The movie Dune was not good.

It was not good. The visuals were stunning; the sound was something bewildering. But you cannot rely on this alone to fool me into thinking I enjoyed watching Dune. It felt like swimming through cement, chained to a thousand tons.

I found myself frustrated, wanting the movie to end, only to find out that I was merely an hour in. Strangely enough, I would say this is the first movie I have ever watched that somehow managed to fit a lot and nothing into its 2h 35min run time. I could go on and on about the plot, but in laymen's terms: the Chosen One. That’s it. There’s the entire plot.

It’s a crying shame that this movie tripped over its own coat tales so quickly (roughly ten/20 minutes in) having promised me so much. Oh! And don’t forget about the promos, the posters, the raving reviews from the critiques. So much so that… even I bought into the hype. Talented actors and actresses, a beautiful and mature story, something different from the schlop that Disney and Marvel force down our thoughts? Sign me up!

How I wish I had known better. The intrigue and mystery surrounding our protagonist — Paul — is, to me, surface level. He’s rather boring as a person, with nothing really driving him toward… anything, really. He’s taken from place to place, only to stand around looking pretty. And yes, I understand he was young and inexperienced, learning about the world and politics around him. In my opinion, info-dumping put on a suit and tie and called itself ‘smart’ dialogue — which for most of the movie was unintelligible.

Didn’t catch what he/she said? Doesn’t matter, it wasn’t really important. Just look at the pretty pictures. Oh, what was that? You think that was important? It wasn’t. You’ll figure it out on your own.

And in a way, it’s amusing. This movie seems to have cultivated a society around it. A loyal group who defend it, pinning those against it as lightheaded morons who enjoy movies like Fast and Furious or lightweight Marvel movies. Now, see, the problem with that is this — it still isn’t entertaining. It still doesn’t make you think. It does nothing a story should do. At the very least, make me laugh once a while, or smile, or make me feel anything other than the sense I’m wasting my time on this Earth, consuming just another sci-fi movie I’d soon forget about.

The smart decisions the characters supposedly make are nowhere to be found. Not that they make dumb choices, it’s just that there are no real or major decisions for them to tackle. Coincidences and a healthy dose of plot armour move the story along, twirling you around for two hours until you’re left dizzy and disorientated, attempting to find the closest exit door in your cinema like a drunk in a hurricane.

Last and definitely least, is Peter. Our boy wonder. The Chosen One. Our hero who is going to change the galaxy, shift the very matter of existence, has ballads written in his honour, his name sung by generations to come. He is simply the worst protagonist I have seen in a long while; at least Rue from Euphoria aggravates me. Peter fills me with a sense of nothing — watching him (not Timothée Chalamet, let’s not get confused) is like consuming a bowl of watered down, sugarless oats. Bland, to put it simply.

He’s not preachy, whiny, or any of the other gripes of main characters. But one thing he is? He’s a shell. An empty, near-emotionless, goal-less shell, floating about. You don’t care when he’s in danger; you don’t care about ground-breaking reveals, mainly because he barely reacts to them. Think of him as a self insert, if you will. It’s almost as if they want you to. Just fill in the emotional blanks with your own, and there you go, you’re in a galaxy far, far… that’s the wrong movie.

As a note to take away from this, I haven’t read the books and neither am I planning to. So I’m only speaking on the movie and the movie alone.

Supposedly (in my thinking) a powerful last scene took place, where [spoilers] he kills a man for the sake of… I can’t really remember. However, it is an important scene, because this sets into motion the events for what I presume is the next movie in the series. This man — we are so info-dumpingly told — is a great warrior who’s killed many a person. And now Peter, a small lad, is given to the task of bringing him down or dying by his hands and ending the entire franchise.

And of course, he kills him. But in those final moments, after a rather boring fight, he looks into the man’s eyes. The first man he’s ever killed. The blood on his gloves, the glimmer of his… wait, no, he isn’t crying. In fact, he doesn’t really care. He shuts the man’s eyes, and it's time to end the movie, because hell, who has time for an important story beat? Whether this was down to the acting (which I doubt, he’s a rather talented actor) or the screenplay, I wouldn’t know. All I do is that an important moment that would have changed the movie for me was shrugged off, having little to no impact on his character.