Dune Review: 7 Ups & 3 Downs

2. The Wildly Inconsistent Pacing

Villeneuve typically isn't in a hurry to tell his stories, and when Dune's 155-minute runtime was confirmed, that seemed fair enough given the source material's density and colossal scope.

And yet Dune's pacing really is all over the place. The first half of the movie maintains a solid canter as it throws us between characters and locations, but in the second half things slow down considerably as the focus is trained more strictly on a smaller cast of characters.

As such, you couldn't really be blamed for clock-watching in the more languorous later portions, where Villeneuve's deference towards quiet calm and slow motion verges on over-indulgent.

While Blade Runner 2049's meditative pace perfectly suited the material, in this case audiences might find themselves wishing that Villeneuve would move forward with a little more expediency.

A few smart cuts would make rewatching Dune a far more appealing proposition, because as it stands it's a bit of an endurance trial.