I Can't Stop Rewatching Dune (now on Hulu)

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Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan Bettimore.

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I'm a producer, writer of film
and television and now a podcast producer.

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And despite having every streaming service,
I never know what to watch. So

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anytime I watch something good, I
talk about it on the show. This

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way, you'll never have the same
problem I do. I watched this tonight.

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There's always something good to watch.
Let's get started. Today in the

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show, we're talking about why I
can't stop watching Dune. So the trailer

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for the new Dune, the Second
Dune, came out relatively recently, and

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Dune has gone from I think it's
on HBO right now, it's on available

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on Hulu. And I realized that, like anytime I see the Dune is

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available somewhere, if I see that
it's on HBO, if I see it's

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on Hulu, if I see this
anywhere, I'm just like, let me

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throw a Dune on. And I'm
trying to figure out why I've seen it

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at this point, probably like six
times, and I'm trying to understand why

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I keep rewatching it, and I
feel like it's gaining in power for me

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the more times I watch it,
to the point that it might be one

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of my favorite, you know,
in terms of like blockbusters. I mean

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that was the other thing I was
trying to think about, like the highest

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grossing films of recent years. What's
better than Dune in terms of being like,

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you know, I don't like the
term elevated, but it's just like

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something that has real weight and real
substance and real Like if someone watches this

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in forty years and they have no
you know, they don't really care about

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any marble stuff or anything like that, Like they're still going to get something

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out of it. So if you
go back to twenty twenty one, the

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highest grossing movies domestic box office,
you've got Spider In, Shang Chi,

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Venom, Black Widow, Fast Nine, Eternals, So all sort of I

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think, just to be fair,
right, like these are franchise ip I

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don't think people are gonna be watching
Fast nine in like twenty five years.

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No Disrespect, No Time to Die, which I thought was really good,

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A Quiet Place Part two, which
I also thought was good, but I

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feel like it's sort of receded from
the public consciousness. I gotta go back

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and revisit it. And then you
get into movies like Jungle Cruise and Free

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Guy, Godzilla Versus Kong. You
know again, these are movies that I

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don't think will I don't think we'll
stand the test of decades, and then

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Dune Part one. Now compare that
to twenty twenty two. Here are the

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top grossing films domestically, Top Gun, Maverick, Awesome Movie, Black Panther,

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Willkona Forever, Doctor Strange and the
Multiverse of Madness, Avatar, The

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Way of Water, Touristic World,
Dominion, Minions, The Rise of Crew,

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The Batman, Thor Love and Funder
spider Man, No Way Home,

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Sound Like The Hedgehog two, Black
Adam, Elvis Uncharted, and you kind

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of have to go all the way
down to Nope to find something that I

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think, you know, it just
feels like it's not one of these ip

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films that you know, I think
most of them will probably be forgotten in

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like five to seven years. And
that's obviously not including Avachar The Way of

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Water, which I have professed my
love for on this podcast before. And

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then just to sort of round out
this comparison, so twenty twenty three,

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here of the top grossing movies so
far. The super Mayer Brothers Movie,

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Guardens the Galaxy Volume three, Avachar, The Way of Water Again, Spider

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Man Across the Spider Verse, The
Little Mermaid, Ant Man in the Waton,

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Quantamania, John Wyck, Chapter four, Creed three, Fast X,

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Puss in Boots, The Last Wish, Scream six, Megan Dungeons and Dragons,

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Transformers, Rise of the Beast,
Evil Dead, Rise, Cocaine Bear,

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A man called Auto says a fear
of the God's air. So I

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think if you look at the last
couple of years, So I just kind

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of rattled off, like, like
thirty movies there were the top grossing movies

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of the last three years approximately.
I think I would take the First Dune

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pretty much over all of those in
terms of its staying power, not necessarily

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to say, like again, it's
not not going to any of these movies,

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right, but I'm just thinking,
like, you know, is anybody

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watching again, No disrespect the Fast
and Furious people. I get it.

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I loved Fast five, Like,
there's a lot of Fast and Furious stuff

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that I really like, But I
don't think people are going to be watching

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Fast X like six times and puzzling
over it. And that's what I find

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myself continue to do a Dune.
I've not read the source materials. For

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me, that's part of it is
that I what interests me about it is

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that it feels so rich. I
feel like there's so much there, and

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when I rewatch it, I feel
like I keep finding stuff. There's something

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in it where Timothy Challamy talks in
the beginning about how he's having these dreams,

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and you feel like him as the
viewer, because this is what I

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think is so interesting about Dune,
and it's very much I think a product

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of Villanev's involvement, Deny villani of
It feels like a dream, but it

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doesn't feel like a dream in like
that kind of shitty like this is just

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confusing, like there's bad versions of
that where something feels like a dream.

