-fetched to think that Dune could become the next big thing.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 15, 2024

The “Dune” series has long been considered a landmark of science fiction. Fortunately, Denis Villeneuve’s astute direction in laying the right foundations only shows his respect for Frank Herbert’s work.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jul 4, 2024

While Villeneuve's version makes more of an effort than Lynch's to explore some of Dune's meatier themes, like colonization, it fails to nail the environmental ideas.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jun 3, 2024

Villeneuve’s “Dune” is the cinematic equivalent of a meditation garden: gorgeous to watch with its characters’ polished skin, smooth stonelike spaceships, sand enveloped landscapes, sunlight

Full Review | Mar 24, 2024

It would be enough of a cinematic experience with just the visuals, but the technical elements within the sound are award-worthy.

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Mar 1, 2024

Few movies showcase this scale, and once again, Villeneuve proves himself one of the best filmmakers alive. However, some early pacing issues and the two-part nature make Dune feel somewhat incomplete.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Mar 1, 2024

Dune’s first half lived up to the hype as a mix of political intrigue, sci-fi storytelling and a large selection of really interesting characters, all with great visuals and sound design to match.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 26, 2024

There are even moments that surpass the novel, especially the relationship between Leto and Paul, mainly due to a heartfelt speech from Oscar Isaac...

Full Review | Feb 24, 2024

Director Denis Villeneuve never misses and succeeds again in this adaptation with incredible performances especially from Timothee Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 11, 2023

The end result is a movie worthy of the source material.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 10, 2023

an incredibly well-crafted adaptation that's faithful to the source material while also breathing new life into it, and an immersive, epic cinematic journey that will absolutely leave you aching for more.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 8, 2023

Villeneuve’s Dune: Part One is a worthy addition to the collection, besting the Lynch film in certain ways but still flummoxed and frustrated by the source material’s conversation-heavy downside.

Full Review | Jul 28, 2023

Dune is a masterful sci-fi blockbuster that is going to please the majority of its audience. The visuals are crying out to be seen on the biggest screen possible, easily becoming the movies standout.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 27, 2023

A true cinematic treasure that will be cherished for decades to come & gave me the same feeling that I got watching A New Hope for the first time. This is Epic to the highest of standards & I need more right now.

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Jul 26, 2023

The talented cast is in service of spectacle, doing little more than providing the expositional sutures that connect one elaborate set piece to the next.

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

Dune sets the new standard for epic cinema with eyegamic visuals, powerful sound design and score, and a compelling story surrounded by an absolutely massive scale. Denis Villeneuve adds yet another audiovisual masterpiece to his filmography.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jul 25, 2023

Dune is so engaged in getting the plot right and building an appropriate world that it doesn’t have time to let its characters bond or develop a real connection.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

Villeneuve can build spectacle and innovative tales because we have seen him do it before, but his rendition of Dune isn’t one of them.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Jul 21, 2023

Laced with complex politics, interesting themes on religion, gender, imperialism, and environmentalism; this has just about everything a fantasy/sci-fi fan could want.

Full Review | Jul 19, 2023

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is simply epic in every sense of the word, from the acting and action sequences, to the score from Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer. The grandeur of the film is accentuated by captivating shots and landscapes

Cast & crew
User reviews

Dune: Part One

A noble family becomes embroiled in a war for control over the galaxy's most valuable asset while its heir becomes troubled by visions of a dark future. A noble family becomes embroiled in a war for control over the galaxy's most valuable asset while its heir becomes troubled by visions of a dark future. A noble family becomes embroiled in a war for control over the galaxy's most valuable asset while its heir becomes troubled by visions of a dark future.

Denis Villeneuve
Jon Spaihts
Timothée Chalamet
Rebecca Ferguson
5.9K User reviews
543 Critic reviews
74 Metascore
174 wins & 294 nominations total

Photos 1360

Rebecca Ferguson in Dune: Part One (2021)

Top cast 48

Paul Atreides

Lady Jessica Atreides

Duke Leto Atreides

Duncan Idaho

Baron Vladimir Harkonnen

Thufir Hawat

Gurney Halleck

Dr. Liet Kynes

Dr. Wellington Yueh

Glossu Rabban Harkonnen

Piter de Vries

Reverend Mother Mohiam

Herald of the Change
(as Benjamin Clementine)

Bene Gesserit Sister

Shadout Mapes
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

Trivia David Lynch , director of the previous Dune (1984) , stated that he has "zero interest" in the new movie. He cited that his issues have nothing to do with director Denis Villeneuve but with his own painful memories of making the 1984 version: "Because it was a heartache for me. It was a failure and I didn't have final cut. I've told this story a billion times. It's not the film I wanted to make. I like certain parts of it very much - but it was a total failure for me."
Goofs Despite several mentions of the intensity of the sun on Arrakis, no character ever wears any eye protection.

Lady Jessica Atreides : I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings obliteration. I will face my fear and I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past... I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Crazy credits At the start of the film, a Sardaukar priest chants "Dreams are messages from the deep" as a prologue as it is subtitled onscreen.
Connections Featured in Black and White Sports Too: Dune Trailer Reaction! Official 2020 - Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa, Josh Brolin (2020)
Soundtracks Tooth of Shai Hulud Performed by Czarina Russell Written and Produced by Theo Green

User reviews 5.9K

jochemcooiman
Sep 16, 2021

Women in Science Fiction

How long is Dune: Part One? Powered by Alexa
Who is playing Feyd?
Is this based on a novel?
Will there be any reference to Omnius and Erasmus?
October 22, 2021 (United States)
United States
Official site
Official Site (Japan)
Wadi Rum, Jordan (Arrakis desert)
Warner Bros.
Legendary Entertainment
Villeneuve Films
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$165,000,000 (estimated)
$108,897,830
$41,011,174
Oct 24, 2021
$407,573,628

Technical specs

Runtime 2 hours 35 minutes
Dolby Surround 7.1
Dolby Atmos
Dolby Digital
IMAX 6-Track

More to explore

Dune First Reviews: The Breathtaking Adaptation Fans Have Been Waiting For

Critics say denis villeneuve's new take on frank herbert's classic novel is a nuanced, well-acted feast for the eyes and ears, even if it only leaves viewers wanting more..

TAGGED AS: Action , blockbuster , Film , films , movie , movies , Sci-Fi , science fiction

After decades of failed attempts and unsuccessful efforts, Frank Herbert’s Dune has been adapted into one of the most anticipated movies of the year — if not millennia. Does Denis Villeneuve ( Arrival ) finally do the classic science fiction novel(s) justice? The first reviews of his star-studded and visually epic new movie, also known as Dune: Part One , answer mostly in the affirmative. However, there’s a fairly uniform disappointment in how it ends without an ending.

Here’s what critics are saying about Dune :

Is this the Dune we’ve always wanted?

“Denis Villeneuve’s movie is the film interpretation that fans have been waiting to see for decades.” – Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend

“For science fiction devotees, especially those who have long-worshipped Frank Herbert’s dense tome…Villeneuve’s Dune is the adaptation you always dreamed of.” – Ben Travis, Empire Magazine

“[It] honors the source material in the most satisfying way possible. Dune 2021 is a modern-day work of art.” – Jimmy O, JoBlo’s Movie Emporium

“The missing link bridging the multiplex and the arthouse… Good heavens, what a film.” – Xan Brooks, Guardian

“For all its amazing imagery and A-list stars and very cool interpretations of the nerdier aspects of Herbert’s book, this version of Dune doesn’t fully coalesce.” – Scott Collura, IGN

Will it make us forget about David Lynch’s version?

“His Dune is the opposite of Lynch’s, methodical and cerebral, set against pastels and smoke and long stretches of moodiness.” – Roger Friedman, Showbiz 411

“Denis Villeneuve hasn’t succeeded where the likes of David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky have already failed, [but] his Dune is at least uniquely dispiriting.” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

“I’ll always love Lynch’s Dune , a severely compromised dream-work that (not surprising given Lynch’s own inclination) had little use for Herbert’s messaging. But Villeneuve’s movie is Dune .” – Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com

(Photo by Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures)

Is it a satisfying adaptation?

“This first chapter explores a very complex and detailed story with clarity and style. More importantly, it does so without sacrificing the impressive detail of Frank Herbert’s original vision.” – Jimmy O, JoBlo’s Movie Emporium

“Denis Villeneuve and his collaborators have cracked the code with their approach… extraordinary in its ability to directly translate the source material across mediums without compromise.” – Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend

“A more significant casualty is the book’s layered interiority, its skill at turning unspoken perceptions and motives into drama; the writers have managed this material without mastering it.” – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

“If anything falls short of Herbert’s particular vision it’s the movie’s sandworms.” – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

Is it OK if you haven’t read the book?

“Thankfully, Dune isn’t particularly hard to follow.” – Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

“Though there’s plenty to establish, Villeneuve makes surprisingly light work of it all… Dune is never as formidable as it threatens to be.” – Ben Travis, Empire Magazine

“The script does a good job with exposition without making it seem like EXPOSITION… but by the same token, there may not be any reason for you to be interested in Dune if you’re not a science-fiction-movie person anyway.” – Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com

“It’s not a film that requires any familiarity with the source material… Stretches in the early parts of Dune are a layman’s terms guide to Herbert’s incredibly intricate and uniquely realized universe.” – Adam Solomons, AwardsWatch

“If you come in not knowing the difference between a Holtzman shield and a hole in the floor, it’s a longer walk.” – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

“We don’t really learn much about individual characters in the film, making it hard to grasp or care about the stakes of the story.” – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

(Photo by Chiabella James/©Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.)

