Believe the Hype: Dune Part Two is a Feast for the Mind and the Senses

It's quite good!

When visionary filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky tragically failed to get his wildly ambitious adaptation of Dune made, and visionary filmmaker David Lynch tragically succeeded in adapting Dune for the big screen, it made Frank Herbert’s best-seller seem unadaptable. 

Then something unexpected happened. Visionary filmmaker Denis Villeneuve adapted the best-seller in a pair of mega-budgeted blockbusters that pleased audiences and critics alike. 

I’ve seen the David Lynch version of Dune multiple times. I wrote about it negatively for My World of Flops a lifetime ago and positively when I re-watched it for my lengthy jaunt through Virginia Madsen’s complete filmography for Control Nathan Rabin 4.0. 

That said, I did not remember a goddamn thing about Dune, a movie whose premise is so convoluted that Universal went to the unusual step of giving out glossaries to select audiences so they wouldn’t be hopelessly confused back in 1984. 

I did not see Villeneuve’s Dune because I wasn’t reviewing new films when it came out. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to follow Dune Part II. I definitely would have gotten more out of the movie if I’d seen its predecessor, but I could understand it as much as someone like myself can understand anything in a world as hopelessly complicated as our own. 

Dune Part 2 opens more or less the same way as Lynch’s Dune: with the impossibly beautiful Villeneuve (Madsen in the Lynch version, Florence Pugh here) unpacking exposition in the form of journal entries about the perilous state her family is in after the events of the first Dune. 

As the film opens, protagonist Paul Atreides (Timothee Chamalet) is well on his way to making a dramatic transformation from being the scion of a powerful family to being a prophet, a messiah, and ultimately a God. 

Paul begins to change on a biological and emotional level on the desert planet of Arrakis, the only source of all-important Spice in the universe. The ambitious warrior goes native, adopting the customs and traditions of the Fremen, a group of tough, savvy fundamentalists led by Stilgar (Javier Bardem). 

Stilgar sees Paul as a prophet sent by the Gods. When Paul denies his divinity, it is seen as further proof of his godhood. Obviously, a messiah would be too humble to actually proclaim himself a messiah.

Dune Part Two is lousy with contemporary political relevance. For example, QAnon people have posited that Donald Trump, possibly the world’s biggest and most unapologetic sinner, is a prophet sent from God to save our country from godless heathens.

Trump knows even he can’t drop a Truth Social post about how, actually, he is a righteous warrior of God waging a secret, lonely battle against Satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles. Even a liar and a narcissist as egregious as Trump can’t claim to be a prophet, but he has not done anything to make people think that he isn’t the God-sent world-saver his biggest, craziest, and most deluded supporters believe he is. 

It is politically advantageous for Trump to have people think that he is a messiah and a savior of babies and not the world’s worst human being. 

The Fremen at least worship Paul because he has superhuman powers of prognostication. Trump fans think he’s God because several boomer friends on their Facebook timelines have posted memes about his divine nature. 

There are Fremen who do not believe that Paul is anything more than an enormously savvy, calculating leader seeking what all leaders and politicians crave, whether they know it or not: power. This contingent includes Chani (Zendaya), a formidable, cynical warrior who becomes Paul’s love interest. 

On a very blunt metaphorical level, Dune, in all of its incarnations, is about colonialism and the regrettable universal instinct to find, conquer, and then subjugate and exploit new worlds, particularly if they possess valuable and rare resources, like Spice or oil.

The Fremen were modeled after the Bedouin and San people, but they represent every group of indigenous people fighting against a colonialist force with more advanced weapons and technology, from the Taliban to the Viet Kong. 

Like Lynch’s Dune, Villeneuve’s adaptation of the book Jodorowsky might have read at some point if his version of Herbert’s magnum opus got made has a lot of plot to get through, with a lot of characters and conflicts and people, some with names like Duncan Idaho. Duncan Idaho, incidentally, sounds less like a real name than a franchise coffee and donut spot in the Midwest. 

Thankfully, Villeneuve also has two movies, over five hours and three hundred million dollars, to tell a story that often feels as vast and imposing as the universe. The French-Canadian auteur is able to give the proceedings the time and space they need, both to be coherent and to do justice to the immensity and complexity of Herbert’s text. 

Villeneuve’s cerebral blockbuster is rooted in thorny philosophical, political, and religious concerns. There’s a Shakespearean depth and richness to its elaborate world of warring dynasties. Yet Dune Chapter Two, like George Lucas’ original Star Wars trilogy, has the pulp appeal of a 1930s science-fiction serial. 

Dune Chapter Two works as a spectacle and a heady exploration of the complicated, dual nature of ultimate power. As is generally the case, the bad guys get all the best lines and scenes and the most stomach-churning make-up and costumes. 

The House Atreides that Paul represents is at war with the malevolent House Harkonnen. Stellan Skarsgard plays the treacherous Baron Vladimir Harkonnen as a physically repulsive man-maggot who leaves behind a trail of slime everywhere he goes. 

He’s corpulent and creepy, a creature of pure ooze. His internal corruption has bubbled up to the toxic surface. He is a sorry sight to behold and one it will be hard to forget. 

He’s assisted, after a fashion, by his nephew Glassu “Beast” Rabban (Dave Bautista). As an actor, Bautista has often played characters whose brute strength and intimidating appearance belies a fundamental gentleness. Even in M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin, where he plays someone convinced he must murder a child to prevent the apocalypse, Bautista is almost disconcertingly sympathetic and relatable. He doesn’t want to do what he sees as his destiny, but his sense of morality says it must be done. 

That is not true of Dune Part Two. Bautista plays a character who looks like Darth Vader on No Helmet Friday and behaves with undisguised sadism. He is a blunt weapon of a man who lives to hurt, to inflict pain, to destroy.  

The same is true of Glossu’s even more psychotic younger brother, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. He’s a ruthless killer with rock star charisma, so it makes sense that Austin Butler, an actor best known for playing the ultimate rock star, Elvis Presley, would replace Sting (who played him in the Lynch version) in the role. 

If the Baron is a massive man-maggot, then Feyd-Rautha is a slithering snake, coiled and dangerous. 

Paul and Chan can’t help but seem a little colorless by comparison, which is ironic, considering the albino-like appearance of the Harkonnen clan. 

I enjoyed Lynch’s Dune even though I had no idea what was going on at any given point. Coherence is, thankfully, one of Dune Part Two’s myriad virtues. As I wrote before, it has the time and the budget to realize an almost impossibly ambitious vision. 

Dune Part Two is a blockbuster that owes more to David Lean than Marvel. Jodorowsky’s ghost haunts Dune Part Two, which is strange, considering that he’s still alive. Seemingly, every other ambitious science-fiction movie was inspired by Jodorowsky’s legendary unmade version of the film. Why should Villeneuve’s films be the exception? 

At one hundred and sixty-five minutes, Dune Part Two is a very long movie that feels short. I was thoroughly impressed and a little surprised when it ended.

Will I see the 2021 Dune? I’m not sure. I thought this was terrific, but I have an AWFUL lot of movies I need to see, and the first part of this saga runs one hundred and fifty-five minutes long. 

I will definitely see it if someone chooses it for the Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 option at my other website, Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place, where patrons can choose a movie for me to see and write about for anywhere from seventy-five to one hundred dollars. So if you want to force me to see what I’m sure is a terrific movie I’d probably very much enjoy, you can make the magic happen here.

Four Stars out of Five