Denis Villeneuve's "Dune" is Great as a Film But Less Successful as an Adaptation

For all of its undeniable cinematic achievements, the two-part space opera fails to capture the complex spirit of Herbert's novel.

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Now that I’ve had a chance to sit with Denis Villeneuve’s Dune a bit longer, I’ve come to some conclusions. Readers of this newsletter will recall that I gave the second half of the director’s magnum opus a glowing review, and I was also quite smitten with the first one. Taken together, they are truly magnificent pieces of epic cinematic moviemaking, proving that there is still some magic in the big screen.  

I stand by the claims I made then, but I also think that Villeneuve’s films, while deserving of being included in the epic film canon, are remarkably less successful as adaptations of Frank Herbert’s novel. This isn’t to say that I don’t still love them and enjoy them, nor is it to say that I won’t revisit them any time I want to feel as if I am really on Arrakis. However, it is to say that, in his efforts to make great movies, he has overlooked the value of creating a great adaptation. 

Adaptation is always a tricky thing, of course, involving so many moving pieces that it’s often a miracle that any book-to-screen journey is ever successful. This is even more true for speculative fiction, in which a filmmaker not only has to juggle the actual events and spirit of the story but also of the entire secondary world the author has created. For my money, the most successful effort in this regard has been Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings which, for all of its changes to the source material, does nevertheless capture the spirit motivating Tolkien’s novel. Villeneuve, on the other hand, seems to have had a vision of what Frank Herbert’s Dune would look like on the screen, without really giving too much consideration as to how accurately he could convey the ethos inherent in the novel itself. 

If you’ve read Dune, you know that one of Herbert’s great strengths as a writer is his ability to craft both crackling dialogue and indelible characters. Even his villains, such as the nefarious Baron Harkonnen, are fully-fleshed-out individuals with their own motivations and backstories and inner lives. Yes, of course the Baron is a monster who is also, not coincidentally, the epitome of all of the ugly stereotypes that have long haunted the depiction of queer people. However, he is also sly and subtle and darkly funny, with a clear-eyed and cynical understanding of how politics works both in the Imperium at large and within his own family. 

Unfortunately, much of this is lost in both halves of the Villeneuve adaptation. In addition to being noticeably and frustratingly less queer, the Baron is just…not that interesting of a character, though Stellan Skarsgard certainly does all that he can to make the Baron into a formidable presence. However, he is much more of a gluttonous force of nature than a wily political operator. His relations with his family, likewise, are flattened out, a problem made worse by the fact that Feyd-Rautha isn’t even introduced until relatively late in the second half, meaning that there’s almost no trace of the development of their dynamic present in the novel. This wouldn’t be that much of a problem if Feyd was just a lowly supporting character, but he is not just the Baron’s chosen heir but also a key piece of the Bene Gesserit’s breeding program, so the decision to keep him off-screen for so long is quite puzzling. 

Nor is Villeneuve very skilled when it comes to capturing some of the novel’s deeper philosophical themes, particularly when it comes to politics. Yes, Herbert’s novel is very much a critique of the savior complex present in so much epic storytelling (and at least Villeneuve managed to get this aspect of it right, in my opinion anyway), but it is also a rumination on politics and the kinds of personalities involved. For this reason, it’s vital that the book contains chapters from the point of view of such characters as Count Fenring, who gives the viewer a keener (and more cynical) understanding of the inner workings of the Imperial court. His absence in the film, while understandable, robs it of much of this critical element. This, in turn, makes Paul’s ascent to chosen one status feel a bit emptier, since it takes place largely outside of the larger political context. (Sidenote: I realize that Princess Irulan takes up some of the slack in this regard in the second film, but again she’s so ancillary to the main plot that it’s easy to forget she’s there). 

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, there’s just not a lot of human emotion in the two parts of Villeneuve’s magnum opus. There’s feeling there, certainly: awe, terror, the sublime (particularly in those scenes involving the sandworms), but so often these play out across the vast canvas of the screen, and of history, rather than within the human characters themselves. It might be going too far to say that everyone has been reduced to an archetype, but I don’t think such a claim is very far off from the truth, either. I know I’m not the only one who had trouble emotionally connecting with Villeneveu’s version of the story, and I fear that that will overshadow its legacy.

It also has to be acknowledged that Villeneuve has rather painted himself into a corner when it comes to how he might sketch out Paul’s arc as a savior figure, at least as this is presented in the Dune sequels Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. By time that Messiah takes place Paul has already established himself as the true ruler of the Imperium, with over a decade having elapsed. Given that Dune 2 ends with Chani riding off on a sandworm in disgust at Paul’s rise, it seems all but impossible for Herbert’s version of the next novel to ever see the screen.

Am I being a bit unfair to Villeneuve? Perhaps. I must admit that I gave him a bit of a side-eye when he remarked in a recent interview that he hated dialogue, dismissing it as something suited for theatre and television. Aside from the laughability of his claim that he doesn’t remember movies because of their great lines but because of their images, I think that this emphasis on the visual at the expense of everything else really does help to explain the emotional emptiness of his Dune films. Whatever else they are, Herbert’s Dune novels are marvels of words and language, and it’s just a shame that Villeneuve didn’t make more of an effort to translate this aspect into the vernacular of film.