How is Denis Villeneuve as director?

“Villeneuve’s true talent is less in the staging of violence than in the queasy anticipation of it… That gift serves him well enough in Dune .” – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

“Those who find Villeneuve to be a self-serious, humorless, and pretentious bore likely won’t be changing their minds anytime soon after Dune , but that just might be their loss.” – Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

“To say I have not admired Villeneuve’s prior films is something of an understatement. But I can’t deny that he’s made a more-than-satisfactory movie of the book.” – Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com

“The unforgiving starkness will unsettle even some of Villeneuve’s greatest fans.” – Donald Clarke, Irish Times

“For all of Villeneuve’s awe-inducing vision, he loses sight of why Frank Herbert’s foundational sci-fi opus is worthy of this epic spectacle in the first place.” – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

“He’s an overloader, and only the keenest and most urgent of scripts can survive beneath that weight. Dune , unfortunately, is not one of those.” – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

How does it compare to his other work?

“It’s an arthouse blockbuster in the vein of his Blade Runner 2049 , but even less concerned with commercial appeal, which is admirably bold.” – Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

“Much like the haunting Blade Runner 2049 , the director has taken the time to explore numerous characters without sacrificing the main story and themes.” – Jimmy O, JoBlo’s Movie Emporium

“Like Blade Runner 2049 and especially Arrival , Dune is another unusually philosophical speculative fiction that ponders the difficulties of language and coexistence.” – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

“If you loved Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 , then Dune is perhaps Denis Villeneuve at his Villeneuviest.” – Richard Trenholm, CNET

Is it reminiscent of anything else?

“Think of it as Game of Thrones in space or Star Wars if it never got off Tatooine.” – Steve Pond, The Wrap

“Impressively ambitious in scale, like Villeneuve mashing up the worlds of Star Wars and Game of Thrones .” – Brian Truitt, USA Today

“Arguably [many of its elements are] all things that Star Wars features too, but just much more dense, sophisticated, and less child-like.” – Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

“ Dune feels most reminiscent of The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring .” – Ben Travis, Empire Magazine

“Much like the semi-recent classic Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Rings in the LOTR trilogy, this is only the beginning of the story… [and] Denis Villeneuve has created one of the best fantasy feature since Peter Jackson’s journey into Middle Earth.” – Jimmy O, JoBlo’s Movie Emporium

“Historical comparisons are of no use. None of us has been anywhere like this before. They can put that on the poster.” – Donald Clarke, Irish Times

“It sets a new standard for modern sci-fi epics.” – Germain Lussier, io9.com

Is there enough action for mainstream audiences?

“ Dune is consistently gripping and plot driven.” – Adam Solomons, AwardsWatch

“Even though it may be a slow burn, the action set pieces do not disappoint, neither does the filmmaker sacrifice the subtle themes and ideas explored throughout.” – Jimmy O, JoBlo’s Movie Emporium

“The pacing is perfect. Villeneuve makes you wait just long enough, so when the action moves to Arrakis you’re just as eager to venture into the desert as Paul.” – Ben Travis, Empire Magazine

“This version of Dune sometimes feels as if it aims to impress you more than entertain you… but it’s also a formidable cinematic accomplishment.” – Steve Pond, The Wrap

“It feels like a drag in its back half.” – Scott Collura, IGN

How are the visuals?

“Cinematographer Grieg Fraser has outdone himself from frame to frame, set piece to set piece, creating jaw dropping pieces of art that are impressionistic, sensational, and other worldly.” – Roger Friedman, Showbiz 411

“It’s all a feast for the eyes. The visuals are mind-blowing.” – Jimmy O, JoBlo’s Movie Emporium

“Aesthetically, Dune is pretty damn monumental and enveloping, and for audiences that potentially may find the plot confusing, the film still works on a deeply experiential, visceral level.” – Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

“The sense of scale conjured up is, from moment to moment, frequently astonishing.” – Ben Travis, Empire Magazine

“ Dune looks great, but outside of the fantastical design, the muted palette borders on drab.” – Richard Trenholm, CNET

And how does it sound?

“ Dune [is] a symphony for the ears as well as a feast for the eyes.” – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

“ Dune is also an auditory journey, not only featuring enveloping sound editing, but one of the best scores Hans Zimmer has ever composed.” – Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend

“The visual vastness is matched by a Hans Zimmer score that is, to use a technical term, full-Zimmer.” – Ben Travis, Empire Magazine

“Composer Hans Zimmer inspires great awe with a booming score, but not one BRAAAM in sight, thankfully.” – Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

What is the overall experience like?

“As a visual and visceral experience, Dune is undeniably transporting. As a spectacle for the mind and heart, it never quite leaves Earth behind.” – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

“ Dune is certainly capable of transporting us to its alien landscapes via its many technical achievements… There is no detail spared in immersing us in this fantastical world.” – Scott Collura, IGN

“You feel like you’re looking into a window across space and time… The line between fiction and reality fades from your mind, and it’s breathtaking.” – Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend

“Villeneuve’s Dune is the sandworm exploding out from the darkness below. It is a film of such literal and emotional largeness that it overwhelms the senses.” – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

How are the performances?

“Chalamet confirms on a grand scale what arthouse audiences have long known about his charisma.” – David Crow, Den of Geek

“Timothee Chalamet once again gives another exceptional performance.” – Jimmy O, JoBlo’s Movie Emporium

“Among the uniformly excellent performances, Timothée Chalamet holds his own in his first blockbuster leading role.” – Ben Travis, Empire Magazine

“Chalamet, playing it earnestly and effectively, is perfectly cast here, and both Ferguson and Isaac are excellent, as is Skarsgård.” – Pete Hammond, Deadline

“Everyone flawlessly gets at the core of who they are playing. Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson and Oscar Isaac are the triumvirate that lead the cast, and they are all phenomenal.” – Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend

“Momoa, in particular, bringing a swagger and excitement beyond anything we’ve seen from him before.” – Germain Lussier, io9.com

“The actors here all give good, serious performances, but in a sense it isn’t an actor’s film, because they are playing archetypes.” – Catherine Bray, Film of the Week

“No one has much time to distinguish themselves, all functioning as mere fleshy cogs in Villeneuve’s churning machine.” – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

Is it a fun movie?

“The script benefits from injecting occasional bits of humor into the universe-shaping events of the film.” – Scott Collura, IGN

“ Dune is so aesthetically rich and monolithic that a few brief, misguided stabs at Marvel-style humor early on feel almost like blasphemy.” – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

“If what you love most about Marvel is the quips, you might not like Dune very much…it is deadly serious…a relief I hadn’t realized I needed.” – Catherine Bray, Film of the Week

“While Villeneuve has been and likely remains one of the most humorless filmmakers alive, the novel wasn’t a barrel of laughs either, and it’s salutary that Villeneuve honored the scant light notes in the script.” – Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com

“ Dune lumbers with such aloof, uninviting self-seriousness that it’s hard to love, hard to even celebrate as an assured piece of tentpole authorship.” – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

“My only grievance is that hardly anyone in this film ever smiles…everyone in Dune is grimly serious. You kind of wish someone would shake Paul’s hand with a joy buzzer.” – Roger Friedman, Showbiz 411

Does it feel unfinished?

“The film is ultimately a long and overwrought prologue — a prelude to action rather than its own autonomous story.” – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

“The real meal doesn’t really begin until Part Two , and that’s probably one of the minor disappointments of its inconclusive finale.” – Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist

“It does wind up feeling incomplete… like the serving of a decadent and delicious appetizer that comes out while the epic entrée to come is still braising in the kitchen.” – Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend

“It feels so completely sure of itself and so legitimately stunning, that it’s a huge shame that the next chapter is in fact subject to the whims of the marketplace… Surely, there has to be more.” – Catherine Bray, Film of the Week

“To be left dangling without Dune: Part Two would be a particular heartbreak. Here’s hoping we won’t only be seeing it in our dreams.” – Ben Travis, Empire Magazine

Is it difficult to assess this first chapter on its own?

“It will require reassessment when the rest of the director’s vision is revealed – and if there is a movie god, we’ll see that happen sooner rather than later.” – Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend

“What could happen in the future isn’t something you can think about when critiquing a movie though. There’s this movie, this story, and if it doesn’t work on its own, that would problem. It’s not a problem here.” – Germain Lussier, io9.com

Dune is in theaters and on HBO Max on October 22, 2021.

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Dune Review: Denis Villeneuve Delivers On Sensational And Spiritual Spectacle [Venice 2021]

Timothée Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson on Arrakis in Dune

Ever since "Star Wars" revolutionized mainstream science-fiction cinema, filmmakers have flooded the genre with various iterations on Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. This repeatable structure known as the monomyth is practically a default style of storytelling now, so commonplace that perceptive viewers can settle into a comfortable, complacent groove within its auspices. Denis Villeneuve's "Dune" fits the model to a T yet accomplishes a new feat by restoring the sense of wonder and awe the hero's journey is meant to inspire.

