Planet Dune (2021)

Slight change to the schedule this week as I planned to cover a Disney movie but I've put it on hold for the moment - watch this space - so we are instead pivoting late on to a FTW movie. If you are new to the scene, FTW; Free To Watch is my catchall acronym for any movie that's freely accessible to watch on the Internet, through whatever means, without paying for it first or having to subscribe to any kind of streaming service beforehand. And broadbrushly covers an absolute treasure trove of low budget, independently produced and / or straight to TV productions that can... vary... in quality. Sometimes quite significantly. Some of these movies are amongst the worst pieces of shit that I have ever subjected myself to. But sometimes they actually turn out to be really good. This weeks pick, I am feeling, it's going to trend towards the former. Not one to miss out on bandwagon as it passes them by, perennial bollocks movie factory: The Asylum shat out their own Dune parody back in 2021 with Planet Dune, a movie that has absolutely nothing to do with the recent adaption of the Frank Herbert penned franchise and any similarity is obviously purely coincidental... Except it isn't.... And that's exactly what they are aiming for. Past lazy swipes at this modus operandi have usually all been pretty bollocks so uh yeah I don't hold much hope for this one either to be honest. But everyone is abuzz about Dune Part 2 right now and I'm too lazy / exhausted to actually go to the cinema so yeah, this is going to have to do.

In the opening scene, ace Pilot; Lieutenant Astrid (Emily Killian), defies a direct order from her superior officer, Captain Chase (Sean Young) when she rescues an endangered Russian Cosmonaut who would have otherwise been left to die. In exchange for an extended stay in a penal colony, Astrid accepts a mission to pilot the worlds... err... universe's... shittiest spaceship to the Planet Dune; a barren sand filled world, on a rescue mission to recover a team of stranded scientists who have been cut off from communications. After Astrid is introduced to the rest of her criminal ship crew; Ronnie (Anna Telfer), Rebecca (Cherish Michael) and Brad (Manny Zaldivar) the team take off for Planet Dune only to fly immediately into an asteroid field, damaging the ship and forcing them to crash land on the planet's surface. Departing the vessel and heading out into the sand, the team discover their target freighter close by but get no response from the crew inside. Deciding to split up and investigate further, the team are just about to get done arguing about Astrid's newly revealed alcohol addiction when they are interrupted by a massive, but albeit fairly slow moving sandworm bursting out of the surface and giving chase. Taking shelter in a cave they discover and rescue one of the freighters crew; Harley (Ramiro Leal) and after getting chased around by a worm for a little while, the crew split up, leaving Harley and Brad inside the cave. Outside, Astrid distracts the worm allowing Ronnie and Rebecca to make it back to the freighter. Whilst taking refuge in the rocks she finds another member of the crew: Marilyn (Sienna Farall) also sheltering. Astrid learns from Marilyn that there are at least 4 other worms, one big one and three smaller ones and that the freighter was attacked by the larger worm and most of the crew slaughtered. After Marilyn learns that Harley is still alive, it seems to be the impetus she needs in order to get back on her feet and together with Astrid the pair make a break for the ship. Meanwhile onboard the freighter, Rebecca reveals she's been sent personally to retrieve the freighter, explaining that it's worth $300,000,000,000 or a hell of a lot of money and that her cut is $100,000,000 she offers Ronnie a cut of her cut to help her get the freighter off the ground and into space. Ronnie agrees but only on the proviso that they also save the crew. Whilst working to repair the freighter, Ronnie barbeques one of the smaller worms with a thruster jet and Rebecca fries one of them to death with an electric cable. Back with Astrid and after she manages to make contact with Captain Chase she learns there is no backup team ready to rescue them, or any kind of support whatsoever really... Back inside the cave, Brad and Harley start getting a little restless and decide they have to make a break for it. After escaping through the ceiling of the cave they attract the attention of one of the worms and... using a grappling hook fired into the worms body they ride it JUST LIKE THAT OTHER MOVIE all the way back to the freighter! Somehow managing to jump off and not get gobbled up in the process. Unfortunately it doesn't go quite that successfully for Rebecca who, back turned, gets ambushed by the aforementioned worm and chewed to death before Brad kills it by dropping something really big and really heavy onto it's head. Finding themselves stuck between a rock, the ship, and god knows how many worms between them, Astrid and Marilyn try to improvise with the supplies they have to create some bombs, and armed with some minor explosives, manage to make it back to the ship without getting eaten. However whilst onboard they are attacked by the massive worm and end up having to sacrifice the ship, blowing it up, in order to escape. Back in outer space, deciding to have a change of conscience, Captain Chase defies direct orders not to assist the team on Planet Dune and departs in her own ship charter bound for the planet's surface. Lamenting the loss of their ship and having a crisis of confidence, Astrid goes into a bit of a spiral until she's talked back to her senses by Marilyn and together the pair reunite with Ronnie, Brad and Harley back at the downed freighter. Just in time for Captain Chase to arrive on the scene and blast away some sand worms in the process. Boarding the ship, Captain Chase is incapacitated when the ship is attacked by a worm. However some quick thinking from Astrid allows them to break free of the worm and jet away from the planet surface with Astrid even finding time to resuscitate Captain Chase in the process! And to make it even more special, Astrid learns that the aforementioned Cosmonaut she rescued earlier, just so happens to be one of the most important scientists in the universe, earning her total reinstatement to Space Force!

