Saw @dunemovie tonight. Overall, a big 👍. A few thoughts follow. 
Denis Villeneuve is clearly the top sci-fi director today. His Dune takes its time (it basically covers the first half of the first Dune book), and includes homages to David Lynch’s movie (see the establishment shot in orbit around Arrakis at ~0.39).
The effects are first rate. As you can see in that trailer, Villeneuve nailed the dragonfly-like ornithopters.
Sets, set design, and costumes were all great, and sort of in keeping with Lynch’s aesthetic. One nice touch was the engravings on the walls.
A big improvement over Lynch was the elimination of expository voice overs.
Casting. Overall, very good. Timothée Chalamet is a better Paul, Rebecca Ferguson is a better Lady Jessica, than their counterparts in Lynch’s movie. Jason Momoa is a better Duncan Idaho, and Oscar Isaac is at least as good as Jürgen Prochnow as Duke Leto Atreides.
The diversity casting is okay until you get to Sharon Duncan-Brewster as a dreadlocked Imperial Planetologist. She is jarringly awful, with zero gravitas, and just a yawning decline from Max von Sydow.
Javier Bardem makes a fine Stilgar; Zendaya is a passable Chani, but looks kind of dumpy compared to Rebecca Ferguson’s beauty. Paul’s love interest should be at least as attractive as his mom.
Fin.
Fin.
A couple more thoughts. I kind of feel bad for black actors today, in the sense that they’re stuck with so much baggage. You see one cast in a movie set in the future, or the past, or a different planet, and you can’t help thinking of today’s politics and why they were cast.
And that just takes you out of the story. But Sharon Duncan-Brewster is bad in this independent of that.
Also, Hans Zimmer’s score is good but not as memorable as the Toto/Brian Eno soundtrack from the 1984 version
One other way the forced diversity takes you out of the story, with respect to the Fremen: you’d expect people who’ve lived in the same environment and inbred to some extent for generations to be the same race.
The Bene Gesserit hand signals were another nice touch in this #DuneMovie; they were in the book, but not the Lynch movie.
No Guild navigators in this one though, unless the helmeted fellows in an early scene were supposed to be navigators. Maybe Villeneuve felt this would be impossible to top.
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