Dune (2021)

In 2021, excitement was high for this film – and not just for its mega-watt pairing of Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya (which, to be fair, is more withheld than the hype may have suggested). Denis Villeneuve came to the project off the back of two superb science-fiction films, Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, and seemed ready to take on his most ambitious project to date. And the anticipation paid off. Villeneuve more than delivered with [the first half of] a mammoth adaptation of a mammoth book. Without the pressure felt in David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation’s attempt to cram the entire story into a neat two hours, it becomes a dream-epic of space grandeur; the enduring sci-fi theme of familial destiny made fresh as an eco-colonial parable. Drifting through some awe-inspiring space vistas, the mind-bogglingly wide canvas comes down to a battle between two clans – the Harkonnen, black-clad and sinister, are ordered to cede their control of the planet Arrakis to the more honourable Atreides. Arrakis’ power lies in its source of a particularly sought-after mineral, and the oppressed indigenous population who guard it: just one of the pressures on Paul Atreides, a troubled young man preparing to live up to his father’s Dukedom in the family. As my attempts to sum it up attest, there are swathes of lore being set up here among its bombast. But – featuring one of Hans Zimmer’s most distinctive and interesting scores – it is a film of textures and worlds, to be basked in at length .

Max King