While Dune: Prophecy is a (very loose) literary adaptation, the HBO series ultimately defines itself by its ties to Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies. In and of itself, that’s no big deal. 2024 has seen a now-standard flurry of shows released under the Star Wars, DC, and Marvel labels (to name just a few) — all of them spinoffs, prequels, sequels, or reboots of franchises that originated on film. Hell, DC Studios relaunched its cinematic universe with a streaming joint!

Yet Dune: Prophecy is innately different to these other small-screen offshoots of big-screen blockbusters, because, unlike them, its cinema roots are baked into its very DNA. And now that the dust (or should that be spice?) has settled on Dune: Prophecy season 1, it’s painfully clear that trying to shrink Dune’s inherently filmic nature — its sheer “bigness” — is a task not even the Lisan al Gaib himself could accomplish.

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for Dune: Prophecy season 1.]

At this point, longtime Dune devotees are probably crying foul. “What about the two miniseries, Frank Herbert’s Dune and Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune, that aired on Syfy in the 2000s?” these fans ask. “Weren’t those successful?” And indeed they were, both critically and commercially; these Dune adaptations rank among Syfy’s most-watched original productions to this day. But here’s the thing: Those productions were built from the ground up for the small screen. Sure, they aspired to cinematic sensibilities, but there’s no mistaking their made-for-TV origins. The acting is uneven, the scripts are deliberately paced and exposition-heavy, and most of all, the spectacle is hemmed in by a basic cable budget.

In that sense, Dune: Prophecy is arguably much closer to cinema than these........

© Polygon