Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes: Ranking all the Apes movies

So the newest instalment of the Planet of the Apes franchise, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, just came out. So due to that fact, I took it upon myself to marathon the franchise and have now seen all 10 instalments, from the original films, to the failed remake, to the current rebooted trilogy.

I thought it would be fun to share my opinion and rank them from best to worst. To keep things simple, I will go through all of them in order of release and give them a placement in my ranking.

Planet of the Apes – #1

As it tracks, the original is usually always the best. The concept of modern man landing on a planet where apes are the dominant species and humans are animals is very simple, so it’s easy to jump into and go along with. But what they do with that premise to explore humanity and pose questions about our own future is extremely interesting and still remains relevant. The twist ending is one of the most famous in history because it’s so impactful and well-executed. If you go in knowing it (which to be honest most people do as it’s been over 50 years) you can see the setup and the hints, it doesn’t just come out of nowhere.

The production design is also great, I love the way they designed the ape civilization to be vaguely human but still a little bit primitive and kind of reminiscent of a zoo enclosure. The prosthetic makeup is still pretty good by today’s standards, but for 1968 it’s pretty incredible. There’s a reason this movie won an Oscar for makeup before they even had a category for it.

I remember seeing this film when I was very young and being captivated by it, and I’ve watched it many times since then. It’s not just one of the most iconic sci-fi movies but movies in general. It’s one of those staples you really should watch if you want to get into film.

Beneath the Planet of the Apes – #10

Inexplicably, they managed to make the worst one immediately.

There are so many interesting places they could have gone for the sequel. They could have explored more of the ape’s world, or even the remnants of the human one. They could have focussed on Taylor rebuilding human civilization or the apes learning more about it. These are all the kinds of ideas I had about what happened next when I first saw it as a kid. But instead, they decided to go with the most insane out-of-left-field choices that feel like a franchise that’s dying and run out of ideas, even though it’s only the second movie.

They have a whole new main character show up, who’s basically exactly the same as the previous one, who then has to figure out what’s going on which we the audience are fully aware already, of so it’s annoying. But then the revelation that there is a whole underground colony of mutant humans with telepathic powers that worship an unexploded nuclear bomb is so batshit, I just hate it. Not only does it completely defeat the point of humanity having regressed to animals, it was never set up and just comes out of nowhere like something out of a bad fan fiction.#

The ending is also extremely anticlimactic if you can be bothered to watch. I will not be watching it again as I spent the whole movie staring at the screen in confusion.

Escape from the Planet of the Apes – #4

This is definitely the best of the 4 sequels as it had the most interesting premise and the most to say, which is the strength of the brand to begin with. It’s a very simple premise as they essentially just reversed the original by having the intelligent apes come back in time so now they’re the odd ones out and the humans are in charge, but instead of just repeating the original movie there’s a different payoff to it.

I like that it starts off very lighthearted and enjoyable, it’s actually a very fun film at the beginning. But as it goes on it gets a lot darker, more dangerous and by the end it’s very bleak. Not a lot of films manage to pull off such a dramatic change in tone like that so it’s pretty impressive that it works. It represents the fickle nature of humanity and how we cannot help but revert to destruction at every turn, which feeds into the original movie’s thesis.

It does suffer a bit from being a low-budget, speedily produced sequel. It has the unfortunate task of building off of what the last movie set up, and explaining how exactly the apes inexplicably figured out space travel, which does drag it down a little. However, it does succeed in what it overall wants to say and also sets up a direction for the following films to go, unlike the last one which just threw stuff at the wall and ended.

Conquest of the planet of the apes – #7

This film does a pretty good job of building off of what the previous one set up, although I did find the first couple of acts a little bit of a slog to get through.

Finding out that it took just 20 years for the earth to become a dystopian state where people keep apes as slaves is a bit of a hard pill to swallow, though seeing how much the political landscape has changed since my own childhood it is somewhat believable. But because of this dramatic jump, they have to spend a lot of the beginning of the movie setting it all up, which is kind of annoying when you’re on the 4th movie. It also lacks a lot of nuance with the humans, they’re all just basically mean and evil, bar two.

The production design is quite bland, being mostly just grey concrete buildings, and the apes also all just wear coloured jumpsuits. It’s all just a bit dull. There are ways of making dystopia more interesting; it felt like they just found a car park to shoot in.