"Dune" is technically IP for Warner Bros. given the wealth of material available to adapt from Frank Herbert's sci-fi novels, but it feels nothing like the boardroom blockbusters littering the landscape today. Villeneuve grants extraordinary breathing room in establishing the quest of Timothée Chalamet's Paul Atreides, the burgeoning leader of his aristocratic house primed for planetary governance of Arrakis, a land of sand and spice. Two and a half hours sail by, never once weighed down by a large cast of characters or vast array of universe-specific details.

This patience is either not afforded or not seized by any other director working at this scale. The average shot length of "Dune" must be two or three times longer than the average studio release but never feels leaden in the slightest. Villeneuve grants his audience time to take in the majesty of futuristic architecture, the intricacy of the imaginative costuming, or the complexity of a reaction to rapidly shifting situations.

Ceremony, Ritual, and Lofty Stakes

Of course, "Dune" has to plow through some exposition dumps at the outset — that's only natural given that Herbert's novel comes with an appended glossary for all the terms he created. But this is ultimately not a barrier to entry given how minimally Villeneuve dwells on the universe's terms or technology. They would be little more than window dressing if the film did not rest on his strong elemental backbone of monomyth. It's wholly recognizable yet wholly its own unique phenomenon.

The minutiae of "Dune" are not an end to themselves, a series of Easter eggs or subtle references meant to tickle the fancy of those already converted. This is not a fan-service film tailored for devotees of this specific journey. Rather, it's one that can pierce the psyche of anyone with the capacity for inspiration from these stories.

Looming large among the reasons "Dune" can elicit such grandeur is the fact that Villeneuve, along with his co-screenwriters Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth, do not sand down the obvious messianic elements of Herbert's book. They never take the audience's acceptance of the story's importance for granted, opting to go big with mythology rather than relying on lazy shorthand to have audiences fill in the mental blanks. But they don't overload the allegory, either, so the overtones don't distract from the progression of the story itself as Paul prepares for his unexpected ascent.

Stemming from this mystical throughline, Villeneuve takes an uncommon interest in both the form and function of ceremony and ritual in "Dune," thus establishing the resonance of this fantastical universe with familiar structures in our own. Yet in embracing Paul's emergence as a source of omniscience and salvation, they establish genuinely lofty stakes for the film, ones that match the scale of ambition and action on display. Their consequences also feel larger-than-life, not just limited to a studio's bottom line, and the responsibility of conveying them largely rest on Chalamet's performance.

On the Shoulders of Chalamet

Chalamet's interpretation of the Paul Atreides character, formally speaking, is miles away from his breakout turn in "Call Me By Your Name." Unlike that role, where a world of inner turmoil expressed itself through a jittery physical performance, Chalamet is all studied stillness in "Dune." Yet underneath that placid exterior lies the same amount of chaotic conflict with which a maturing character must grapple. He broods without the blankness of Ryan Gosling in Villeneuve's last directing gig, "Blade Runner 2049." It speaks to Chalamet's extraordinary versatility and range as an actor that he can command the screen when painting with broad strokes of physicality or subtle pointillist emoting.

There's even evolution within the movie itself as the shifting sands of power move Paul out of the shadows and into the seat of power. "Dune" grapples with weighty concepts like the proper exercise of political might, the weight of authority, the power of prophecy, as well as the conflict between being both man and messiah. The quiet turmoil of Chalamet's performance embodies all these tensions as he comes to understand his own position at the center of a vast ensemble. Paul's coming to terms with the reality that he represents a beacon of hope bright enough to merit the sacrifice of loved ones proves as breathtaking as any visual effects in the film.

This is Only the Beginning

And that is saying quite a lot, given that the eye-popping visuals invoke the full sublimity of science-fiction cinema. The effects work of "Dune" thunder with the full bellow of thematic resonance. Everything from the film's sandworms to spaceships looks and feels unlike anything else put on-screen. Villeneuve cares about their construction long enough to encourage cinematographer Grieg Frasier to linger on them, too, not cutting away quickly to mask mediocre design work. He's not just invoking the imagination that makes the hero's journey so compelling. "Dune" manufactures the magic of movies where the dreams can be as big as the screens that display them.

"This is only the beginning," remarks Paul with an impish grin as the film closes — part one, as the opening title card states. Bravo to Denis Villeneuve for calling his shot to will a sequel into existence. Part two of "Dune" must happen so he can finish the hero's journey he started. Audiences deserve to see the conclusion of an action film so immaculately crafted and patiently paced, one that's more focused on inspiring reverent amazement through the simplicity of durable storytelling structures rather than the complexity of cinematic universe building.

/Film Rating: 9 out of 10

Dune Review

The story must flow..

When Denis Villeneuve signed on to direct a 21st century version of Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel Dune, he was no doubt aware of the book’s long and often tortured history in Hollywood. Once thought unfilmable – just ask Jodorowsky – it was finally adapted by David Lynch into a famously off-kilter film in 1984, and then a Sci-Fi Channel miniseries version also got some traction in 2000. But those takes didn’t quite manage to translate the more epic and spiritual qualities of Herbert’s work. Could Villeneuve, who had pulled off the seemingly impossible with his fantastic sequel to Blade Runner , finally do justice to the tale of Paul Atreides? Unfortunately, the answer is… not quite. For all its amazing imagery and A-list stars and very cool interpretations of the nerdier aspects of Herbert’s book, this version of Dune doesn’t fully coalesce.

The director, his co-writers Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth, and producer Legendary Pictures made the seemingly sound decision to divide the sprawling novel into two separate films, so in fact the onscreen title to this installment is actually Dune, Part One. The result of this split is not just a license to let many of the book’s smaller moments or supporting characters breathe more, but also to perhaps be too devoted to Herbert’s work. Heresy, yells the Frank Herbert fan! But we all know that what works in a novel might not work in movie form, and vice versa, and Villeneuve’s biggest misstep with Dune, Part One is how misshapen and plodding it feels in its second half, as if the movie doesn’t quite know how or where to end… before it just suddenly does .

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Timothée Chalamet stars as Paul Atreides, scion of the powerful House Atreides in a far-off future where a substance known as the Spice is the most valuable commodity in the known universe. Paul’s father, Duke Leto Atreides (a heavy-with-responsibility Oscar Isaac), is sent by the Emperor to the desert planet Arrakis to take over production of the Spice. And so the whole family packs up and moves house, including the Duke’s military advisors (and Paul’s tutors) Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa), Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin), and what appears to be every soldier and house servant who works for the Atreides. What awaits them on the planet also known as Dune? An uncertain future to be sure, but the Duke has a plan: Harness “desert power.”

Meanwhile, Chalamet’s Paul – as dreamy, misunderstood, and tortured as you could want the heartthrob to be here, and I mean that as a compliment – is having prophetic dreams of a mysterious girl, one of Arrakis’s native people known as the Fremen. This is Zendaya’s character Chani, who some viewers may be distressed to learn is barely in this movie beyond said dreams. Again, it says Part One in the title, so be patient.

Dune Movie Images

(L-r) ZENDAYA as Chani and TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary release.

The film opens with Zendaya’s voiceover explaining how beautiful her home planet is, and succinctly summing up the violent history of Arrakis, caught as it is in the middle of bigger galactic concerns due to its natural abundance of the Spice. This sequence is a triumph over the exposition that continuously threatens to bring any adaptation of Dune down, but unfortunately, the filmmakers don’t always succeed on this same front moving forward. Perhaps the tutorial that comes later about stillsuits – the life-saving, water-conserving garb of the Fremen – will be fascinating to the uninitiated, but those who are familiar with the source material may find that these moments gum up the works of Dune, like the sand of Arrakis that plays havoc with the Spice machinery.

And yet, Villeneuve frequently impresses with his ability to take tried and true sci-fi concepts and put some new spin on them. Take the Bene Gesserit – sort of space witches with extra-human mental powers, if you will. Paul’s mother, Rebecca Ferguson’s Lady Jessica, is a member of this order, and early on we see her tutoring Paul in the strange ability to mentally coerce others via a modulation of one’s voice. Here, Villeneuve relies on sound design to highlight the weird and offsetting manipulation of Chalamet’s words, but he also shoots the moment as a series of flashing images where time seems to be displaced. It’s off-putting and effective, placing us in the same mindset as the person who the vocal attack is being used upon.

The script also benefits from injecting occasional bits of humor into the universe-shaping events of the film, and the casting of charismatic actors like Momoa and Brolin help to drive those humanizing elements home. Both actors’ characters essentially serve as big brother/uncle figures to Paul, teaching him to fight and helping him ease into the notion that he is the heir apparent to this great family. Ferguson’s Jessica, meanwhile, knows that perhaps something even more heady awaits her son on Arrakis. Indeed, this eventually leads to a painful moment of accusation that Paul directs at his mother, and the look on Ferguson’s face tells us… he may not be wrong?

In fact, the cast is solid across the board, and full of familiar faces, from Javier Bardem as the leader of the Fremen to Charlotte Rampling as the scary Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother to David Dastmalchian, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and more. And then there are the villains. Stellan Skarsgård is effectively grotesque and sinister as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, the bane of House Atreides, while his nephew, Dave Bautista’s “Beast” Rabban, is vicious enough that any memory of Drax will be long gone while watching this film.

And Dune is certainly capable of transporting us to its alien landscapes via its many technical achievements in production design, costumes, photography, sound, visual effects, and more. From the breathtaking vistas and strange space- and aircraft, to the enormous, frightening sandworms that will devour a ship as easily as they will a clutch of bad guys (and sometimes good guys), and right on down to the sparkly glimmer of the very Spice itself as it glitters across the surface of Arrakis, there is no detail spared in immersing us in this fantastical world.

