I watched it opening night. It's good. Nowhere near the best movie I've seen, even recently. But, it's good.
Alia, Chani, and Jessica kind of got sidelined more than I thought they would have, and some of the things they changed, abridged, skipped, or did out of order....those changes didn't make any sense to me. None of them really bothered me all that much, but I don't think it has the impact that the book did. The few changes that do bother me are kinda subtle but have a big impact and at the very end (literally in the last 2 minutes), so I won't give away the spoilers by complaining about them.
If they do make another one, I'm excited to see Anya Taylor-Joy play out Alia's story. I was wondering who they could get to play that part, and I think she'll do a great job. I kinda think that Florence Pugh is wasted as Irulan....I don't think she's the right choice for the parts of the character I think are halfway important. But, whatever. She doesn't actually matter that much in the long run...I just think it was a waste of money to cast her.
FWIW, I'm not a huge Villeneuve fan. Sicario was great. Arrival was pretty cool, though I'm not quite sure why it got the praise it did. 2049 was....one of the best screensavers I've ever seen and had a really awesome soundtrack, but I didn't like it as a movie. At least form what I've seen, if you like one of the first BR cuts with the voice-over, you dislike 2049 and vice versa - which comes down to whether want it to be cyberpunk/noir or straight sci-fi. There was no noir in 2049, or at least no good noir, so I didn't think it was a good fit for what I think that story should be.
Dune 2 really is pretty good. But, other than production value and the quality of the visuals, I still think the scifi channel miniseries from 2000 is a better adaptation if you liked the book. Really, I think the "best" adaptation is to watch the animated section at the very beginning of the Lynch movie and then switch to the miniseries.
I wonder how far they're going to go with it. If they actually follow the books for long enough (they've already changed enough to make it kind of hard), I'd be interested to see what today's super-fans say by the time God Emperor comes out. Or if they actually make all of it. The books get weird.
My honest guess is that they're going to make one more movie that combines (and abridges) Dune Messiah and Children of Dune and then stop. But, I also don't think the rest of the books are actually good enough to bother making movies of. I'd be much more interested for them to go way back in time and tell the story of the Butlerian Jihad instead.