The third act is where it really gets going. The apes learning from Caesar to plan a rebellion and then executing it is the meat of the story and where it comes alive. It’s really thrilling and they manage to do a lot with the action, there’s fire there’s guns there’s destruction, it’s worth sitting through the first half of the movie to get to it. It then all reaches a very powerful climax with a speech from the new ape leader, that brings in that commentary that the franchise is so good at.

Battle for the Planet of the Apes – #8

I was expecting so much after the setup of the battle in the last film, but this movie ended up being the most boring to me. I think the poster and even the name of the film made me expect some epic film about a war between humans and apes, but it ends up being very low stakes and nothing much really happens.

It’s essentially just a small battle between a small group of apes who live in the woods and a smaller group of humans who live underground. They discover each other, they fight, it gets resolved and then the movie is over. It’s vaguely entertaining but it’s by the numbers but it reeks of the end of a franchise where they had run out of ideas and budget and couldn’t really take it much further. It also tries to set up the beginning of the mutants from the second movie which I obviously hate and I wish they would just pretend that never existed.

It does have a little more nuance in it in that there are good and bad humans and good and bad apes, it’s not totally one-sided who is in the right. It also starts to set up the hierarchy within the ape community itself which is established in the original film.

It ends on a very ambiguous and hopeful note, suggesting that time may have been rewritten and there can be peace between humans and apes which is a nice juxtaposition from the nihilistic ending of the original. I’m not sure whether I like that as an ending but it does at least feel like the journey was worth it and we got somewhere in the end, and it feels satisfying to close up this original set of movies on that.

Planet of the Apes (2001) – #9

So points are already docked for being a remake of an already good film, but what bothers me most about this film is that it completely misses the point. I don’t need remakes to be exactly the same as the original (in fact I don’t like that) but what they need to do is understand what made the original good and try and stick to that. I just feel like Tim Burton didn’t understand Planet of the Apes.

The premise is destroyed when all the humans can talk and are just regular humans, as well as there immediately being apes that are nice and want to help them. There’s no sense of isolation for the main character, he’s not extraordinary compared to the other humans, so he’s not poked and prodded and he had people who can understand and listen straight away, the danger is significantly reduced. The worst part is that it turns out it all actually is on another planet, which I suppose is meant to be the twist because you don’t expect it to be, but if it’s not Earth, what does this movie have to say. Nothing it turns out. It’s just a sci-fi action movie with no deeper meaning.

So if you watch it from the perspective of a movie by itself then it’s fine. It’s entertaining and even enjoyable at times, though the writing is pretty bad. But as Planet of the Apes movie, it just doesn’t work. Making them aliens wouldn’t have changed very much about the story so why bother. And we don’t need to talk about the famously confusing and convoluted ending.

As much as I dislike this movie, I do have to give it props for something and that’s the design elements. The prosthetics namely are absolutely phenomenal. All the apes look so real and expressive and not like people in masks. It’s insane how good it is and how it allows the actors to really perform through it and not feel hindered, they really were robbed of an Oscar nomination. I also enjoy the production design, specifically of the ape city, with the jungle element as opposed to the more desert theme of the original, it looked really fun to explore.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes – #6

And so we reach the inevitable reboot. I do think it was a smart choice to reboot the series with a prequel rather than trying to remake the original again, but they have left the door open to remake it down the line and strongly hinted at it.

Honestly, while I watched it I was getting annoyed at the fact that it seemed as if, like Tim Burton, they missed the point of the original film. Because really the apes are not the point of the original story, it’s about how humanity destroys itself with nuclear war, and the apes are what comes next. So seeing this film have the apes grow and “rise” out of a fluke lab test, and the humans just living life irked me. However, I took a step back and remembered that this is a reboot with a new cannon. Nuclear war was obviously a hot-button topic in the 60s during the Cold War, and while it’s still a threat today, it’s not as feared in the cultural zeitgeist. I realized that this movie instead decided to approach a commentary on humanity’s cruelty to animals and pursuit of science, by having the apes be lab rats. Humanity is still breeding its own destruction just in a different way. Once I saw it from that perspective I managed to enjoy it a lot more.

