Denis Villeneuve's Dune (Parts One and Two) is a masterpiece of storytelling, beautifully adapting one of my favorite novels that was largely declared "unfilmable." Even after it was filmed by David Lynch, whom I thought actually did a great job given that he only got one movie and was limited by the special effects of the day. Villeneuve's success had HBO Max salivating at the idea of adapting more material in the hopes of giving them another massive Game of Thrones sized hit. And in that respect, Dune is perfect because it's got the same Great Houses shenanigans that was the hallmark of Thrones.

Dune was Game of Thrones before Game of Thrones existed.

The six-part series we're getting is Dune: Prophecy, and it seems to be based on the book Sisterhood of Dune as written by Frank Herbert's son, Brian Herbert, along with Kevin J. Anderson. It's been a long time since I read the novel, but it still seems like there's a lot of changes going on. Which I'm indifferent to since I wasn't a huge fan of any of the prequel books that I read.

The first episode debuted last night and was pretty good. Though it's mostly just putting all the players on the chessboard in a time period 10,000 years before Paul Atreides existed, and the universe is in turmoil after the war with the thinking machines. We did get a teaser of what's to come, and it looks like it might be darn entertaining...

At least HBO is putting some serious money into the show. Much of it is beautifully realized and comes off looking like a million bucks. Or, more likely, tens of millions of bucks. The scenes are highly detailed and the cast (lead by the always excellent Emily Watson with equally good appearances by Mark Strong and Olivia Williams) is capable.

If I have a criticism, it's that they sometimes don't seem to know what the heck to do to move the story forward. A glaring example is when the Princess Ynez heads off to a nightclub with her brother to do drugs, and it's like... a nightclub? Seriously? It drives me crazy when writers just kinda give up on thinking of anything exotic, new, or interesting, and instead just slap a nightclub from earth into their bullshit. And least the cantina scene in the original Star Wars tried to be exotic, new, and interesting. Dune Prophecy just gives up completely right out of the gate.

So... all-in-all... a pretty solid start to what will hopefully be a solid show.