I love Walken, but I don't. The whole point is that he's 80 and looks 30-something because of (yeah you guessed it) the Spice. Walken's a walking corpse now. And they got Pugh to play the supremely radiant beauty that is Irulan? Man, I thought Zendaya was miscast as Chani (I still don't get why they didn't let her have her dyed red hair considering she was sporting them around the time of the announcement) but this is a new level of bizzare. The entire thing just seems so... soulless.
It's not that they're awful castings, and I really like a lot of them, but the entire thing is just "off". And now we get left-field picks such as these. If they were going to cast someone who'd already acted with Chalamet for chemistry, Saoirse Ronan would've made a far better Irulan. Shaddam should've been Domhnall Gleeson. Isaac, Chalamet and Bardem are great choices. Fergusson isn't given much to do and Momoa is good enough. But characters like Thufir and Kynes got butchered. Gurney is halfway there.
Mostly I just find the aesthetic pretty drab and boring so it makes me less excited about the whole thing. The casting's not awful by any means, it's just weird. It's both too convential and also misses the mark. And again, the aesthetic. Too corporate. At least I want to believe that, because of this is the film and style Dennis the self-proclaimed Dune-fan actually envisioned, Christ...
I'll still buy the Paul dollies, and could build a small Atreides display (which I'm unlikely to ever do so). I even am excited to watch Part 2 and hopefully get to see Dune Messiah adapted as well. But I don't have much faith in it. I hope it'll be grander and more epic in score, but...
Bah, when I, the DOOM of this Earth, am crowned God Emperor Of Mankind, I shall make the perfect Dune Adaptation!
And then my Empire will go bankrupt and they'll beat me to death with Sandworm Leto dolls...
