Not since Peter Jackson's OG Lord of the Rings trilogy has there been such an earnest and epic film adaptation of classic genre literature. Villeneuve appears to be working on his magnum opus with his Dune saga. He is digging deep into the themes of the novel (in ways I want to talk about) and bringing the world building and characters to life with a passion and love of this story that makes for incredible cinema.
I'll start out by saying Dune: Part Two is a wonderful movie and the sort that can be enjoyed by almost any audience from the casual to the sci fi loyalists. While it may be a bit dark for the youngest of audiences its themes are accessible to older children while being complex enough for and adult crowd. Dune Part Two is the sort of film to experience on the biggest screen possible but it isn't just gorgeous visuals and spectacular action it is incredible story telling and fascinating performances.
I maintain my position that the novel Dune is extremely problematic when viewed with a modern sensitivity and post-colonial lens with all its white saviour nonsense, the way it treats eastern aesthetics with romantic exoticism, its queer coded homophobia, and issues with female characters. Villeneuve is determined to not just wrestle with these problems in his adaptation (as he did in Dune: Part One) but he takes those bulls by the horns and takes them down. He either exorcizes those issues (as with the queer coding which is just gone) or inverts them so we experience this story from a completely different point of view. While previous filmed adaptations often end this chapter of the story triumphantly, Dune: Part Two ends with an ominous foreboding. Paul is transformed, by Villeneuve's script and by Chalamet's performance into not just an morally ambiguous protagonist, into something quite concerning.
Villeneuve has purposely centred Chani as a way of exploring this saga as something different than how its generally experienced in popular culture. Dune: Part One starts with her and Dune: Part Two ends with her. He is inverting how hero's journey stories are told so it is transformed into something more profound. His approach is brilliant and makes this more than just a big budget Hollywood tentpole, but an old school event that captures public imagination and brings an enduring part of the culture into relevance and re-examination.
I have to comment on how incredible the cast is. Chalamet could have treated this as his "action star" role but instead he tackles Paul in all his complexities, embracing how dark the character becomes. Yes we sympathize but we also can be quite critical of his choices and journey. The film gives him space for this and he runs with it. Ferguson gives a similar performance as her Jessica is as complicated as Paul yet she nails it. Butler has the showiest role. The film makers and the actor both clearly enjoyed taking Feyd-Rautha in a different yet completely authentic direction. Yes he'll be memorably terrifying but he is also so much dimensional than he could have been. Some of the cast feels like they are planting seeds for future films with small yet essential roles which will have more to come, similarly to how Zendaya was used in the first film. Here she truly shines bringing her signature energy and pure force of will to a role that is more and more a central part of this story.
Dune: Part Two doesn't compromise. It gives us a deeply moving, completely engaging, and complex narrative that is going to be satisfying upon repeat viewings as its characters and plots unwind and untangle time and again. It isn't so opaque that it can't be enjoyed on its own in one sitting (it's almost 3 hour runtime flies by) but it is dense and rich enough to be savoured over time. Together Parts One and Two make up one of cinema's most recent epics.
Dune: Part Two
Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Léa Seydoux, Stellan Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling, Javier Bardem, Tim Blake Nelson, Anya Taylor-Joy
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Writers: John Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve
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