Dune

Science fiction set on a desert planet. There is a substance in the universe. Spice is found only on Arrakis and interstellar travel depends on it. The emperor takes the planet's administration from one house and gives it to another. House Atreides moves to Arrakis knowing it is a trap. Paul is the son of the house. His mother raised him in the methods of an order, and the boy sees another place while he sleeps. From there the film is an establishment and a collapse. The move, the harvesting operations, the sandworms, the people of the desert, and a raid at night. What the narrative is interested in is not heroism but use: the film shows how a story about a saviour was planted in advance and how a people was prepared for it. The section with the desert people is left to the second film. This one covers roughly the first half of the novel and stops on purpose. Scale is its real strength. Ships, buildings and worms are framed deliberately to make people look small. It was shot in Wadi Rum in Jordan, in Abu Dhabi, in Norway and in Budapest. The music is by Hans Zimmer, who turned down another large production for it and built an unusual texture out of the human voice. It opened in cinemas and on a streaming platform on the same day, a decision that came out of the conditions of the period. The production won six Academy Awards, all in technical categories. Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Zendaya and Javier Bardem are in the cast. Denis Villeneuve directed. Who it is for: anyone who wants slow, heavy, large-scale science fiction. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a finished story; the film stops in the middle.