I definitely remember them trying to explain it at the beginning of the movie, saying it's necessary for space travel. The movie is just so information dense it's easy to miss the details. I read the book years before watching the movie and I feel like I caught the large plot points.

I will definitely watch it again myself before watching the second.

I read the book recently for the first time and then watched the movie. The entire time I thought this is awesome to see these scenes from the book but I would have absolutely o idea what’s going on if I didn’t just read it

I didn't think the first Dune movie in this series was that good and the reason why was probably as you explained it. I knew there was this rich universe lore behind the series but as someone who hasn't read the books it didn't really gel that well or make much sense.