Which is to say, there’s so much to love in Dune, but I didn’t come away in love with the movie itself. Villeneuve has proven himself to be a master of the kind of smart and stylish sci-fi that a modern Dune adaptation demands, and the film is a triumph when it comes to its visuals and sound. But there’s a shapelessness to the latter part of the movie that drags it down and distracts from its beauty; it’s a story that ends at Act 2, and it shows. Just as Duke Leto himself would find out, harnessing the power of Dune is no easy task.

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is beautiful to behold, a faithful adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel. Or of its first half, that is. And therein lies the problem that the film faces, for in cutting this story into two parts, Villeneuve has front-loaded Dune with a lot of set-up and no obvious way to end things… and so it lingers, and eventually overstays its welcome. This is a technically brilliant, visually amazing movie with a top-notch cast and deep sci-fi concepts. A shame, then, that it feels like a drag in its back half.

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Dune Review: A Stunning Cinematic Experience That Also Demands A Part 2

Denis Villeneuve ’s Dune is simultaneously the movie that I was hoping it would be, and the movie I was dreading. Frank Herbert’s book is beloved because of its impressive attention to detail, and this incarnation, unlike any before it, has the patience and resources to bring the source material into spectacular, jaw-dropping reality. The cast is tremendous, the themes are phenomenally captured, and every shot is transportive to such a level that you become hypnotized.

It’s everything that an adaptation of the first half of Dune should be – but therein lies the problem: being based on only a fraction of the book, it does wind up feeling incomplete, and the desire to immediately watch Part 2 is arguably too powerful. It’s an exceptional and special big screen experience, and does an incredible job laying the foundation for what is an expansive, unique universe, but it also can’t help but feel like the serving of a decadent and delicious appetizer that comes out while the epic entrée to come is still braising in the kitchen.

Made by an array of filmmakers who clearly have a deep passion for the original novel, Dune takes audiences across the stars in the year 10191 to Caladan – the lush home planet of House Atreides. Led by the bold and righteous Duke Leto Atreides ( Oscar Isaac ), the eponymous family and those who follow them swear fealty to the galactic emperor, but at the same time there is a recognition that the influence and strength of the clan is growing to rival that of those they serve.

Fearing what could result from this power shift, the emperor orchestrates political machinations to prevent it – secretly collaborating with the brutal, fascistic House Harkonnen, led by the physically massive and sadistic Baron Harkonnen ( Stellan Skarsgard ), and the religious order called the Bene Geserit, led by the stoic and ruthless Gaius Helen Mohiam (Charlotte Rampling). A trap is set that begins with House Atreides being given control of Arrakis, a desert planet that is the only source of the universe’s most valuable commodity: melange, also known as spice.

As seen through the eyes of Duke Leto’s son, Paul ( Timothee Chalamet ), and Leto’s concubine/Paul’s mother, Lady Jessica ( Rebecca Ferguson ), House Atreides moves to the new world aware of the conspiracy-driven setup, and with intentions to turn the tables. While the Harkonnens spent years subjugating and annihilating the indigenous population of Arrakis, known as the Fremen, it is the intention of the Atreides clan to form an alliance with them and together create a union that nobody in the universe can challenge.

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is a perfect adaptation of one of the great literary sci-fi epics.

The complexity of the plot and the expansiveness of the world are the reasons Dune has been seen for decades as a book impossible to properly adapt, but Denis Villeneuve and his collaborators have cracked the code with their approach and have sculpted an epic that is stunningly faithful in its depiction of events that transpire in the book and in its greater spirit. It’s not a facsimile – as there are scenes shifted around, minor details changed, and there are a few key characters seemingly put aside in anticipation of Part 2 – but the movie is otherwise extraordinary in its ability to directly translate the source material across mediums without compromise.

One of the great challenges in the adaptation process surely had to be the war between scope and pace, as showcasing the scale of the universe and its intricacies can be deadly to the movement of the story, but Denis Villeneuve and co-writers Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth keep it constantly flowing without any sacrifices. The layering of characters and plot unfurl in harmony as you are simultaneously drawn in by the political intrigue and become invested in the heroes.

As far as the latter goes, it also certainly helps that Dune ’s ensemble is both loaded with extreme talent, and is perfectly put together, with everyone flawlessly gets at the core of who they are playing. Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson and Oscar Isaac are the triumvirate that lead the cast, and they are all phenomenal – with Chalamet’s Paul chastened by the weight of his greater destiny; Ferguson’s Lady Jessica emotionally torn in her loyalties; and Isaac’s Duke Leto impressive in his nobility. Truly there is no weak link among the performers, however, as Jason Momoa is impressively subtle and powerful as the warrior Duncan Idaho; Stellan Skarsgard’s Baron Harkonnen is appropriately grotesque and horrifying; and both Javier Bardem and Zendaya deliver great turns as the hardened and determined Stilgar and Chani, two of the key Fremen characters.

Watching Dune, you feel like you’ve left the Earth behind.

Intricate as the plot of Dune is, and as many characters as there are, it’s made easy to fall into the world simply because of its magnificence. This is in no way surprising given what we’ve previously seen from Denis Villeneuve’s directorial vision, but that doesn't undermine its awesome success. It’s not an overly complicated futuristic universe, as the sci-fi aesthetic is made to be grounded and familiar (it’s a society that has moved past computers), but all the same you feel like you’re looking into a window across space and time, and it’s unendingly thrilling. The cinematography, the production design, and the genius visual effects blend in such a way that the line between fiction and reality fades from your mind, and it’s breathtaking.

It’s pure cinema, as every department on the film has delivered work that sweeps the audience away. Visually, no special element of the source material is left unexplored, from the beautifully designed stillsuits (clothing made to recycle the body’s excretion of water on Arrakis), to the dragonfly-like helicopters known as ornithopters, to the god-like sandworms that live below the surface of the desert planet. Dune is also an auditory journey, not only featuring enveloping sound editing, but one of the best scores Hans Zimmer has ever composed.

Dune is an immensely satisfying experience, but it also still has plenty of story still to tell.

Remarkable as the adaptation is, Dune is on a track to be at the center of a debate that has been happening about Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back for decades: while many rightfully hail the 1980 film as one of the greatest blockbusters of all time, it also receives valid criticism for not independently featuring its own complete narrative. Thrilling, stunning and ambitious as Denis Villeneuve’s film is, it’s also defined by being a Part 1, and just by its nature it doesn’t provide conclusions for its biggest character arcs and themes. It’s certainly an experience unto itself, and one that must not be missed, but it’s also undeniable that it will require reassessment when the rest of the director’s vision is revealed – and if there is a movie god, we’ll see that happen sooner rather than later.

Until that time comes, Dune exists independently as a cinematic accomplishment all the same, and one to be marveled at. Denis Villeneuve’s movie is the film interpretation that fans have been waiting to see for decades, and one that should be experienced on the biggest screens possible the most times possible – both to properly experience it the way it is meant to be experienced, and to ensure that the epic story gets to continue.

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.

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Common Sense Says
Parents Say 26 Reviews
Kids Say 104 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Lots of fighting in vivid but long sci-fi adaptation.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 13+?

Sci-fi action-style guns and shooting. People get shot; deaths/dead bodies. Figh

Infrequent use of "hell," "s--t," "ass," "damn." "My God" used as an exclamation

Kissing. A man appears to be naked; nothing explicit shown. Shirtless man.

"Spice" is described as a drug that has good properties but is also addictive; t

Any Positive Content?

Paul comes off as a fairly traditional hero but also has started down a dark pat

Male-driven narrative, but women in supporting roles are quite powerful and admi

This film covers the first half of the source novel, so many of the book's bigge

Violence & Scariness

Sci-fi action-style guns and shooting. People get shot; deaths/dead bodies. Fighting with swords, blades, other weapons. Battles. Explosions. Character stabbed. Character impaled with dart. Neck-slicing. Beheadings. Characters swallowed by sandworm. Not much blood, but scenes include a bloody hand, bloody knife, blood spot. Poison gas. Crash-landing. Rape is mentioned in dialogue.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Infrequent use of "hell," "s--t," "ass," "damn." "My God" used as an exclamation.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

"Spice" is described as a drug that has good properties but is also addictive; the only side effect is that it turns users' eyes luminous blue. It's not really depicted as a substance that can be abused. It's more just "the thing" that both the heroes and villains want to get their hands on.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Role Models

Paul comes off as a fairly traditional hero but also has started down a dark path by beginning to use a prophecy to his own advantage, setting himself up as a kind of messiah. To prove himself worthy of the Fremen, he kills a man; there are no consequences. His father, Duke Leto, is a far better role model; he's shown to be kind, benevolent, wise, understanding, although his trust and loyalty eventually ( spoiler alert ) get him killed.

Diverse Representations

Male-driven narrative, but women in supporting roles are quite powerful and admirable. This version improves on previous iterations' all-White casts by including diverse actors (Latino, Hawaiian/Polynesian, Asian, Black), but main characters are still all White, and ( spoiler alert ) virtually all characters of color die. Has raised concerns in the way it leans on Middle Eastern culture for world-building but doesn't include any MENA actors. No body/size diversity, unless you count the Baron, whose grotesqueness is unfortunately tied to his larger size and eating.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Positive Messages

This film covers the first half of the source novel, so many of the book's bigger themes -- including religion and environmentalism -- aren't fully explored. One theme that does arise involves control of Arrakis: The villains (House Harkonnen) oppress the Fremen, while the heroes (House Atreides) try to work alongside them.

