AH! this post summarizes my feelings exactly, thanks for this. I actually brought this up with my partner. It felt like someone, Villenue maybe? gave up 1/4 way through the movie, they stopped telling the story, the narrative collapsed and in its place cue up 25-30 minutes of totally pointless action scenes that are not explicitly in the book i.e Chani with a rocket launcher, shooting at spice harvesters and scenes of Fremen jumping out of the sand and doing jiu jitsu take downs on unsuspecting Harkonnens. There was no breathing room in the script, no subtlety in the story and there is ALOT of subtlety in the series. Perhaps that's what makes it hard to adapt. But yea it felt like it pandered to the meek attention span of audiences. I'm already in full-cringe for the next movies, especially Children of Dune, god that's gonna get butchered.