I’m not sure how to write about Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two. It is a movie so full of characters, story, and action that it is almost overwhelming. Not only that, but the lore of Frank Herbert’s Dune universe (Dune-iverse? Sorry, couldn’t help it) is rich and complex, where every setting and group of people has its own detailed history and culture. It’s a lot to take in, and even though the movie is nearly three hours long there is so much going on that there is never a dull moment. Dune: Part Two is the kind of film that aspiring filmmakers will watch and say to themselves, “I want to make a movie like that.”
Villeneuve’s first Dune film, released in 2021, was a very good movie even though it didn’t resolve any of the story’s main conflicts. That’s not necessarily the fault of the movie, since Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel is a sprawling epic that has proven very difficult to adapt over the years, as David Lynch discovered when he made a film of it in 1984, to very mixed results. Denis Villeneuve’s first film covered the first half of the book, and while I like that film a lot it can’t help but suffer a bit from the fact that it does not tell the complete story. Again, this is not the film’s fault, but it feels like it ends right when it really starts to get rolling.
Warner Bros.
Thank goodness that it did well in theaters and was well-received, because soon after it was released Warner Bros. greenlit the sequel. If they hadn’t, I feel like Villeneuve’s Dune would have become one of the great what-ifs of cinema. But after being delayed from its original release date last year due to the writers and actors being on strike, Part Two is now here and it is the definition of epic. The first movie feels like a two-and-a-half-hour trailer for the second movie. But the second movie wouldn’t work nearly as well as it does without the strong groundwork laid by the first movie.
Frank Herbert wrote six Dune novels, and many years ago when I was in high school I read the first three and got partway through the fourth one before I got bored and gave up on it. I did like the first two books though, and seeing Dune: Part Two made me want to revisit the first book. Villeneuve has said that he has a script mostly done for a third movie that would be based on the second book, Dune Messiah, and based on how well the current film is doing it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s another movie a few years away. It’s hard to see how Villeneuve could top the epic scope and scale of Part Two, but he’s a crafty guy and if anyone could do it, he could.
I’ve written about Villeneuve’s previous films Prisoners, Sicario, and Blade Runner 2049 on this blog and, long story short, they’re all terrific and you should watch them (Villeneuve’s film Arrival is also excellent, although I haven’t covered it). The man is simply a tremendous director, and I will watch anything he makes. The word “visionary” gets tossed around a lot these days, to the point where it’s lost some of its meaning. But then a guy like Denis Villeneuve shows up and makes you think, “yeah, that guy is a visionary.”
The first thing about Dune: Part Two that you immediately notice is that it looks phenomenal. This has to be one of the most gorgeous movies ever made and should be a shoo-in to sweep the technical categories at the Oscars next year. Every scene in this movie is breathtaking, the cinematography, special effects, costumes, vehicles, weapons, and the mighty sand worms all look incredible. This movie gave me the kind of feeling that I would imagine people had upon watching Star Wars for the first time all the way back in 1977. You feel like you’re watching something truly special, and it’s hard to do that in the modern era, where there are a massive number of entertainment options available at the click of a button.
In terms of spectacle, Dune: Part Two can’t be beat. But what about the story? Well…that’s a bit more complicated. Which is certainly not to say that the story is bad, but it is somewhat difficult to describe. Here is a very basic summary, but I am not an expert in Dune lore so I apologize if I get a few details wrong. Most of the story takes place on the distant desert planet of Arrakis, many thousands of years in the future. Arrakis is a barren and inhospitable planet that is nevertheless of extreme strategic and economic value. This is because Arrakis is the only source of melange, commonly called spice, a hallucinogenic drug that is the most valuable substance in the universe because it is what makes interstellar travel possible, among many other qualities. There is a LOT of lore about the spice, but the interstellar-travel thing is most important (I think).
Warner Bros.
The story begins with Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) being given stewardship of Arrakis and control of the spice trade. Leto suspects that this is a trap of some kind but when the emperor of the known universe tells you to do something you don’t have much choice. Leto turns out to be correct and most of House Atreides is wiped out by the combined forces of the emperor’s elite Sardaukar warriors and the evil House Harkonnen. The Harkonnens are the primary villains, and the films portray them as the definition of pure evil.
The first film ends with Leto’s son Paul (Timothee Chalamet) and his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) surviving the attack and escaping into the desert alongside Stilgar (Javier Bardem), a leader of a tribe of Fremen (peoples native to Arrakis) and a young woman named Chani (Zendaya), about whom Paul has been having mysterious visions. I thought Stilgar was Chani’s father but according to Google he’s actually her uncle. Anyway, that was an extremely condensed summary of the first movie.
As the second movie begins, Paul is learning the ways of the Fremen, participating in their guerrilla war against the Harkonnens, and rapidly falling in love with Chani. He learns the Fremen language and adopts Fremen names, and quickly becomes a powerful and feared figure. He also gets to do some extremely cool stuff like riding one of the enormous Arrakis sand worms, and the scene where he rides a sand worm for the first time is one of my favorite scenes in the movie. You can practically feel the wind and sand whipping into your face, it’s freaking awesome. Dune: Part Two is a much more action-packed film than its predecessor, with massive screen-consuming battles that are often breathtaking.
I feel like I’m not qualified to talk about the minute details of the plot. There is a lot to absorb, and I’m sure some of the more intricate aspects of it were somewhat lost on me, since it’s been probably two decades since I read the book. There is just so much going on, and it can be confusing. But it’s never alienating, and once you get on the movie’s wavelength it’s easy to find yourself swept up in it.
And because I love bad guys, let’s talk about the villains. The Harkonnens are pure evil. Their leader, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) is a grotesque being who looks like a deformed toad-man and bathes in pools of oily black goo. He floats around and is connected to various machines keeping him alive. One of the second movie’s new villains is Feyd-Rautha, played by Elvis himself, Austin Butler. Butler is completely unrecognizable here, and is a ferocious villain, cruel, ruthless, and highly skilled in hand-to-hand combat. The final knife fight between him and Paul is tense and brutal, and very well-choreographed. In the David Lynch version of Dune, Feyd-Rautha was played by Sting, who I think wore some kind of weird man-thong? Butler’s portrayal is much more sinister, and every scene he’s in is tense and frightening.
I feel like there’s a lot more to say about this movie, but I’m not sure how to say it. There are certain events in the movie that I didn’t totally understand but reading up on Dune lore online after I saw the movie helped clear a few things up. There are hallucinatory sequences in the film that give the whole thing the feeling of an extremely vivid fever dream. In addition to being epic, the movie is also profoundly weird, and it makes me happy that big movie studios are still willing to spend nine figures on big, epic, weird movies.
There are so many other things to talk about regarding this film, and I feel like this post hasn’t quite done the movie justice. Who knows, maybe I’ll revisit it down the line once I’ve had the chance to see the movie again. It’s the kind of movie that requires at least two viewings. Dune: Part Two is a colossal sci-fi epic that is staggeringly beautiful, full of great acting, intense action, and is jam-packed with lore. Sometimes it feels like you need an encyclopedia to keep up with it, but you can’t help but get swept up in the awe-inspiring spectacle. This film is an amazing achievement and sets the bar very high for sci-fi movies. I can’t wait to see it again, and that is the highest compliment I can give it.
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