Dune was an amazing visual and audial experience, and it definitely captured the vibe of Dune very well, but it lacked almost all of the depth of the book, from the lore, to the characters, and especially the plot. They cut out a huge chunk of the plot in the book, almost all of the political intrigue, and that resulted in it feeling incredibly rushed and the decisions of the characters often seemed odd and unexplained. For example, in the book, House Atreides know that House Harkonnen is planning a trap, they know the Emperor has turned on them, and they know to expect the Sardauker. They also strongly suspect there's a spy among them, and the drama surrounding this is incredibly interesting, and acted as a brilliant build-up to Doctor Yueh's betrayal. Alas, all of this was cut, and the film suffered for it.

Another fairly major gripe I had was the portrayal of Lady Jessica. In the book, she was an incredibly powerful character and was feared and respected by all. She was calm, collected, intelligent, and strong. In the film, she comes across as a mentally unstable mess, constantly crying and having mental breakdowns, and very little of her Bene Gesserit power was shown.

I had mixed reactions to the other characters. Paul and Leto Atreides were great, but Rabban Harkonnen felt very odd and not like a Harkonnen at all. Thufir Hawat was also disappointing, first they made him fat when he's supposed to still be strong (albeit ageing) warrior, but then they removed any mention of him being a Mentat and cut most of his scenes from the book.

And let's not forget to mention they cut my favourite scene from the book, which featured a dinner party and acted as very important character development for Paul, as well as showcasing the political situation on Arrakis as well as the extent of the Bene Gesserit powers.

In general, it felt like this film was less of an adaptation of the story and more of an illustration of it - omitting much of the plot, lore, and character development, and replacing it with beautiful visuals and music. Overall however, despite my disappointments at the various cuts and changes, and although I will continue to wonder what could have been achieved if the story had been split into 3 films instead of 2, this remains a fairly faithful adaptation of a book which is notoriously difficult to adapt to the screen, and as a result I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to the sequel.