Tallyho Towards The Dry
What I See Through The Burning Sand
Traveling through the void of the desert without a destination…but a goal in mind. How long has it been since I first began this journey? 10 minutes? Or has it been 10 months? Possibly 10 years walking barefoot with these hobbit feet through the sand. Grains of a world sifting through my toes in which nothing can survive no matter how much the sun shines. And shines. And shines. That fucking fireball never seems to shut up in its shining and so it goes as I travel through the desert.
Burning my body to leave me a tan unlike a farmers as I search for the 1 thing that could save my life...a decent film. The most serious of business when walking through the desert with these stank ass hobbit feet.
Nice and Crusty
Time stands still in this void. Losing all sense of the passing moment. A beard growing on my face and feet. Until finally…I find the film. In the middle of this void was the film I have been searching for so long. My bones withering away as time went on but now I have found a science fiction film that ironically takes place in the desert wastelands.
DUNE
Now, what makes me, an unlicensed genius who can't seem to keep a blog up to date, crave for a film like the 2021 adaptation of DUNE? In order to answer that question let me explain a bit about the current status of films of this nature; the Summer Blockbuster.
Listen Up Children
Summer Blockbusters are the safest films around. These films have been strained and squeezed now to the point where there are no consequences to any of the bullshit you are watching. Just look at the nearly 84 different Marvel films that have come out, it is easy to see that Death means absolutely nothing. There is no finality to any character as long as they are still under contract to their Disney overlords.
Another fantastic example I was forced to take part in was watching the recently released Jurassic World Dominion. That series sure went to dog shit ever since the T-Rex ran around San Diego or maybe it was when the Raptor crack pipe was introduced in Jurassic Park 3 or maybe it was that time with the whole cloning the niece or whatever in Fallen Kingdom but man is this particular film just the worst.
The stakes are at a complete rock bottom. Not a hint of suspense throughout for the audience to take part in for it is very obvious from the beginning they wouldn't just bring Sam Neal, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum into the movie to just have them killed off. These characters have no choice but to survive no matter what dumbass choices they make.
Another fault is introducing new characters that hardly do anything or really matter in any way in the movie because its obvious that in the 10th movie, that will be when they’ll matter but killing them off in the same movie they show up in would be a waste. I also wish I can remember their names but I can only remember them as Pilot Woman and Scientist Man.
The positive though is that they sure do succeed in creating a villain that you couldn’t care to root against or root for. A villain without any real feasible motive in the film and just ultimately receives a death reserved to the nostalgia portion of your disgusting childhood that enjoyed that 1 scene where that man of girth was killed by the same dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.
Its obvious that the greatest and possibly the saddest moment in the film is of the T-Rex gasping one last CGI breath of fan fiction heights to stay relevant by winning a fight with another dinosaur in a fantastically lackluster way. Death may not matter but I can only imagine that it is the only solution for this series. Please Die.
Once again though, I have to bring up the greatest perpetrator of the Summer Blockbuster; Star Wars. Where even if you are an genocidal asshole like that Darth Vader fellow who kills little Jedi kids, blows up planets that causes massive erections to genocidal maniacs, and cutting off your own sons hand; YOU can still win.
All that truly matters is that you commit a final act of sacrifice for the greater good or the good side of the force or if you just repent at the last second, then you too will be able to live on as a blue tinted ghost as hairy 3 feet abominations dance and cheer to beating the Empire. Death is no longer a problem. And maybe some asshole wants to mention the death of Ewok #8 but honestly, did that Ewok even have a name to remember? More importantly, does it even have a soul?
No It Doesn’t
But I digress back to my digression; Death is no longer something tangible and permanent but just some fantasy that the dead will always be farting around instead of being stuck within the black void where they belong. It's a strange phenomenon that Death seems to be avoided at all costs when it comes to these films since the first real blockbuster film was one with Death at every corner.
Death I Say
Did you ever see Jaws? That motherfucking shark was trying to eat EVERYBODY. Little kids, old ladies, sexy ladies, old dudes, and bearded dudes. Death was around every corner and each death was one that resonates throughout the film and by the time Quint gets eaten, the entire audience is screaming for Roy Scheider to kill that motherfucking shark and by the time that motherfucking shark blows up, everybody wins. Fantastic. What an ending. Death being the only answer to solve that shark problem.
And so from that moment of Jaws being a big box office smash hit, the notion of making films strictly for this kind of summer time audience grew more and more. It seems like an overnight affair that these summer blockbusters came about but its the end result of the changing times. People needing bigger and bigger thrills but they seem to get cheaper and cheaper as time went on.
