Regarding mentats, in Lynch's Dune, we had Brad Dourif as DeVries, who stole every scene he was in, and Hawat, with his own very memorable character arc, improved by that very disturbing heart plug subplot and a cat.

Dourif’s daughter is in the sadly-truncated Dirk Gently show, and is an absolute delight.

I think I need to rewatch it, so I am grateful to this thread for that!!

>I felt Villeneuve effectively conveyed the dread of the inexorable emperor crushing house Atreides. We go because of duty, and we make the best of it even when our predecessor left us nothing we would need to be successful

I kind of hated the battle scenes, though. I didn't like any of the sardukar fighting scenes, or how the ships exploded etc. I don't remember the book well enough to know if it matched how it was described, but for visual mediums like movies instead of books it felt very fake.

Agreed about the mentats, and the ornrithopters. The cinematography has a lot of style but I'm honestly not sure if this particular style is to the movie's benefit or not. I can imagine it having looked a lot of different ways.

Overall the pacing of the movie felt...boring.

I'll watch the sequel but I'm not hoping for award winning movies at this point.

> I didn't like any of the sardukar fighting scenes, or how the ships exploded

I thought the ship explosion effect was brilliant and realistic in terms of how it would actually work if energy shields were a thing in real life. Just like how the slow blade penetrates a personal shield, the slow missile penetrates the ship’s shield. The movie shows this effect and the consequences. Once the missile gets past the shield, it explodes and the explosion is initially contained by the shield. However, the explosion spreads internally and it takes a second to take out the shield generator, at which point the explosion is no longer contained.

Just as an energy shield contains external explosions to the outside, it would also have the same effect on the inside for the brief moment the shield generator still operates.

Btw I always felt that laser on shield == nuclear explosion idea was rather bad, as it has immense exploitable military potential which somehow wasn't utilized at all in the books. I understand that it was made to explain why they suddenly fight with knives and swords instead of projectiles and lasers, and while the explanation works for projectiles, the laser explanation fails.

/spoiler

It was though.

>I thought the ship explosion effect was brilliant and realistic

I just thought it was boring. All of the battle scenes were boring. The most accomplished warriors in the known universe were there and their tactics were to line up and then run at each other.