A movie review & rebuff
This movie sucked. I don’t understand why anyone likes this story, or why anyone believes it is science fiction. So, in no particular order, here’s why Dune sucked:
Voice-farting telepathy – dream prophecy
Precisely 5 minutes into this “science fiction” we are introduced to not one, but two forms of magic. I don’t pretend to know what the VOICE is, but it sounds a bit like someone burping the alphabet. And why does it force people to listen? Bad breath? Why do they have to say words? Why can’t they throw daggers with their eyes? This is not science, it is magic. Same with the poor kid having dreams of a young, beautiful woman. Oh, wait, that’s hormones. But the fact Paul is seeing the future (dream scrying) is neither science, nor original. It’s magic.
Where are the robots?
I’m looking at all these dudes running around in useless personal armor, also pretty much useless EM armor, and having knife fights. I see people flying spaceships and dog fighting in the atmosphere. I see people loading and unloading cargo. Where are the robots?
Look, our military uses robotic “dogs” to carry their shit. We are on the verge of personal suits that will augment human strength and speed. And we are also starting to put AI brains into things so humans don’t have to do risk themselves. Our commercial jets take off and land themselves. I mean, why have a planet dedicated to training soldiers, when you could have a factory on another planet building ten soldiers a second? Or a hundred such factories? Or a million?
The only examples of robotic AI were those Goodyear Tire floating lights. They seemed to be capable of autonomous movement. And I didn’t see one fly into anyone’s head. Did they ever consider putting a bomb in it and telling it to get close to someone they didn’t like?
Oh, and the big battle. Someone has a Rome fetish. But the phalanx was deprecated thousands of years ago. A division of Canadian regular army forces would have slapped those attacking dudes silly.
“The slow blade penetrates the shield”
Okay. But they should visit a Bronze Age leather armor maker. The slow blade also does not cut through leather. Seriously. Take the pull tabs off your beer cans and wire them together. Presto, no more getting “slow” stabbed with swords.
Why are these people living in stone buildings?
Yeah, that’s the entire complaint.
They still give birth to babies?
We are gestating goats in artificial wombs, today. When we reach the stars, nobody will give birth to babies. Why risk being mutilated or killed, and the baby dying, when they can be gestated in perfectly safe, carefully monitored sacks?
Giant dragonfly helicopters?
Unless Araccus has an unusually dense atmosphere — and I’m pretty sure it does not, since it did not catch fire and everyone did not die moments after trying to breath it — every aviation engineer on Earth must have a handprint on their foreheads, from slapping it so hard.
Biology? What’s that?
Other than people, we see two other forms of life on this planet. A mouse, and a worm so big it would need the energy requirements of a million blue whales to sustain it. And, hey, the amount of food a blue whale can trap when it takes a gulp of water is up to 500kg (1,102 lbs), providing the whale with about 500,000 calories. Per mouthful.
Now, how many desert mice do you imagine a sandworm would need, per day, to go roaring about the desert? 100 billion? 100 trillion? More?
Physics? What’s that?
So a dart, upon hitting a target, can magically modify its directional inertia into centrifugal force, torquing its way slowly through an EM shield. I mean, sure, maybe it can trap its inertia in a tiny flywheel to be transferred into different kinds of movement later. Problem is, that flywheel would need to be made out material from a neutron star, to be so small and have such inertial mass. Then, of course, you’d need a rail gun to fire it. And, as I understand it, even the US Navy has given up trying to develop a rail gun.
Hey Director, not every single shot needs to be epic
Seriously, a score consisting of people caterwauling in every scene, with the camera lugubriously sliding left or right, or up or down, as if the camera operator is on Valium. This movie is a clear case of trying way, way too hard. No, you were not remaking Lawrence of Arabia. Also, Lawrence of Arabia didn’t take itself so seriously.
I’m afraid Dune sucks, and thus deserves at last one barf bag. I’d give it more, but so many people have been raving about it I must bow to social pressure.
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