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Dune 2021 Movie Review

Setting aside Regal Theaters’ ear-splitting volume emitting from every theater room as well as the one we sat in, and setting aside our thoughts on the 25 minutes of shallow woke commercial bombardment before the 2021 movie Dune even started, we did enjoy the movie, if not the venue.

A cult classic movie, like the 1984 version of Dune, is usually a cult classic for good reasons: Excellent acting, good props and sets, good costumes, and fealty to author Frank Herbert’s vision all make the 1984 Dune movie a timeless classic with a cult following. You can watch it once a year and never grow tired of it.

Yes, to follow the 1984 version, a viewer must already be somewhat familiar with the book Dune and with its general story line to begin with. But it covers and tracks well with a lot of the 1,000-page book’s territory. For example, the 1984 Dune has a highly compelling and truly evil Baron Harkonnen, literally bathing in the blood of his slain enemies and reveling in the blood of a sexually molested slave boy whose heart plug he just pulled in front of his two nephews (one of whom, the actor Sting, evinces morbid fascination and horror turned to sadistic glee all too well).

Fast forward to Dune 2021, and now our evil Baron Harkonnen is merely deeply brooding and kind of distantly menacing. That he is surrounded by black-clad ministers of evil and a brutish thug nephew, and that he bathes in black used motor oil to “heal,” makes him icky and probably really bad. But we see no blood-baths, no sadistic glee as the vulnerable innocents twitch their last under his daintily painted finger nails. He doesn’t even look for Duke Leto’s ducal signet ring as the helpless prostrate mess breathes its last, a boring scene which contrasts poorly with the believable 1984 Baron, whose unfulfilled lust for the Atreides signet ring is foiled and gives way to howls of rage.

The same distance is observed between the Duke Leto Atreides character of 1984 and 2021. One radiates nobility and dead seriousness, while Oscar Isaac acts here exactly like he acts in every movie in which he appears. Which is to say weak. Oscar Isaac is literally the same character in Dune as he was in Star Wars. He emits no gripping leadership, exudes no magnetic charisma at the head of one of the universe’s greatest armies that we admire in the book and in the 1984 movie.

And again, the 2021 movie’s lack of the Sting character, Harkonnen Feyd Rautha, nephew of Baron Harkonnen, removes what was in the book the evil Harkonnen foil to young and good Paul Atreides. As House Atreides represents good, honor, justice, fairness and clean living, House Harkonnen is everything opposite- murder, coercion, violence, cruelty, sadism, greed etc. Throughout the book Dune, and in the 1984 movie, the two nephews (who turn out to actually be related by blood) ever more tightly circle each other, coming closer and closer to an in-person showdown knife fight to the death. All of this foil effect and symbolism is absent the 2021 movie

While the 2021 movie has fantastic special effects that are blended with just enough gritty sand to make them believable, today’s movie lacks the true grit, grime, and desperate feel of the 1984 version.  The 2021 space ships are superior to the almost pathetic hand-drawn ones of 1984. However, in 1984 the freaky-looking mutant spacing guild navigator folds time and space by shooting light beams out his mouth and ass, thereby connecting two distant parts of the universe and moving an entire army across the distance between the two points “without moving.”

We get no such mouth or ass action in 2021, and it is a true loss. Because no matter how good your special effects are, and no matter how much your movie watchers are supposed to innately know that eight thousand years from now weapons and space travel are really high tech, your viewers nonetheless want to see how that high tech moment is attained. That is the point of watching a movie. Having a bunch of spacing guild navigators show up in 1960s NASA astronaut space suits with their visors filled with a pink fume just does not cut it (when the Emperor’s representatives visit Caladan). That scene is oh-so Star Trek and Star Wars, and we who are in 2021 are  supposed to be oh-so-beyond those passe genres.

As much as I expected to be bothered by the woke racial aspect of the 2021 Dune movie, because Hollywood has done such a good job of butchering otherwise ok movies on the altar of PC, I was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked. In case you missed it, Hollywood now demands that non-white-skinned people appear in all kinds of movies in roles that were originally written by, of, and for white-skinned people. As a result, this ‘woke’ virtue signaling gone super foolish now has unfunny black women trying to play the humorous roles of truly funny Italian and Jewish guys in Ghost Busters IX or whatever. Go woke, go broke making stupid movies appealing to no one but Hollywood insiders.

But here, in this movie, the roles are believable. Even the role of Dr. Liet Kynes, who in the book is a tough guy, and who in the 1984 movie is played very well by a big tough guy, is now switched to a black lady. I think she carries the role off well and believably. And so do the varied multi-racial Fremen, whose skin tones run from crusty white to deeply black. The 1984 movie had some blacks and American Indians in military roles, which was avante gard for its time. Here, the pursuit of heterogeneity is not forced, and it flows. Thank Shai Hulud.

