Warning: This article contains full spoilers for Dune: Part 2.
Science-fiction nerds and IMAX enthusiasts rejoice, because Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part 2 (review) has already made big waves on its opening weekend, securing a CinemaScore grade of A, a 93% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and pulling in a global total of $178.5 million – a massive jump over its predecessor’s opening weekend gross. In fact, that’s nearly half of what the first film made in its entire run. With numbers like these and excellent reviews, it looks like Warner Bros. has a breakout sequel on its hands, and the chances of a third film happening in Villeneuve’s proposed trilogy – adapting the second book in Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi series, Dune Messiah – appear to be brighter than ever.
But amidst all the accolades, there’s a gnawing sense that whatever flaws Dune: Part 2 may possess, they’re being completely ignored in favor of many film fans already proclaiming it as one of the greatest science-fiction movies of all time, and potentially as a savior of cinema. Setting aside the irony of the movie receiving this kind of unquestioned adulation when it’s about a genetically engineered and ultimately false prophet who uses a people’s faith in him to wage a holy war on the rest of the universe, I can’t help but feel that the extreme response to Dune is only partly because of the film itself and the people who made it.
At a moment where hostility from filmgoers towards the deluge of corporate, micromanaged tentpoles is at an all-time high, Dune’s arrival as a massive-scale blockbuster project with a genuine directorial vision must have felt like the second coming. How did this happen? Let’s take a look.
We Used to Be a Real Country
It may be hard to remember sometimes, but there was a world before cinematic universes, legacy sequels and live-action remakes were all the rage. Studio blockbusters have been an important part of the movie business for several decades, but the 21st century trends popularized by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Star Wars sequel trilogy, and Disney’s insistence on remaking most of their animated classics in live-action really only cemented their dominance of the movie business over the past 10 years and change. During this period, there’s been an increasing sense that many of our biggest movies are no longer under the jurisdiction of their directors, instead being mostly the creation of cadres of studio executives trying to brute force focus-tested, franchise-friendly blockbusters to the top of the box office charts.
Now, this is admittedly an oversimplification that isn’t entirely fair to the many hard-working creatives doing their best in such a taxing industry. Studio interference has existed as long as there’s been movie studios, and there’s nothing wrong with being a director for hire. But the general feeling that the last 10-to-15 years of big-budget filmmaking has pushed further and further into the realm of regurgitated IPs and anonymous direction didn’t come out of a vacuum. Even looking back as recently as the 2000s, blockbusters often had a genuine directorial sensibility that is nowhere near as prevalent in contemporary film. Consider Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, Gore Verbinski’s Pirates of the Caribbean, the Wachowskis’ Matrix sequels, and even George Lucas’ Star Wars prequel trilogy. However you feel about the final products, these were all massive studio productions that are as sincere and idiosyncratic as the directors who helmed them.
Between IPs becoming more important than artists, the COVID-19 pandemic imperiling the theatrical experience, and rising anxiety among creatives about the role generative AI will play in the future of Hollywood, the people who love movies and the people who make them have been in desperate need of a win. The Barbenheimer phenomenon was a shot in the arm for theaters and filmgoers, but there was also a worry that the (at the time) ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes would stifle any momentum the surprise double feature brought to the business. As we slowly head back to normal in 2024, the health of studio filmmaking as once impervious franchises like the MCU and Star Wars suffer serious declines was a major question hanging over the air, and Dune: Part 2 arrived at precisely the right moment to signal to a worried moviegoing public that big-scale blockbusters that feel specific and authored still have a chance to flourish in the theatrical space.
That’s a good thing, but has it also squashed out any acknowledgment of what doesn’t work about the movie from the conversation? Unfortunately, it seems so.
Dissenters of Dune
I was one of the few people who didn’t connect with the first part of Villeneuve’s magnum opus, largely down to that film not having much of anything happen in it. As beautiful as the production design, costumes and cinematography were, the actual plot conveyed felt roughly like the first act of Paul’s journey. So much of the runtime acted as setup for the sequel to come instead of clarifying any meaning that installment had as an individual film. This is why Dune 2 is an improvement, feeling far more focused and eventful because Denis actually adapts the rest of the book and brings this part of the journey to its natural conclusion. However, many of the creative choices beyond mere structure that plagued the first film carry forward into its sequel, leaving a gorgeous adaptation that is massive in scope but lacking in emotional depth.
