The golden sands of a barren planet. A long, looming shadow over the desert. Countless spaceships huddled together. Hand-to-hand combat with blades. Eerie music, a star-studded cast, an ingenious logo, and IMAX visuals. Is this Star Wars? No, it’s Dune, an enthralling and mesmerizing introduction to a saga with great potential.

56 years after Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel, Dune, was published, we finally got a modern adaptation of Dune on the big screen this year. Set twenty thousand years into the future, Dune follows young Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and his father, Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac), who serves as the duke of the loyal and noble House Atreides from his home planet. However, House Atreides is caught in a war for control over the planet Arrakis—also known as Dune for its vast sands that are the only source of an extremely valuable spice.

I finally got to watch Dune on HBO Max on my couch the day before it was released in theaters, but the immense scale of the film is definitely meant for the theater-grade IMAX format, not an iPad. Two elements of this film that will give you goosebumps are the sandworms and the hand-to-hand combat. The two-mile long sandworms guard the spice and are attracted by even the slightest vibrations on the sand, making harvesting spice nearly impossible on the spice-rich dunes. The visuals reminiscent of BBC Earth make it seem almost like a high-quality documentary with David Attenborough’s iconic voiceover because of the constant panoramic shots of the desert, space, and the sandworms. The hand-to-hand combat was also unlike anything I’ve ever seen before; gleaming golden knives and smooth fight choreography clashed against the raw and rigid blue shields that cover a fighter, called a Holtzman shield. Despite the movie being set in the distant future, it was intriguing to see traditional knife combat rather than your typical guns and ammunition.

Dune has perfectly captured the ethereal wonders of the desert and combined it with one of the greatest sci-fi storylines that impressed audiences all across the world. Despite criticisms that its story may be too dry (which I fully disagree with), Dune powers through the blistering sandstorm of critics and makes its way to the very top.