Brace yourselves! An 8-page long article is coming.

You won’t believe me if I say I made my first movie when I was 7 years old. In fact, It wasn’t a real movie and I wasn’t alone. We were 3 best friends who happen to read too many books for our age. We got the brilliant idea to write a story and stage a play. Gathered 10 kids from our neighborhood and gave each a role. The script was called “The escape of the butterfly”, and it described the struggles of a lone butterfly stuck in the net of a spider and the perils her friends had to go through to save her. That was the first obvious sign of the beginning of a great love of mine, the love for storytelling, for cinema. From watching Heidi, Digimon, or other old Millennial cartoons, every darn morning while getting ready for school, the magic of cinema always fascinated me.

The first time I went to the movie theatre, it blew my mind, even though the movie that I saw was total garbage. I got so immersed in that world and all I wanted to do was to follow that calling and learn as much as I could about those enchanting moving pictures.

I remember seeing the first still from the movie “Dune”, like a year ago. Temothée Chalamet, looking sharp while standing on the shore of a hypothetical alien sea, with some pending vague objects in the sky above him. It looked promising and exciting. Did a little search and found out the movie had Denis Villeneuve as the director and that was quite enough information for me to believe in its absolute success.

For those who don’t know who Denis Villeneuve is, he’s the mastermind behind “Prisoners”, “Arrival”, “Sicario” and many other brilliant movies.

As a cinephile veteran, as I would like to call myself, being absolutely sure about the spectacularity of a movie just by seeing a picture and reading a paragraph, wasn’t enough. My love for movies dates back to my childhood, getting more serious during my teenage years when I would lend DVDs to watch the freshest movies available. And we all know that "fresh" and "DVDs" can’t stay together in a sentence.

As years went by I realized that I wasn’t watching movies just as a fun pastime, as any other normal human being, but I would also study them. My movie memory would hold infinite terabytes of names - actors, directors, screenwriters, composers, titles and so many other staff, like a real-life database.

I even won a 6-month scholarship course for directing and editing short documentary features at one of the most dedicated schools on film in Tirana, but the knowledge I got there wasn’t much and frankly not impressive. So I persisted more in my self-education.

I started writing about movies and making short reviews, which soon after became longer and more specific. As I kept writing, my readers would grow, offers to publish my articles in newspapers and magazines kept on rising and I decided to get more involved than I was before.

Every year as the award season would get closer, I would forecast the nominees and winners of each category. My clear vision and very much accurate predictions grabbed the attention of one of the most famous magazines in Albania at that time. They asked me if I could write for them and become their movie critic, but I refused. Not for snobbism, but during that same time I got accepted at the Cannes Film Festival as a silver badge young movie critic and had the right to attend every screening in the festival and be present at every conference, in rooms filled with the greatest movie stars of the world, for free! Of course, I would jump for joy and get my head over hills because I thought that was my momentum and I would finally get to do my dream job. That’s right, that’s what I thought. The joy didn’t last long. It was just after a short google search that I found out that to stay in Cannes during the festival, I would probably need to sell my car.

And that just to afford a one-night stay at every freaking place in the city. Disappointed and saddened by the reality, I made peace with it and kept my life going with the usual routine. I didn’t go to Cannes, and also destroyed my chance in establishing myself as a movie critic in that famous magazine.

Life went by, even without having the chance of seeing Leonardo Dicaprio face to face, but as busyness with work kept on growing, movies exited slowly by the back door and the dream of becoming a writer got closed in the drawer.

The story doesn’t end there. Years later, I became a writer, but the time to sit and watch movies wasn’t enough. I went from watching a movie every day to watching 3 max 4 movies a year. Didn’t have the time or the nerves to write about them. Suddenly life had become more engaging and dynamic than movies themselves and there wasn’t enough room for both.

That’s called adulthood. Priorities change, life goes on and you find yourself following other passions, exploring new paths, and doing other types of jobs. I tried to keep up with the new upcoming movies. Have a look here and there and keep an eye on the most promising ones.

This year I got my eye on just a few movies, one of them was definitely “Dune”. It had one of my all-time favorite directors, the perfect cast, and the perfect setting and it was getting a lot of buzzes.

Finally, I got the chance to see the movie. Suddenly I felt the need to share my thoughts with you, even though I haven't done it for such a matter, in nearly a decade. My perspective on movies has changed. I want them to be fun, artistic, qualitative, and also… have that added value that would sound like a message or a lesson that truly can be applied in our daily life. Not that kind of “Be good to people and God would reward you”- kinda crap, but something more usual, more familiar, and more real.