Parents need to know that Dune is based on Frank Herbert's epic 1965 novel (previously adapted for the big screen in 1984 and for TV in 2000). It covers the first half of the book and stars Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya . Sci-fi action violence includes lots of fighting, both on the battlefield and one on one, with guns, knives, and other weapons. There are also beheadings and explosions, and characters are stabbed and/or cut open, poisoned, and eaten by worms. A little bit of blood is shown, and characters die. There's kissing and partial male nudity (no sensitive body parts shown). Infrequent language includes "s--t," "ass," and "hell." The story is about a drug known as "spice," but it's more of a thing for everyone to fight over than a real drug. While this (long) movie isn't without its flaws, director Denis Villeneuve gives it a languid smoothness that makes for an enthralling tale (which continues in Dune: Part Two ). To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (26)
Kids say (104)

Based on 26 parent reviews

Jaw-dropping prologue has intense violence

A fan and a father, what's the story.

In DUNE, the desert planet Arrakis is the source of a valuable drug, called "spice," that allows users to travel vast distances. Spice mining and distribution on Arrakis are controlled by the evil Baron Harkonnen ( Stellan Skarsgard ), whose armies oppress the planet's Fremen people. Under orders from the emperor, Duke Leto Atreides ( Oscar Isaac ) takes over the stewardship of Arrakis and moves there with his wife, Lady Jessica ( Rebecca Ferguson ), and son, Paul ( Timothée Chalamet ). Lady Jessica has been teaching Paul in the ways of the Bene Gesserit, and, once on Arrakis, some of the Fremen begin to suspect that Paul may be a prophesied "chosen one." But after a betrayal, Lady Jessica and Paul find themselves in the desert, hunted by giant sandworms, with the mysterious Fremen their only chance of survival.

Is It Any Good?

In this first of two Dune movies, director Denis Villeneuve smooths out the most cumbersome parts of Frank Herbert's original tale, providing enough spectacle to overcome the dull bits. With echoes of his earlier films Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 , Villeneuve brings a languid moodiness to the storytelling here, slowing things down and allowing viewers time to take in the vast sets (built broad and low to fit the widescreen frame) and devices -- like the amazing, if impractical, ships modeled after dragonflies -- and to keep track of the story's innumerable characters. This rhythm builds to the tale's memorable, invigorating highlights -- such as Paul dodging a life-threatening hunter-seeker or enduring the painful gom jabbar test, or the first appearance of the massive sandworms -- and makes them feel extra vivid.

The movie even manages to soften the old, tired "chosen one" device, as well as the simplistic plot strands that are covered up by heaps of sci-fi names (how do you pronounce "Thufir Hawat" anyway?), places, and devices, making things flow more organically. It's even possible to remember that the original novel, published in 1965, actually inspired much that came after it, including Star Wars and The Matrix . Villeneuve can't quite downplay the source material's choking seriousness, but there are lighter moments. Skarsgard's Baron is a highlight; he's so grotesque that you can't look away. And then there's a swaggering Jason Momoa as swordmaster Duncan, who seems to be the only one having any fun. As with Blade Runner 2049 , Dune goes on too long, with too many scenes of fighting, and this version lacks the quirky personality of the 1984 David Lynch take , but it's far more rousing.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Dune 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

Why is "spice" considered a drug ? Is meant to represent drugs as we know them? Is it glamorized? Are there consequences for using it?

What are some of the movie's themes? How can sci-fi be used to explore real-life issues like colonialism and representation? How are the Fremen represented in the film?

How does this movie compare to the novel, the previous movie, and/or the TV movie? How is it different from those versions? How is it the same?

Is Paul a role model ? What makes him seem heroic? What behaviors suggest otherwise?

Movie Details

In theaters : October 22, 2021
On DVD or streaming : January 11, 2022
Cast : Timothée Chalamet , Zendaya , Rebecca Ferguson , Oscar Isaac
Director : Denis Villeneuve
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors, Multiracial actors, Latino actors
Studio : Warner Bros.
Genre : Science Fiction
Topics : Book Characters , Space and Aliens
Run time : 155 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : sequences of strong violence, some disturbing images and suggestive material
Awards : Academy Award , Golden Globe - Golden Globe Award Winner
Last updated : July 21, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Dune: Part Two

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Critic’s pick

‘Dune: Part Two’ Review: Bigger, Wormier and Way Far Out

Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya make an appealing pair in Denis Villeneuve’s follow-up film, and the actors fit together with tangible ease.

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In a sci-fi-looking scene set in the desert, Zendaya holds a gloved hand to Timothée Chalamet’s cheek.

By Manohla Dargis

Having gone big in “Dune,” his 2021 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s futuristic opus, the director Denis Villeneuve has gone bigger and more far out in the follow up. Set in the aftermath of the first movie, the sequel resumes the story boldly, delivering visions both phantasmagoric and familiar. Like Timothée Chalamet’s dashingly coifed hero — who steers monstrous sandworms over the desert like a charioteer — Villeneuve puts on a great show. The art of cinematic spectacle is alive and rocking in “Dune: Part Two,” and it’s a blast.

It’s a surprisingly nimble moonshot, even with all its gloom and doom and brutality. Big-screen enterprises, particularly those adapted from books with a huge, fiercely loyal readership, often have a ponderousness built in to every image. In some, you can feel the enormous effort it takes as filmmakers try to turn reams of pages into moving images that have commensurate life, artistry and pop on the screen. Adaptations can be especially deadly when moviemakers are too precious with the source material; they’re torpedoed by fealty.

“Dune” made it clear that Villeneuve isn’t that kind of textualist. As he did in the original , he has again taken plentiful liberties with Herbert’s behemoth (one hardcover edition runs 528 pages) to make “Part Two,” which he wrote with the returning Jon Spaihts. Characters, subplots and volumes of dialogue (interior and otherwise) have again been reduced or excised altogether. (I was sorry that the great character actor Stephen McKinley Henderson, who played an eerie adviser in the first movie, didn’t make the cut here.) The story — its trajectory, protagonist and concerns — remains recognizable yet also different.

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“Dune” turns on Paul Atreides (Chalamet), an aristocrat who becomes a guerrilla and crusader, and whose destiny weighs as heavily on him as any crown. In adapting “Dune,” Villeneuve effectively cleaved Herbert’s novel in half. (Herbert wrote six “Dune” books, a series that has morphed into a multimedia franchise since his death in 1986.) The first part makes introductions and sketches in Paul’s back story as the beloved only son of a duke, Leto (Oscar Isaac), and his concubine, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson). When it opens, the royals, on orders from the universe’s emperor, are preparing to vacate their home planet, a watery world called Caladan, to the parched planet of Arrakis, a.k.a. Dune.

The move to Arrakis goes catastrophically wrong; many members of House Atreides are murdered by their enemies, most notably the pallid, villainous House Harkonnen, and Paul’s father dies. Paul and the Lady Jessica escape into the desert where — after much side-eyeing and muttering along with one of those climactic mano-a-mano duels that turn fictional boys into men — they find uneasy allies in a group of Fremen, the planet’s Indigenous population. A tribal people who have adapted to Dune’s harsh conditions with clever survival tactics, like form-fitting suits that conserve bodily moisture, the Fremen are scattered across the planet under the emperor’s rule. Some fight to be free; many pray for a messiah.

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Dune Doesn’t Care If You Like It

Vulture is recirculating its coverage of Dune in celebration of the epic’s long-awaited release on HBO Max and theaters .

Sandworms, the signature creation of Frank Herbert’s Dune series, are colossal beings that live in the deserts of the planet Arrakis, which the worms travel through the way a shark might through water. Their dominance over the land has them alternately revered and feared by the different human populations who also live there, carving out lives in the unforgiving environs. The worms are drawn to anything out on the sand, capable of sensing vibrations from far away, and emerge from underneath their targets, the ground giving way to a gaping maw for anyone unfortunate enough to be in the area. When David Lynch directed his ill-omened 1984 adaptation of the original 1965 novel, he gave his sandworms multi-lobed mouths that opened like monstrous flowers, much like they had in John Schoenherr’s dust-jacket illustrations. It’s a dependable method for making anatomy look ominous — just have it look like a toothy vulva — but it’s not an approach Denis Villeneuve replicates in his own sumptuous and strange new take on Herbert’s source material.

Villeneuve’s sandworms, like so many details of his new movie, strive to come across as genuinely otherworldly and from a context other than our own. They have a tunnel-like quality that’s organic only in the sense that microscopic organisms that turn out to be nightmare fuel when given their close-up are still organic, ending abruptly in circular jaws that are permanently agape and ringed by a filter made up of rows of needle-like teeth. When Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), Dune ’s reluctant messiah figure, has an encounter with one after fleeing into the desert, the worm lifts its massive noggin out of the drifts right in front of him, and he stares into its unseeing countenance in a moment that’s meant to be electric with the terrifying majesty of this utterly alien life-form. But, gazing into that eyeless hole with clenching interiors glimpsed in its shadowy depths, it might also cross your mind that the reimagined worm left its old vagina dentata influences behind only to end up resembling a giant asshole.

