I don’t really know why I am writing this. I mostly avoid watching any movies made after 2010 as I find them irritating, disappointing, woke, etc. The latest version of Dune was no exception.

Everyone has been telling me how wonderful it was, and as a fan of the books and the 1980s version of Dune (particularly the version with an extra 20 minutes or so of narration to explain what is going on), I thought I would give it a try.

Well, I hope this does not hurt anyone’s feelings, but I thought it was total crap for the following reasons:

• The movies were too long — mostly boring with a few moments of exciting action with nice special effects, but not worth the wait.
• I found the characters bland or irritating or both.
• I particularly disliked Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides — he may be a fine actor but he failed to convince me that he could beat anyone in a fair fight or even bust out of a wet paper bag.
• I also disliked his mother who was also very unconvincing as either a worried mother or a Bene Gesserit. She swung from inexplicable displays of fear to even more irritating displays of unwarranted confidence. I don’t know if it was the actress, the dialogue, or just how she was directed.
• I initially found Chani a sympathetic character and the relationship between her and Paul believable, but I found her abandonment of Paul when he finally became the Kwisatz Haderach both confusing and irritating — what was she so mad about??? Was she mad that he upstaged her, and now she had to prove that she really was a ‘strong independent woman that didn’t need no man!’???? And Paul’s diffidence in the face of her betrayal was bizarre. The whole thing just sucked.
• The second movie decided that most of the dialogue had to be in Fremen without making even the smallest effort to teach the audience a bit of Fremen to help make sense of things, or even explain the context. It was needlessly confusing since both Paul and his mother were both fluent in the language, so why force the audience to listen to long stretches of a language which only they could not understand??? To increase the mystery? Who were the audience supposed to connect with? The Fremen who we could not understand, Paul or his mother (who understood everything unlike the audience), or off-worlders like the Harkonnen????
• And then the Harkonnen. I liked Dave Bautista as Rabban although I think they could have done more to emphasize his negative traits — a cruel bully, a cowardly leader, stupid and brutal, and disgusting personal habits — I thought Dave Bautista did what he could to pull it off. The same with the actor who played the Baron Harkonnen — again the true horror of the Baron (and perhaps the entire Harkonnen clan) was not emphasized enough in my opinion, but the actor did a good job. The rest of the Harkonnen??? Why were they even there. And the character of Feyd, the terrifying and intimidating Harkonnen killer who wanted to be the heir of the Baron, was disappointing to say the least — I class him the same as the actor for Paul; simply not believable for some reason. I found Feyd to be neither sinister nor frightening — just forgettable.
• As for the other Atreides characters — they were all forgettable. Perhaps even worse — their presence was pointless and unnecessary. Why were they there????

I could go on. There were a few other things about the movies that irritated me, but that is enough. Needless to say, if this is the best that modern movie makers can come up with (and perhaps good enough for desperate audiences looking for something to consume) I think I will re-double my avoidance of new movies.