To get the obvious out of the way, if you enjoyed Dune: Part One (2021), the first half of Denis Villeneuve’s sprawling adaptation of Frank Herbert’s groundbreaking sci-fi saga, you will no doubt like the conclusion, the eagerly awaited Dune: Part Two just as much. You might even like it more simply because while the first film necessarily had to spend large chunks of its running time setting up the sometimes convoluted narrative and introducing us to its expansive cast of characters, this one is able to dispense with all of that and focus more on the big action sequences involving vast legions of warriors, strange armaments and, of course, the giant worms that are arguably the story’s most famous element. However, if you were like me and found that the first part, for all of its undeniable technical accomplishments, simply lacks the kind of magic that might have transformed it into the masterpiece that it was clearly hoping to be, my guess is that you will come away from this one feeling pretty much the same as before.
Say what you will about David Lynch’s infamous 1984 attempt to wrestle the story into a single film, for all of its faults—and they are legion—it was made by someone with a genuine and personal cinematic vision (albeit a crackpot one) who was unexpectedly given the resources to bring it vividly to life, at least during the points when they weren’t forced to contend with the often-lugubrious narrative. Villeneuve’s take, on the other hand, still feels like the kind of movie that the people at Universal presumably hoped to get when they hired Lynch all those years ago—a visionary epic in name only made by a filmmaker who recognizes that he has been given the keys to a valuable piece of IP and who doesn’t want to shake the boat by messing with expectations. For a movie like this to work, it should be a sort of Dionysian fever dream of sheer audacity but for all the elaborate visuals on display, none of it really connects on anything more than a purely superficial level—the only aspect of it that comes close to approaching that are those genuinely weirdo popcorn buckets (with a design that even Georgia O’Keefe might have deemed to be a bit on the nose, so to speak) that AMC is selling for $25 a pop.
The film picks up immediately where the first one ended, making a rewatch of the previous installment almost mandatory. To sum up that chapter, young Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) and his parents, Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac), the benevolent ruler of Caladan and Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), have, on the orders of the Emperor of the Unverse, relocated to the harsh desert planet of Arrakis to replace the current rulers, the vile House Harkonnen, take charge of the production of spice, the drug-like substance found only there that allows everything from instantaneous space travel to semi-mystical powers, and to forge an alliance with the Fremen, the natives who have developed ways to live amidst the planet’s harsh conditions. Alas, the Atreides clan soon discovers that they have been betrayed by the Emperor, who has arranged for the Harkonnen forces to attack in order to seize control once again and destroy the Atreides bloodline for good. Although the Duke is killed, Paul and Jessica manage to escape to the desert, where they are discovered and taken in by a clan of Fremen led by Stilgar (Javier Braden), who is convinced that the plucky lad may be the messiah-like figure that prophecies have decreed will lead a revolution that will free the Fremen from tyranny forever. Paul isn’t too sure about that at first but the fact that the literal girl of his dreams, Chani (Zendaya), is another member of the clan, helps to seal the deal.
As Dune: Part Two starts, Paul and the pregnant Jessica are becoming more ingrained with the Fremen—the former continuing to pursue his destiny by developing his powers, including the taming of one of the planet’s fearsome giant sandworms, in ways that leave the others increasingly convinced that he is their chosen one, and the latter undergoing the dangerous ritual required to become their Reverend Mother. Using his keen intelligence, Paul begins to lead the Fremen in sneak attacks on the Harkonnen spice production facilities in which they use the unique properties of Arrakis to their advantage. This leads to some conflicts with Chani, who likes Paul, to be certain, but is convinced that the whole messiah concept has done more harm to her people than good. Meanwhile, both the Emperor (Christopher Walken) and Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) find themselves desperately trying to quell the rebellion for good, the latter going so far as to recruit his dangerously psychotic nephew, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen (Austin Butler), to put things right for them, leading to a climactic battle between the representatives of the younger generations of the warring factions to settle control of Arrakis, and possibly the known universe, once and for all.
Although most recent attempts to split one narrative into two separate films have reeked of studios trying to lure audiences into paying two admissions for what is ultimately one story, splitting Dune into two parts proves to make sense for a number of reasons. For one, as Lynch’s version of the story showed, trying to cram the entire tale into a single feature would only result in a narrative that would thoroughly perplex those not already familiar with it and irritate those who know the story and who would take exception to the story points that were either streamlined or eliminated in order to get to a reasonable length. More significantly, the split smartly comes at the point where the story shifts its focus from interplanetary political intrigue to something more mystical in nature while at the same time moving from serving as a example writ large on the whole White Male Savior narrative conceit to an implicit critique of that particular dramatic mindset.