Honestly, it’s a very good start to a new franchise, it’s got a lot of heart to it, it builds your emotional connection to the ape characters, particularly Ceasar better than most of the original films did while also keeping that human side. I do feel it suffers like most prequels do, in the sense that as we know where it’s going, it feels more like the set up to the part that gets good rather than being the story in itself. But I didn’t feel that as strongly as I have with other films.

Now what needs talking about is the draw that this film had, which was its use of CGI. Now I am a sucker for the old way of doing it with makeup over human faces, but I can’t deny the use of motion capture brings a whole new element that pushes this reboot era into new territory. Allowing the actors to use their whole bodies but still have realistic-looking apes on screen rather than having to cover up with costumes brings a new level to the performance, and allows the story to expand with it.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes – #2

This is where I really got into the new series. I feel like Matt Reeves got handed this franchise and really got it and knew where to take it.

The story is very much what Battle wanted to do but couldn’t, with apes living in their woodland colony and humans in the city, meeting and coming into conflict. But it’s much more nuanced than just two groups meeting and fighting. Both sides of the conflict take steps to quell the fighting as well as to spark it, and both have divided opinions among them. Like a real war.

All the characters are fleshed out, you can understand and empathize with all the human characters as much as you can for the apes, you really want everyone to be able to make it out alive, but of course they can’t. And I appreciated the apes weren’t suddenly all developed and talking, you can see that they’re still evolving and they haven’t taken over just yet.

Also watching a movie where humanity is brought down by a man-made virus, post covid, is kinda crazy. Gives you a very new perspective.

I felt like the motion capture really came into its own in this movie as well. It was impressive in the last movie but I found myself awestruck at how real the apes were in many of the scenes in this film, especially with the addition of elements like rain and fire to interact with them.

It was a really good payoff to what was set up in the last film, while also perfectly queuing up a continuation of the story.

War for the Planet of the Apes – #3

The word I would use to describe this film is epic, because that’s what it reminded me of. It felt like a classic epic war film but with apes in it. It’s a sweeping story of conflict, revenge and imprisonment that takes place across a long journey, a lot is going on and it does it well.

It’s a lot more melancholy than the previous entries, because war is horrible and sad. But I did miss the warmth that the previous installment had which is why I liked that one a little but more. But overall it really hit the nail on the head in terms of drama and story. I like that it moved things forward by beginning to address the devolution of humans as the apes evolve even more, moving us closer to where we know things will end up, but also still showing the idea that they brought it amongst themselves and even in such dire circumstances anger and fear take over and humanity continues to be self-destructive.

Visually, the motion capture was on point once, the apes just look amazing and there’s even more of them this time. But what I liked the most is that they chose to have most of this movie take place in a snowy setting, which none of the other movies have done. It gives this movie a distinct look that makes it recognizable which is clever when you’re on the 9th movie of a franchise. It keeps things fresh.

It feels very much like a fitting conclusion to a trilogy, while also leaving the door open for the next one and not making it feel unearned. I’m not sure if they knew they were gonna make another one after this so they probably wanted to end the story of this group of characters on a high, which they certainly did.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes – #5

And here we are at the newest release, which really became a movie of two halves for me.

The first half of this movie I absolutely adored. It gave me everything I had wanted since I saw the first film. Set hundreds of years after the last trilogy, the apes are more advanced and can all talk while the virus has made humans into mere mute animals whose population is scarce. So we got to explore more of the ape’s civilization and also see the ruins of the human one, which I found so fun. I love that world-building. And the story was also pretty entertaining with there being one more intelligent human that a faction of apes are hunting that our new hero has to protect and explore the world with. I was really into it.

But in the second half, you realise that this isn’t just a fluke and there’s actually a whole bunch of completely normal humans that haven’t devolved. Plus the goal of the villainous ape is to gain their knowledge and become even more advanced, so we’re obviously supposed to be against that. So what was the point in the huge time jump if not that much had actually changed? We still have essentially the same conflict between apes and humans, but it’s just that there are more apes this time, plus they want to reverse things and bring humanity back. It’s just dragging out the inevitable because we know where it’s all going, if these are still supposed to be prequels to the original movie.

They obviously want to continue making these movies (they plan to make at least 2 more) so they want to string out the conflict more so they have some plot. But I would argue that they could have plenty to explore just by focusing on the ape’s stories and watching their civilization grow, with the humans diminishing and regressing on the sidelines. That way when you get to the eventual remake of the original, we’ll feel the loss of humanity much more.