I was actually kidding earlier by the way. The moment I saw this thumbnail I made my decision that I was watching this this evening. I will admit to not being the most avid follower of the Dune franchise. I saw the David Lynch movie years ago when I think I was like 14, but barely remember anything about it, but yeah I couldn't pass up on an opportunity to watch an Asylum knock off of it. And this wasn't all bad! I mean, it was half bad... but it was entertaining enough that I mostly enjoyed it. It had it's moments where it got a little bit rough, but I do feel like enough genuine effort was put in to at least make this a halfway decent movie. Even if it did feel real lacking in places.

Initially I was impressed with the special effects, the set design and the costume design which were all genuinely pretty good! The space ships genuinely looked like space ships, it genuinely felt like some remote alien planet and for the most part everything was pretty convincing enough that it looked real. I feel like, at this point; 2021, Asylum are probably punching above their weight and being potentially the most famous "low budget" movie factory, they probably have quite a bit of capital to invest in their productions nowadays. That all could be massively false though, I genuinely have no idea, but if they do have a bit of extra budget, it's clear to see they are investing it in making their movies look much more realistic and convincing. The worms were a little bit odd looking though, and although they featured plenty enough they always sort of looked like they hadn't quite been finished yet in post prod... 

I mostly thought the story / plot was all pretty decent. It's a very one dimensional tale; a space crew land on a planet inhabited by hostile aliens, they fight them off, and escape. It had a couple of the regular clichés dusted in: the one rogue person with ulterior motives who meets a grizzly end, the main protagonist going through something of a personal development by the conclusion of the movie, e.t.c. e.t.c. and they went full on balls to the wall with the conclusion with Astrid basically getting them off the planet, saving the Captains life and then learning she effectively saves Space Force right at the beginning at the end! Talk about all your cakes and eating them. But it wasn't, if nothing else, not entertaining and I at least enjoyed that it told a story from start to finish and featured plenty enough going on that it kept you engrossed for the most part.

Productionwise as well things were mostly fine. There was a few odd moments with some questionable scene framing, and some creative but albeit awkward camerawork in order to record a scene and get an action point across without shelling out for some crazy special effects. The soundtrack was mostly the bland, clone-stamp Asylum dramatic music that shows up in every one of these knockoff action movies that they produce but I guess it was suitable enough to compliment what was going on and was inoffensive enough so yeah, it was fine I guess.

But it does suffer severely from alot of Asylum tropes though: lots of holding pattern dialogue that exists plainly to pad the runtime out, as aforementioned; lots of slightly confusing and awkward scenes shot bizarrely because it costs too much money for the actual special effects to shoot them more convincingly, weird creatures that move just a bit too un-naturally and make sounds like dragons or lions regardless of what they look like, and more than it's fair share of slightly cringey, slightly embarrassing dialogue and trailer bait. Most of all the Asylum bingo numbers get called out here and it has it written through it like a stick of rock.

The acting as well is not really the crème de la crème. I kinda struggled a little bit with Emily Killian as Astrid who just sort acted aggressively at everything throughout the entire thing, and Sean Young as Captain Chase just came across very vanilla and very stunted. Nobody else really faired any better in this one to be honest although I found myself warming to Anna Telfer who played Ronnie and I think she deserves better than starring in stuff like this! I don't think anybody strayed too far into 'terrible' territory, but there was more than a fair share of moments where it was clear you were watching a low budget B-movie here and not a premiere Hollywood production.

But to be fair, this was miles and miles away better than some of the other Asylum movies I've watched and I feel like there was a genuine effort and genuine intention here to make this a decent enough movie in it's own right. Even if it was massively plagiarising somebody else's source material. And although it wasn't the best display of acting you will ever see, I still found it enjoyable and interesting enough that I'm coming away from it feeling mostly positive. It is very much B-Movie territory and skirting the "so bad it's good" kind of feature, but it was entertaining so if nothing else it has that going for it. A, maybe slightly too generous 2 out of 5.