Reel Entropy

Dune began its life as a deliberately incomplete project, with writer/director/producer Denis Villeneuve insisting on adapting the famous novel in two parts, but only securing funding for one of those parts, with a follow-up film contingent on its success. There are several problems with this approach, but Dune was successful enough – well, no it wasn’t. Its box office performance certainly didn’t warrant a sequel, but that was hindered by Warner Bros.’ unilateral decision to release all its 2021 movies day-and-date on HBOmax, so executives gave it a handicap and took all its technical Oscars into account. They’ve all been sacked, that’s not even what the god damn website’s called anymore, everything’s much worse now – whatever logic was used, someone decided this was worth another $190 million, so here we are. 

Ironically, this is not the first attempt at adapting “Dune” to film that is known to be incomplete – David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation ran out of money in the middle of production, leaving an obviously incomplete film relying on cheap “Star Trek” style sets that starts skipping like a broken record halfway through, fortuitously at almost the precise point part one of Villeneuve’s adaptation cuts off. This second part is the realization of not just the last film, but more than 50 years of trying to bring this novel to the screen.