When Denis Villeneuve’s first Dune movie came out, I didn’t feel like giving it a full review, because as much as I loved the world-building and visuals, I very much felt that it was only half a movie. I didn’t have much to say without seeing how the filmmakers would resolve the story in the sequel.
Well, now the sequel’s here, and I do indeed have Things to Say. So this will sort of be a review of both movies, just with a stronger emphasis on the second. It will also contain spoilers…but keep in mind, this is a franchise based on a 60-year-old book in which the main character is prescient and everyone’s unavoidable destiny is spelled out a quarter of the way in. Plot spoilers are kind of irrelevant.
Dune and Dune: Part Two
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Writers: Denis Villeneuve, Jon Spaihts, and Eric Roth
Starring: Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya, Javier Bardem, Stellan Skarsgard, Oscar Isaac, Austin Butler
Music By: Hans Zimmer
Cinematography By: Greig Fraser
Rated PG-13 (Contains knife fights, explosions, and a talking foetus)
Let me see if I can break down the plot of these movies:
10,000 years in the future, Arrakis is the most important planet in the universe. A harsh desert world, it’s the only place where the hallucinogenic substance known as spice, which powers space travel in the galaxy-spanning human empire, can be harvested. As a result, it’s been fought over for centuries by the Great Houses that manage the empire, all of whom have oppressed the native people of the planet, known as the Fremen. At the beginning of the first movie, House Atreides is ordered to take over the planet from its previous governors, the brutal Harkonnens, as part of the emperor’s latest political machinations.
Paul Atreides (later Paul Muad’Dib Usul Atreides) is the most important person in the universe. He’s the young son of Duke Leto Atreides and his concubine Lady Jessica, a member of the all-female religious order known as the Bene Gesserit, whose clairvoyance, mental manipulation, and control of their own reproductive systems are the semi-secret power behind all the galaxy’s thrones. To Jessica, Paul might be the Kwisatz Haderach, a being with power over time and space which her order has been trying to breed into existence for generations. To the Fremen, his arrival on Arrakis heralds the fulfilment of a prophecy about the Lisan al-Gaib, a messianic figure who will liberate the planet. To Paul himself, both destinies are a burden forced on him against his will, and his prophetic visions show them leading to tragedy and horror. But as he survives a massacre by the Harkonnens, joins the Fremen’s fight for freedom, and falls in love with one of their warriors, his desire for revenge and drive to protect what he has left draw him inexorably toward the future he fears.
I need to start by laying my cards on the table and saying that I think these movies, taken together, are the most magnificent example of science fiction filmmaking in recent memory. I don’t usually compare other genre blockbusters to The Lord of the Rings, because it’s kind of like comparing the winners in a middle school art contest with Michelangelo, but when I look at the sheer scale and ambition of the Dune movies thus far (particularly Part Two), and the level of craft and attention to detail that went into every aspect of their production, it’s the only comparison that springs to mind. Every costume, lighting choice, and prop feels like it has an intention rooted in millennia of lived history. The invented languages sound like they actually mean something. The sandworms look like Lovecraftian gods come to life, yet when someone rides them, the cinematography and sound design make the audience feel like we’re right there with them. Every set and location, from the grand halls of the colonial palace on Arrakis, to the endless sands of the desert, to the Harkonnen gladiatoral arena bathed in black-and-white infrared light, feels real and solid and at the same time so colossal that it should dwarf the human drama playing out against it–and, at times, in the first movie, that’s what happens. But by the second movie, every actor’s performance has grown to fit their world, and the themes of power and destiny feel so epic in scope that it doesn’t seem right to explore them any other way.
As you can probably tell, Dune is a large-scale sci-fi saga with a ton of lore behind it, even considering how much of the book was cut to make it adaptable for film. But in a nutshell, it’s a story about power–the different forms it takes, the kinds of people who seek it out, and what it does to those who wield it. The first movie sets up a world of precariously balanced factions, all fighting for control over the galaxy in their own unique ways. The Harkonnens rely on brute force, which comes to a head in the second movie with the introduction of Feyd-Rautha, a sort of foil for Paul who is mainly considered as a potential leader because of his ferocity and sadomasochism. The Atreides, led by the most compassionate of the players we see, try diplomacy (which doesn’t work out well for them). The Bene Gesserit use emotional and sexual manipulation, plus their ability to see into the future and concoct long-term strategies. Against all of them are set the Fremen, who use “desert power”–fierce communal loyalty and the ability to cooperate with their own environment to the detriment of intruders. Over the course of two movies, Paul learns to wield all these forms of power, but he isn’t able to “win” Arrakis until he adds one more to the mix: the power of faith.
These movies, especially Part Two, treat religious fanaticism with the same existential dread that Oppenheimer used for the atomic bomb. Scenes of worshippers gathering around Paul are scored with the most ominous bass riffs Hans Zimmer has put his name to since The Dark Knight. The glimpses we see of his prophetic visions are consistently nightmarish, and every actor’s performance becomes scarier the more they believe in “the prophet Muad’Dib” (especially Rebecca Ferguson as Jessica, who truly earns the “witch” label sometimes thrown at her in the second movie). Because the power of film is to compel empathy through visuals, it’s always a bit risky to make a movie in which the audience isn’t meant to root for the protagonist–and, indeed, the scenes of Fremen conquest in Part Two look so awesome that I fully expect them to create a whole new generation of misguided Paul fans (if not Feyd-Rautha fans–Austin Butler is ridiculously charismatic in that role). But Villeneuve has at least made a brave effort to show what a trap it is to marry religion with political power. For all the huge scale of his worldbuilding, he knows how to make the story’s themes personal by focusing them on a few key relationships.
