I haven't been this excited about a movie in a long time. I guess Avengers: End Game was the last one. I went and saw it by myself at midnight. I had plans to see it with my friends later in the week, but I needed to know how the story ended. I needed time to process it. Space to be alone if I needed to cry. I didn't end up crying, but it was an emotional moment for me. I cared about those characters, their story.
I felt this way about The Hunger Games too. For reasons I can't quite articulate, that story was emotionally important to me too. I cared so much. And I like caring about stories, about characters, about how they work and what they mean.
It's why I do what I do. It's why I'm here.
And I've been ready for another story to get its hooks in me like Avengers did for a long time. I was really thinking that Dune might be it.
I went to the movie theater – again, by myself – partially because it's still the era of COVID, but also, because I wanted to be able to feel this story without judgement. I needed my emotional space to process this.
Or so I thought.
Perhaps you've guessed this from the title, but Dune was not the story I wanted it to be. I loved the lush visuals, the epic scope of the worlds, the amazing dramatic potential. . . But as much as I tried, I could not care about the characters or their story in Dune.
It's not that I didn't like them. Lady Jessica is deeply interesting, Duke Leto seems like an honorable man. It's interesting that they are in a loving relationship, that they've never married just in case he needs to take a wife for a political alliance yet have remained committed. This speaks volumes about the type of people they are, and this is usually the stuff of great story.
But it didn't work for me here. And I'm trying to figure out why.
There's a lot to like about these character. Jessica and Leto have a lot of potential, and Paul suffers early on with that pain-box thing the Bene Gesserit brings him. That sets up some pretty high stakes, and good stories need those too. There's a pretty compelling antagonists too—House Harkonnen has the look and feel of a great bad guy. This story really should have worked.
And yet. . .
After three hours, I left the theater feeling empty. Dune didn't spark anything in me. Not the way the first Star Wars does, or Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter, or nearly all of the Marvel movies do.
I didn't really care about Paul, or his mom, I felt nothing when Leto died. I had the faintest inkling that I was supposed to, but the moment didn't resonate for me. It was sad to see Duncan Idaho go, but I think that is mostly due to the strength of Momoa's performance.
I'm not sure how to explain why this story didn't work for me, but I can explain what would have made it better.
First, I think Leto needed a clear goal for Arrakis. We know he had to go there. We know it was dangerous, and we know the Harkonnens weren't happy about it. But that's all just stuff happening. It doesn't really mean anything in story-sense until we know how it will impact a character on deeper level. It's sad that the Atreides are being set up for failure, but I don't really care until I know how that failure will specifically crush them. I wanted to know how great a man Leto was. . . that he wasn't just going to rule Arrakis, but that he wanted to undo the terror the Harkonnens had done, and forge a new create a better world for its people. I think I'm supposed to believe Leto was going to do something like that, with the mission he sent Idaho on, but it didn't really come across. And without really know what he was all about as a main character, or what was at stake for him, I just didn't really care when he died. I also think that Leto's goal would have added structure to the story. A clear place for the story to start and end.
I also think Paul needed some sort of goal/ want to motivate him. What if he was super curious about learning the Freman culture. . . Or, he also could have been against it. A dumb teen who only wanted to focus on his noble-things studies and fighting and stuff like that. Either way, I would have understood what he was about and it could have folded into other elements of the story.
And I think that is another aspect that Dune lacked. One thing happened, and then another, and I don't see how these elements are related. We could have removed the dramatic Sandworm scene in the middle. I know it was fantastic to look at. But what did it do to move the story forward? I guess we learned that Paul is extra sensitive to Spice (but why is that so important?), it further cemented the idea the Atreides were being screwed over by the Harkonnens (but did we really need to know that?).
I've heard time and again in all the writing books and podcasts and lectured I've consumed over the past few years that if you can delete something from your story and not ruin it, then delete it. I think so many scenes in Dune could have been deleted. They were beautiful, sure, but did they add meaning to the story? Were they delivering necessary and important information about the story's world, character, theme and plot? Usually, the answer was no.
Take the play fight scene with Gurney Halleck for example. It was sweet to see Paul learn from his mentor and friend, but did I need that scene? Did I even need Gurney's character? Nope. And at the end when Paul had to fight the one man in the desert. Jessica had to tell us that "he's never killed a man before," to help us understand why this moment was so important to Paul. But why was it important to the story? If the story had been framed around Paul becoming a man - and taking his first life was a step in that direction, then, I'd have gotten it. But Dune didn't appear to be about Paul become a man on any thematic sense.
Imagine if the first scene had been Leto and Jessica in bed, wrapped in each other's arms but debating, disagreeing even, about how they're raising Paul. Jessica wants to protect him, as any mother would. Leto, however, very aware of the great responsibility the family is taking on by moving to Arrakis, tells her, "he's not a child anymore, Jessica, you can't keep protecting him." That would have clarified the story's theme about Paul's coming of age story. Then, imagine this discussion sets up more Jessica's thoughts and feelings with the Bene Gesserit woman comes with the pain-box. Imagine this is why Leto tells Gurney to step up his training. "He needs to learn to fight, Gurney. He's not a child anymore, and Arrakis is dangerous. . ." Now that scene is with Gurney is essential to the story.
Something that I often tell my students is that good writing is good logic. It's as simple as that. There's got to be some designing principle, something guiding, ruling, holding the whole thing together. I usually think of this as theme, but however you think of it, it's what helps you decide what pieces stay in a story and what pieces are cut out.
I think this is the thing that Dune is missing. That's at least how I think about it. I hope that makes sense.
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