Dune getting good reviews

Denis Villeneuve's Dune opens in a couple of weeks in wide release, but the reviews are already up and it's 90% fresh on the tomatometer: looks like he nailed it. People who have read the novel will surely find David Klion's review in The New Republic most interesting, as it covers the important bases that non-fans won't care about.

But while the Harkonnens may lack redeeming qualities, the Atreides were never meant to be as straightforwardly benevolent as they initially come across, and Villeneuve grasps this. Early in the film, Chalamet's Paul is critical of his own family's quasi-liberal conceit that they can run Arrakis as an extractive colony without oppressing their Fremen subjects, and of the Bene Gesserit's religious manipulations of those same subjects. But by the film's end, Paul has decided to exploit the Fremen himself in order to enact his revenge on the Harkonnens and the Emperor, has personally killed one Fremen in combat, and has experienced prescient visions of the galactic-scale killing that will follow from his actions.

The movie covers half the book. Klion rightly notes that it would be "criminal" if the second half doesn't get made, but I'd go as far as to say that the matter of Dune Messiah—the first sequel—is required shooting too. It's not really a sequel at all, but a relatively brief coda which makes much clear that Paul is bad news, not a savior.

As for the rest of the sequels, well.