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This feels like a dream in a
way that adds to it because it also

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feels grounded. And to explain what
I mean, when you see the spaceships

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in Dune and how they are designed
and animated and shown you visually, they're

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design in a way that's very smooth, very naturalistic. It's not calling attention

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to itself, and it makes it
almost feel like like a magical realism,

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like you feel it feels more real
because they don't make a big deal out

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of it, and they don't kind
of overdo it. If anything, the

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design of the spaceships feels very grounded
in like form and function, and I

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just I just find it very interesting
the way they did that. The movie

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is a mixture of like mysticism and
reality, has this weird mystical quality to

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it. And I thought another good
example that so the Skellon Scars guard character,

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who you know, I assume might
have inspired Job of the Hut.

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It's pretty well documented that George Lucas
is very inspired by the Dune series,

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and tattooing is a bit like Aracus. The sand worms are a bit like

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the sand worms, I mean,
And so do you have this Scone Scars

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character who is basically this extremely fat
villain character. That's the character, and

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in Star Wars that's Job of the
Hut, who's very cartoonish. But in

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Dune, the way that the character
is portrayed is very It's treated very seriously,

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right, and because it's treated seriously
and in a way that's sort of

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grounded in reality, you start thinking
about it differently and it almost becomes this

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visual metaphor for greed and brutal capitalism
to like a gluttonist degree. And again

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that dreamy quality. Right, So
there's a part when he's talking and he

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just levitates as he's talking, but
like for no real reason. That's one

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of the funny things when you watch
the movie five six times, Why is

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he levitating? It's very cinematic.
But again it's that thing where it's like

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in the moment, you sort of
go with it. That's that dream equality.

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Another point that like that, and
this is with the Hearkenin's which is

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part of Skull and Scars Guards like
faction. He has this insane spider gimp

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creature that's never explained. I gotta
look up. I've no idea if that's

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part of the source material or what. But the fact that that's just like

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a tossed off aside, that they
have this creature that's like a pet,

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it's like insane. But that's what
I'm talking about. That's why it's so

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fun to revisit this movie. All
the little weird visual things, all the

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subtlety of it, all the things
that are suggested, implied, alluded to.

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There's so much going on under the
surface and it feels so rich,

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you know it does. I mean, obviously it is rich. It's based

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on such rich source material, and
it is so visually spectacular. That's the

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other thing I would say is that
every frame of this movie is like a

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painting. There's a part where they
have this spaceship that looks like a giant

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thimble basically, and these little dots
are emerging from it and they're tiny like

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specs, right, and we tilt
up towards a planet that is sort of

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behind them, And that one shot
is doing so much because we know that

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we eventually know that those ships are
huge. Those ships are little specs,

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which means that the carrier thing that
they're coming out of is like almost it's

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almost impossible to comprehend how big it
is. So there's that, and then

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you have the light in dark contrast
of the darkness of space versus the planet,

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and that's all happening in the same
shot. And there's just so much

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like that in the movie that I
think it is a really just enjoyable for

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me to revisit. I find myself
just throwing it on as like almost like

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wallpaper, Like I just like looking
at it, I like hearing it.

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I like the sort of like if
you put the subtitles, they call it

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lamentation, where you hear the voices. Ah All, that's the whole mood

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of it. I mean, obviously, look, I am technically North African.

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My parents were Wren, Morocco,
so you know, the Fremen very

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clearly our bedwins. You know,
I have some cultural history that that might

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explain some of it. But I
think that as time has passed, I've

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continued to be more and more impressed
with the First Dune, and I think

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it's it's reached a place for me
where I think it's one of the best

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blockbuster movies, meaning like big,
big movie, theatrical lots of money,

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a huge budget, etc. Best
movies like that, not just the year

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came out, but in the last
couple of years. And that's why I

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mentioned all those other movies because with
some exceptions, to be clear, definitely

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there's some exceptions in there, but
a lot of those movies are movies that

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will be lost, I think,
to the sands of time, and I

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don't think that this one will be
so yeah, that's why I've just been

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it's a it's a watch this tonight
of like you never have movies where you're

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like, I liked it the first
time, and then I just found myself

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continue to watch it again and and
again, and each time I kind of

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like it a little bit more.
It's that kind of recommendation. So if

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for some reason you didn't see Dune, or maybe you saw it but like

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not under ideal circumstances, like you're
in a bad mood that day, or

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you watch it on your TV in
the middle of the day or something,

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I really would encourage you to turn
the lights off, watch it again.

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And I think there's so much there. So yeah, it's sort of a

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weird and it's not a new thing, and it's not a classic, but

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I think within the next couple of
years, you know, this will be

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considered a modern classic. I just
think it's extraordinary. I would love to

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know what you think if you saw
Dune the New Dune, I mean,

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what you think, And I would
love to know your thoughts on the upcoming

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second film, which I'm very excited
about. That is a show for a

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day. As always, if you
enjoy the show, please leave me a

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the best way to support the podcast and

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You can always find me at Benamardan
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Thank you for listening, Until next
time, by m