10 Films That Are Better The Less You Know Going In

5. Dune (Or any film based on a book)

We’ve all heard it before. We’ve either said it or we know someone who has said it. ‘The book was better’. From Harry Potter, to Lord of the Rings, to Twilight, literary fans the world over jump for joy when their beloved novels are snapped up to Hollywood, only to leave the cinema seething about everything that got left out or changed.

Most recently, this has been keenly felt by fans of Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi epic Dune. Already adapted in the 80s with disastrous results, the dense narrative and colossal scale of the novel has often been described as unfilmable. Following the power struggles of warring factions over the Spice planet Arrakis, and one young heir’s discovery of his destiny as messiah to the planet’s desert dwelling natives, the Fremen.

Denis Villeneuve’s film comes a lot closer to capturing the bleak majesty and bombastic ambition of the book than its 80s predecessor, but the weight of its narrative meant that huge chunks of the film had to be taken up with world building exposition.

For those of us new to the material, this proves to be an intriguing and menacing look into the mortal rivalries of these characters, which we can excitedly speculate about in the run up to the sequel. Like many literary movies before it though, this has been seen by the fans as yet another bloated and incomplete wasted opportunity.