TL;DR – Even with such a weight of expectation that I had for it, Dune: Part 2 still stuck the landing with a gusto I was not expecting.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I was invited to a screening of this film.

Dune: Part Two Review –

I need to be clear when coming into this that this might have been the most excited I have been to see a film since maybe The Lord of the Rings. I adore this universe (okay, only the first three books, don’t @ me), and to see the First Film not only get the universe they were adapting but also have the budget to show it off. Well, there is a reason it was my favourite film of 2021. However, that is a lot of expectation, and in my experience, that can be a recipe for disaster.

So to set the scene, the plan of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård) has succeeded. With the help of  Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken), Arrakis/Dune is his, the Atreides are dead, the millennia-long feud is over, and Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen (Austin Butler) is getting ready to take over from his incompetent brother Glossu Rabban Harkonnen (Dave Bautista). There is only one problem: not all the Atreides are dead, for Paul (Timothée Chalamet) and Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) made it through the desert to the Fremen people and are now in the hands of Stilgar (Javier Bardem) and Chani (Zendaya). It was safety brought with a blood price, which is increasing as the Harkonnen troops send patrols deeper into the desert. For Paul, his new place with the Fremen could be a way to find revenge for the destruction of his family, but is he ready for leadership to be thrust upon him? For once the Fremen are unleashed, can they be stopped?

There are a lot of things that I could talk about here, but the first one has to be the casting. Few films are so impeccably cast as this was, with no weak links and everyone doing something interesting. Javier Bardem is having a blast, and it shows, given he has some of the best lines in the entire film. Timothée Chalamet is just as commanding as he needs to be. Even if we never get Dune Messiah, I think we got a taste of it here. Zendaya shines as Chani and gives the character some more depth. Rarely has someone completely captured a character in an instant, as Austin Butler did with Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. It’s entirely menacing but with some added complexity.

Even some of the characters that are playing small parts absolutely nail that role. Léa Seydoux was as fascinating as she was dangerous as Lady Margot Fenring. Christopher Walken walked the line between being commanding and impotent as the emperor, which you love to see. I also loved the energy that Florence Pugh brought to Princess Irulan; completely observant and with conflicting loyalties. It was a joy to watch the performances alone because all you wanted was more, more of Dave Bautista, more of Stellan Skarsgård, more of everyone. After all, it was that good.

As with the first film, the entire production design of the film is outstanding. You can tell the amount of work that all the artisans have put together because everything works in a weirdly wonderful way. There is the scale of the visuals. Things in the Dune Universe are not small, and you feel that presence here. You get action scenes happening in and around the large harvesters where cover is constantly on the move. It helps create that tension that you need in every encounter. But more than that, it becomes a visual reminder of the sheer scale of the task that the Fremen are trying to accomplish with their guerrilla tactics up against a monolith of power. Using the visual style to help support the underlying themes of the film is one of the areas where Dune truly thrives, so it was great to see it replicated in the second outing.   

We also get a lot more juxtaposition of locations this time around as we cut to different planets like Kaitain and Giedi Prime throughout the runtime. These help make sure that the desert does not become overwhelming in the mind but also help remind you of the stakes that exist in this universe. I loved the visual styling of the Harkonnen home planet and how it shifted from outside to inside. It also helped contextualise the visual design choice of the Harkonnen’s from the first film. It is weird and grimy and a perfect fit for people who see the world in black and white because that is baked into their everyday existence.  

While the first film dabbled with religion and prophecy, Part 2 dives into this hard. Which is perfectly understandable because this is the darker and messier part of the novel that the film is adapting. To explore this, they have taken some shifts in the Fremen to create a more multi-faceted people, or at least a two-faceted people. You also see the Atreides get in the weeds in some messy and uncomfortable ways, which is something more implied in the book, and I like that they show it here. I do think it was a good idea to be a bit more prescriptive about this side of Dune because it gives you a better idea of what is coming, which is probably one of the strengths of adapting a work when you know the endpoint.

One area that I am still mulling over while writing this review is some of the other changes that they made to the story. While I will try to be vague, timelines get a bit truncated, relationships don’t quite match the source material, and there are some missing characters and moments. Some of these issues flow one from the other, which leads to the film having a significantly higher ultrasound component than I was expecting. But how they resolved that was fascinating. This does have the outcome of short-changing some characters like Lady Jessica and uplifting others like Paul. Still, those are the understandable choices that you have to make when adapting a work to a different medium.  

I am not entirely sure about the other changes; it will probably take at least another viewing to be certain. It is clear that they had the future of this franchise in view when making this film with at least one cameo that made me go, ‘Oh, that will be a good choice in the next film’. The big difference for me is that the timeline changes make some character actions feel absolutely fine in the context of the film adaptation, even if it runs contrary to their actions in the novel, and that is the juxtaposition that I am still processing. In some places, these choices make the film a bit less weird, and in others, it ramps up the weirdness, which makes for some odd moments. Also, while I know that the film was meant to be thematically messy, some moments were more visually gloomy than they needed to be.

In the end, do we recommend Dune: Part Two? Absolutely. This is an absolutely stunning work of art where every department on the production, from costumes, to location scouts, to visual effects, and more, have come together to put something majestic on screen. It can be messy, bloody, and brutal at times, but that is the world it is working in. Now, I want to watch Part One and Part Two back-to-back to see how they flow together. If you liked Dune: Part Two, we would recommend to you The Northman.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Dune: Part Two
Directed by – Denis Villeneuve
Screenplay by – Denis Villeneuve & Jon Spaihts
Based on – Dune by Frank Herbert
Music by – Hans Zimmer
Cinematography by – Greig Fraser
Edited by – Joe Walker
Production/Distribution Companies – Legendary Pictures, Villeneuve Films, Universal Pictures & Warner Bros Pictures.
Starring – Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Léa Seydoux, Souheila Yacoub, Stellan Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling, Javier Bardem & Anya Taylor-Joy with Roger Yuan, Babs Olusanmokun, Imola Gáspár, Joseph Beddelem, Alison Halstead & Giusi Merli
Rating – Australia: M; Canada: PG; Germany: 12; New Zealand: M; United Kingdom: 12A; United States: PG-13