So every damn movie that I would choose to see, better have something to give to its audience, otherwise, I will make sure to question its reputation just as I’m about to do with this one.

1. Time is precious.

As my husband slept on the first 10 minutes of the movie, I saw the whole damn thing, as I always do. After shutting my laptop, I couldn’t sleep for more than an hour, thinking. Confused and a bit shocked by the 2 hours of a snitched - clips - story, I concluded that I just sacrificed my sleep for a bunch of amateurs, nonvital scenes that I couldn’t care less of.

Dune tells the story of Paul Atreides, a young man born in the powerful house of the Atreides family, living on a faraway planet. By the order of the emperor, the family must travel to another deserted planet to ensure the future of the people of the galaxy. Their main duty is to manage the supply of a precious resource of existence found between the grains of sand laying in the infinite dunes of the planet.

It sounds nice, right? And it would have really been if it wasn’t for the very VERY bad script. Dialogs and monologues were completely inexistent. The pace and switching from one scene to another were amateurish. Every scene was floating around like separate clips, representing just glimpses of the story, not a full, clear, and steady storyline. The editing was bad. The movie score was deafening. I can’t even believe Hans Zimmer was behind those boring sounds. The actors had very little screen time at their disposal. No character development took place for any of the subjects. The movie suffered from a tremendous lack of emotions, and empathy and couldn't transmit what was going on inside the character’s mind. Didn’t give any information whatsoever about their backstory, their feelings, or their thoughts. And most of all didn’t give any added value to the audience. So yes I’ve seen the movie, now what good did I learn?

All I’ve seen was some beautifully made cinematography and a glorious art design, with mastered CGI, gorgeous matt painting, wonderful costumes, and vibrant darkness all around the movie. It was like watching cinegraphs (still moving photos or illustrations), but unfortunately not an authentic movie.

All I could think about after watching it was “I just wasted my time”. Life has changed so much in the last couple of years and we finally understood how precious time is. So every time we invest our time in something, it better be of good use, because otherwise why do we have to care? No money value, no materialistic price is ever greater than our time. This is an essential principle in business, in relationships, and in life in general.

Getting back to “Dune”, I can’t state it was a bad movie. It was a strange movie, bizarre portions of a story, cut into pieces and snitched back together trying to tell a long story short. But we all can agree that a long story isn’t long by accident. It’s long because it needs to create the whole picture in our minds so that we could understand the plot and the message of the movie. Dune’s story couldn’t be fitted into a movie. Period. It can be developed only in a series. It’s too long, too engaging, has a very delicate and detailed backstory, a new alien world, and we need time to get to know it, its rules, its mechanism, the characters, the settings, and the situation, so we can be ready to take a side and sit calmly watch whatever is going to be shown on the screen.

This movie made me so upset, cause it wasted my time and I hate to waste my time. I could have used those two hours of sleep and my brain would have thanked me.

I did my research before deciding to watch it. I did my homework. Everything looked fine by my standards. I even took the conscious decision to read the backstory and description of the world and each character and get to know them, before watching the movie. This was even recommended by their marketing, so the fans could be better prepared before watching the movie. Like doing your homework before starting school. What the hell?! Are we going to get a test after that?

Anyway, I read it because I was curious. Period. This made me waste a total of more than 4 hours of investment on that movie.

So, getting back to my question on how to prevent it from happening again… the answer is you can’t. The only thing you can do to save time is to stop the movie at the exact moment you realize you’re not liking it (just like my husband did). The same thing applies to real-life situations like jobs, relationships, and activities. When you don’t like the job you're doing, or even worst, you hate it, just stop. Leave it and find something suitable for your taste and where you feel more comfortable and your best self. Or when your relationship feels doomed, just let it go and move on. Why would we waste our time, spending it in the wrong direction? Everything gives you a taste of what you’re about to get, just in the first moments, and you either like it from the start or get confused by it. No middle ground.

2. Taste changes based on your skills and knowledge

I think I would like the movie if I were in my early twenties. That’s because back then, I wasn’t aware of my taste yet, and that CGI technology would have blown my mind. As we grow older we get to learn more, to know more, and to improve our intuition. We cultivate an experience, based on similar events and get to have real practical knowledge about things. This forces our taste to change, evolve, and at the same time refining our skills and competencies.

