Everything is filmmable if you put the effort and talent into it. That’s what Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings taught us. That’s what The Last Airbender (2010) and Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop threatened to disprove once and for all, giving us all doubts for years to come. But now Denis Villeneuve’s Dune duology has put the train back on its tracks, reinvigorating the cinematic power of simple visual and audio translation.
The stars are here too, both young and old, in an attempt to attach their names to what could be Hollywood’s next great epic. While Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya are putting butts in seats, just as intriguing of a casting was to see Christopher Walken step up to assume the role of the ruthless and fabled Emperor Shaddam IV. Yet, just like this isn’t any other story, this is also not like any other Walken performance. When you see a Christopher Walken movie, you’re expecting a chaotic blend of eccentric energy. Someone who will command over the screen with awkward energy and authority. However, Walken’s portrayal is of a meek shell of his former self. Lethargic and unsure of himself, as his daughter Irulan (Florence Pugh) appears poised to pick up the slack of the ruler’s fledgling performance. Shaddam’s reign as a leader is slowly entering its twilight, while a new reign is on the cusp of its sunrise.
Paul Atreides (Chalamet) is reintroduced to us as a freedom fighter of great importance. He rubs shoulders with the oppressed Fremon and develops a kinship with the dubious Chani (Zendaya). However, his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), envisions a world where Paul rules the Fremon as well as the planet Arrakis. It has been his destiny since birth. Dune: Part Two cares a lot about the tyranny of singular men and the ruthless pathways they take to gain power. Paul and Jessica are the victims of political betrayal, still rebounding from a coup in the last film that left the pair discarded like week-old trash. But their misfortune leads to privilege as they discover that the Fremon desperately want to believe that Paul is the prophesied Messiah that will save the war zone of Arrakis from further exploitation. They might want to speak with him about these expectations, as he may have some revisions.
Villeneuve returns to direct this sequel, an explosive production firing on all cylinders of special effects, scale, camerawork, and sound. Some of the reverberations in the theater can literally be felt in your bones. The action setpieces leap far beyond what was put on display in the original, including one of the coolest opening setpieces ever put to film and several other breathtaking rides. Villeneuve once again teams with cinematographer Greig Fraser, whose work on the original Dune, Rogue One, & The Batman has been incredibly influential on the look and feel of modern action. Dune: Part Two aims for photo-realism, and achieves it not by running away from CGI, but combining it with the use of on-site locations and practical effects for a medley of visual imagery that feels real and overwhelming. The “un-filmmable” is filmed as characters navigate gargantuan sandworms and engage in catastrophic guerilla warfare. The photography looks as tangible as a shot out of Apocalypse Now despite having over 1,000 vfx images. It all aids a sense of believability that is almost impossible to achieve – it’s as if Villeneuve traveled to a real alien planet and made a documentary.
Like its predecessor, Dune Part Two is a pensive, whispery film full of indulgent shots, nuanced performances, and an abundance of political maneuvering in-between the loud action. It should go without saying, but the film takes itself very seriously. Just like another noteworthy drama, you could even say it insists upon itself. But this ambition isn’t without merit – the story as based on Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel (Part Two covers the latter third of the first novel) is as much about history and real-world conflicts as they are about the fictional mythology. One of the chief metaphorical parallels being the history of the Middle East as a hotbed for global conflicts, including Jewish Displacement, the co-opting of genuine political movements by military influence, and the everlasting fight over oil, which Dune turns into the plot device “spice” – the drug used primarily to aid in interstellar travel. Herbert took inspiration from real-life tragic events and then placed a Messiah in the middle of the chaos to examine the history of how myths are used to control people.
Paul Atreides is an interesting enigma – a man of great ambition whose psychology is constantly changing. He may have been a template for the likes of Anakin & Luke Skywalker and countless other saviors, but he still feels like his own man. Part of that uniqueness comes down to how he responds to obstacles and adversity. We met him as an excited but somewhat timid ruler in training, yet the sequel sees him grow to overcome his flaws while finding ways to relate to all around him. He has his male friendships, his romantic interests, and his ambitions as a militant commander that make him a man of the people. Chani is skeptical of Paul’s background but grows to love his charm and determination. Through sweeping vistas and rousing musical notes, the film documents a burgeoning romance between the pair, which may be the linchpin for peace on Arrakis and across the galaxy.
