- Network: HBO
- Series Premiere Date: Nov 17, 2024
Critic Reviews
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The world it builds – intense, intellectual, unforgivingly meritocratic and yet tinged with the unpredictable and supernatural – is a template for a bracingly different kind of science fiction. But it has work to do to overcome this tentative start.
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There’s not much humour to be found here. The main light relief is when beautiful people have sex and snort drugs. But if you like this sort of thing, it is well done. Though it wouldn’t hurt it to lighten up occasionally.
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Dune: Prophecy has lots of elements to introduce, and the series is already a slow, sometimes lugubrious build. But I found myself becoming increasingly invested as it went along. Maybe by the end of the first season, I’ll be hooked. As of now, though, everything could use just a bit more spice.
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Two thirds of the way into the season, it's mostly fine — but also mostly unexceptional. It's got enough going for it that it could build into something special, but only if it actually had time to build.
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It’s a mixed start for this first Dune spin-off, which can’t entirely escape the shadow of Denis Villeneuve. But patience may be rewarded; the Bene Gesserit’s plans are measured in centuries, after all.
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The premiere of Dune: Prophecy lacks the ingenuity and spark of another recent WBD spin-off like The Penguin, feeling both familiar and slight at the same time, despite the clear boatloads of money poured into it. There’s something missing here that it might find shortly, or it could be a long six episodes of political wheel-spinning and terrifying visions. Let’s hope it finds that spice soon.
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By hewing so closely to its predecessors, Dune: Prophecy undermines its own central tension, implicitly signaling to us that for a very long time, everything in this universe will be pretty much fine. The series’ treading-water quality feels like a portent, one that warns us Hollywood’s prequel formula won’t ever dare to change.
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While fitfully entertaining—and well-acted by all involved—the series can’t shake off the cynical synergy of its existence. It’s ancillary product, spun off from a film franchise not yet indelible enough to sustain such expansion.
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Like the movie, whose commercial and critical success suggests people approve, it’s pokey and self-serious and almost entirely devoid of humor. .... As is the case with many films in which classically trained actors are called upon to elevate genre material, “Prophecy” comes across as simultaneously grand and silly.
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But everywhere in “Prophecy,” one feels the merciless tractor-beam pull of franchise service. It is a story of characters who share familiar names — an Atreides makes the scene as well — but lack a spark of life. There is a sense of checking off lists.
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With too many characters whose introductions prove too slight to understand their place in this world that viewers get plopped into, “Dune: Prophecy” disappoints.
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It’s trying so hard to fill a GoT-but-in-space mandate that it often forgets to serve its I.P. narrative duties while bending over backwards to please its corporate masters.
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"Dune: Prophecy" easily ranks among the most disappointing examples of franchise expansions dressed up as prestige TV.
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“Dune: Prophecy” is too hung up on scope and too trusting in its audiences’ adoration for its preexisting I.P. to feel as strange and spectacular as it should.
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Many of the more character-focused elements of its story are thrilling, and Jessica Barden, Emily Watson, Emma Canning, and Olivia Williams are superb as ancestors of House Harkonnen. But with a lack of cohesive vision, the prequel series fails to live up to the expectation of quality set by the books and films that preceded it.
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Prophecy was given a paltry six-episode run, which, based on the four made available in advance, is far too little space for the kind of expansive ensemble drama the show seems to be aiming for. .... There are hints of a larger, presumably multi-season story, most of them involving the mysterious visions that increasingly plague characters both major and minor, but they feel more like Lost’s four-toed statues than pieces of a predetermined puzzle, designed to create a sense of mystery without progressing toward any fixed revelation.