All the way back in 1965, one of my favorite books in the history of science fiction was released. Dune, written by Frank Herbert, is essentially a cult classic, and while it’s not the most well-known book series in the world, the people who like it, love it. Several years ago, the news broke that this book was going to be adapted into a two-part movie series, with the first part being released in 2021. The 2021 Dune movie was essentially the first financially successful adaptation of the original book, with the previous 1984 movie and later TV series not doing so well monetarily (in other words, they flopped). But, under Denis Villeneuve’s directorship and a cast of some of the most beautiful people in Hollywood, the 2021 Dune movie was a big success.
After watching this version of the film, I completely fell into the rabbit hole of the Dune universe. Admittedly, I have yet to read all 6 of the main books in the series, let alone all the encyclopedias and the 17 other books written after Frank Herbert’s death. However, the first book is one of the most beautifully crafted books I have ever read. The characters and their interactions show just how much care the author put into the first book. I personally am a sucker for great worldbuilding, and the Dune franchise has an abundance of that. The first movie alone shows how much history this fictional world has, from references to past wars (the ancestors of the Dune characters fought an entire war against an army of AI robots, which is very funny to think about considering how easily we have access to things like ChatGPT) to a bunch of different planets with their own unique terrain, as well as dozens of different houses and people groups, each with their own rich history and culture. Because of how complex the book and its worlds are, it makes perfect sense to adapt it into a movie series, instead of just a single movie.
Dune: Part 2 was set to release in October of 2023, but after a bunch of setbacks, including the writer’s strike, they postponed it to March of 2024. With this three-year gap between the movies, 2021 feels like it was a lifetime ago, and that is kind of a problem. A big concern is that the audiences who watched the first movie three years ago might not come back to watch the second part. I think that despite all the setbacks and concerns, turning the book into a movie series has actually set it apart from a lot of the media coming out of Hollywood today.
I’m going to be honest: I think we as a society are starved of quality movie content, specifically when it comes to movie series. In the late 1970s and early 2000s, nerds were greeted with Star Wars and The Lord of The Rings respectively, arguably two of the most influential movie franchises in history. In the early 2010s, series like The Hunger Games or Divergent were adapted into movies, much to the joy of the fans of the books. Even Twilight (love it or hate it) had its time to shine in the spotlight in the early 2010s. Most of the movies I remember watching growing up (and still rewatch to this day) were part of a movie series, with each movie building off the lore, storylines, and character development built upon in earlier movies. That was part of their appeal.
Movies today have taken up a different format. Nowadays, the movie industry mostly relies on stand-alone blockbuster movies and remakes of old classics to bring in money. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it doesn’t quite satisfy that craving that a lot of people have for certain types of entertainment. Most movies now are made to stand alone so that the average consumer can walk into them and make sense of them without any sort of background information. This applies to movies that were made alone, like “Don’t Worry Darling”, as well as franchises like the DC movies, where the movies are built to stand alone but still incorporate elements of the same world and characters. Franchises like the Marvel movies and the Fast and the Furious movies are mostly made up of individual movies within the franchise that make sense to the casual viewer even if they haven’t seen the rest of the movies. Yes, you might not get all of the inside jokes and lore from previous movies, but the plot of Winter Soldier still makes sense even if you haven’t seen the first Captain America movie. That’s not the case with the Dune movies. You have to have watched the first movie to make sense of the new movie.
I think this deviation is ultimately going to be a good thing. One of the reasons that the 1984 Dune failed was because it tried to turn an action-packed book into a single two-hour movie. Denis Villeneuve’s choice to turn it into a movie series not only gives the audience a chance to thoroughly enjoy the world it’s set in and to appreciate the rise and the fall of the story without it being rushed. Despite the worries about how successful the second movie will be, there are definitely a bunch of people (including me!) waiting excitedly for it to release on March 15th. In fact, Villeneuve has teased the possibility of a third Dune movie in the future due to the overwhelmingly positive response. And for those who might need a refresher on the events of the first movie before the second one comes out, it is currently streaming on Max! If everything goes well (and they bring in enough money), the Dune movies might set Hollywood back onto the path of creating well-crafted movie series that will be talked about for decades to come.