SPOILER-FREE DUNE REVIEW
Dune is fantastic. It’s not perfect, and from a pure story/scripting point-of-view the second one isn’t paced as well as the first (which also wasn’t paced perfectly), but there are so many awesome sci fi ideas, incredible direction and design, killer acting moments, and kickass fight scenes in the movie that it’s still carving a place on the Mt. Rushmore of sci fi franchises. You should see it post haste (although box office tracking indicates the film doesn’t need my endorsement, it’s going to be a big hit), and my dearest wish for cinema is that we had a dozen sci fi films of this ambition and quality every year.
First, the pacing issue: Pretty much every big sci fi movie I watch, I leave it going “that would have been twice as good if it were an hour shorter”. Marvel movies are the prototype for this problem, but it’s everywhere now. “The Creator” was too long. “Avatar: The Way of Water” would have been better if it were literally *half* as long. The list goes on.
I left “Dune: Part II” saying “that would have been better if it were an hour *longer*”, which is just unheard of for me. Now obviously, it’s already three hours and you can’t put a four-hour movie in theaters, that doesn’t really make sense. There would have to be an intermission, the reduced showtimes per day would screw with the economics, and honestly I get that most people just don’t have the appetite for four hours of even killer sci fi cinema.
But it still would have been better! There are a number of plotlines in the film that feel rushed. Their plans succeed too quickly. Supposedly “impossible” feats are accomplished in five minutes on the first try. Climactic scenes are not fully set up as you would expect, and lack the fullness of tension they could hold as a result. The movie still makes perfect sense, the story doesn’t really suffer, and it’s honestly impressive how much plot they manage to cram into under three hours—but all the amazing stuff they’re doing would hit harder if it were set up a little more slowly.
That said, “a bit too quick” is hardly scathing criticism. When a movie gives you three hours and still leaves you wanting more, then the movie by definition kicks butt, and this one does and then some. The world is just so incredible, and the details are so inventive and feel very real. Small example that’s not a spoiler because it was also in the first movie: The tank of black oil that Baron Harkonnen is always sitting in. It’s never explained exactly what it does or why he needs it, and yet it’s *perfect*, just a thematic and metaphorical masterstroke for his character.
Everything about the film is like that: The costumes, the set design, the cinematography, the casting (with the exception of Christopher Walken as the Emperor, he’s too recognizable and has too much of a signature acting style), and every other little detail are executed not just perfectly but dazzlingly, with verve and ingenuity and a consistency of tone that makes the three hours go by in a flash.
(Also, for the record, Austin Butler—who plays Feyd-Rautha and also got an Oscar nom for “Elvis” this year—is incredible in the movie, kinda steals it even thought he isn’t in it all that much, and is headed for superstardom once he gets a lead in something that plays internationally (“Elvis” was good and made him a name among cinephiles, but for real stardom you need a big worldwide franchise these days).
Speaking of superstars, Zendaya is incredible in this movie. She steals scenes that she doesn’t even have lines in, steals them with with looks and takes and pure presence.
This movie is funny, as well. It has actual laughs in it, which the first one didn’t really.
It is extremely worth your time and money. I will see it at least once more in a theater, and there’s already a countdown clock in my head for when the third one (for which the script is reportedly not even complete) might get released.
As I was leaving the theater last night, I was contemplating where to place this unfinished trilogy in the pantheon of sci fi greats. It’s hard to rank something I just saw against the classics, and I’ll need to see it more times (and probably see the third one and let them all breathe a bit) to be sure, but some comparisons do occur to me.
The franchise that comes to mind as the most apt comparison is actually “The Lord of the Rings”, which is obviously very different from “Dune”, but which shares the sense of existing in a complete world of its own, lovingly realized and totally alien and yet captivating and lush. Both feel like there are whole other compelling stories that could be told about every secondary character and even the extras.
The sense is of a tiny spigot with water shooting out of it, and even though the actual volume of water is limited by the spigot size, you can feel an immense amount of water pressure behind the spigot, just by the sound and urgency of how the water is flowing out. That’s how so much of my favorite art feels, across mediums. Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” has that feeling, as does Radiohead’s “OK Computer”. Ditto the paintings of Blake and Bosch, the fiction of Borges and Butler. (Do I just really like artists whose names start with ‘B’? That was totally not intentional.)
Both “Dune” and “LotR” have that feeling in spades. They’re different in that LotR are the more *perfect* films. Talk about great pacing! But then, LotR has a much, much simpler structure than Dune, and its perfection comes at the loss of some variety. Dune explores much more about the darkest parts of the human psyche. It explores sadism and psychosis and honor and self-destruction on a level that LotR can’t touch, because it stays so focused on the central characters and makes the bad guys foils. In Dune, the bad guys are the best characters!
I wish I could make a good comparison to “The Matrix”, but unfortunately, there’s just no viable competition between them. The first Matrix movie is the best sci fi film of all time, and if it were all at anything like that quality, nothing would ever touch it. Unfortunately, the rest of the franchise of offensively bad, to the point that the Dune franchise is already definitively better two movies in because the second Dune movie is *so* much better than the second Matrix movie. (You can read my detailed thoughts on the Matrix franchise here.)
The other movie this really put me in mind of was “Blade Runner: 2049”, which I rewatched this evening for the third time. It also has a surfeit of plotlines, some of which felt underdeveloped to me the first time I watched it, but then seemed a lot better on a second and third watch. What had seemed digressive and tertiary became nuance and naturalism as my experience of its cinematic world became less effortful.
I am hoping that the latest installment of Dune progresses the same way, because it’s the sort of ambitious, weird, visionary project that justifies the existence of Hollywood despite the absolutely enveloping amount of derivative, focus-tested crap that gets made every year.
Please go see it in theaters so they will make more!
saw it/loved it!