The Spice Melange Highs and Lows of Dune: Part Two
Denis Villeneuve’s sword-and-sandworms epic is flawed but astonishing.
Timothée Chanelamet and a bald-capped Austin Butler prepare to face each other in single combat.
‘May thy knife chip and shatter,’ intones Chalamane, a dangerous glint in his eye.
Butler leers. His teeth are pitch-black. His skin is chalky white. He has no eyebrows.
Is this some freakish vision of how GQ’s Men of the Year Awards will be decided this November? Or a glimpse, perhaps, of a grim future in which the Oscar for Best Actor is awarded only after trial by combat?
No! It’s Dune: Part Two — and the fate of the universe rests on this clash between Hollywood heartthrobs.
Denis Villeneuve’s hotly anticipated sci-fi sequel soared into cinemas at the start of March to great excitement and acclaim. Earlier this week, it passed the $500 million mark at the global box office (and thus the total box office takings of the first film); it’ll surely be one of the biggest movies of the year. Villeneuve’s decision to split his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s seminal novel in two was risky, not least because the greenlighting of this second part was contingent on the first one doing well at the box office (and, crucially, on HBO Max – this was the time of Warner Bros.’ Covid-era day-and-date release policy). Halving the book also meant that the first film was — in the tradition of Part Ones from Harry Potter to last summer’s Across the Spider-Verse — lots of setup with minimal payoff. Part Two was left with a lot of work to do to bring the first chapter in Paul Atreides’ story to a satisfying close.
A mixed bag that nonetheless manages, through the thrilling momentum it builds after the first hour, and the sheer chutzpah with which it sticks the landing, to build into something special
With the arrival of this sequel, it’s clear that Villeneuve’s gamble has paid off. The second instalment in this spice-and-sandworms epic is a mixed bag that nonetheless manages, through the thrilling momentum it builds after the first hour, and the sheer chutzpah with which it sticks the landing, to build into something really quite special. It improves upon its (very good) predecessor with a more engaging emotional core, better action, and a conclusion that is more satisfying even as it directly paves the way for Villeneuve’s planned adaptation of Dune Messiah. I’ve seen Part Two twice now, and though the film frustrated me at points, both times I left the cinema exhilarated. And the movie has taken the box office by (sand?)storm. Taken together, Villeneuve’s two-part adaptation is a great artistic and commercial success, a flawed but remarkable feat of filmmaking on the grandest scale.
Though our first (hallucinatory) trip to the Duniverse feels like a lifetime ago, no time at all has passed on Arrakis. Part Two picks up right where the first film ended. The Machiavellian Harkonnen family, led by the Baron (Stellan Skarsgård), in cahoots with Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken), have massacred the House of Atreides and taken back control of Arrakis. Presumed dead, Paul Atreides (Charlemagne) and his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), are in hiding on the desert planet, travelling with a tribe of Fremen warriors led by Stilgar (Javier Bardem) and including Chani (Zendaya). Paul is determined to unite with the Fremen and overthrow the Harkonnens, both out of a desire to avenge his father’s death, and a conviction to free the desert people from their decades-long subjugation. Will he succeed? The villainous trio of the Emperor, the Baron, and the Baron’s nephew Feyd-Rautha (nightmare spice rotation?) aren’t going to make it easy for him. The film follows Paul’s attempts to gain the Fremen’s trust, his budding romance with Chani, and the growing whispers among the desert tribes (encouraged by the wily Lady Jessica) that this young Duke Atreides may just be the Lisan al Gaib — the prophesied saviour of the Fremen.
The villainous trio of the Emperor, the Baron, and Feyd-Rautha (nightmare spice rotation?) aren’t going to make things easy for Paul
Once again, Villeneuve and his below-the-line team have pulled off an exceptional technical achievement. This return to Arrakis looks and sounds amazing, offering even greater spectacle, a bigger dose of action, and more sandworms than the first time out. Dune goes in for much less planet-hopping than its clearest sci-fi successor, Star Wars. The majority of the action takes place on Arrakis, so it’s a good job that the desert planet is such a delight to spend time on (probably not literally — at least, not without a stillsuit). It’s a vast sandbox of seductive, psychedelic strangeness.
And when we do pop over to a different world, the results are equally impressive. A scene of gladiatorial combat on the Harkonnens’ home planet Giedi Prime, shot on black-and-white infrared cameras, is a sequence of transcendent brilliance. Both Dune films offer a remarkable example of different creative and technical departments — Villeneuve’s directorial vision, Greig Fraser’s cinematography, Patrice Vermette’s production design, Hans Zimmer’s terrifically otherworldly score, and the work of numerous other crew members — working in beautiful harmony. It’s a treat to be immersed in such a vividly realised world. What's more, I admire co-writers Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts for their willingness to confront the darker, more challenging aspects of Herbert’s book: its refusal to give us a straightforwardly heroic protagonist, its suspicion of messianic figures, its interrogation of the white saviour trope. These elements are a crucial part of what makes Dune, Dune, of course — but you wouldn't necessarily expect to find them in a Hollywood blockbuster.