As incredible as Villeneuve’s Arrakis is as a technical achievement, it’s also as bereft of life as the desert of the film’s title. Because almost every scene has been designed to be an epic moment, there is little to no sense of what normalcy is for any of the people or cultures represented. What status quo for the Fremen is Paul Atreides disrupting by accepting his place as the Lisan al Gaib? What is the functional difference between House Atreides and House Harkonnen when they both share the same brutalist architecture and technology? How exactly do the Bene Gesserit operate and what makes Lady Jessica different enough from the others that she’s seen as a traitor to her own people when she’s acting exactly the same way as them? These and many other dramatic questions are unanswered by the film, and saying there’s clarification in the novel only further illustrates one of the major sticking points.
Even though the two movies put together total around five hours of screen time, they alternately ignore or refuse to explain many of the thornier and more esoteric aspects of the Dune mythology. Fellow IGN contributor Siddhant Adlakha has delved into the ways Dune: Part 2 scrubbed much of the intentional Islamic influence from Herbert’s text, such as never calling Paul’s war a “jihad,” and replacing the Arabic words used by the Fremen in the novel with a new fictional language. This is exactly the sort of cultural specificity that could help the Fremen resonate as a society worth investing in, but it’s been all but excised in the film. If you wanted to know more about what it means for Anya Taylor-Joy’s character Alia to be “pre-born” or how that works, why the weirding way and its associated Prana-bindu training were barely touched on, what an “Abomination” even is, or more details about the political factions or religious themes that make up the very foundation of the Dune universe, these movies can’t really help you.
That’s not even getting into the fuzzy character work, which struggles to make Paul’s internal journey track in any meaningful way. Although the movie makes the (correct) choice to be upfront about how Paul leading the Fremen on a galactic conquest is a tragic development and most definitely not about their liberation, him spending so much time not even being tempted by his dark destiny before the Water of Life scene makes his transformation ring insincere. Paul going from “I must do everything in my power to avoid my visions” to “I will bathe the universe in the blood of my enemies” in only a few minutes of screen time is a mind-boggling decision that saps a lot of the drama from what is the pivotal character turn of the entire story. Add in a romance that doesn’t convince and villains that the movie doesn’t even try to elevate above their flat depictions in the text (Austin Butler’s Feyd-Rautha’s two traits are “has knives” and “looks mad”), and you have a Dune movie that adapts Herbert’s book to mixed results.
But does that really matter when it’s accomplished a different mission: giving us more hope for the future of movies?
This Is How It’s Supposed to Be
Whatever issues I or anyone else may have with how Villeneuve executed his Dune films (and I still like Part 2 even with its faults), what is abundantly clear is that Dune’s strengths and weaknesses are largely on the director’s shoulders, not the studio’s. Although producers and collaborators undoubtedly had input on the finished product, the films as they exist feel akin to the previously mentioned blockbusters of the early 2000s, ones that breathe and bleed with the quirks and hangups of their directors. At no point during either film did I feel like I was watching anything less than Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, and that is precisely the paradigm on which movies of all shapes and sizes should be based. Filmmaking is an art form, and what makes art valuable is that it reflects the artists who make it.
In a world where not everyone in the movie business seems to share that sentiment, perhaps it’s okay that Dune provides an imperfect rebuttal to the corporate mindset that’s been strangling Hollywood for far too long. In the past few years, we’ve seen audiences embrace big-budget films that actually feel directed, like Joseph Kosinski’s Top Gun: Maverick, James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. If Denis Villeneuve’s Dune continues this trend, perhaps the powers that be will finally start to clue in that they should abandon their attempts at cookie-cutter tentpoles and let visionary artists back at the steering wheel. After all, it’s far more rewarding to evaluate a movie based on the merits of a director’s creative choices than on the unfortunate fact of them having no creativity whatsoever.
Carlos Morales writes novels, articles and Mass Effect essays. You can follow his fixations on Twitter.