But as much as the plot of the second half annoyed me, I still continued to enjoy the world-building. I liked the beach setting with apes living in old washed-up ships. Which also felt like a bit like a reference to the ending of the original film. And as always the animation on the apes is incredible, even without Andy Serkis, the king of motion capture, being involved anymore.

I think the goodwill from the first half of the movie will make me look back on this movie with better eyes over time, and I am intrigued to see where they do take this story they do make this into a new trilogy like they plan. I just hope the humans go away so I can spend some more time with the apes. It’s their planet after all.

My Ranking:

1. Planet of the Apes
2. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
3. War for the Planet of the Apes
4. Escape from the Planet of the Apes
5. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
6. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
7. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
8. Battle for the Planet of the Apes
9. Planet of the Apes (2001)
10. Beneath the Planet of the Apes

That was a lot of movies to watch and write about! so now I’m going to take a well-deserved break and enjoy the earth while it still belongs to us humans.

Dune Part 2 Review: I gave it a chance

If you read my review of Dune a couple of years ago you’ll know I didn’t really care for it. I found it confusing and very boring. But ever the optimist I thought maybe it just needs part 2 to finish it off and get me to enjoy it. So I was fairly excited to see Dune Part 2, especially as it was getting such rave reviews (just like the first one did). But guess what, I still didn’t like it.

There’s just something about this franchise I just can’t get into, despite all the pieces being there, so let’s talk about it.

Plot

The story follows on from the end of Part 1, with Paul and his mother finding the Fremen and deciding to live with them in the desert and learn their ways, Paul hopes to fight with the Fremen to overthrow the Harkonnen who killed his father and overthrow his house for control of the planet Arrakis, while falling in love with Chani, a fremen warrior. Meanwhile, the Harkonnen leader appoints his ruthless nephew to oversee the planet and fight the rebellious Fremen. While all this is happening, Princess Irulan, the emperor’s daughter keeps track of events in her journal and wonders whether Paul may still be alive, unknown to the empire.

There’s a lot going on in this movie and it’s very long! You’ve got to keep up with a lot of lore being thrown at you, there’s prophecies, bloodlines, religion, politics and geography. Everyone is related to everyone else somehow and there’s a bunch of different groups with different motivations. Now I love some deep lore don’t get me wrong, but when it’s all thrown at you in one movie it’s overwhelming because you can’t relax and enjoy the story you have to always be doing mental mind maps to ensure you’re really following what’s going on.

Characters

As this is a sequel I wanna talk about the new characters, and I’m gonna include Zendaya as Chani, because she was only in the last 15mins of the last film. That woman is such a superstar, she really knows how to carry a blockbuster in the supporting role, and I need to see her lead one soon. Her chemistry with Timothee Chalamet is brilliant, they have a particularly sweet scene together sat on top of a sand dune that I really enjoyed. But she never feels like just a romantic add-on despite honestly being written as one, because Zendaya just brings this strength and this relatability to her that makes her so engaging.

I also need to talk about Austin Butler stepping into the villainous role of Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen (yes the names are crazy). Say what you will about his wild Elvis accent claims, and believe me I have, but there’s no denying that boy can act. The voice work and the physicality he brings to the work, along with the makeup they did on him just made him truly fearsome. We all love a good baddy.

The one person I was really excited to see, because I’m a huge fan of hers, was Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan, but I was really disappointed. She’s barely really in it, and when she is she just spends the time sitting and standing around and just reacting to what everyone else is doing. She had no real agency or importance of her own which just felt like such a step back for female characters. I know this book was written in the 60s but Zendaya made it work.

As for returning characters, Timothée Chalamet is great in the lead as Paul, even though I find the character a bit too self-righteous at times. He does have this natural charisma despite being not what you’d expect from a typical action hero, being that he’s quite mousey and thin, and I think that works for the character.

World

My favourite part of any sci-fi or fantasy story is the world-building. Getting to explore the various planets or locations and meet different species is always so fun. So I think my disappointment with both of these dune movies is that they spend the majority of the time focusing on just one planet, and it’s a pretty dull and miserable one. Now I know the point of Arrakis is that it’s a tough and harsh environment to live in, and that’s pretty key to the point, but it doesn’t make for a fun experience being stuck there. As a wise person once said, “I don’t like sand”.

