Didn’t like it. Don’t hate it either. In my opinion it’s way to long and doesn’t have anything to say really. It touches upon multiple difficult topics, sure, but it either doesn’t follow through with them or it just straight up fails them. For example, take the spice mining thing about exploitation of both the people and the land. The people are introduced as warriors fighting for their freedom from the oppressors, but we don’t know what they are fighting for. Nothing is said about their culture apart from fighting. Also we don’t see in which way they are oppressed, they are shown to be the aggressor attacking a farming ship right in the beginning. In fact the Harkonens don’t even know how many of them are on arrakis, which makes it look like they just ignored them? Hardly what I would call criticism of colonialism. If they would have been enslaved by them or imprisoned or rounded up and killed in large numbers by the Harkonnens, that would have been criticism, but we aren’t shown any of that.
Now on to the exploiting the land trope. This is much better supported by what is shown in the movie, but its just feels so artificial. This planet might be exploited for its natural resources, but we aren’t shown the scars that this endeavor caused. The Planet is a wasteland, but not BECAUSE of the spice mining, but because it was a desert to BEGIN WITH!? WHYYYYY, there is so much potential flushed down the toilet, its infuriating.
Anyways there are other things that bugged me, like the confuse political landscape and the nonsensical plot, (why take care of the astreides, via luring them to Arrakis and buffing the herkonnten, if the harkonnen, the wipe the floor with them and are the much more obvious thread to this emperor?) or the ever repeating color palate. I get that desert are beige, but please give some contrast every once in a while. For example give Pauls vision some visiual distinguishability or give the few natives that we see more colorful cloths or give the city on Arrakis some bright colors to show that it doesn’t belong to this world. Anything to break the everlasting dullness of it all.
So to round things up after a more thorough rant than intended, I am disappointed, I expected more, good night.
P.S.: Is it just me, who thought that the water animation after the astreides ship took off looked awful.