Dune: Part Two

Review

I enjoyed DUNC 1 a lot but felt pretty let down here. Some of my broad complaints: 1- The pacing of the whole thing is very hit or miss. There was too much content for a 2.5 hour movie, this really needed to be a trilogy. If the first third of this movie (Shai Hulud adopting Paul) had been a movie, then the rest had been a movie that would have helped a lot. 2- That first third was also pretty bad. The fights in it make no sense (even for Dune's weird tech/rules). Worse, the romance gave me intense flashbacks to Star Wars prequels. There was some extremely stilted dialog and the chemistry between the leads was no there, I like both of them but this just didn't work. 3- The racial and gender politics of this movie are just bad. I think Dune as a 60s SciFi novel was pretty progressive and interesting. But in 2024 there are a lot of glaring issues. Gendered roles in society have not aged well and there is a lot of implied gender essentialism. Beyond that having all the off-world characters be white is, well, it's the default, but it's a Choice. Beyond the white savior issues all of the leaders of humanity we see are white. And there are ways for that to work and add to the story, but they're not on display here. 4- The best part of these movies is without a doubt the visual design for a lot of things. But unfortunately that's a bit let down with Dune and its deserts being the primary setting. The Fremen and their settlements are not (and can not be) as visually interesting as other parts of the galaxy, and we already saw most of that in the first movie. The shots in the desert are gorgeous but can't compare to how interesting the scenes on the Harkonnen home planet are. 5- The holy war aspect and "fanatics" are poorly handled. We here they're in the south, and there are a lot of them. And I guess some of the people in the big cavern scene are them. But they're faceless and nameless. They're a very important part of the story that only function as a plot device. 5a- The movie has scrubbed a lot of Muslim influence from the Fremen. The language is the most obvious example but we are now given a clearly Muslim inspired people but now divorced from 20th and 21st Muslim revolutionary and well, jihadist politics. 6- I overall like how the film handled Paul's wrestling with destiny/power/etc., but it doesn't have a convincing turn from reluctance to acquiring power. I think this is another area where a third movie would help but we see his reluctance turned to certainty in the span of minutes. I'm glad these films were made, and they do some incredible things, but I think in the balance they can't quite pull it off. I think just increasing the films from 2 to 3 would have resolved a large number of the issues in this film (please more time w.th Lady Jessica!) but as it stands this was a let down. I'll be interested to see where they next movie goes, I do think that Chalamet "turns on" near the end of this film and I suspect the next could be much better. For one thing it will have to give a face and voice to the southern fanatics beyond the limp stand in of Stilgar.

Consumption history1

1. Mar 25, 2024

   Completed★ 2.5 / 5

   Theater viewing