The movie that is #1 on my geek Sci-Fi list is Dune.
I read these books back in the early 70's and they always were one of my favorite Sci-Fi books.
David Lynch's version in the 80's was an abomination, but this one looks like they got it right.
First, supposedly this movie is only the first half of the first book. That's important since there's a whole lot to cover in this story that doing the whole first book in ~2 hrs isn't easy.
I've seen some other videos where they interview the actors and a few things impressed me.
First was the guy who plays Paul saying he only had 2 or 3 scenes in front of a blue screen, the rest were on sets.
I assume the blue screen scenes involve worms, and that's understandable.
Using sets, is important since I think it helps the actors do their jobs. I have no idea how an actor properly responds to the scene when they can't see what's happening around them. I think being on an actual set has to help the performance.
Related to that, they went to the desert in Jordan to film this, and all the actors said being in a real desert helped their performance.
The cast looks good as well.
The advances in special effects hasn't hurt since ornithopters look like ornithopters and shields look like shields.
