I SAW DUNE PROPHESY (AN IMPRESSION)

I feared Dune: Prophesy might get too bogged down in political ramifications, in the way of SyFy's complex Krypton, and damn it, it did. Political anchoring needn't be a cloudy hinderance, if such draws one in, and Dune: Prophesy had the advantage of weaving spirituality into its power-and-control theme, but when push came to shove, it was at best an exercise in chatter. 

I'll admit, it wasn't too hard for me to latch on to the virile aspects of the miniseries, watching as I did through the eyes and actions of Mark Strong's Emperor Javicco Corrino and Travis Fimmel's Desmond Hart, and for what it's worth, Emily Watson's Valya Harkonnen felt quite right in her regal status (channeling, for all intent, Judi Dench), but I wanted desperation and rage to permeate through all the dissertation. I wanted a friggin, full-blown, extraterrestrial, Game of Thrones-meets-Black Narcissus. I wanted the prequel to brew and bubble over in its desperate, Sisterhood prophesy of a messiah's rise, or at least something like that. I mean, for crying out loud, this thing flows like Exorcist II: The Heretic on valium, and though I realize such an approach might attract a rebellious few, I still maintain that even the most pensive sojourns require thundery claps, and by that I mean, more than just a sex scene, a sand-worm cameo, a come-and-go explosion ... a Last Jedi-influenced melee. To worsen matters, Prophesy follows such things with lengthy regurgitations of whispery nonchalance. 

To toss further dust on the dying fire, the times when Prophesy proved beautiful to behold (evading, oddly enough, substantial, Lawrence of Arabia stretches for landscapes that invoke The Ewok Adventures, Lord of the Rings, Zardoz and Excalibur), there would come moments when even the travelogue backdrops felt like watching paint dry. (This is one of the things I find irksome about the Harry Potter franchise, where sorcery, no matter how elevated, feels flat, especially when the glitz is wiped away to reveal a Hitler Jugend agenda.) 

Now, I'm happy to say that I didn't detect anything ideologically amiss (i.e. too radical) in Prophesy, but even so, I wanted it to move me in the most positive and profound way. I don't see the point of HBO Max extending it, anymore than I see the network's necessity to rehash all that propagandist, anti-Semitic, Potter fluff. Please, nurture The Penguin instead, and from there, the subscription-viewing region will be all the better for it, not to mention Dune's theatrical continuation. In other words, we don't need a yawn-fest to blunt what's become a prosperous, big-screen perch.