Now there are other places shown in this installment of the series, like the Harkonnen homeworld which has this really cool greyscale appearance. But visits offworld are all too brief and I felt disappointed whenever I was chucked back to a baron and lurid desert world once again.

Visuals

Visually this is a very stunning film, and I think that’s what mainly drew them to wanting to adapt this book as a movie rather than a series, despite its long and complicated plot. So even if I was bored at least I had something pretty to look at. The bit I mentioned before where everything went grayscale was a stand-out moment for the cinematography and effects, but there was also the opening scene where everything had a kind of orangey hue in the harsh desert light that I found really gorgeous.

I’m also a sucker for good costume design and there were plenty of exquisite outfits to look at, particularly Florence Pugh’s gowns and the various ceremonial robes of the Benne Gesserit women. For the latter, I like that each he’d her own kind of style as opposed to them all wearing the same uniform, it lent more to the fleshing out the characters and where they come from.

Tone

I think I’ve realized my main issue with this movie is that it wasn’t very fun. Now I love a serious movie don’t get me wrong. But when I saw the trailer i saw a sci-fi action movie that’s really enjoyable to watch, and what I got was nearly 3 hours of people being very serious, quite maudlin, with deep intellectual ideas that I needed to ponder. That is all well and good if that’s what you want and I’m sure that’s what many people really love about it, but it wasn’t an entertaining experience for me.

I cannot help but compare it to Star Wars. Dune was obviously the blueprint that George Lucas took a lot of his ideas from, watching this film and the first you can see so many things that he brazenly copied, or shall we say influenced him. But the thing is Star Wars is fun! And you can call it the common man’s Dune, but I think there’s a reason it’s become much more well-known and popular.

I think what I really need to do is go and watch the original 80s movie of Dune, because that looks like a camp old time.

At the end of the day, a lot of people loved Dune Part 1 and I didn’t. A lot of people love Dune Part 2, and I didn’t. Objectively, it’s a very good movie. The acting is great, it’s visually stunning, it’s got a very interesting lore and world-building. But there are things that just stop me from connecting with it and I can’t help that.

They are probably going to make a third one and yes I’m probably going to torture myself and watch h that one too. Maybe the third time will really be the charm or maybe I’ll just have even more egg on my face.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 review: A very satisfying end

It’s been a long time coming! Through firings and rehirings and making DC movies instead, James Gunn has finally finished the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy he kicked off for the MCU way back in 2014. But in an Era where Marvel fatigue is setting in and projects are dipping in quality, has he managed to keep the franchise at the high standard he set for it or has it come to a whimpering end?

Plot

The new uniforms weren’t as comfy as they expected

After an attack by Adam Warlock (sent by the evil genetic scientist The High Evolutionary) leaves Rocket close to death, the guardians must find the key to his mysterious genetics to save his life. We also discover Rocket’s origins as a creation by The High Evolutionary during his quest to create a more perfect world filled with perfect beings.

Whereas the previous two Guardians films focused on Peter Quill’s backstory and character development, I like that they decided to branch out and focus on one of the other guardians this time (even though Quill is very much still the main character). This was especially exciting because Rocket’s life had really been a mystery up until this point, so it gave us something to build from while keeping things feeling new and fresh. We also get a few revelations that tie this new story back up to the previous entries as well as new character choices that together serve to bring the trilogy to a satisfying close.

Characters

All the characters are consistent with how we came to know them in the previous 2 movies, so there are no real major changes in characterization abate from one character who I’ll get to.

Turns out Gamora’s not a cat person

As problematic as Chris Pratt may be to some people with his ultra-religious and conservative private life, I cannot deny that he continues to just be really good at movies, with both this and Super Mario back-to-back and Jurassic World last year, being super enjoyable for me. As I said, despite this being a movie about Rockets, Quill/ Star Lord is still the main character as Rocket does spend a lot of the movie unconscious. And rightfully so because as a lead he brings such charisma and humanity to the team. I also didn’t like the way that they kind of made fun of Star Lord and infantilised him a bit in the last Avengers, movie so it was nice to see him as a more 3-dimensional character once more.