Then DUNE comes along to give us these consequences of death that we all desire. The true certainty of an end. For throughout the film, motherfuckers be dying left and right. Then the movie goes on and some more motherfuckers are dying left and right. Then the movie keeps moving and these motherfuckers keep on dying left and right AND THEN the movie starts to wrap up and still, another motherfucker has to hit the dirt.
There is no certainty in who will make it and who won’t and this leaves a greater of anticipation as well as a sense of engagement with the audience. Danger at every corner is a critical plus to the summer blockbuster and its great to see that come back.
Time goes as it does and the standards of the summer blockbuster starts stinking. I’ll leave the history lesson for another time but the state of affairs reaching this critical impasse is disconcerting. Then DUNE comes along to bring a true trigger of nostalgia of when films could be so much more than flash. It feels like an actual film.
So it goes and let us dive into what the film offers that other films in the same genre do not. At all.
S C O P E
This is a film that understands scope and trusts the audience to figure shit out. It doesn't tell us much of anything but doesn’t leave us stranded either.
The story follows Paul Atreides uncertain about the future of himself and his family on Arrakis. The Emperor has declared that the Harkonnens will give control of Arrakis to the Atreides to take control over spice production. The surface of royal families wheeling and dealings with the reality being families trying to cut each other out of the royal lineage family tree all together. A story that has a place in history and now takes place in the future. A future in which guns don't exist and the only way to kill is by hand to hand combat. Unless an explosion comes around from a big ass bullet coming from a spacecraft in space. But Arrakis is far more than a place where the spice flows as the Fremen, the native people of Arrakis, want the outsiders gone from their planet. Also, there are some big ass worms running wild whenever they feel vibrations in the sand.
What separates this story from the others? Not much honestly. Just about every science fiction dealing with this similar story has picked the meat off the bones but what makes THIS movie stand out from those other movies is the visual language maaaan.
We are spectators to a world that seems familiar to the eye but not something we have been bombarded with over and over and over again so that when we see it, its not to give you a the falseness of nostalgic boner much like the reveal of the Millennium Falcon was in the The Fart Awakens. For instance, we get no specifications on the spacecrafts that are being flown. You just know that these strange looking transports can fly. As the audience, we don't need some asshole talking about what the fuck this piece of junk flying in the air can travel however fast. Grandiose in terms not seen in some time.
Space Shippin Done Kewl
Star Wars is confined spaces at every corner. Every spaceship interior is that of a utility closet. CGI landscapes in the distant. Showing off every species of alien to show off how diverse the planet is.
Dune shows off space as this endless vast of coldness with the spacecrafts seemingly to be small insignificant pieces in the grand scheme of things. Then there's the opposite end where the landscapes are vast as well but the sizes of the ships are just HUGE. There is 1 scene in specific where Paul Atreides watches from the cliff side as spacecrafts rise out of the ocean as though they are these giant behemoths waking up from their slumber.
Holy shit was that great. I ain't seen shit like this in a long time. I haven't felt this sense of awe for some time.
And why is that? Because the film understands scope as well as taking the time to let the world breathe. Now what do I mean by breathe? I mean to say that there is NO rush for the story to accelerate beyond its means and so a certain pace is set in which the film never deviates.
There are no stupid ass title sequences that crawl down to give you the spark notes to the story at hand. You know how this movie starts off? With a motherfucking attack on some Spice harvesters. Well, it starts off with a black screen where some fucking crazy voice states 'Dreams Come From The Depths' and THEN its a shot of the desert as sand blows across the screen and THEN its a motherfucking attack on some Spice harvesters. BOOM! The situation has been set. Motherfuckers getting that spice and some other motherfuckers don't want them to. Sure there is narration but that doesn’t deviate from the overall feel that the opening scene gives. Then the titles appear on screen.
Throughout the rest of the film, the story gets heavier and darker but ultimately the end comes along and even though, and I understand this was more of a necessity because that book is so damn big that you couldn't fit into one movie, it comes to an end that isn't the end of the story but it is still a satisfying place to end the movie.
There is enough content within the book to not have to rush through it and the fact that they made the film without having a commitment to a second is pretty ballsy.
Thus far the film succeeds in having the following:
*Consequences
*Scope
*Breathe
Which leaves me wondering when I stare out into the horizon ,'What else is out there?' Immediately giving me hope for the future of the summer blockbuster. The time has come to travel out of the void. Back into the clutches of the human race but the next question that has to be answered is 'Which way do I go now?'