Mrs. Brewingfrog and I took in the two Dune films recently. I found them to be wonderfully shot and absolutely brilliant from a Production Design standpoint. Script was reasonably good, but slid into the Usual Crap of "strong female girl-boss" with Chani. I suppose the girl they had cast into that role excels at scowling, so they let her play to her strengths. Timothy Chalamet was surprisingly good as Paul, and Rebecca Fergusen was fabulous playing Lady Jessica. Jason Momoa was wonderful, as usual, and will be back on the payroll as a ghola very soon. Javier Bardem looked like he was doing nothing more than playing Anthony Quinn's "Auda" in Lawrence of Arabia. Of course, Herbert himself probably had that role in mind when he was writing Stilgar...
My main annoyance with the films has to do with composer Hans Zimmer. The "primitive woman shouting incoherently" at dramatic points grated at first, then descended into torture. I don't understand why this was repeated over and over, although thankfully it only happened a couple of times in the second part. It was extremely annoying and really took me out of the picture. Bad Hans. Bad! Figure out another sonic way of emphasizing a dramatic point than a recording of a woman having a finger cut off...
I have read that Villenueve has gotten Dune III greenlighted. Considering the dark nature of the source materiel (which I began about four decades ago, and put down halfway through because I ran out of patience), it will test the modern cinematic audience.