In sum, the 2021 Dune movie is pretty good. I say A for weapons and action acting, B for acting, A for special effects, C+ for script, A for props and sets. My son said they should have simply used the 1984 script verbatim or close to it, and he is right.

It is easy for me to say that it could have been better, and I am but one lone watcher in a sea of watchers. But then again, I am a customer and my opinion is supposed to count with the people selling this movie. After all, Dune is the first movie I have gone to see in a couple years, maybe even three years. That is because Hollywood has turned out endless nonstop trash and junk that is either not entertaining, or not meaningful, or shallowly PC woke preachy and annoying. At this point, I now simply refuse to transfer my hard-earned wealth into the pockets of Hollywood America haters. When a decent movie comes along that promotes family, loyalty, fearless stoicism and fearless warriors, vision for a better future, risk and sacrifice, why then Hollywood can expect a donation from me.

This Dune was part one, and that is one of its main superior aspects over the 1984 movie, which tried to do too much in too short a time. To serve up the book well and just, one must convey it in bites that can be consumed and digested. Such is part one here. I am looking forward to part two, and hopefully more intensity and inward awareness from the protagonist, Paul M’uad Dib Atreides aka Timothee Chalamet.

On January 20, 2021 does America turn into a pumpkin if election results are still contested?

With all this rush rush rush to get the fake “president elect” Joe Biden sworn in, and with all of the mounting tidal wave of evidence that Biden cheated, spammed America’s voting system with fraudulent ballots, and in fact not only did not win the 2020 election, but actually lost by an enormous margin to Donald Trump, one must ask What happens if all this is unresolved by January 20th, 2021?

January 20th is when the new administration is supposed to take possession of the government apparatus. But there sure looks to be a likelihood that this huge Biden spam job is gumming up the works so much that the many legal challenges, complaints, lawsuits and investigations won’t be resolved until much later on. Is this a problem? Will America suddenly cease to exist if we don’t swear in a president on January 20th?

Put in the vernacular of Cinderella, will America magically turn into a pumpkin if we don’t have a new president sworn in by January 20th?

And the answer is No, America will not cease to exist, or cease to function, or stop being America if we miss the January 20th deadline. The January 20th deadline is really more symbolic than actual requirement; this date is not a bigger requirement than the requirement that America have honest and fair elections. This date can be missed in the interest of proving that our elections are clean and fair and honest. That is the most important part of an election.

There is no 6-week statute of limitations on election fraud, so that if you get your chums to stall the investigations and lawsuits until January 20th, you then happily march on to becoming the President of the United States without anyone finding out what happened. No way.

Above all else, even before swearing in a new president on January 20th, America must be able to prove that it had a real election to get us to January 20th in the first place. Before we get to swearing someone in, we have to make sure that we are swearing in the correct person. All this rush rush rush to get Biden sworn in is just another attempt to circumvent the investigation and legal process that began when the Democrat Party decided they just had to cheat like crazy in this past election. Had the race been clean, then none of these questions would be looming and working their way into the courts. Had Trump actually been beaten, he would have conceded. But we know that Trump was not defeated by Biden, that the opposite is true, and so Trump correctly refuses to concede.

And no, China Joe Biden, you do not get to have your minions drag out and dither the investigation process, so that the clock runs out and you are automatically de facto coronated. Nope. First and foremost, Americans must know that their 2020 presidential election was honest and fair. Anyone with an atom of curiosity can see and hear for themselves the tidal wave of evidence that the 2020 election was stolen. The Epoch Times, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, Project Veritas all have actual reporters investigating the claims made by the Trump campaign. And these actual reporters are finding an incredible amount of evidence of vote fraud. Mostly in the Democrat Party-run cities in key swing states like Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania. Like after Midnight ballot dumps of hundreds of thousands of fake votes for Biden, with no poll watchers. Of course the mainstream media will not tell you any of this, because they are on the same page as the Biden campaign and the Democrat Party. The mainstream media is an active participant in elections, trying to change minds; they are not a neutral bystander just reporting facts.

Donald Trump must remain in the office of President until this whole mess is sorted out. That could easily be until March 2021. No big deal. After all the fake investigations of “Russia collusion” voter fraud that Trump went through, four years of it, why, a real investigation into the very demonstrably real voter fraud with hundreds of sworn witnesses, that just occurred here in America could easily take four years. And throughout that time, until the investigations are finished and we know for certain who won the election, Trump should remain in the Oval Office as the duly elected president. He is, after all, the last duly elected president before all this he-voted she-voted nonsense started. His continued presence in the Oval Office will bring stability to an uncertain time, a comforting answer to a constitutional crisis brought on by the thieving Democrat Party acting as the not-so-secret political agent for the Chinese Communist Party.

Americans are just not yet ready to say that they are owned by China. They would rather take their chances with becoming a pumpkin.