Earlier this month, David Klion and I discussed our shared fandom of Frank Herbert’s Dune, and our anticipation of Denis Villeneuve’s film adaption. The movie is out now and we both loved it.
David enthusiastically reviewed the movie in The New Republic. His review began, “Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of people who are going to see Denis Villeneuve’s new adaptation of Dune, which will finally be in theaters next week following a grueling pandemic-driven delay: general audiences looking for an epic sci-fi blockbuster, and fans of the classic 1965 Frank Herbert novel, on which the film is based.” In my experience, the film manages the amazing feat of satisfying both audiences. I went to the movie with my partner Robin Ganev, who hasn’t read the book or seen more than a snippet of the earlier adaptations. But she found the movie to be powerful, as did I.
As a sequel to our earlier talk (which has been very popular with followers of this podcast), I sat down to discuss Dune, the film, with David. We take up how Villeneuve successfully transformed the dense exposition of the novel into visual action, the changes made to the story, and some of the frequent criticisms (that Dune is a white savior story, that it betrays the weirdness of the original material, and that it is too long).
It’s true that in making the journey from prose to film, many aspects of Dune had to be changed. But the essence of Herbert’s novel survives the transformation. The Dune abides.
(Post edited by Emily M. Keeler)
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Podcast: The Dune Abides