Dune Too

I missed seeing Dune 2 in IMAX but discovered it is now available free on HBO. I watched it last night and have to say I was seriously underwhelmed. Maybe I’m biased. We tend to cling to art discovered in our younger days. Sequels are supposedly being planned, but I’d say their prospects are dim. I’ll be sure to follow them, but not enough to be motivated to actually go to a theater.

As an old sci-fi head, decades ago I read at least three of the novels. Unlike most I loved the 1984 version. For all its problems, the remake pales before David Lynch’s film. Evidently money problems plagued the older one and it ended up being disowned by Lynch. A point in favor of the remake is that it doesn’t shrink from the darker implications of the story, namely the future of colossal inter-galactic carnage. Otherwise it thrives mostly on special effects and photography. It’s still too damn long.

The most striking difference is the actors. The new ones have no pizazz. Two exceptions are Stellan Skarsgard and Javier Bardem. Jason Momoa in Part I was o.k. too. The dynamic between the new leads — Timothée Chalamet and pouty Zendaya — looks like a bad episode of High School Musical. Their nemesis, the guy who plays Feyd-Rautha, looks like a refugee from Immortan Joe’s gang in Mad Max.

In contrast, the merry trio of Harkonnen leaders from the 1984 film, stood out. The giant floating fat man and Sting. Even the Beast Rabban was better; sorry, Dave Bautista can’t act. Jose Ferrer sounded like an emperor. Christopher Walken is miscast and sounds like a goomba from the Bronx. Then in the old one you had Max Von Sydow, Brad Dourif, Patrick Stewart, Linda Hunt, Dean Stockwell . . . Jurgen Prochnow and Josh Brolin for Oscar Isaac and Stewart are pretty much even trades.

Even for all its command of special effects, the new version misses some opportunities. The giant worms do not figure in much. The sight of the navigators in the Lynch film is unforgettable. There is no weirding way, though its depiction in the 1984 film was hokey. Toddler Alia never shows up. A Shadout Mapes is listed in the cast of Part I, but I don’t remember her; I remember Linda Hunt very well.

Some of the casting choices relative to 1984 entailed replacing older actors with younger ones, like many movies these days. In one way or another, commerce impeded artistry in both films.

Like every movie ever, there’s what I call the Popeye eating spinach moment. The hero is besieged and battered, then at the last moment there is a miraculous turnabout that enables him (usually him, rather than her) to triumph. There are a couple of these in Dune 2. I didn’t get how Paul wins the knife fight with Feyd at the end. That aside, Timothée (fix the spelling, bro, you’re in America) looks overmatched. It would have made more sense to cleave Feyd sideways with a word like Kyle MacLachlan did in 1984.