The human imagination is not as limitless as we like to pretend, and it’s funny how often, in trying to get beyond the boundaries of the known, we just end up circling back to our own privates. That’s the challenge of science fiction, to create a real sense of distance and otherness when so much of storytelling rests on evoking the familiar. It’s a challenge that Dune takes up with an admirable and maybe doomed determination, rendering Herbert’s rival intergalactic aristocrats and space witches on an awe-inspiring, gloriously unfriendly scale. Herbert himself didn’t build his world from scratch: The squabbled-over Arrakis, the only source for a substance called spice that’s essential to interstellar travel, is at the heart of what are basically oil wars writ large. And Dune does have the contours of a space opera, with its sand monsters and ghoulish villains and fine-boned princeling destined to meet the literal woman of this dreams — Chani, a member of the indigenous Fremen population played by Zendaya, who will presumably get more to do if the sequel actually happens — and lead humanity toward a better future. But Villeneuve isn’t interested in making a swashbuckling romantic adventure that happens to have sci-fi trappings.

His 2016 film Arrival was about trying to communicate with extraterrestrials who experience existence in an entirely different way from us, and Dune is bent on depicting a far future humanity in which traces of the familiar — bagpipes played at a ceremony, an ancestor’s penchant for bull-fighting — just end up emphasizing how distant the characters’ desires and motivations can be. They aren’t entirely inscrutable: Oscar Isaac plays Paul’s father, Duke Leto Atreides, as a careworn but kind ruler who’s aware he’s being steered into a trap when asked to take over Arrakis. Leto’s trusted military advisers, Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa) and Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin), serve as surrogate fond old brothers and stern uncles to Paul, while as Paul’s mother and Leto’s concubine Lady Jessica, Rebecca Ferguson embodies the fretful tension of a woman torn between protecting her son and preparing him to face unavoidable danger. But Jessica also happens to be a loyal member of the Bene Gesserit, a matriarchal order of psychic women who manipulate politics while masterminding an unfathomable multi-century breeding program to create the Kwisatz Haderach — a messiah who may or may not be Paul.

The most daring aspect of Dune is not that it only tells half a narrative, or that it opts to immerse its audience in its richly rendered universe, assuming they can keep up without guide ropes. It’s carried pretty far on the strength of spectacle alone, with its spaceships hanging impossibly still in the air, its thrumming Hans Zimmer score, and its pallid antagonist, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård channeling Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz), floating around on anti-gravity boosters like a menacing balloon. No, the most daring aspect of Dune is how much unease it creates around the idea of a chosen one, from the Leni Riefenstahl–inspired military ceremony in which Leto and Paul receive their commission to take care of Arrakis to the fact that Paul is the product of eugenics. It begins with Chani talking in voiceover about the colonization of the Fremen’s land and the oppression they’ve experienced at the hands of rapacious outsiders, and then turns to a white savior whose greatness is entirely synthetic, engineered via planted prophecies and genetic manipulation. Paul’s reluctance to fall into the role created for him isn’t the usual self-doubt, but the dread of someone who begins to believe he’s meant to initiate a holy war. Being the hero of the story has never looked so poisoned, and that alone is thrilling enough to hope Villeneuve gets to make part two of this impressively batshit venture.

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Review: Denis Villeneuve's sci-fi epic 'Dune' is a mixed bag of eye-popping sci-fi, lackluster storytelling

The sci-fi epic “ Dune ” boasts a few films’ worth of giant sandworms, amazing spaceships, cosmic armies and galactic political drama, though it essentially is only half a movie.

Director Denis Villeneuve ’s visually arresting big-budget adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic – well, a good bit of the novel anyway – is an odd bird and a mixed bag. “Dune” (★★½ out of four; rated PG-13; in theaters and on HBO Max ) is impressively ambitious in scale, like Villeneuve mashing up the worlds of “Star Wars” and “Game of Thrones,” but with that unmistakable signature style he showcased with “Arrival” and “ Blade Runner 2049 .”

While the film (currently playing the film-festival circuit, hopping from Venice to Toronto to New York) has a lot going for it, including a pretty stellar cast, real-world metaphors and an intriguing twist on a war-movie aesthetic, it's lacking in character development, and aspects of the book's substantial mythology are tossed in to keep your head swimming over 2½ hours.

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In the year 10191, the noble House of Atreides – led by Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac) – is tapped to relocate from the rather pleasant planet of Caladan to dangerous, desert-filled Arrakis to oversee the mining of Spice, a precious resource that does wonders for human existence and makes interstellar travel possible, and to tame the indigenous Fremen. Leto’s teenage son, Paul (Timothée Chalamet), has had vivid dreams of this new place – specifically a young Fremen girl with shining blue eyes named Chani (Zendaya) – and this phenomenon has brought extra attention from the Bene Gesserit, an all-female order with superpowers including Paul’s warrior priestess mom, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson).

Paul is seen in some circles as a messiah, so he’s caught between an ancient prophecy and being an heir to a renowned house. Their rivals in villainous House Harkonnen – including Baron Harkonnen (a near-unrecognizable Stellan Skarsgard), a slovenly mix of Jabba the Hutt, Colonel Kurtz and the Emperor from “Star Wars” – were Spice stewards for 80 years, and they’re out to sabotage their successors. And the Fremen, led by the enigmatic Stilgar (Javier Bardem), are the most unpredictable wild cards of them all, though they loom large in Paul’s story.

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Alongside themes of ecology and colonialism, the movie boasts plenty of factions and personalities, though good luck actually investing in any of them. Chalamet’s a talented actor, but Paul’s a tortured, broody sort, while Isaac and Ferguson do what they can with fairly dry parental figures.

Everything’s overly serious in “Dune,” though the guy who's most enjoyable (and has the best name) is Jason Momoa as Atreides sword master Duncan Idaho, a fearless warrior loyal to his crew yet absolutely joyful whenever his old student Paul is around. Also noteworthy is Dr. Liet Kynes (Sharon Duncan-Brewster), a gender-swapped Fremen figure from the Herbert book who works for the emperor (yes, “Dune” has one of those, too) transitioning Arrakis to Atreides’ control.

The other issue for Paul and Co. is that there’s much more to their tale not in this movie. Unlike, say, the horror film “It,” where the first film stood as a singular story and you didn’t have to see its sequel, “Dune” doesn’t: It gets to a point and just ends, not to mention being extremely anticlimactic. Imagine watching the original “Star Wars” if they blew up the Death Star midway through and then Luke Skywalker tussled with a few Tusken Raiders in the finale. (George Lucas was influenced by "Dune," and audiences will find the use of “the Voice,” a psychic ability wielded by Paul and his mother, to be very Force-like, though there is some striking sonic originality here.)

Even with its imperfections, “Dune” as an experience is awesome, with astounding special effects, great production design and a propulsive Hans Zimmer score. Insect/helicopter hybrid vehicles buzz around, Paul’s frequent future visions add a mysteriously neat vibe, and it’s hard to beat scarily mawed sandworms that could stretch across quite a few football fields.

You’ll just need to hope for a "Dune" sequel – or head to the books – for it all to make sense. Sure, it's got Spice, but better storytelling would be nice.

More: Timothée Chalamet set to play Willy Wonka in origin story film 'Wonka'

Dune Review

01 Jan 1984

190 minutes

Derided, disowned, and debated endlessly, David Lynch ’s weird venture into big budget sci-fi spectacle (having turned down the chance to make Return Of The Jedi ) is a most fascinating disaster of genre making.

On a storytelling level Frank Herbert’s swollen book, a thinly disguised allegory of the Arab control of oil supply, proved far too intricate and unwieldy to cohere into a sensible film. And Lynch wasn’t about to worry about it, wrapping the film in swathes of religious symbolism, and letting it devolve into a rare form of highly expensive gibberish. No matter which, of many, extended cuts you watch the yarn retains no holding logic. Even lovers of the book’s dense arcana — a universe of squabbling aristocratic families, mystical witches, messiahs, and emperors all vying for control of the necessary spice — found it impossible to follow.

Yet, on another level, it isn’t without artistic merit. Story was never going to concern Lynch for long (making him a foolish choice for director), but he lends Herbert’s crowded mythos with its low-level fusion of the hi-tech and the Biblical, a vivid design. From the red-stained deserts (it was shot in Mexico) to the industrial horror of Harkonnen, to the great worms, giant phallic beasts coursing through Dune’s outback, the film has a surreal grace that draws you in. And the characters, as is Lynch’s wont, are rich and wild and amongst his funniest.

It is far more of a piece with Lynch’s idiosyncratic career, than he has made out.

While Kyle MacLachlan ’s hero-messiah Paul is bland, a good looking trope for the film’s peculiar destiny, Kenneth MacMillan has a whale of a time as the corpulent villain Baron Harkonnen, coated in suppurating boils as if his whole body oozed with his avaricious evil. Although, Sting in naught but a codpiece might have been an extravagance too far — the singer turned actor never fully recovered from the look.

Thus, it is hard to truly punish Dune . As a version of the book it remains hopeless (John Harrison’s TV mini-series made in 2000 does a far better job in adapting the book) but as a piece of outrageous sci-fi art, thrilling to its own excess, it is far more of a piece with Lynch’s idiosyncratic career, than he has made out.

