Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” was always going to be specifically aimed at fans of the 1965 Frank Herbert novel, no to mention those still heartbroken about the disastrous 1984 David Lynch version.
Last Sunday, “Dune” had an ultra hush-hush press screening at the legendary WB parking lot. The embargo for the film is set to be lifted during the first week of September or after its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, but Jeffrey Wells managed to get three anonymous critics to share their brief reactions on the film:
First Person: “I tend to like epically scaled movies, even flawed ones or those that are hard to follow [as Dune] has a number of distinct characters weaving in and out. Dune viewers need to do, in other words, is get themselves into a place in which “flaws” don’t especially matter and “following the action” isn’t all that vital.”
Second Person: “I loved Dune and went into something of a trance and was mesmerized from beginning to end. Seeing it on a big screen was fabulous, and I might well see it again sometime just for the immersive pleasure.”
Third person: “Dune‘s not bad. It just makes no sense. But that’s okay — it’s a mood piece. Good to see if you’re really stoned. Greig Fraser‘s cinematography is quite mesmerizing and that you can coast along on that aspect to your heart’s content. The plotting was too complex and it seemed as if everyone was speaking some kind of foreign tongue. This sense of being lost and adrift had not, to put it mildly, coagulated into anything special.”
Villeneuve seems to be appeasing to that particular demographic. As mentioned in a previous post, I am getting “Blade Runner 2049” vibes all over again with this one. Is the fanbase actually large enough to make “Dune” a legitimate box-office hit?
While James L. Brooks teased last year that "we'll soon be seeing" Jack Nicholson, 89, act again, and that he was "reading scripts," that idea has now been shut down by his close friend Michael Douglas, 82.