An explanation and a complaint
Hello! I did not have one single big idea this week but I had two medium-sized ideas, so I wrote them both and one is for everyone and one is for paying subscribers only. That seems fair.
Before that though, I have something to get off my chest. It’s very important. You see, every six months or so, a journalist goes to a sex party - usually Killing Kittens - then writes about it for a newspaper. Every six months or so, that journalist reveals that it was a new and exciting experience and people were kissing and naked and…they, themselves, did not fuck. Enough! Enough!
This is my ultimatum to Fleet Street. Either stop publishing what is essentially the same feature twice a year every single year or only send journalists who actually are down to clown. If I’m going to be reading a story about a sex party, I want some sex in it. You can’t just go “ooooh turns out it was not for me” every single time. It’s boring!
I should probably make it very clear at this stage that I am not volunteering in any way. I am merely here as a disgruntled reader, irritated that they keep sending cowards to sex parties. Boo to them!
Anyway.
A little column (1)
A number of people have asked me, over the past few weeks, to explain why I loved Dune (2021) so much. I decided to ignore them at first because I thought the answer was obvious: I’m a big nerd. Dune (2021) is a Big Nerd Movie. I have an obsessive personality so I went to watch it in the cinema three times, because I find it hard to like things the normal amount. Case closed.
Well, closed-ish. Those tweets did make me think about why I loved Dune (2021) quite so much, and I wasn’t sure at first but I think I have it. Firstly: Dune (2021) is a movie that takes itself seriously. It isn’t funny or self-aware. These are serious space dynasties seriously fighting about serious things.
There aren’t any winks, contemporary human popular culture references or knowing call-backs. Dune (2021) is a proper movie: it just happens to be science fiction. I really like that, and I respect it a lot.
Secondly: Dune (2021) is Big. The music is loud and the outfits beautiful and the scenery is breath-taking. Perhaps most importantly, it feels real. One of my favourite scenes in the movie is a very brief one, and shows the Bene Gesserit arriving on Caladan. They step off the ship in their very sci-fiesque outfits and walk into terrible weather, and the rain beats down on their headwear and the wind makes their robes cling against their skin and billow behind them.
It only lasts for about ten seconds - I just went to check - but I’ve thought about it a lot since seeing it for the first time. Other movies in that genre may try and tether their stories to real, Earth-based human lives by making jokes that we, right here, would also laugh at, or have characters listen to the sort of music we may enjoy.
Dune (2021) doesn’t do any of that but instead anchors itself into reality by playing off its more fantastical aspects against phenomena like the weather. I may be unlikely to make it to Arrakis in roughly 20,000 years, but I know what it feels like to leave the house in a nice frock and feel the fabric begin to stick to my skin, all clingy and wet.
Elsewhere, spaceships land in environments we may recognise, and consequently look massive and preposterous. You’re not just watching them float around in space, where nothing feels quite real - they’re real and monstrous, and as you look at them you can tell you’re looking into a world that is both distantly alien and still somehow familiar. Dune (2021) has a sense of scale.
Finally: it is not a movie that holds your hand. I went to watch it for the first time without any prior knowledge of any kind, and I came out both awed and more confused than I had been in some time. “I have no idea what just happened and I must watch it again immediately” was, if I remember correctly, the first thought I had as I left the room.
In a way, it reminded me of Mad Max: Fury Road, which dropped you in the middle of the desert, with limited exposition, and expected you to care straight away. Both of them are quite demanding movies. They turn up and ask you to follow along, but refuse to be accommodating. You’ve got to go to them because they’re not coming to you. It’s probably not for everyone, but it really worked for me.
Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is: I really, really loved Dune (2021) because it was everything Marvel movies aren’t, and that was a nice thing to have in 2021. I aggressively enjoyed Avengers when it came out in 2012 then I became one of those incredibly enthusiastic MCU followers, because, again, when I love things I really love them.
I watched every MCU movie from the beginning till Endgame between two and eight times each, and it was great until it wasn’t. There’s only so much clunky exposition you can take, and stakes that somehow both feel way too big yet completely inconsequential, and I just didn’t want to be winked at through the fourth wall anymore.
Dune (2021) is the anti MCU movie and it made me, a big nerd, keep wanting to hang out in space, at a point when I thought I was done with it. That’s why I couldn’t get enough of it, and am counting down the hours until I get to watch the second one on Sunday. I hope that answers the question.
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