Comment by eszed

> [Dune] makes the mistake of not communicating anything to you about it. If you haven't read the books, much of the story is easily lost.

Counterpoint: my wife. I took her into Dune knowing nothing at all about it, besides how excited I was to see it, and she got everything. Like, seriously, everything. She's a super intelligent and intuitive person, and Villeneuve is one of her favorite directors so she's maybe the ideal audience member.

It might be fair say that the exposition is too subtle for a general audience to pick up, but it's certainly there. I refuse to hold that against the film, though. The usual state of Hollywood movies is to browbeat an audience with heavy-handed explanations, so I love it that Villeneuve makes you pay attention and think and remember and put together clues to understand everything that's going on. It's sophisticated filmmaking, dammit, and there's not enough of that around - especially in big-budget / sci-fi / franchise films.