Denis Villeneuve's upcoming adaptation of Frank Herbert's Sci-fi epic Dune holds a lot of promise with a stellar writer/director who claims such acclaimed credits as Arrival (2016), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and Sicario (2015), and a shockingly good cast with FAR too many big names to list here. The movie shows so much promise that Warner Bros. has apparently already ordered a spin off television show based on the Bene Gesserit, an order of women who, through careful breeding and mental conditioning, have developed a supernatural mastery of social and political manipulation to guide humanity. Not knocking this idea at all it sounds like a fantastic series concept with potential to replace the GoT shaped void in many people's lives, but shouldn't Warner Bros. wait and see if Dune (2020) is successful first?
I don't want to down play the talent, skill and pedigree involved with this latest Dune adaptation, but I'm not convinced that a Dune adaptation can be successful. There are quite a few reasons there hasn't been a good film or television adaptation of Dune. It's not an easy book to adapt: it's about 200,000 words long for a start. Length is not insurmountable of course. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy was very successfully adapted to film, and Dune is getting split into two films so Dune should have plenty of time to cover everything important. Conveniently the book can be pretty easily broken up into two parts with the split occurring after the natural climax of the Sardaukar assault on Arrakis, but I can't help but think that the build up to what will surly be a spectacular action sequence will disappoint. That first half of the book is a lot of people talking about what they're going to do and not a lot of doing. There are a few scenes which are nicely cinematic and these scenes have been done well in the past but there are only 2-3 of them and that can not fill a movie. As if that wasn't challenging enough the actual Sardaukar assault is about 1/3rd of the way through the book. As a result the second movie runs the very real risk of being very poorly paced as it tries to cram 2/3rds of the story into a second half.
This problem could be remedied by placing the split a bit later in the story, but another challenge is far more entrenched in the way the book is written. So much of the story is communicated through subtext. Part of what makes Dune unique is it's emphasis on political and social subtleties. There is consistently more communicated by characters' understanding of others' body language and tone than there is in the actual dialogue and explicit actions. Of course that's why we have such a stellar cast for this upcoming film: to communicate the same information visually. This seems like a surmountable obstacle, but Dune takes place in an ENTIRELY different culture than the one we're used to in America and as such the social expectations, and subtleties are different and need to be exposited if they're to be understood. David Lynch clumsily solved this problem by allowing character's to directly express their thoughts in voice over. While this mechanism works it's not exactly good filmmaking. Hearing characters explain things as opposed to seeing them play out drains the things of all their impact. We understand, but we don't feel. This is part of the reason David Lynch's movie fails to engage emotionally despite being a fairly faithful adaptation... barring the pacing, quite a few of the characters, and the production design.
I firmly believe that Dune (2020) has a choice: be a good adaptation or be a good movie. I don't think it can do both. Dealing with the length and scope of the story is not an insurmountable problem, but the book's emphasis on subtext and social subtleties, if properly adapted, would make the film completely boring and incomprehensible to non fans. Additionally this emphasis is key to what gives Dune it's identity to ignore or downplay it would hurt the film as an adaptation while making it a more enjoyable and successful film.
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