Anyone with hankering for BIG WORM ACTION will get tons of it in Dune: Part Two (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video), which delivers plenty of thrills where 2021’s Dune mostly gave us a bit too much of Timothee Chalamet looking sleepy. My beef with the first film is that it’s all setup and not much else, a chilly space opera set on a very hot desert planet. But director Denis Villeneuve’s eye for impressively sweeping, artful visuals is very much in motion the second time around, as the battle for all the spice on Arrakis heats up, and the temperature matches the tone for a rousing epic.
The Gist: KETCHUP TIME: As you may recall at the end of the first Dune, the evil Harkonnen obliterated the Atreides’ spice-mining stronghold on Arrakis. They didn’t declare war or anything – just a craven sneak attack that sent our protag Paul Atreides (Chalamet) and his pregnant mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) fleeing to the Fremen after everyone else was killed. If all these names and places seem like an impenetrable wall o’ sci-fi narrative, well, you should’ve paid closer attention to the onslaught of goofy proper nouns in the first movie. I’ll help a little: Everyone wants spice, because it’s the key to power and riches in the galaxy; you need big machines to sift it from the sand on Arrakis, but you have to be quick lest the gigantic sandworms rumble along and swallow you whole.
The Fremen are desert folk who live in underground strongholds on Arrakis. The Harkonnen are Hairless Nazis led by Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard), a putrid blubberlump that looks half-human, half-Jabba the Hutt. Lady Jessica is a member of the religious order Bene Gesserit, who believe that Paul, who has visions of the future – or maybe they’re just dreams – is thee Chosen One. The Fremen take in Paul and Lady Jessica, and they’re divided between believing he’s their savior and being suspicious of his motives. Stilgar (Javier Bardem), one of the Fremen leaders, really glugs down the fundamentalist Kool-Aid, and interprets Paul’s every twitch and scratch to be a sign that he’s the religious It Boy around here. Fremen warrior Chani (Zendaya) is skeptical, but she ignores the red flags because, one look into Paul’s sad doe eyes, and she can’t help but melt down to a hormone puddle.
OK, I think we’re mostly caught up now. Lady Jessica is compelled via death threat to become the new Reverend Mother of the Fremen Bene Gesserit sect, which leaves the lovely Becky Fergs sullied with face tattoos. Paul convinces the Fremen that he’s not here to take over – he just wants to fight the Harkonnen alongside them. He learns their customs and, alongside Chani – with whom he’s now sharing a tent, hubba hubba – leads ambushes that cripple the Harkonnens’ spice mining operation, much to the frustration of the Baron’s idiot nephew, Beast Rabban (Dave Bautista). Note to fascist dictators: if you chilled on the nepotism for once, you might actually accomplish your vile plans.
I haven’t even gotten to the new characters yet. Because Rabban is licking the shit out of the moron Blarney Stone, the Baron replaces him with his other nephew, Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler), an ultrapsycho who’s killed more people than you’ve eaten slices of pizza. We also meet Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken exclamation point!), who we learn ordered the Harkonnen to slaughter the Atreides; his daughter, Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh), isn’t much more than a third-act plot cog at this point, but she dons some pretty wild headwear. We also see the return of Paul’s old mentor, the warrior Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin), notable because he Knows Where The Nukes Are. And Bene Gesserit leader Reverend Mother Mohiam (Charlotte Rampling) remains an amoral influencer and power broker, hissing from behind her ridiculous towering veil. So, is your money on Paul being the savior, or just a fraud? NO SPICY SPOILERS.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Modern mega-blockbusters don’t get ambitious like Villeneuve’s Dune very often – the easy comparison is Mad Max: Fury Road, and now you’ll be compelled to ponder whether you’re a car person or a worm person. (That’s not a tough choice in this instance; car person it is!)
Performance Worth Watching: Between Dune, Mission: Impossible and her highly memorable villain role in Doctor Sleep, Becky Fergs may be the new Queen of the Elevated Genre Flick. You have to appreciate her intensity. Same for Butler, who bears down and brings some evil-ass charisma to the deliciously despicable Feyd-Rautha.
Memorable Dialogue: “Abomination!” – Mother Mohiam’s exhortation when her religious-magic shtick gets shut the f— down
Sex and Skin: Nothing beyond a brief postcoital snuggle for Paul and Chani – unless you interpret all the worm-riding and put-your-hand-in-the-box scenes as visual innuendo.
Our Take: Villeneuve gives us much more to appreciate in his second Dune missive: Rousing action sequences ranging from worm-riding (which is part water-skiing, part rodeo) to tense knife fights and large-scale battles, and a thorough seat-soaker of a finale which combines all of the above. The screenplay is a sturdy distillation of Frank Herbert’s writing down to something comprehensible – no small task – that doesn’t make us feel like we’re lugging around a load of momentum-crushing exposition. The political power struggles are complex without being stultifying, and the story of Paul, a man who just might believe his own bullshit, is compelling in its ethical ambiguity.
And yet, Dune: Part Two doesn’t push itself to the greatness we might expect from Villeneuve. The film lands somewhere between the razor-sharp Blade Runner 2049 – thus far the director’s masterpiece – and the resonant emotion he cultivated in Arrival. He draws stronger, more memorable performances from Chalamet and Zendaya this time around, but their love story falls well behind the machinations of the plot and its relatively potent assertions about the evils of colonialism and religious fundamentalism. Villeneuve compels us to invest our intellect in the subtext and rouses us to pump our fists in response to violent conflict, but the emotional heart of the story beats only in the distance, drowned out by spectacle. Of course, we’re absolutely here and ready for that spectacle, and the film delivers, its sonorous thematic depth heightening the stakes of the conflict. And considering the fraught history of Dune’s path from book to screen, very goodness is an altogether realistic expectation that Villeneuve meets.
Our Call: Villeneuve can take a somewhat improbable W for a difficult adaptation. Dune: Part Two makes the first film better in retrospect, and the eventual third one, Dune: Messiah, absolutely welcome. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