The big change in character was with Gamora, as she was technically a different character. After the original Gamora was killed in Avengers: Infinity War and an alternative timeline brought in a new Gamora that never joined the Guardians in Avengers: Endgame, we have to follow this new Gamora as she finds her place in a team that remembers her in a way she doesn’t know herself. I’ve always loved Zoe Saldana in this role, and while I loved her as the old Gamora, I really appreciated what she brought to this new, more aggressive version of the character, and she managed to differentiate the two with her performance. They also could have very easily found a way to just reboot her memories and bring back the old version but I appreciate that they didn’t do that and committed to her new journey as this character.

Everyone else was just as entertaining as ever. The only thing I didn’t enjoy was the new design of Groot. While I eventually got used to it, I still don’t like how cartoony he looked, almost an action figure, which I think is a particular creative choice, but not one I personally liked.

Villains

Gotta hand it to him, he gets to the point

The High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji) was horrible! But I mean that in a good way. He was a character with not an ounce of empathy or goodness in him, who committed unspeakable acts through the course of this film. I think in a time where most movie villains have a little bit of empathy or relatable (which does usually make them interesting), it’s good to also have one that is just truly awful, because that makes him scary. He was also wildly emotional, which made his reactions and therefore his actions escalate, which upped the tension as the movie progressed.

One of the secondary villains of the film was Adam Warlock (Will Poulter), a character that people have been wanting to see in the MCU for years. As a character, I think he was well done. He had basically just been born, as he was just created by Ayesha and the High Evolutionary, so he had this childlike naivety that created great comedy that really fits in with Guardians’ sensibilities. But he was also really powerful and a genuine threat. I think he was sadly underutilized here though. He really didn’t serve a purpose outside of inciting the initial conflict, and then he just kind of stuck around for the rest of the movie doing not much. It felt like he was there because he’s supposed to be an important character, rather than actually being important to this story. But the silver lining is this is Marvel, where everyone comes back in other projects. So I’m sure there’ll be more time to get to know him properly and have him be a part of his own story later on.

Tone

I know why the caged Rocket sings

This movie was very dark! While the last two Guardians films had deep emotional moments, they were overall very light hearted and fun; so I think it will come as a surprise to people just how dark it is. Now don’t get me wrong there is a lot of comedy and silly moments, it’s not a complete 180, but it goes very heavy on some quite harrowing imagery, particularly around the theme of animal cruelty. There’s one scene in particular that left me thoroughly shaken.

After Thor: Love and Thunder and other recent comedies like She-Hulk left me feeling disinterested in an MCU that wasn’t taking itself seriously, I obviously much prefer this approach. Because James Gunn managed to balance out his more typical silly comedy stylings with a more deep meaningful story, something Taika Waititi did not manage to do with Thor. The only issue I see is rewatchability, as I already see people saying it was too sad for them to go back and sit through it again, no matter how good they thought the film was.

Soundtrack

Spitting fire on the tracks

I’m the previous 2 Guardians films, the soundtrack has been a huge selling point and was sort of a character in its own right. The soundtracks stuck rigidly to 70s music played through cassette that the characters themselves were hearing along with the audience, which gave a unique twist to the sci-fi genre. I think it’s safe to say that it’s a key ingredient of what made this brand so popular in the first place.

In this movie however, they switch to a Zune mp3 player which played songs spanning up to the 2000s. While a lot of the songs are great, I think having that range did lose a little bit of the franchise’s identity and I didn’t feel like they all blended in as seamlessly with the action on screen as previous films had, apart from a couple of exceptions.

This was of course James Gunn’s last Guardians of the Galaxy movie, so it was very much set up to be an ending, which it ends up being, quite satisfyingly so. Despite this, the door is very much left open for the Guardians to return, as everything is always left with Marvel. Of course, if they do return it will be with a new lineup as a lot of this cast have stated that they don’t want to come back.

I would like to see the Guardians come back in some capacity in the future, but I think they should hit pause a bit to give this film some time to breathe as a conclusion to the trilogy. Then they can come back with a fresh creative team behind them to take them in a new direction.

Dune Review: Sorry, I got bored.

