Dune Part Two Review: A Modern Sci Fi Miracle

Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya fight for the planet in Dune Part Two

Dune Part Two lands us back in Arrakis mere moments after the ending of 2021’s Dune. The young Duke Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) and his mother the Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) find themselves lost in the desert after their house was betrayed and the old Duke murdered by his rival, the disturbingly evil Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard.) Having managed to fall in with a sympathetic group of Fremen (the local indigenous people) Paul and his mother must now adapt or die.

Whilst romantic interest Chani (Zendaya) begins to teach Paul the ways of the desert, his real path into the inner circle of the Fremen could come from the benefit of a local legend. The Fremen believe in the ‘Lisan al Gaib’ – a messiah who will come from another world to lead them into a better future – and all signs point to this being Paul. As religious fanaticism begins to mount around him, Paul must choose whether to try and live a simple life amongst his new people or whip up that faith into a frenzy he can use to take revenge against the Harkonnen’s, and even a swing at the emperor behind him.

I don’t think there’s any film maker working right now with a run the likes of which director Denis Villeneuve is having. Since his first English language film Prisoners in 2013, Villeneuve has created a series of critical and commercial successes over the last ten years, with all of his films charting at 80% or higher on Rotten Tomatoes. With the success of 2016’s Arrival and 2017’s Bladerunner 2049, he’s one of the most distinctive voices working in sci-fi today.

Dune Part Two feels like the bigger, bolder, more satisfying sequel to an already very good first installment. Its scale is enormous; climactic scenes reminiscent of the battlefields of Middle Earth or Avengers: Endgame – yet it doesn’t lose sight of the people at the center of the story, finding time to bring us back to the connections between lovers, between parents and their children, between comrades and leaders. It’s a masterfully well-balanced film.

Where Frank Herbert’s source novel Dune is undoubtedly an influential masterwork, it’s also often quite cold as a story – a densely packed missive on imperialism, environmentalism, and religion with a glossary of terms you need to constantly dip in and out of if you want to even begin to understand the heavy lore behind it.

Villeneuve’s interpretation of that story does a great job of adding humanity back into the mix – where in the book it feels completely inevitable that Paul is the mystical messiah of legend (he can see the future and has a supercomputer in his brain for god’s sake) – here he’s a teen on a journey of discovery and plagued by self-doubt. Our hero’s journey is that much more satisfying because of it.

Villeneuve also shifts the story slightly to give more agency to the Fremen; mostly through some rewrites to Chani’s character, who now becomes voice to those who question the prophecy and the need for a ‘saviour’ at all. Again, it’s a welcome, modern change – shifting the viewpoint from the coloniser to the colonised – and Zendaya acts as a magnificent foil to Chalamet. She’s a fierce warrior in her own right who is torn between love and concern for her man, and love and concern for her people.

It’s visually stunning work from cinematographer Grieg Fraser who picked up an Oscar for Part One and has found time to be DOP on The Batman and The Creator since. The orange-red deserts of Jordan were used to dupe Arrakis and they’re captured here in stunning clarity. When paired with dynamic sound design that ranges from the soft swishing of sand drifting down a dune to the bone-crunching boom of a sandworm attack it transports the viewer into a fully immersive audio-visual experience. This is a film that deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible.

While several characters have been cut or changed to streamline the pace and story of Dune, two new additions to Part Two have been beefed up to give them more screen time than their book counterparts. These are Florence Pugh’s Princess Irulan – daughter of the emperor, and Austin Butler’s Feyd-Rautha – nephew and heir to Baron Harkonnen. While Pugh isn’t given much to do other than narrate the story, Butler gets an electrifying action set piece that stands out as one of the highlights of the film.

Part of what sets Dune Part Two apart as a modern sci-fi milestone is its stunning design that creates planets that feel truly out of this world – where so much sci-fi in the wake of Star Wars has had set design that felt like it could be built out of lego, Dune Part Two is sleek and stylish but so, so alien.

Nowhere is this better seen than in the design of the Harkonnen’s, whose home planet is pitched to us entirely in black and white, a dazzling contrast to the warm sands of Arrakis. Their depiction as pasty, bald, plastic-clad sadists transports them from simply being rival humans to being truly monstrous villains. Both Skarsgard and Butler are giving top tier monster performances here.

Dune Part Two already feels like a modern sci-fi masterpiece, with scenes that’ll be seared into your mind long after the credits roll. It’s a heavy film whose nearly three-hour run time asks for a great deal of concentration from its audience – but that concentration is rewarded with rich storytelling, complex characters and a bombastic finale that’ll shake you right out of your seat.

With Villeneuve reportedly keen to adapt the next book in the series, Dune: Messiah, he quite clearly leaves the door open for the inevitable sequel. We can only hope the audience numbers are there for him to get it greenlit.

Dune Part Two is out in cinemas worldwide on 1st March 2024