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"It's like a dream," my friend from Hollywood was explaining. "It doesn't make any sense, and the special effects are straight from the dime store but if you give up trying to understand it, and just sit back and let it wash around in your mind, it's not bad." That was not exactly a rave review for a movie that someone paid $40 million to make, but it put me into a receptive frame of mind for "Dune," the epic based on the novels by Frank Herbert. I was even willing to forgive the special effects for not being great; after all, in an era when George Lucas' "Star Wars" has turned movies into high tech, why not a film that looks like a throwback to Flash Gordon. It might be kind of fun.

It took "Dune" about nine minutes to completely strip me of my anticipation. This movie is a real mess, an incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless excursion into the murkier realms of one of the most confusing screenplays of all time. Even the color is no good; everything is seen through a sort of dusty yellow filter, as if the film was left out in the sun too long. Yes, you might say, but the action is, after all, on a desert planet where there isn't a drop of water, and there's sand everywhere. David Lean solved that problem in " Lawrence of Arabia ," where he made the desert look beautiful and mysterious, not shabby and drab.

The movie's plot will no doubt mean more to people who've read Herbert than to those who are walking in cold. It has to do with a young hero's personal quest. He leads his people against an evil baron and tries to destroy a galaxy-wide trade in spice, a drug produced on the desert planet. Spice allows you to live indefinitely while you discover you have less and less to think about. There are various theological overtones, which are best left unexplored.

The movie has so many characters, so many unexplained or incomplete relationships, and so many parallel courses of action that it's sometimes a toss-up whether we're watching a story, or just an assembly of meditations on themes introduced by the novels (the movie is like a dream).

Occasionally a striking image will swim into view: The alien brain floating in brine, for example, or our first glimpse of the giant sand worms plowing through the desert. If the first look is striking, however, the movie's special effects don't stand up to scrutiny. The heads of the sand worms begin to look more and more as if they came out of the same factory that produced Kermit the Frog (they have the same mouths). An evil baron floats through the air on trajectories all too obviously controlled by wires. The spaceships in the movie are so shabby, so lacking in detail or dimension, that they look almost like those student films where plastic models are shot against a tablecloth.

Nobody looks very happy in this movie. Actors stand around in ridiculous costumes, mouthing dialogue that has little or no context. They're not even given scenes that work on a self-contained basis; portentious lines of pop profundity are allowed to hang in the air unanswered, while additional characters arrive or leave on unexplained errands. "Dune" looks like a project that was seriously out of control from the start. Sets were constructed, actors were hired; no usable screenplay was ever written; everybody faked it as long as they could. Some shabby special effects were thrown into the pot, and the producers crossed their fingers and hoped that everybody who has read the books will want to see the movie. Not if the word gets out, they won't.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Dune (1984)

Rated PG-13

137 minutes

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Dune: part two.

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With a phenomenal score and spectacular storytelling and visuals, Dune Part 2 is an entertaining sci-fi film thanks to Chalamet's compelling performance and Villeneuve's direction.

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BABY REINDEER

'Dune: Prophecy' release date window, cast and everything we know so far

This 'Dune' prequel series takes place 10,000 years before the first movie

The world of "Dune" is about to expand once again with the upcoming release of "Dune: Prophecy" near the end of this year, and it's set to be released on one of the best streaming services , Max. Originally titled "Dune: The Sisterhood," it will be based on Herbert and Kevin J Anderson’s first novel in their Great Schools of Dune prequel trilogy.

Following the success of Denis Villeneuve's cinematic adaptation of Herbert's iconic sci-fi saga, this latest installment promises to explore the history of Arrakis, the noble houses, and most importantly, the Sisterhood.

So far, we’ve gotten two "Dune: Prophecy" teaser trailers with a majority of the cast confirmed, but the coming months will probably bring a full-length trailer that really delves into what to expect from the show. For now, we’ve gathered the latest updates on casting, plot developments and even rumored insights into the episode guide. And as the release date approaches, we’ll continue to come back to this page with exciting updates.

Without further ado, here’s what you need to know about this highly anticipated continuation of the legendary saga, coming to Max very soon.

dune: prophecy (2024) pic.twitter.com/v5UXFKx15V August 13, 2024

'Dune: Prophecy' release date

The first teaser trailer for "Dune: Prophecy" revealed a release date window of September, October or November of this year. However, the most recent trailer did confirm the series will hit the small screen sometime in November 2024. This means we don’t have long to wait until the highly anticipated prequel series comes to Max.

It’s also likely that this series will have a weekly episode release, much like "House of the Dragon." Therefore, the final episode could air sometime in December.

IMDb has already listed the names for the first three episodes (and it seems as though there will be six episodes in total). These names include "The Hidden Hand", "Two Wolves" and "Sisterhood Above All." It’s not confirmed whether these are the real titles.

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'Dune: Prophecy' cast

"Dune: Prophecy" has actually undergone quite a few major casting changes since the spinoff was ordered back in 2019 by Legendary Television. Following some creative overhauls, the final cast list was confirmed between November 2022 and June 2023. Alison Schapker became the showrunner with Anna Foerster serving as director for multiple episodes.

There are quite a few characters in this prequel series, with only some of them taking on recurring roles. However, don't expect to see Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya or Rebecca Ferguson, since this show takes place 10,000 years before their time.

Here’s every confirmed cast member:

Emily Watson as Valya Harkonnen, leader of the Sisterhood
Travis Fimmel as Desmond Hart, a soldier who seeks to gain the Emperor's trust at the expense of the Sisterhood
Mark Strong as Emperor Javicco Corrino, who manages a fragile peace within the Corrino Empire
Olivia Williams as Tula Harkonnen, Valya's sister and a Reverend Mother
Sarah-Sofie Boussnina as Princess Ynez, a princess dealing with the pressures of her responsibility as heir to the Golden Lion Throne
Tabu as Sister Francesca, the Emperor's former lover
Jodhi May as Empress Natalya, a formidable royal who united thousands of worlds in her marriage to Emperor Corrino
Aoife Hinds as Sister Emeline, an acolyte who carries fervent religion to her training at the Sisterhood
Josh Heuston as Constantine Corrino, the illegitimate son of Javicco
Faoileann Cunningham as Sister Jen, a fierce, unpredictable acolyte in training at the Sisterhood School
Shalom Brune-Franklin as Mikaela, a strong-willed Fremen woman
Jihae as Reverend Mother Kasha Jinjo, the Emperor's Truthsayer
Jade Anouka as Sister Theodosia, a talented and ambitious acolyte at the Sisterhood
Chris Mason as Keiran Atreides, a Swordmaster to a Great House
Chloe Lea as Lila, the youngest acolyte at the Sisterhood School
Camilla Beeput as Reverend Mother Dorotea, the founder and leader of the schismatic Orthodox Sisterhood
Callum Coates as Lord Hagal, who leads the home of House Hagal
Edward Davis as Harrow Harkonnen, a rising politician from a once-great family

First look at Tabu as Sister Francesca in ‘DUNE: PROPHECY’ series. pic.twitter.com/IrNYBsAKrs August 13, 2024

'Dune: Prophecy' plot

Sarah-Sofie Boussnina as Princess Ynez in Dune: Prophecy series on Max

"Dune: Prophecy" is set 10,000 years before Paul Atreides' (Timothée Chalamet) ascent to power, focusing on two sisters from House Harkonnen as they navigate challenges that threaten the future of humanity and pave the way for the creation of the Bene Gesserit order.

This prequel series is inspired by the novel "Sisterhood of Dune," written by Brian Herbert, son of the original "Dune" author Frank Herbert, along with Kevin J. Anderson. It dives deep into the rich lore of the “Dune” universe, expanding on the foundations laid by the novel to explore the origins of key characters and institutions that are crucial to the saga.

The latest trailer spotlights the early years of the Bene Gesserit, highlighting their internal power struggles and strategic maneuvering across the vastness of space. As the trailer mentioned: "You wish to serve the great houses and shape the flow of power. You must first exert power over yourself."

"Dune: Prophecy" unfolds from the perspective of the Bene Gesserit, a secretive order of women who have honed extraordinary abilities through their mastery of both body and mind. As they navigate the feudal politics and intrigue of The Imperium, they work skillfully to advance their own hidden agendas, leading them to the planet Arrakis.

The official synopsis reads: "10,000 years before the ascension of Paul Atreides, DUNE: PROPHECY follows two Harkonnen sisters as they combat forces that threaten the future of humankind and establish the fabled sect that will become known as the Bene Gesserit."

'Dune: Prophecy' trailers

Dune: Prophecy | Official Teaser - Influence | Max - YouTube

Max released the first official teaser trailer back in May when announcing the prequel series was coming to the streamer this fall. It's only a minute and 30 seconds long, but it did give us a decent look at the characters.

To put it straight, the teaser looks stunning, not to mention thrilling. Instantly from the warm tones and classic ambient music, we know it’s in the world of “Dune." The spaceships, costumes and cult-like shots of the Sisterhood throw us into this universe while giving us a brief insight into what’s coming.

Then, in July, another teaser trailer drops alongside the confirmed release date of November 2024. In the newest sneak peek, Emily Watson's character Valya discusses how to control the "flow of power." Another member of the Bene Gesserit warns a group, saying, "The more influence our Sisterhood gains, the more enemies we make."

We also see how the Sisterhood's influence is increasing over the "levers of power," but Valya acknowledges that their hold is still weak. She tells her sister Tula: "I am trying to protect the Imperium. Sacrifices must be made."