Dune’s all about desert power, but this film has a whole heap of star power in its favour, too. Chalamet has always been a terrific actor; here, he has a gravitas and steely fury we’ve rarely seen from him before. His Paul has convincingly grown, over the course of these two films, from wide-eyed prince into fearsome warrior and leader. After only a tiny role in the first part, Chani is essentially a co-lead here, and Zendaya more than rises to the occasion. The Euphoria star powerfully conveys Chani’s inner turmoil as she battles between her love for Paul, and her conviction that her people don’t need the help of a Duke from another planet to free themselves of their colonisers. The much-memed Stilgar, whose die-hard belief in Paul’s status as the messiah at times echoes dialogue from Life of Brian, adds a note of levity to the proceedings that the first part could have done with more of. Rebecca Ferguson (Part One’s low-key MVP) has a big role to play here, and really sells the manipulative cunning of Lady Jessica, but she's let down by some of the distractingly silly material she is laden with. I’d say I have a pretty good tolerance for high fantasy / hard sci-fi ingredients like true names, prophecies, and made-up languages, but an early scene of Lady Jessica pacing back and forth having whispered conversations with the omniscient unborn baby inside her was… a little too much for me.
A few key players are added to Part One’s stellar ensemble. Walken and Florence Pugh do as much as they can with their significant but brief roles as the Emperor and Princess Irulan, mostly fretting about events on Arrakis from off-world. But it is Austin Butler, as the villainous foil for Chalamet, who shines brightest in the supporting cast. His Feyd-Rautha is a hairless, ‘sexually vulnerable’ sadomasochist with serious mommy issues. He’s a buff albino with a shelled egg for a head. He looks like the love child of Voldemort and Megamind. He is utterly terrifying. Butler has little screen time, but makes a hell of an impact. I am now firmly *Austin Butler-pilled*; I haven’t seen Elvis, so I’m late to the party.
Feyd-Rautha is a hairless, ‘sexually vulnerable’ sadomasochist with serious mommy issues. He’s a buff albino with a shelled egg for a head. He looks like the love child of Voldemort and Megamind. He is utterly terrifying.
The film isn’t perfect — I struggled to fully engage for much of its first hour. This is partly because of the jumpy storytelling style that Villeneuve and Spaihts employ. It’s great that the film picks up in medias res and drops us right into a thrilling scuffle between Fremen outlaws and Harkonnen soldiers; less so that this manner of storytelling persists for the rest of the movie. Scenes appear to have their natural beginning and ends chopped off, and as a result it’s a struggle to tell exactly how much time is passing as Paul and Jessica attempt to win the Fremen’s trust and learn the ways of the desert. It’s a little disorientating, and makes the story feel rushed in parts; a strange thing to say, perhaps, about a movie with a 165-minute runtime, but this feels to me like a longer film that has been edited with the intention of getting it under 3 hours. I would rather they had gone all-in with an extra 20 minutes or so just to smooth out some of the jumpy pacing. I don’t mind a long film in the case of blockbuster event cinema of this magnitude.
There are, however, some great moments in the somewhat haphazard opening act; Paul’s first sandworm ride, in particular, is spectacular. And the real turning point for me came with that Giedi Prime gladiator scene. From that point onwards, I was totally engaged. The thing is, the pacing issues of the first hour continue for the rest of the film; there are illogical, unexplained narrative jumps right up until the denouement. It’s just that the movie manages to build a momentum that is so thrilling, so breakneck, that it renders these pacing issues far less troublesome. It has to be said that the human drama at the film’s centre (the relationship between Paul and Chani, and their conflicting feelings about the journey the young Duke is on) is, perhaps unsurprisingly, lost somewhat amid the increasing scale of the action surrounding it. But Villeneuve does a good job of snapping that smaller-scale drama back into focus in the final scenes.
Dune: Part Two is an imperfect film, but it's a towering blockbuster achievement, and a cinema-going experience I won’t soon forget. I enjoyed it more the second time around. The sound and the fury of it all is phenomenal, even if its heart and soul can get a little lost among the colossal spectacle and dense narrative.
No accompanying review of ‘Something Old’ to watch this time around — but you know what makes an excellent double feature with Dune: Part Two?
… Dune.