If you threw a rock on the internet when Dune: Part One came out, you’d hit a comment calling it “Star Wars for adults.” The sandworm-eating-its-own-tail of that assessment aside, Denis Villeneuve’s efforts to adapt Frank Herbert’s novel of interplanetary empire and rebellion really share more in common with Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy – films which transposed a thorny, dense literary mythology into an accessible, groundbreaking spectacle which remains beloved today. In that respect, Dune: Part Two’s considerable expansion of the story’s scope and splendor positions the movie as a Two Towers for the 2020s, a middle chapter that doubles down on the quirks of its source material and is largely successful at sustaining its unwieldy, fascinating identity.
Dune: Part Two picks up in the immediate aftermath of the Harkonnens’ obliteration of House Atreides, with the supplanted Duke of Arrakis Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) hiding amongst the desert planet’s native Fremen people. After narrowly avoiding death himself, Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård) is moving quickly to resume control of spice harvesting. The storyline splinters into a tapestry of war, intrigue, and destiny from there. For as heady and sometimes hard-to-follow as the mythmaking surrounding Paul gets – or the space politics, for that matter – Villeneuve and co-writer Jon Spaihts’ script constantly reinforces the most important information with streamlined efficiency. Dune: Part Two can’t even get to the Warner Bros. logo without reminding the audience how important spice is – remember, it’s the lifeblood of the economy in this far-off future – and it’s with that fervor that Baron Harkonnen sets about consolidating his family’s power. The success of Paul’s counteroffensive, and his rise as a messianic figure amongst the Fremen, are contingent of how much of himself he’s willing to sacrifice in the name of destiny, and Chalamet does a good job navigating the Kwisatz Haderach through the darker territory this time around.
Tense confrontations between Paul and trusted confidants like his mother and his mentor, Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin), serve to highlight Dune: Part Two’s story of generational divide, and Chalamet’s rising frustration feels well-pitched to the stakes as they boil over into a larger conflict. Villeneuve drives a particularly interesting wedge between Paul and Jessica, a far more active player this time around who tests the limits of her own Bene Gesserit power in some of the most surreal sequences of Part Two. Dune certainly traffics in big emotions, but there’s quiet tragedy in the distance that grows between Paul and Jessica as they reach fuller understandings of their own potential.
After being more or less confined to dream sequences in Part One, Zendaya’s Chani is a focal point of Part Two. Her reluctance to accept Paul as the Lisan al Gaib – the savior promised to the Fremen by the Bene Gesserit – is representative of larger sociological forces at play, with Stilgar’s (Javier Bardem) Northern tribe being more secular than Arrakis’ zealous Southern Fremen. The Fremen will need to be united to stand against the forces of the Imperium, and the sacrifices and compromises that Chani make constantly ground the story with help from Zendaya’s direct, steely performance.
If all this talk of prophecy and fate sounds like a rather ponderous way to spend 166 minutes, don’t worry – Villeneuve knows exactly when to drop one of Part Two’s fantastic action sequences. An early attack on a spice harvester gives the director ample opportunity to frame the central conflict in microcosm, with Fremen expertise and adaptability outpacing technological advantage in jaw-dropping fashion. Villeneuve’s as detail-oriented with Dune: Part Two’s bombast as he is with the spiritual minutiae, thrillingly staging battles and duels that remain in conversation with the human drama at play. It’s why Paul’s first sandworm ride – rapturously received by even Fremen who doubted him up to that point – feels like both a triumph and a bad omen. Villeneuve frequently asks the audience to remember that winning a battle does not mean winning a war, and Paul’s growing influence over the Fremen feels like an increasingly double-edged sword as Part Two goes on.
With Rabban (Dave Bautista) proving to be all bark and no bite in his role heading up spice-mining operations, Baron Harkonnen turns his eye to an even more brutal nephew, Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler). The younger Harkonnen’s raucous introduction through gladiatorial combat – and his compulsive throat-slitting – tells us everything we need to know about the character, and really, all there is to know. By design, Feyd-Rautha is a dark mirror of Paul – the kind of leader he fears he could become – and that’s about as much detail as Part Two commits to the character. Butler’s animalistic physicality and Skarsgårdian vocal qualities do a good job animating House Harkonnen’s id, but Feyd-Rautha is a tool of not only the characters in the story, but of the script itself.
A similar fate befalls Part Two’s other notable addition to the cast, Florence Pugh’s Princess Irulan. As counselor to her father Emperor Shaddam (Christopher Walken), Irulan’s scenes function to illustrate the precarious balance of power in the Imperium. Walken’s Shaddam is rendered as a frail, indecisive leader, which gives Pugh room to imbue Irulan with enough authority to feel like a power player, but the cutaways to the princess’ debates with her elders don’t have the same visceral power as the action on Arrakis and its on-the-ground perspective. The cat-and-mouse game between Fremen and Harkonnen, the hotly debated arrival of the Lisan al Gaib, Lady Jessica’s machinations – these movements of the story feel ominous and weighty and are handled with such panache that by the time of the Imperium’s delayed arrival on the desert planet, they feel out of touch in a way that makes them feel less threatening than they probably should.
But no matter where in the universe Dune: Part Two’s narrative takes you, there’s incredible production design in place to hold you captive. A superlative, seamless blend of practical and visual effects make these distant worlds feel vibrant and tangible. Villeneuve keeps finding ways to ratchet up the atmosphere on Arrakis, with visions of glittering spice and dreamy, warm tones providing plenty of variety to the surface of the desert planet. Feyd-Rautha’s extended introduction on Giedi Prime gives the director and cinematographer Greig Fraser an excuse to shake up that visual language in favor of space-Brutalist architecture and a black and chrome palette that externalizes Harkonnen power quickly and impactfully, as if their gravity are enough to change how light bends on the planet. Dune: Part Two may ask for a lot of your time and focus, but it’s nearly impossible to look away from.
It may come as a surprise that none of this resolves in a particularly satisfying way: The sequel more or less completes Villeneuve’s adaptation of Herbert’s first Dune novel, but it’s also very obviously the second act of a film trilogy. The ending is certainly less abrupt than Part One’s, but Paul’s fleeting glimpses of the future and Jessica’s doomsaying promise more fateful battles ahead, and by the time Part Two’s final showdown kicks into high gear, there are enough hanging plots threads and underdeveloped new characters to recognize there’s just not enough runway left to service them all. Villeneuve has more than earned our patience, and once this trilogy is complete, that feeling will no doubt lessen – but we’re still midstream. On its own terms, and despite all its strengths, Dune: Part Two’s desert power starts to fade by the time credits roll.