Like what is typical of Villeneuve’s filmography, the acting is solid to great across the board, but Austin Butler threatens to steal the movie as the slimy, seductive, and psychotic Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. He leads one of the best stretches of the film – on a planet where the sun casts the surface in a light devoid of color. It’s a sequence that could fit into any decade due to how surreal it all seems. Javier Bardem has a kinetic energy that wants to leap off the screen as a freedom fighter with his own trials and tribulations, but who ultimately finds common ground with the vengeance Paul intends to enact. I enjoyed Glossu Rabban’s (Dave Bautista) accelerated descent into psychosis as he continues to eat shit from both the good guys and bad guys. The bloke can’t even hop onto a getaway vehicle without being ambushed by Fremon attempting to WorldStar him.
Butler and Batista get to chew scenery like there’s hot sauce on it, but most of the other stars have to make the best of understated roles. Between Ferguson, Pugh, and Léa Seydoux, I couldn’t tell you whose whisper is the lightest, but Ferguson is clearly the most experienced whisperer of the three, her filmography a who’s who of ASMR adjacent roles. Ferguson’s character of Lady Jessica is among Dune’s most fascinating, as she and the cultish Bene Gesserit are essentially the viaduct where this whole story gets weird. The only thing these ladies like more than eugenics and steathly pulling strings in the background is getting high as fuck on the most potent drugs in human history. But it feels like we’re only scratching the surface of the mystery behind the Bene Gesserit, who are just one puzzle peace of this bizarre political intrigue.
The tragedy at play here, and this goes especially for the bad guys, is that so many of the characters are just pawns in someone else’s chess game. Rabban can only do what his power-hungry uncle, Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), tells him to do, and Feyd-Rautha is similarly leashed. Very few people here have true autonomy, as their fates are dictated by the actions of others. However, poised to break from the chains of his life-long bondage is Paul, who continues to consume every psychedelic that’s put in front of him as if he’s attending a month-long disco-themed festival, gradually making himself more powerful. Paul’s power scaling is both literal and metaphorical – he grows stronger as the people of Arrakis increase their belief in him. But perhaps people have a reason to fear such unchecked power – isn’t this what so much of our literature and media has attempted to teach us? Yes, it’s cool to be all powerful – would it be so cool for everyone else?
You can nitpick the story to death – due to the age of the novel, many of these tropes are well-worn on the silver screen. There can be quibbles about the character development – there are a few 3rd act revelations that end up quickly advancing our characters’ evolution, making their changes feel jarring at first. Many of the villains aren’t heavily featured, taking a backseat to the heroes and their struggles. But by the 3rd or 4th time you see a character riding a sandworm like an ocean wave, it dawns on you that we can quickly take a production of this caliber for granted. Or how the movie so easily encapsulates the feeling of hopelessness when it seems like victory, or at least progress, has been snatched away by the actions of the most selfish and privileged of us all. The movie has its slight warts, but that’s just scratches on a plane that is flying high in the air.
Dune Part Two succeeds not because it is a perfect movie – you are bound to be disappointed with those expectations. It succeeds because its ambition and execution stick out in a media landscape watered down by quantity. A blockbuster like Dune isn’t made for purely artistic purposes, but the artistry and care makes up so much of what’s great about it. It’s an exciting, rhythmically violent space opera utilized to teach a fable showcasing how political leaders can get absorbed by the very mechanisms that birthed their radicalization. That a revolutionary must question where the needs of the people and his/her own goals either meet or end, as to not conflate personal glory with true heroics and liberation. Villeneuve’s film is a haunting, contemplative tale about why myths don’t save you – they just bridge us all into the next chapter of the story.
