With a little under two months left to go before the release of Dune, critical reactions have dropped regarding the upcoming release of Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of the hugely influential sci-fi novel of the same name by Frank Herbert. Dune will be released on October 22, premiering in theaters and simultaneously on HBO Max for 31 days.
Herbert's book is considered to be hugely influential, with everything from Star Wars to Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind drawing inspiration from the sci-fi novel. Despite this, adaptations have been notoriously difficult to make, with many filmmakers trying and failing. Now, it is Villeneuve's turn at the bat, with his take on the story reportedly tackling only the first half of the novel. The director and co-writer has said recently that he plans to make a film trilogy, with the first two movies fully adapting the first Dune novel, and the third film adapting Herbert's follow-up, Dune Messiah.
In Dune, we follow Timothée Chalamet's Paul Atreides, whose family inherits custody over the planet Arrakis (or the titular "Dune"), an unforgiving desert world that also hosts the only source of something known as melange, or "spice," the most valuable material in the known universe. Meanwhile, a plot is brewing against the Atreides from a rival family known as the Harkonnens, and the fate of Dune is eventually at stake, but Paul himself might be at the center of a long-foretold prophecy even he doesn't understand yet. The film also stars Oscar Isaac as Paul's father Duke Leto Atreides, Zendaya as Chani, Rebecca Ferguson as Paul's mother Lady Jessica, Josh Brolin as Gurney Halleck, Stellan Skarsgård as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, Dave Bautista as Glossu 'Beast' Rabban, Charlotte Rampling as Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho, and Javier Bardem as Stilgar.
With the release of Dune coming in less than two months, it is time to find out what the critics thought. Is the film accessible to non-fans of the book? Is it as campy and messy as David Lynch's version? Does it have battle pugs? Check out some of the early reactions below — we'll keep updating as more continue to come in.
First off, here's what Collider's own Steve Weintraub and Rafael Motamayor had to say about the film:
In fact, the overwhelming consensus between critics and journalists who had the chance to see the film was that even clocking in at two-and-a-half-hours, Villeneuve will have viewers clamoring for even more Dune:
Other journalists spotlighted the film's epic score by Hans Zimmer, and praised Dune's hypnotic sci-fi immersion that doesn't shy away from the grimmer aspects of the source material:
Some critics drew comparisons between Dune and another iconic space film, equally as ambitious and compelling: