Knee-jerk thoughts

I saw the trailer for Dune 2020.  Here it is:

 

Okay, so it's got some good stuff there.  I like the look of the soldiers floating down to the surface.  (Not sure whether those are Harkonnen soldiers or Sardaukar, but I think they're Sardaukar.)  And the personal fighting shields are better than the blocky things in the Lynch movie.

But the trailer ends with the sandworm, and I'm a bit disappointed with it.  I've always seen the sandworm with a three-jawed mouth apparatus, and this one doesn't seem to have that.

Wiki says the three-jawed thing is a result of an early book cover, not from the actual description in the book.  So it's technically not canon, I guess.

 

John Schoenherr provided the earliest artwork for the Dune series, including the illustrations in the initial pulp magazine serial and the cover of the first hardcover edition. Frank Herbert was very pleased with Schoenherr's art,[8] and remarked that he was "the only man who has ever visited Dune".[9] Schoenherr gave the sandworm three triangular lobes that form the lips of its mouth. This design was referenced for the sandworm puppets that appeared in the 1984 movie adaptation of Dune.[10]

 

Still, though, there's this thing called "fan expectations."  The three-jaw design is decades old and ingrained in the consciousness of the fans.  There's no good reason for Hollywood to ditch it.

Then there's the fight scenes.  We only get a brief glimpse in the trailer, but the hand-to-hand stuff looks a bit too choreographed for my liking.  Hopefully it'll play out as more realistic in the movie.

The trailer shows Jason Momoa more than it shows Rebecca Ferguson.  That's an ill omen.  Lady Jessica is a far more important character than Duncan Idaho.  Hopefully the movie won't sideline her.

I really hope there's no Pink Floyd music in the movie.  Nothing against the band, but I want a symphonic score.  Symphonic music is timeless.

I didn't get to see enough of the ornithopters to form an opinion bout them.  I didn't see much of the Fremen, either.  Or Baron Harkonnen, or Feyd Rautha, or the Spacing Guild...  I know a trailer is just a trailer, but this is like a Star Wars trailer not showing Darth Vader, the Death Star, any rebel fighters, or the Imperial fleet.

Was the spice mentioned at all?  If so, I missed it.

So, yeah... I'm not terribly enthusiastic about the trailer.

However...

When the trailers for The Matrix hit television back in 1999, I thought the movie looked pretty dumb.  I thought it was just a mindless action flick made for the purpose of playing around with CGI.  When I saw the movie later, I was blown away.  It's one of my favorite movies.  And I was pissed off at the trailer for giving me the wrong impression.  So I'm not willing to write off a movie based on the trailer, because I know first-hand how a trailer can fail.

The movie is part one of two, so it's also possible that the trailer only shows stuff from the first movie, not the second one.  Still, though, that's no excuse for not mentioning the villains or the McGuffin (the spice).

Nevertheless, I'm still looking forward to seeing the movie.  I won't fear the impressions given to me by the trailer.  Fear is the joy-killer, the little-death that brings total disappointment.  I will put the trailer out of my mind, and when it is forgotten, only the movie will remain.