After being pushed a year from its initial premiere date in 2020, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune screened for an audience of critics at the 2021 Venice Film Festival.
Some praised the sprawling, massive scale of the movie as brilliant and awe-inspiring, while others faulted it for being the first part of a planned two-part series that ends just as things are getting interesting. A movie as huge and as anticipated as Dune, which has been described by more than one person as “unfilmable,” was bound to produce a wide array of critical opinions, with more to come closer to the planned premiere in Oct. 2021.
Here’s what critics have to say about Dune.
Smarter sci-fi
The Guardian, Xan Brooks
Denis Villeneuve’s fantasy epic tells us that big-budget spectaculars don’t have to be dumb or hyperactive, that it’s possible to allow the odd quiet passage amid the explosions…Dune is dense, moody and quite often sublime.
IGN, Scott Collura
Villeneuve frequently impresses with his ability to take tried and true sci-fi concepts and put some new spin on them.
A faithful adaptation
Roger Ebert, Glenn Kenney
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. Or, I should say, two-thirds of the book.
Empire, Ben Travis
And for science-fiction devotees, especially those who have long-worshipped Frank Herbert’s dense tome and waited decades for it to be brought to the screen in a more successful incarnation than previous filmmakers have managed, make no mistake: Villeneuve’s Dune is the adaptation you always dreamed of.
An abrupt ending
IGN, Scott Collura
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.
Indiewire, David Ehrlich
“Dune” only resembles a dream in that it cuts out on a note so flat and unresolved that you can’t believe anyone would have chosen it on purpose.
The LA Times, Justin Chang
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.
A high bar for entry
Vanity Fair, Richard Lawson
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. In all its marvel, Dune forgets to do basic things like give us someone or something to root for, or feel for, or think about for longer than the stretch of the film.
The Guardian, Xan Brooks
He has constructed an entire world for us here, thick with myth and mystery, stripped of narrative signposts or even much in the way of handy exposition.
Powerful and overwhelming
CNET, Richard Trenholm
In Villeneuve’s hands, this version of Dune is a richly detailed and hugely evocative imagining filled with striking imagery. It’s supremely and winningly odd.
The LA Times, Justin Chang
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.
EW, Leah Greenblatt
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.
Dune premieres in theaters and on HBO Max October 22.