This is why when you’re in your 30s you gross out when you see a picture of your high school boyfriend/girlfriend. Because your taste has changed and you have evolved. The same with jobs and professions. I remember wanting to be a dentist when I was 13. With all due respect to dentists, I can't even imagine myself doing that type of job now.

So Dune isn't too much to blame on this perspective, but only evolution.

3. Never accept less than 100% investment

This movie doesn’t share the complete story. According to the director, it shares only 50% of the story, because he thought it would be better to divide the book, on which it's based, into two parts. Dune and Dune 2. The sequel is already confirmed. In my opinion, as a viewer, the movie doesn’t share 50% of the story but merely 20% or even less. That’s because it lacks empathy, emotions, a real plot, backstory, pace, stakes, world-building, and character development.

When a movie doesn’t have any of those elements, it’s not a qualitative movie. The director can make Dune 2 and tell us that he shared the second 50% of the story, but let’s not forget 30% got lost on the first attempt. So I, as a viewer, didn’t get 100% of the promised half of the story, but just a part of it, and this is a huge red flag.

The same goes for relationships and careers. When you put all your energy toward your partner but they don’t give much back, that’s a red flag. When you overwhelm yourself with work and stay overtime too often or say yes to everyone, and still don't get any recognition, that’s a red flag. Those countless love gestures, commitments, or sacrifices shouldn’t go unnoticed if you receive what you give. Otherwise, you’re just consuming yourself for the wrong cause.

Dune didn’t give what it promised, and I am mad about it.

4. Don’t trust marketing. Trust content.

Do you know what a movie trailer is? I mean what it really is…? It’s marketing. It’s an ad. Its purpose is to assemble all the good parts of the movie and put them into a fantastic video commercial, to give us a glimpse of the movie, to grab our attention, and presumably to give us an idea of what we are going to enjoy if we chose to see it, and to sell those precious movie tickets.

I always fall for the trailers. Even though I know what those represent, I still buy what they're selling. Even though I think my pre-selection radar has improved, still, some movies get through it wickedly. “TENET” was last year’s DUNE, in that perspective, but I managed to escape it before it was too late.

Next time, try looking up the synopsis, the book reviews (if the movie is based on an actual book), the cast, the director, the plot, and what the critics (the real ones) are saying.

5. Budget is not what makes a great project

How many times has it happened to the company you work for, to invest a huge deal of money into a project that looks prophetic, while the outcome reveals ridiculous or even worst, it gets lost and disappears slowly without any notice? I’ve seen and experienced a lot of those. Huge projects with big budgets failing in big ways. Not because of money, that’s for sure, but because of too many other reasons that those in charge thought they wouldn’t even matter.

I won’t even care what was Dune’s budget or even if the profits exceeded its loss. All I care about is that it didn’t help the movie in fulfilling its promise and delivering a fully qualitative feature.

6. Connections are everything

I can't emphasize enough how important connections are. They’re the most crucial part of a project and the key factor for its success. If some unknown director would come up with the idea of making Dune a movie, not a lot of people would know that, would care about that, and let aside promote that.

Denis Villeneuve, a great established director with a star-studded cast and great collaborators, makes it hard to say no. They would make garbage and we still would buy it, cause in our heads they know what’s best for us, but do they?

They’re just people with good connections and access to great resources, but that doesn’t make them all geniuses. Dune is the reflection and proof of that.

If you're thinking about your skills and why you can’t be promoted or get a better job, that’s because you’re lacking good connections. You can have a great pack of skillsets, an amazing experience, the desire to give your best, and a lot of friends, but if you don’t have the right connections then you have lower chances of succeeding compared to the people who don’t have your resume but know one or two VIPs.

7. Work until you become famous then your fame will work for you

Let me tell you a short story.

When I was looking to publish my first novel, no one of the publishing houses accepted to read my pitch. I kept asking them to read just the first 5 pages or a short synopsis but they wouldn’t care. They just kept ignoring or refusing me. Why? Because I was an unknown author and not a public figure.

The market was full of crapy books and I kept on wondering why aren’t they interested in even reading two lines from my book? How do they know that the book isn’t worth publishing if they haven’t any idea of what it is about? I already knew the answer but wouldn’t accept it.