Dune: Prophecy | Official Teaser 2 - Control | Max - YouTube

Can't wait for this prequel series? Stream both "Dune" movies on Max or check out these five best movies like "Dune."

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Alix is a Streaming Writer at Tom’s Guide, which basically means watching the best movies and TV shows and then writing about them. Previously, she worked as a freelance writer for Screen Rant and Bough Digital, both of which sparked her interest in the entertainment industry. When she’s not writing about the latest movies and TV shows, she’s either playing horror video games on her PC or working on her first novel.

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‘The Union’: 7 Things You Need To Know About Halle Berry and Mark Wahlberg’s Netflix Film

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Old friends and high school flames turn into a dynamic duo of international spies in The Union , an all-new spy action-comedy film from Netflix. The streamer original hails from British film and television director-producer Julian Farino ( Entourage ) and is written by Joe Barton and David Guggenheim . The Union follows Mike, a regular construction worker from New Jersey who happens to bump into his high-school sweetheart, Roxanne, after 25 years. What appears to be a chance encounter turns into a life-changing event for Mike when he is whisked out of his ordinary working-class life and thrown into the perilous world of spies and secret agents. As he trains to be an agent and partners with Roxanne for a high-stakes US intelligence mission, it also rekindles Mike and Roxanne’s teenage romance.

Academy Award-nominee Mark Wahlberg and Academy Award-winner Halle Berry lead the cast of the spy action-comedy as Mike and Roxanne, respectively, along with Academy Award-winner J.K. Simmons as spymaster Tom Brennan. While Wahlberg is no new to action-comedies with films like The Other Guys and Spenser Confidential to his credit, Berry has also played action-driven roles in the X-Men film series Die Another Day , besides making her directorial debut with the sports film Bruised . Despite the film’s spy-action plot, The Union is said to focus on Mike and Roxanne’s relationship as friends-turned-partners. As the filmmaker himself explains, “Roxanne and Mike’s relationship is going to define the movie. For me, even the action in the movie was always about how to keep our characters integral to the explosions and fun and games.” Here's what you need to know about The Union.

7 Does 'The Union' Have a Release Date?

Halle Berry and Mark Wahlberg as Roxanne and Mike while Mike holds his arm outstretched in a training montage in The Union.

The Union is scheduled to be released on Netflix on Friday, August 16, 2024 . In the month of August, Netflix is also releasing the R-rated director’s cut of Rebel Moon , with both parts retitled Rebel Moon – Chapter One: Chalice of Blood and Rebel Moon – Chapter Two: Curse of Forgiveness , respectively. Additionally, you can check out Incoming , a teen comedy by The Mick creators Dave Chernin and John Chernin , among other new titles, which will be joining the streamer in the same month.

6 Will 'The Union' Be in Theaters or Streaming?

Halle Berry and Mark Wahlberg as Roxanne and Mike, sneaking around a truck in a scene from Netflix's The Union

The Union is a Netflix original and will be exclusively available on the streamer on and from August 16, 2024. Accessible by subscription, Netflix is also home to several spy action-comedy films like Man from Toronto and Spy Kids: Armageddon . If you are a genre fan, then you can also check out well-acclaimed spy films like The Catcher Was a Spy , Wasp Network , and Operation Mincemeat , among several others, currently streaming on Netflix.

The Union (2024)

The Union follows Mike, a down-to-earth construction worker, who is unexpectedly pulled into the world of espionage when his high school ex-girlfriend, Roxanne, recruits him for a high-stakes U.S. intelligence mission. As they navigate dangerous situations, Mike must adapt quickly to survive in this high-octane adventure

Watch on Netflix

5 What Is 'The Union' About?

Per Netflix’s official logline, The Union follows,

Mike (Wahlberg) is happy living a simple life as a construction worker in his native New Jersey –– until his long-lost high school sweetheart, Roxanne (Berry), shows up with more on her mind than romance. Knowing he’s the right man for the job, she recruits Mike on a dangerous intelligence mission in Europe that thrusts them back together into a world of spies and high-speed car chases, with sparks flying along the way.

4 Is There a Trailer for 'The Union'?

Following the film’s first-look images released earlier in 2024, Netflix released the official trailer of The Union in June 2024, which gives us a quick look at what the spy thriller film will offer. The fast-paced trailer opens with a romantic reunion between Wahlberg’s Mike and Berry’s Roxanne when they bump into each other at a bar after 25 years since high school. After a short nostalgic conversation about the old days, Roxanne reveals her true intentions to Mark when he finds himself waking up in London that next morning. The trailer then quickly reveals the plot, where we learn that Roxanne works for an unconventional government agency called the “Union,” which “does the dirty work for the CIA and FBI.” And now they are on a mission to retrieve a list containing identities of every American spy that was stolen, so they need someone with a low profile. Based on her past relationship with Mike, Roxanne believes that Mike is the perfect man for the job and someone she can trust. And overnight, Mike’s quiet and mundane, working-class life is turned upside down, as he gets thrust into a world of high-stakes international espionage, packed with daring adventures. Packed with thrilling action sequences and plenty of comedic moments, The Union might find a place among popular spy action-comedy films of our times . But will this mission also bring him closer to Roxanne and reignite their high school romance? We will have to find out when The Union arrives this summer.

3 Who Stars in 'The Union'?

Announced in 2021, the cast of The Union is led by Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry as Mike McKenna and Roxanne Hall, respectively. Wahlberg’s Mike is an ordinary construction worker who has a chance encounter with his long-lost, high school sweetheart, Roxanne, and finds his life changes overnight. Describing his character, Wahlberg explains, “We always felt Roxanne to be the love of this guy’s life; he stayed where he was because he was hoping that she would actually come back into his life somehow.” The Oscar-nominated actor is best known for his roles in gritty dramas like The Departed and The Fighter and comedies like I Heart Huckabees , Ted, and Ted 2 . The Union marks the second film of 2024 for Walhberg, after Arthur the King , and he will be next seen in Mel Gibson ’s Flight Risk , and Shane Black ’s Play Dirty .

Academy Award-winner Halle Berry portrays the character of Roxanne, a government agent working for the secret organization called the Union, who recruits her high school flame, Mike, for a dangerous espionage mission. Following her critically acclaimed role in Marc Forster ’s Monster’s Ball , she gained widespread prominence as Bond girl Jinx in Die Another Day and Storm/Ororo Munroe in the X-Men film series. Berry has also starred in films like thrillers like Perfect Stranger and The Call , and the sci-fi series The Extant , and made her directorial debut with Bruised. and will be next seen in the horror thriller film Never Let Go and the Hulu series All’s Fair.

Whiplash star J. K. Simmons joins the main cast as spymaster Tom Brennan, Roxanne’s boss who recruits average blue-collar workers and trains them to be field agents for the Union. The Academy, BAFTA, and Golden Globe Award-winning actor is best known for his character and voice roles in over 200 films, with notable work in Sam Raimi 's Spider-Man trilogy, Thank You for Smoking , Juno , and Being the Ricardos . Some of his most prominent television roles include Oz , The Closer , and Counterpart . Simmons will next appear in the action-adventure comedy film, Red One , Clint Eastwood ’s Juror No. 2 , and The Accountant 2 .

In other supporting roles, The Union also features Luke Cage star Mike Colter as Nick Faraday; Alice Lee ( Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist ) as Athena Kim; Orange is the New Black ’s James McMenamin as Rick Healy, Lorraine Bracco (The Sopranos) as Mike’s mother, Lorraine McKenna, and Succession alum Patch Darragh as Bobby Breslin. Jackie Earle Haley ( Watchmen ), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje ( The Bourne Identity ), and Jessica De Gouw ( Arrow ) round up the cast of the spy comedy film.

2 Who Is Making 'The Union'?

J.K. Simmons and Halle Berry in The Union

The Union is a Netflix original film directed by four times Emmy-nominee Julian Farino, with the screenplay written by Joe Barton and David Guggenheim. An English film and television producer and director, Farino is best known for directing most episodes of the first three seasons of Entourage , as well as select episodes of Coronation Street between 1992 and 1994. He has also directed episodes of How to Make It in America , Giri/Haji , Ballers , and Florida Man . His film projects include Byron , Oranges , and Toby Jones -starrer Marvellous .

British film and television screenwriter Barton is best known for creating, writing, and producing the crime thriller series Giri/Haji and the sci-fi thriller series The Lazarus Project , and writing the films Encounter and My Days of Mercy . Following The Union , Barton is set to create and produce the British spy thriller series Black Doves and will pen the script for an untitled Cloverfield sequel . Barton’s co-writer for The Union , David Guggenheim, is best known for writing the films Safe House and Stolen , and for creating and writing the political thriller series Designated Survivor .

Farino and Barton will also collaborate on the upcoming television series Amadeus , a fictionalized account of the lives of composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri . Farino directs the series from an adaptation by Barton of a 1979 play of the same name by Peter Shaffer . Mark Wahlberg serves as a producer for The Union under his Closest to the Hole Productions banner, with Stephen Levinson and Jeff Waxman also producing.

1 When and Where did The Union Film?

A year after the film’s announcement in March 2021, the production for The Union commenced in March 2022, with filming taking place in London, New Jersey, Piran, Slovenia, and Ponterosso Trieste, Italy.

Mark Wahlberg

COMMENTS

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