I have long waited to see this new attempt at turning Herbert's book into a movie. The ingredients sounded promising (Villeneue, Zimmer, cast, ...) as well as the praise the movie has received so far.
Trying to immerse myself into the universe the film constructs, or better, translates from the book, I need to say for me there is something missing. I've seen Lynch's adaptation, have read the book, and played the Dune games (esp. Dune 2) day and night in my teenage days. Maybe it is because of this background, that I felt empty during most of the runtime of the movie. The book is difficult to translate to the screen, depicting not only the political conflicts, but also the inner conflicts and motivations of its protagonists vividly.
The movie tries not to deviate too much from the book's storyline, which I have to give Villeneuve credit for. But in contrast to Blade Runner 2049, the movie runs quite flat on the emotional side. But as said, maybe because I already know what happens next, and have already immersed myself into the imaginative Dune universe countless times, I felt like I was in a half-dreaming state phantasizing these visuals, but not actually watching a captivating story.
There is little dialogue and another point of critique is Zimmer's work in this. Someone here wrote that he considers the Dune soundtrack Zimmer's magnum opus, but to me this was Interstellar (2014). The score in Blade Runner 2049 was already quite minimalistic, but I credit Zimmer for at least using the CS80 like Vangelis did, thereby finding the right sounds for the futuristic setting. But here, in Dune, there is even more absence of any theme/leitmotifs, it's just a combination of a few chords and drones which sometime do not match the film's flow, with some occasional ethnic vocals which are absolutely over the top. It feels like Zimmer tried hard to find the right music for this movie, but in the end, delivered something absolutely generic that a young aspiring composer would probably be ashamed of.
Nevertheless I think I can recommend watching the movie, especially for people who have not read the book. I hope Villeneuve will be able to deliver the second (and third?) part, because probably it will turn out that the movie was deliberately filmed in the style of a two hour long prologue.
Just do not expect too much; I think the praise that the movie has received on its own is a bit too much for the actual product, but in the end, let's see where this franchise goes, probably this Dune will be the perfect movie if seen as a part of a trilogy.