Just a few months after my book was published (self-published, but I will tell you more about that in the upcoming article), a few ballerinas, models, and celebrities who know nothing about literature or writing a full sentence, published their books with the most influential and big publishing houses on the market. No need to talk about it, you can imagine the quality of those books. Everyone was aware of it and still… people would line up for hours to get their book, resulting in huge profits for publishing houses and a lot of free advertising.

Just like that example, I think Dune is the output of fame, not the result of the best work an artist can do. Denis Villeneuve is a great director but not a good writer. So let's not get pretentious and think we can do everything just because we’re good at something, because sir,… we can’t.

8. Great effort isn’t great if it’s not for a well-established brand

You can quick-search on Youtube by typing Dune and you will get hundreds of videos talking about the movie. You can find behind-the-scenes videos, interviews of the cast and crew, and talks about the cosmography, the characters, the art design, etc etc. Snippets of the second movie, or even merch that would make you buy whatever they’re selling. All appear on the top search. Or you can even Google it and thousands of pages will tell you about your search. You would think, well that’s an impressive marketing strategy. Yes, it is. It’s pure marketing’s good work and it should be applauded. But imagine doing the same thing, giving the same effort with the same budget for a non-well-known brand, would that be this successful? Would their marketing get applauded for their good job or would they be crucified instead for not getting too many leads, for not having too many readers, viewers, or fans…?

Sometimes you can give the most amazing ideas to a non-well-known brand and still get no real results from it. It’s not your fault. Not even the brand’s fault. It’s just how it is.

9. Sometimes we should separate the art from the artist

This is a big debate. Some people agree some say no. What do I think? In general, I would vote for not separating them. But sometimes the art is too bad while the artist is a marvelous mastermind. Does this type of artist deserve to be dragged down and judged just by one piece of his work?! That wouldn't be fair, don't you think?!

In this case, separation would help the good part prosper without getting all the dirt that it doesn’t deserve. Denis Villeneuve is an amazing director. Nobody can dare to state otherwise. But I think Dune isn’t his best work and I refuse to diminish him just because of it. I will still call him a great mind and I would still look forward to what he has to offer.

10. Expectation is the mother of disappointment

When you set yourself up for a particular expectation, it can make the eventual reality hard to cope with. Luckily in my case, it’s just about a movie. In other cases might be for a job interview, for a promotion, for a relationship, for friendships, and so on. It’s easy to say don’t expect anything from anyone because we as humans are built that way. Hope is a default tool incorporated into our being and it’s hard to set up a new mindset and force ourselves to get rid of it. Instead what we can do is not to lose hope but to be more open, more tolerant, and acceptable even if what we’re receiving is not exactly what we wanted.

In Dune’s case, I was disappointed because I had very high expectations, and that’s not Dune’s fault, that’s my fault.

11. You can not use the same ingredient to cook every dish

Not every great asset should be used as the source of every project. Not every great book should be a movie. We have experienced not just a few movie flops when they tried to adopt great books and fail miserably. This should be a lesson for every filmmaker to choose the right material and to be careful in its adaption.

It’s just like saying you’re good at office jokes, but overusing it without thinking, will ruin your reputation or even worse get you fired.

12. Star-studded cast, is a NO-NO

Besides being used as a great marketing tool, assembling a lot of celebrities in the same project has its benefits and also its drawbacks at the same time.

Dune has a star-studded cast, but giving supporting roles to well-known actors has wasted away their potential. For the majority of them, the acting in this movie can be summarised in 2-3 lines in total. Even the protagonists have a huge lack of expressions, words, and emotions.

Usually when a movie has a weak screenplay, uses this strategy to get famous actors to fade the real problem with their shimmering presence. But that rarely works. This is a political tactic: use amusement to shift the public attention from real problems. It’s simple PR.

Obsessed with genuine tactics, I don’t recommend doing it, but you know… everyone knows what’s best for them.

13. Don’t trust the ratings, everyone is bought nowadays

Can’t even remember the number of times I witnessed a job announcement for a reviewer. Posted by Amazon or any other company, the trustfulness of the ratings, is doubtful. Even New York Times is being bribed for decades, putting their famous tag “a new york times bestseller” on every piece of crap that gets published.

Reviews are opinions given by people and people can be corrupted. So next time you’re looking for good relevant feedback, lookup for real, professional critics. A professional has ideals, norms, and morals. It’s very doubtful they can be bought. What fills them with happiness is by letting them express their genuine thoughts.

If you want to feel good about yourself, go ask your mother’s opinion. If you want to improve, go to the coldest, stiffest professional. One thing is sure, they will never lie.