Technically fantastic movie that is well made on every front, but second half feels emotionally distant and shoots itself in the foot by portraying every character in a negative light with no nuance to their portrayals.
Let me get this out by saying the movie is technically astounding on every level and is great at what it does. It looks great. It sounds great. The effects are great. Love everything about it visually.
That being said, the movie loses me emotionally after the halfway point where just about every character is portrayed in a negative light when really only a few need to be, and certain characters that were likable beforehand start to viewed as frothing at the mouth lunatics. It's like a switch is flipped halfway through the movie and it starts to feel like an angsty teen is running the show where just EVERYONE in the film has to be an a-hole, manipulative, delusional, or a psychopath. Now, I understand thematically WHY that choice is made and narratively the point behind that choice, but it is portrayal itself that I think is rather annoying.
Take Stilgar, for example. Fun character in the first half, suddenly becomes insane religious fanatic in the second half who is always frothing at the mouth. Narratively and thematically I understand WHY this choice was done, but it feels to me like there was a better and more emotional way to do it that didn't feel so cold and mean-spirited that also added to the character's stakes in the film.
I'm not a person who is very quick to complain about cultural appropriation or "on the nose bashing of religion" but this movie makes it a bit... er... blunt? I'm no Muslim and I do not agree with Islamic principles, but shoot if I were one I could imagine being a bit pissed off at this movie. The visual styles of the Fremen, their language, text, behavior, and everything is just made to look like Muslim traditions and practices, which doesn't help that the second half of the movie is just dedicated to bashing religion and faiths of all kind through the visual design choices of all of the different factions.
There is a difference between critiquing religion, and then LITERALLY HAVING THE SAME CLOTHING AND PRACTICES as current religions. It comes across as rather mean-spirited and loses all subtlety. Having a rebellious female protagonist shout "prophecies are lies" and get dragged down by a crowd literally called "fundamentalists" is something dreamt up on r/atheist and felt a bit cringey. To add to that, the in-world explanation for her not believing in prophecies doesn't fully make sense because she lives in a universe where people can quite literally predict the future and the whole point of Spice is that it allows Space Guild Navigators to predict far into the future and across space and time. There's no real reason why anyone in this universe should be skeptical about prophecies when it is basically a fact of nature that people can see into the future.
Imagine living in a world where someone tried to argue that "coffee doesn't wake you up and accelerate your heart-rate". That is kind of the equivalent to Chani not believing in prophecies (or anyone for that matter) because prophecies seem to be a fact of nature and the whole Spacing Guild runs off of the ability to make "prophecies" to fold space. There isn't a difference between prophecy and being psychic, so the skepticism of them doesn't make sense other than the plot demands it.
Either way, I thought the movie was very technically well crafted and thought out, but my main issue with the film is that portrayal of all of the characters being viewed in a "negative" light in the second half of the film doesn't make for interesting drama, it makes me disconnected as a viewer. All of the EXACT same plot points could have happened in the movie with the EXACT same script, but if portrayed slightly differently I think it would have been more emotionally engaging.
Let me get this out by saying the movie is technically astounding on every level and is great at what it does. It looks great. It sounds great. The effects are great. Love everything about it visually.
That being said, the movie loses me emotionally after the halfway point where just about every character is portrayed in a negative light when really only a few need to be, and certain characters that were likable beforehand start to viewed as frothing at the mouth lunatics. It's like a switch is flipped halfway through the movie and it starts to feel like an angsty teen is running the show where just EVERYONE in the film has to be an a-hole, manipulative, delusional, or a psychopath. Now, I understand thematically WHY that choice is made and narratively the point behind that choice, but it is portrayal itself that I think is rather annoying.
Take Stilgar, for example. Fun character in the first half, suddenly becomes insane religious fanatic in the second half who is always frothing at the mouth. Narratively and thematically I understand WHY this choice was done, but it feels to me like there was a better and more emotional way to do it that didn't feel so cold and mean-spirited that also added to the character's stakes in the film.
I'm not a person who is very quick to complain about cultural appropriation or "on the nose bashing of religion" but this movie makes it a bit... er... blunt? I'm no Muslim and I do not agree with Islamic principles, but shoot if I were one I could imagine being a bit pissed off at this movie. The visual styles of the Fremen, their language, text, behavior, and everything is just made to look like Muslim traditions and practices, which doesn't help that the second half of the movie is just dedicated to bashing religion and faiths of all kind through the visual design choices of all of the different factions.
There is a difference between critiquing religion, and then LITERALLY HAVING THE SAME CLOTHING AND PRACTICES as current religions. It comes across as rather mean-spirited and loses all subtlety. Having a rebellious female protagonist shout "prophecies are lies" and get dragged down by a crowd literally called "fundamentalists" is something dreamt up on r/atheist and felt a bit cringey. To add to that, the in-world explanation for her not believing in prophecies doesn't fully make sense because she lives in a universe where people can quite literally predict the future and the whole point of Spice is that it allows Space Guild Navigators to predict far into the future and across space and time. There's no real reason why anyone in this universe should be skeptical about prophecies when it is basically a fact of nature that people can see into the future.
Imagine living in a world where someone tried to argue that "coffee doesn't wake you up and accelerate your heart-rate". That is kind of the equivalent to Chani not believing in prophecies (or anyone for that matter) because prophecies seem to be a fact of nature and the whole Spacing Guild runs off of the ability to make "prophecies" to fold space. There isn't a difference between prophecy and being psychic, so the skepticism of them doesn't make sense other than the plot demands it.
Either way, I thought the movie was very technically well crafted and thought out, but my main issue with the film is that portrayal of all of the characters being viewed in a "negative" light in the second half of the film doesn't make for interesting drama, it makes me disconnected as a viewer. All of the EXACT same plot points could have happened in the movie with the EXACT same script, but if portrayed slightly differently I think it would have been more emotionally engaging.