2021 was the year that we finally got to see most of the blockbuster movies that should've been released a year earlier. The pandemic led to dozens of films shifting back an entire year, and even when they did finally arrive, there was no guarantee that they would find the audience they would've done in any other year. No more was this true than Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part One.

Villeneuve's adaptation of the first half of Frank Herbert's classic sci-fi novel might have been the Sicario and Arrival director's dream project, but the difficulty in adapting such a dense, revered work--combined with the fact it would only tell half the story--meant there was no guarantee that the film would succeed, either artistically or commercially.

But we shouldn't have worried. Dune was a hugely impressive achievement, that went far beyond the previous two screen adaptations (David Lynch's 1984 movie and the 2000 SyFy mini-series) in bringing Herbert's groundbreaking and hugely influential vision to life.