Originally we were going to watch Dune when it was released in the theaters when our son was home for break. But, things just ended up too busy while he was home. Then after he went back to school, the priority kept slipping. Then the next thing I knew it was out on Blu-ray.
I picked up the Blu-ray eager to watch the movie, but again, the priority has slipped. I’ve wanted to watch it in our home theater. But, our home is under construction and it’s making use of the home theater a bit difficult.
We finally got around to watching it this weekend and ended up watching it on just a regular TV with a lower quality surround sound system – not bad necessarily, just not as good my HT. The movie was immediately uncomfortable. The sound was either whisper quiet, so we turned the volume up, but then you’d have blow-the-doors-off-the-house loud effects and music. We kept the sound at a loud level and my wife put ear plugs in. It was a little frustrating and we stopped watching after 20 or so minutes because it was late and didn’t want to bother the whole neighborhood.
The surprising part is that I’ve already adjusted my system to have the center much louder than the surrounds to boost dialogue, so this movie must be something extra.
The next time we sat down to watch it, I kept the remote handy. Volume up, volume down, volume up, volume down. That was equally frustrating, again, late night viewing and we didn’t want to disturb the neighbors so we stopped after 20 minutes.
Night 3 of watching Dune, late night again, kept the volume lower and couldn’t understand hardly anything, so I eventually turned on subtitles and what a relief! We could enjoy the movie cinematics, understand all the mumbling, all without blowing the doors off and bothering neighbors.
In the end it felt like a very high-production-value foreign-film. Thinking of it as a foreign film makes even more sense as there is already a ton of subtitles for the Alienese bantered about. Plus, the director is French-Canadian – connect the dots.
Pretty good movie. CGI keeps getting better and better. Main actor was better than expected. Sound design is just terrible though. I hope this trend of whisper/rage sound dynamics doesn’t continue much longer. I mean I like loud, but even my ears were very uncomfortable when the volume was at levels that allowed easy comprehension of all dialogue.
I would give it like an 8 or 9/10 if the sound were easier on the ears, but the sound mix knocks it down to a 7.
7/10
I’ll update if watching in my home theater is any better.