Occasionally a film will come along that ends up being a big deal for whatever reason. The Dune book series is one that has its fans, but has never really been adapted well into any other medium, and has since been eclipsed as a pioneer of sci-fi by movies and shows like Star Wars and Star Trek. So it’s inevitable that in this renaissance of adaptations someone would want to try and get it right, and people were very excited about that.

Now due to the hype around this film I thought it only right that I see it. But having never read the books or seen the original movie, I was going in totally blind.

Story

I’ll do my best to explain what I can of the story  from what I could follow, as, like many epic sagas, it was very complex.

Oscar Isaac is Paul’s daddy, and mine

It follows Paul Atreides (Timothy Chalamet), of the House Atreides, one of many powerful houses who exist within the galaxy under an empire. Their house has been given control over Arrakis, a desert planet which has a special magical spice that they will harvest and sell as it is essential for traveling through space. But the House Harkonnen, who used to control Arrakis are angry at it being taken from them and so a war begins. Paul is also having visions of a girl from Arrakis, as his mother is a part of a magical clan of women and he has inherited his power. She believes he will be a chosen one from an old prophecy.

The story was complex, but not that hard to follow. I understood what was going on, it’s just the why that wasn’t always clear. There were a lot of characters to follow and knowing how they all relate to each other and why they do what they do and what they want was tough to grasp. The only thing I can’t explain at all yet is the chosen one angle and the visions Paul is having throughout the movie. I’m not certain what Paul is supposed to be doing and why he’s special, all I could figure out is that he was essentially space Jesus.

A movie of two halves

I can split this movie into to sections (I don’t know if it’s exactly half I wasn’t timing it) where I liked it and when I didn’t. The first half I felt was a solid movie. It was setting up the characters going from location to location and I was engaged. As I explained I didn’t fully follow what was going on but I was entertained. I want to stick with the story and see where it was gonna take us, knowing I would better understand where I had been by where I ended up. There was some exciting sequences with some good tension and action and it was visually striking with a good mix of environments and characters.

This still image is the entire last act

The second half of this movie, I was so bored. The hole thing just ends up with just a handful of characters, walking through the desert, running through a desert, talking in the desert, then walking through the desert a bit more. Nothing interesting happens until the movie ends and everything is just brown and sad. I can’t recall ever having been more disappointed with where a movie ended up from where is began.

Characters

There are a lot of characters in this movie so I can’t talk about them all if I don’t want this to be a lengthy review. I wasn’t the biggest lover of our lead Paul. I think Chalamet managed to make him sympathetic at least, he could pull off his fights and the way he acted the visions with the mental toll they took on him was good. The character himself was just a bit dull, and not very charismatic for the lead and the supposed chosen one.

That’s a thinly veiled look

I was much more interested in his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) who had the interesting story of split loyalties between her family the Atreides and her magical clan who want to influence the political sphere in a way that would hurt them. Her anguish was evident and I’d be really intrigued to see where her loyalties will lie as the story develops.

Zendaya was barely in this movie, she only appears in Paul’s quick visions and then the last 20mins. I don’t know anything about her character. It may be weird to mention but she was a huge part of the marketing. Literally all of her scenes were in the trailer already, so if you’re a Zendaya fan don’t get your hopes up.

Sequels

I didn’t mention the giant sand anus

This movie commits one of the most egregious peeves I have for a film, in that it assumes it’s getting a sequel. The plot does not wrap up, in fact it just stops. It ends after building up to something that never comes round, and expects you to come back for a part two. Now I know there is every possibility that this film will get a sequel, but it’s incredibly risky to leave it hanging so aggressively. It makes me angry to think I may have wasted time on a film that didn’t go anywhere and may never get there.

Based on the hype of the film and the fact that I felt I had to see it I do believe it will do well enough to get another go. Just how well people will react to it is another matter. I think fans of the book will obviously be invested in this world and its lore in a way I obviously could not, and they probably will enjoy it. Will that translate to a big box office though?

My feeling towards this movie is obviously pretty luke warm, but most critics I have seen are saying it’s a masterpiece and a triumph. So maybe I’m just dense and I didn’t get it but I honestly don’t see it. It’s a first have that is fine and enjoyable if you can get your head round the plot but a second half that drags on into eternity and comes to a sudden stop.
If you are interested in it I would recommend giving it a go, you may appreciate it on a level I could not. Personally, I just don’t think it was for me.