The problem is that while the film is certainly an epic on a technical scale, the often-impressive production design, cinematography and visual effects still cannot quite disguise the work around the inescapable fact that the story at its center is just not very interesting. At its heart, the story is about a man struggling to come to terms with the long-written prophecy that he has found himself at the summer of and trying to figure out a way to change things enough to avoid the horrors to come as stated by that very same prophecy. The trouble is that the film has been made by someone who is determined to have the long-written prophecy that he has found himself at the center of—the Herbert novel—play out exactly as written so as not to cause any consternation or upset amongst the fan base. (Even if you have never experienced Dune in any of its various incarnations, it has had its bones picked so thoroughly over the years by others that it will still seem familiar.) As a result, the film just kind of plods along—with many scenes going on at interminable length—without ever giving viewers anything to suggest a personal touch on Villeneuve’s part. The closest that it comes to an intriguing wrinkle comes in the moments where it seems to tackle the problem of having an Indigenous people needing to be led to their salvation by a pasty-faced white guy and even that winds up being underdone by the lack of representatives of the Arab and Muslim cultures that Herbert mined in his work in any of the key roles.
One of the key reasons as to why Dune doesn’t quite work as a story is the fact that its central character is, to be frank, a bit of a bore. In big genre epics like this, the hero generally tends to be the least interesting character on display and making him an incipient messiah to boot certainly doesn’t help matters much. In the Lynch film, he was able to work around this, as much as he could, by casting the then-unknown Kyle MacLachlan in the part, who was able to suggest hints of otherworldly weirdness beneath his clean-cut good looks in ways that made the character more interesting than it had any right to be. By comparison, Timothee Chalamet is just kind of bland and boring as Paul, demonstrating approximately the same level of gravitas here that he did in Wonka. While perhaps all too plausible as the callow version of Paul seen in the early scenes of the story, he largely fails to convince as the character becomes darker and more complex as he simultaneously follows and fights his apparent destiny—this is a Paul that you barely believe would be capable of buying a pack of gum, let alone upending the status quo of the known galaxy.
Most of the other returning players from the first film wind up more or less getting swallowed up by the gargantuan size of the project, even the ones that made an impression the first time around like Skarsgard, Bautista and Charlotte Rampling. The only one who makes a strong impression—indeed, may even be the most effective thing in the film—is Zendaya as Chani, who gets a lot more to do this time. Watching in despair as she sees what she believes is her people being fatally distracted from their quest for independence and self-reliance by their desire to embrace a prophecy embodied by the guy she has developed strong personal feelings for, she brings the film the only authentically human feeling and emotion on display, one that cuts through all of the visual pyrotechnics.
A number of new actors have been thrown into the mix as well but most of them end up getting lost in the fray—Christopher Walken is not nearly as offbeat as one might hope as the manipulative Emperor, Florence Pugh cuts an undeniably striking figure as Princess Irulan but has little to do other than pose in elaborate outfits (at least when Virginia Madsen played the same role for Lynch, she at least got to deliver that film’s wacko opening exposition dump) and Anya Taylor-Joy barely registers in her blink-and-you-miss-it appearance. The most notable newcomer is Austin Butler as Feyd, whose psychotic manner comes across here as so mannered that he never achieves the desired level of malevolence required—even when he was running around in a rubber jockstrap while yelping “I will kill him!,” Sting still managed to come across as a more imposing figure of fear than Butler is able to conjure up here. (That said, he is effective in the one moment where he shows some vulnerability, a scene in which he finds himself being seduced by Lea Seydoux, briefly turning up as yet another mystical character with vaguely defined powers.)
As I said before, if you liked Dune: Part One, you will almost certainly like Dune: Part Two, especially if you are one of those under the bizarre misapprehension that Denis Villeneuve is some kind of genius. If he is a “visionary filmmaker,” as some claim, he is one without any evident vision of his own to speak of (even his best film, Blade Runner 2049, is one that bases its ideas wholly off of the work of those who have come before him) and while is able to create a fully convincing vision of a giant sand worm attacking, he isn’t able to give it, or anything else on hand, the splash of personality that might have transformed a story that Harlan Ellison once described as essentially being King of Kings with giant worms into the kind of extraordinary unique cinematic event that the Lynch film, for all of its obvious and undeniable hiccups, managed to be in its most striking moments. In essence, Lynch gave viewers a dream—the kind of fractured one where you wake up afterwards with hallucinatory visions burned in your brain even as you struggle to recall what actually happened during it—while Villeneuve’s take is basically the cinematic equivalent of a book report that dutifully recounts the key points of the plot, characters and themes of the story at hand. Call me crazy but if I have to choose between the two, I would opt for a dream over a book report any day.