It’s Game of Thrones without the action scenes and all the players have been replaced by angry matrons dressed in sensible black dresses.
Posted by Joshua Tyler | Updated
If you enjoyed Denis Villeneuve’s A mound movies, but think they’ll be enhanced by a script written by a women’s studies major, then Dune: Prophecy it’s your broadcast plan. The result of this method Game of Thrones except for the action scenes and all the actors replaced by angry matrons in sensible black dresses.
The first episode of Dune: Prophecy is available to stream now. I will only review that episode here because it is the only one available, and the thought of suffering through another episode is unbearable.
Dune: Prophecy it begins by dancing in the ashes of artificial intelligence. 10,000 years before Paul Atreides, the human race existed as slaves to AI machines. The ancestor of the Atreides defeated the machines and freed humanity, making the Harkonnens very jealous.
Thus begins the plot, built on the bones of Harkonnen’s petty jealousy. That envy is held by the show’s main character Valya Harkonnen, the Reverend Mother of the Bene Jesserit sisterhood. Making an entire series about being a petite woman seems like an odd choice, but here we go
Valya’s jealousy causes her to start a chain of events that will replace the current Emperor with the Princess she controls. To accomplish this, many women stand in the rooms and make harsh, empty, and pathetic speeches.
Now Dune: Prophecy it wanders from one stage to another, buzzing between women talking endlessly without saying anything. It was done in front of B’s attempts to imitate Villeneuve’s brilliant set design. A mound movies, using digital backdrops and the occasional chair purchased at Pottery Barn.
Dune: Prophecy crescendos when its audience has reached a point where they are ready to turn it off. It is at this point that actor Travis Fimmel appears, dressed as if he is going to Dune from the set of Dances With Wolves succession. He’s a breath of fresh air, only because he’s a little different in the sea of blah and he’s the only male character who doesn’t come off as a complete idiot.
To be fair, there is only one male character of consequence. So it’s a 50/50 dumb to dumb type of ratio. That other male character is the governor, played by Mark Strong. As a character actor, Strong has made his career playing smart and manipulative villains. That’s amazing Dune: Prophecy you have written him as a reluctant and weak fool.
Fans of the Netflix series Bridgerton it seems like Dune: Prophecy target audience. That’s unfortunate as I don’t think so Bridgerton demographics are all that in the universe, and I doubt if a few scenes of women in bodices will convince them to tune out.
I’m also not sure that the corset and fancy party crowd will enjoy the slow, cruel, painful, and completely unnecessary screaming of a cute little kid at the end of the episode. I’m not sure who would. Scratch that; I think Dune: Prophecy director, Anne Foerster, would. I’m not sure what else would make someone spend so much of their audience’s time watching this little boy suffer.
The torture of killing children, speeches, weak digital background, and old women will not attract the audience. This approach might have worked two years ago, during the days of high energy, blue hair, and ultra-feminism. It is now completely out of step with the world we live in, a leftover product from a time before most were caught up in the newly rising wave of humdrum commonsensism, for better or for worse (wherever you think it is).
DUNE: THE PROPHECY UPDATE THE RESULT
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