Overview: Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people.

As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet’s exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence, only those who can conquer their own fear will survive.

Verdict: This visually sumptuous space opera is sure to please new audiences and Dune fans alike. Director Denis Villeneuve gifts us with unusually patient storytelling; a refreshing change in the sci-fi genre, and an opportunity to relish in setting up the magnitude of a new, grand universe.

The SFX team serves up haunting, slow-gliding high-tech obelisks and highly impractical dragonfly crafts, contrasted with vast misty desolate desert vistas. The sound design is the requisite BWAAA and generic tribal vocalizations.

The costuming is an exquisite pastiche of vaguely ethnic global appropriation, window dressing to the story’s main thrust which could be summed up as “What happens when imperialism goes wrong.”

The film opens on a hazy Zendaya commenting on colonialism (perhaps signaling an intention to unpack white-savior themes in the sequel), then cuts away to a satisfyingly wan and angsty Timothée Chalamet, a physical manifestation of the powerlessness of youth. Villeneuve has stated that Zendaya’s character will have a greater role in the sequel.

Jason Momoa, Dave Bautista, and Josh Brolin are completely in their element, serving righteous space-bro energy. Charlotte Rampling is deliciously haughty and scheming as the Reverend Mother, matched against matrilineal renegade Lady Jessica, quietly played by Rebecca Ferguson.