Dune: Part Two is an improvement over Part One, a maximalist sci-fi epic with an impressive sense of scale. Director Denis Villeneuve uses his vast setting, the desert planet of Arrakis, to show the miniscule size of humanity against giant machines and monsters. His sense of spectacle puts most special-effects blockbuster cinema to shame. That visual panache could also be found in Part One, so what’s new here? Unlike the 2021 film, which suffered from being an incomplete half a movie, there is a more of an arc to Part Two. It has a proper climax, and while the final minutes set up yet another film, Villeneuve and his co-screenwriter Jon Spaihts needn’t rely on the exposition and world-building that defined the first film. He trusts his audience to keep up.
Even with all those positive changes, however, the improvement over Part One is modest. After the momentum of the first hour, there is a languid middle section where Villeneuve adds intrigue because the plot requires it, not because it interests him. Throughout Villeneuve’s career, the director has had a marked disinterest in humanity. He would rather explore heady ideas, letting his characters and actors serve as vessels for his grandiose themes. Part Two is like that, to the point where character pivots are sudden, and the actors fail to add a personal dimension to explorations of war and fanaticism. No matter the triumph or setback, each plot development and inflection point is as dry as the sands where film takes place.
Set shortly after the events of Part One, we catch up on Paul (Timothée Chalamet), a Duke’s son who escapes annihilation and now ingratiates himself with the Fremen, the indigenous people of the desert planet. Paul wants revenge on the Empire, who he sees as responsible for the siege on Arrakis that took his father’s life, and his birthright. Most of Part Two follow his journey to overthrow the empire, a goal that can only be accomplished by becoming a warrior prophet to the eyes of the Fremen. Two people are instrumental to the propaganda campaign: Paul’s mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), who becomes a reluctant zealot, and the Fremen leader Stilgar (Javier Bardem), a true believer who thinks Paul will return lush greenery to Arrakis. This macro-scale manipulation does not sit well with Paul – or his Fremen lover Chani (Zendaya) – until it becomes the most convenient path forward.
Chalamet’s performance is thankless, and to his credit, he does not shy from the dark implications of his character’s conduct. Once Paul drinks the proverbial Kool-Aid – in this case, a bright blue poison distilled from the bowels of baby sand worms – he thinks nothing of committing atrocities or betraying those closest to him. The script offers little sense of Paul’s interiority, so Chalamet accomplishes this transition through nonverbal acting, whether it’s how he steadies his gaze or loses his youthful exuberance. The trouble is in the journey, not the result. Villeneuve includes so many Fremen sieges on Arrakis, so many scenes of spectacle, that all the character development is sudden. Jessica abandons all her maternal instinct at the drop of a hat, while Chani’s affection for Paul is almost arbitrary (Zendaya and Chalamet do not have much physical chemistry – not that it would interest Villeneuve if they did).
These character problems may seem minor, but they add up, especially when a film with a scope this massive needs something to ground it. What is spectacle, anyway, if not action without the emotional involvement of suspense? There are images in Part Two that viewers will never forget, like a grotesque, black-and-white tournament where the psychopath Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler) slaughters people in a Romanesque colosseum, or when the Fremen ride sandworms into battle. The sound effects and music are also ear-piercingly loud, an auditory onslaught on thumping bass that adds to an overwhelming sensory overload. As breathtaking and pulverizing as the technical qualities may be, they lose their meaning without a meatier connection. To use a simple counterexample, Star Wars connects with legions of fans because – between the space opera with laser swords – there is space (pun intended) for the viewer to care about the characters as individuals, rather than hollow metaphors. It barely registers when Paul gets his revenge, and Villeneuve does not seem to have the wherewithal to understand that empty feeling should be at least partially intentional.
In recent comments, Villeneuve has discussed his distaste for movie dialogue. The sentiment makes sense on one level, as the most memorable moments in Dune: Part Two are callbacks to silent filmmakers like D.W. Griffiths and Leni Riefenstahl (there is a touch of Triumph of the Will to how the film depicts fascistic ritual and rallies on the planet of Paul’s enemy). At the same time, Villeneuve’s statement is ironic, since his best film, Arrival, is dialogue-driven, and is quite literally about the need for communication to push humanity forward. The sensibility of “image over dialogue” is the greatest strength to Part Two, and its greatest weakness. In an era where many special effects are muddled computer-generated slop, Villeneuve practically stands alone as a Hollywood director with genuine specificity of vision, and the capital to achieve it. What also defines that same era is a failure to create any meaningful, lingering emotion – except perhaps for the joy of fan-service recognition – and in that sense, our most visionary genre director is also too typical of what passes for ordinary.
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