on some general atmospheric levels, it kind of works. there are a bunch of interesting visuals that give you something to look at even when you have no idea what is going on. and i had absolutely no idea what was going on. was paul the good guy? he was giving off supervillain origin story vibes, but almost everyone else was playing the bad guy too. about halfway through i realized that i was no longer actually listening to the dialogue because it was all so weird and confusing i just gave up on it and was only watching for the emotion. the voiceovers were dumb and unnecessary, it felt like an author that didn't know how to use film, so they just made it like a book. lynch is just about the opposite of that, so it was a weird choice that was maybe trying to offset the struggles the actors (particularly kyle maclachlan) were having conveying any emotion. it really needed an epic score to carry it through long stretches where it feels like nothing is happening. give morricone, jarre, or goldsmith a chance to let their music take over what i think was trying to be an epic story. toto was trying to do that, but it just didn't work. i am fascinated by how some gibberish words work in film and some don't. star wars, star trek, and lord of the rings are packed with goofy made up words that feel natural when they say them, but the stuff in dune really just feels like gibberish. maybe it is something about the structure of the words themselves, maybe it is the quality of the product using them, or maybe it is just that some have become so pervasive in culture that we have gotten used to them.