Half Measures 

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• Warner Bros. Pictures
• Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet in Dune Part One

To Denis Villeneuve's credit, he lays it right out there in the opening title card for his new movie: Dune Part One. There was simply no way to condense the sprawling narrative of Frank Herbert's 1965 science-fiction classic into one feature, even a 2-1/2 hour feature, a reality that gifted filmmakers like Alejandro Jodorowsky and David Lynch had already discovered in their own attempts at cinematic adaptations. Like recent examples ranging from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to Breaking Dawn to It, this would be yet another case of prioritizing fidelity over efficiency, counting on an audience's investment in the source material to let them leave the theater believing that half (or one-third, even) of a story was still a whole, individually satisfying movie.

And thus we dive headlong into the galaxy-spanning political intrigues that lead the Atreides family—Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac), Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), and their son, Paul (Timothée Chalamet)—from their home planet of Caladan to the desert planet Arrakis, where Leto has been assigned by the Emperor to oversee mining operations for the immensely valuable substance simply referred to as "the spice." Long story short—not particularly short, in this case—the increasingly powerful Atreides family has been set up by the Emperor for possible attack by a rival clan led by Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård, digitally and prosthetically blown up to Jabba the Hutt dimensions), in addition to the more mundane threats of a harsh planet under an occupying power.

Villeneuve's adaptation—co-credited to veterans Eric Roth and Jon Spaihts—generally downplays the colonialism angle in favor of the arc of Paul's hero journey, a Joseph Campbell-ready "chosen one" narrative built on Lady Jessica's history with a mysterious spiritual order. Chalamet's brooding style works well for a character haunted by his dream visions, and he does well with the part of Paul's story that deals much more with confusion and uncertainty than action.

Action is present here in concentrated doses, though, offered in a scope that really is best served on the largest possible screen. As Villeneuve demonstrated in his previous science-fiction efforts like Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, he prefers awe to slam-bang spectacle, and his imagery—captured in haunting dusty vistas and accented beams of light by cinematographer Greig Fraser—emphasizes stuff like enormous starships and colossal sandworms. "World-building" has become a loaded, almost sarcastic terminology when it comes to storytelling of this kind, but there really is no better word for the detail Villeneuve commits to, from the dragonfly-style design of one of the commonly-used airships, to the functional costuming of the characters, to the rituals and traditions of Arrakis' native Fremen built on the value of moisture in this world. If your ideal movie experience emphasizes memorable stuff to look at, you've come to the right place.

If your ideal movie experience is based on connection to the characters, however ... eh. Long stretches of Dune Part One are devoted to making sure we're clear exactly why the Atreides are coming to Arrakis and the Harkonnens are leaving, to the extent that it's repeated just on the off-chance that we missed it the first time. Such an intense focus on machinations leaves little room for anything that resembles emotion, aside from the brief bursts of energy Jason Momoa brings as a loyal Atreides soldier/Paul's best friend, or Skarsgård's Harkonnen played as what feels like a hat-tip to Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now. The repeated glimpses of a premonition by Paul that he will someday have a relationship with a Fremen warrior (Zendaya) only serves to emphasize that we're generally not seeing actual people having actual relationships.

Is that in part a function of the split narrative? Of course. That's the risk you take as a filmmaker when you start something that the folks who bought a ticket aren't going to be able to finish for what may be a couple of years. Dune Part One may be quite an extraordinary spectacle, but it could only ever be half of a story, which isn't even the same as a "middle episode" like The Empire Strikes Back that ends with a cliffhanger. Maybe this movie will feel different circa 2023-ish, when Dune Part One has been resolved by Dune Part Two.