In a slight change from the source material, the movies show that different regions of Arrakis have their own beliefs and customs, with the Fremen in the embattled north being more sceptical of the prophecy (or at least, wanting to believe the Lisan al Gaib would be Fremen), while those in the harsher south are labeled “fundamentalists” and are much more ready to believe in whatever saviour a tattooed Bene Gesserit might point them at. These different perspectives are represented by the two major Fremen characters: Chani, Paul’s love interest; and Stilgar, the leader of the desert fighters he joins to strike back at the Harkonnens. Despite being in love with Paul and believing in his strengths as a leader, Chani spends most of the movie resisting her people’s belief in the prophecy, seeing it as just another way for foreigners to manipulate and enslave them. And the audience knows she’s right, since it’s revealed in the first movie that the Bene Gesserit deliberately planted the prophecy in order to pave the way for a potential Kwisatz Haderach to arise on the planet. So Chani becomes a much-needed audience surrogate and moral compass to balance out Paul’s increasingly dangerous quest for power, which is something I always felt was missing from the book (which might be an unfair assessment, since I haven’t read the sequels yet–don’t hate me, book fans!).
Stilgar, on the other hand, represents the fundamentalist belief in a militant messiah, and his character has a very different journey. When he’s introduced in the first movie, Javier Bardem plays him as a desert-wise, no-nonsense leader who distrusts foreigners but is willing to give Paul and his mother a chance because of his religious beliefs. And when, in the second movie, those beliefs start fixating on Paul, it’s mostly played for laughs at first. But after a certain point, it becomes clear that Stilgar’s idea of the Lisan al-Gaib has superseded his friendship with the actual person who’s been fighting alongside him, and that’s when the entire movie takes a darker turn. The Fremen’s faith in Paul is portrayed as a trap–both for them (it results in them being subjugated by foreigners to a greater degree than ever before) and for Paul (no matter how destructive he knows his rule will be, he can’t back out of it after a certain point).
In Stilgar and the other Arrakis freedom fighters, we see how turning Paul into a religious symbol degrades their friendship, and even their respect, for him as a human being. And when he decides to fully embrace that symbol, it breaks down his humanity and his ability to relate to other humans. I’m not usually his biggest fan, but I think Timothee Chalamet deserves a lot of credit for selling the transformation from an idealistic, sheltered prince to a charismatic yet terrifying dark messiah. It’s such a dramatic shift, yet he makes it believable. And the filmmakers do a great job of making the audience feel the shattering of Paul’s bond with Chani. By the end of the second movie, Paul has achieved all his goals, but has also destroyed all the relationships that were important to him, and is now trapped by his own followers on a path that will inevitably lead to more destruction.
Because of their ambition and scope, I dared to compare the Dunes with The Lord of the Rings trilogy–a comparison that might become even more apt in the future, since a third Dune movie has been announced–but in reality, they’re very different beasts, simply by virtue of their source material. The Lord of the Rings (book and adaptation) is a classic hero’s journey, set in a world of fairly black-and-white morality, in which the good guys’ rise to power is a sign of a happy ending. Dune, on the other hand, has the bones of a heroic fantasy (young, inexperienced “chosen one” gets thrust into a war by some older mentors, goes through a journey of struggle and transformation, and defeats his enemies in a symbolically satisfying way), but without the “hero” part. While Paul is definitely more sympathetic than the Harkonnens, he’s also not above using brutal tactics to achieve his goals, which aren’t any more lofty than personal revenge and survival. And his rise to power is unequivocally portrayed as a tragedy, not a triumph.
In other words, it’s a lot easier to draw parallels between Dune and real-world politics. The Fremen’s struggle for freedom, against an empire that wants to harvest their resources regardless of the impact on their planet, obviously brings to mind the various Western proxy wars over oil and land in the Middle East (which, unfortunately, might resonate with 2024 audiences even more strongly than 1960s book readers). And to Americans, in an election year during which one party is getting louder and louder about its desire to turn the country into a militant theocracy, a warning against charismatic leaders who use religious rhetoric as a weapon feels pretty timely. It’s just as true now as it was in the ’60s: blind faith in a human being whose version of paradise just so happens to include giving them control over their followers’ lives doesn’t lead anywhere good. Even if they look like Timothee Chalamet.
Personally, though, I’m just excited to have a movie like this again–a real, big, explosive action movie that also reminds me how much my nerdy little heart loves things like alien planet ecology and futuristic religions. I haven’t been as happy to see a movie in IMAX, or geeked out as hard about the backstory and lore behind it, since…well, since Denis Villeneuve’s last sci-fi movie. There are simply no other directors doing it like him. Throw in the incredible cinematography of Greig Fraser, Hans Zimmer actually caring about a project instead of tossing it to his interns, the most breathtaking costume design I’ve seen in a long time courtesy of Jacqueline West, and a cast filled out by some of the best actors working today–and you have something approaching a perfect sci-fi movie. It’s not quite there–I have a few complaints. I wish the pacing wasn’t so dramatically different between the first and the second movie; I wish the editing had made a few plot points clearer in Part Two; and I wish both movies were longer. I also think the concerns many Muslim and Middle Eastern critics have about the movies toning down the Arabic influence from the books are valid (though I think there’s too much nuance to get into them here). But considering the book’s reputation for being unadaptable, and considering how dull and formulaic most mainstream sci-fi movies have been lately (looking at you, Star Wars), Dune hits like water in the desert.
I’m eagerly awaiting the adaptation of Dune Messiah–and hopefully I won’t have to wait for centuries!
Wizard at the Clicks 