Dune: Part Two (2024)
Another masterpiece from Denis Villeneuve.
Well today was the day for “Dune Part Two” at the cinema and unless I’m very much mistaken nearly four months past its originally planned release date of November 2023.
But boy oh boy was it worth the wait.
If you were to do me the great honour of diving into my spoiler free review of Part One (linked below and together with my love-in appreciation of three more films directed by the genius that is Denis Villeneuve) you’ll note that I liked and not loved the original film and always struggle to truly appraise a science fiction film as I inevitably disappear into cliche and just keep repeating the phrase “It’s a beautiful film”. OK, to save you the trouble of reading yet another review besides this one, here are some excerpts from my original review penned and published in September 2022:
It is a beautiful film, no doubt about that and with delightful echoes of the misty stillness surrounding the alien spaceship in “Arrival”. There’s also a brilliant dark shadow inspired scene that reminded me immediately of Colonel Kurtz and Francis Ford Coppola’s opus to madness “Apocalypse Now” and the opening 45 minutes that I’ve now re-watched have a shadowy, claustrophobic feel of a Tim Burton film. The touching down of spacecrafts are shot in close up ala “The Terminator” or “Alien”, you have “The One” reference (and others) to “The Matrix” and the film is soaked to the skin in obvious links to the George Lucas behemoth “Star Wars”. From the lame and simple theme of good versus evil you also have the link back to a central warrior saviour, a God amongst men, the divine right of family rule, the receiver of “training” from an elder and the speaker of many tongues in secretive languages against a backdrop of an outer world of Empires, a ruling class, in-fighting, warring factions and the harvesting of a planet’s resources.
Here the resource is “Spice” and without it, Empires crumble in the sand.
I wish I’d seen “Dune” at the cinema and on the glorious “big screen” we all love. I liked it but I have no real reason for loving it despite some strong central performances from an ensemble cast of actors and actresses of whom I cherish their cinematic and dramatic skills. Oscar Isaac will forever be the struggling put upon singer songwriter crashing from one wrong turn to another in the Coen Brothers brilliant “Inside Llewyn Davis” in 2013 or the creepy loner in Alex Garland’s “Ex Machina” a year later, rather than a “Star Wars” character or head of a family dynasty here and passer of the flame to his young son. Isaac is good but his screen son Timothee Chalamet (“Interstellar”, “Lady Bird”, “The French Dispatch”) is even better, and has to be. Aided by mystical powers, secret languages and the training, coaching and guidance of an elder (veteran Josh Brolin being typically grizzled and brilliant), we see the film politically, spiritually and often humanly via his eyes as well as those from an ostensible lover in waiting portrayed by Zendaya (“Spider-Man”, “The Greatest Showman”). Rebecca Ferguson impresses again as familial Matriarch, Dave Bautista crosses over from the “Guardians of the Galaxy” to simmer thunderously, Jason Momoa (“Justice League”, “Aquaman”) brings a smiling humanity and two final character portrayals that must figure prominently in “Part 2” of this three part science fiction epic must fall to the unrecognisable Stellan Skarsgard as this franchise’s Emperor Palpatine and the brilliant Javier Bardem as a vaunted and respected tribal leader.
I’m aware of the mythos surrounding the creation of the David Lynch film in 1984 and the subsequent documentary of its creation as well as the highly regarded book upon which all of these have used as the basis for their interpretations and creations. I just found Villeneuve’s first creation beautifully befuddling, slow and uninteresting when stalled and static and, as you’ve gathered from the rambling introduction above, I was rather more interested in the links, deliberate or fancifully imagined by me, to other films and franchises from past and present.
But I will be seeing Part 2 on the cinema screen as there is only one place to see a creation of this spectacular magnitude, and that’s on the biggest cinema screen you can find.
So today was the day, 5th March 2024, and I indeed watched and thoroughly enjoyed and LOVED watching “Dune Part Two” and on the biggest cinema screen my beautiful son and I could find.
Then we went for a bag of chips and sat beside the oldest iron bridge in the entire world to discuss Denis Villeneuve’s latest masterpiece.
"The Essential Film Reviews Collection" - Vol.2
"Dune" (2021) Directed by Denis Villeneuve
"Sicario" (2015) Directed by Denis Villeneuve
"Enemy" (2013) Directed by Denis Villeneuve
"Prisoners" (2013) Directed by Denis Villeneuve
So where does this leave us all with Part Two? Well firstly I ADORE this second instalment of the franchise and far, far more than the somewhat required scene setting of Part One. Where the first film drags the second accelerates brilliantly into the thrust of a story of revenge, entitlement, faith, prophesy, love, a battle for supremacy and so many shades of our modern world writ large on the cinema screen: an underclass of “rats” that refuse to be bested or a larger whole dependent on a singular Christ like figure to lead them ala Neo in “The Matrix”. The “One” is continually reinforced across both films and once more here in Part Two by an extraordinary performance once more from Javier Bardem in league with our Matrix leader Timothee Chalamet who excels again whilst also dancing a fine line between the main themes of the film and spoiling the much mooted screen love affair with Zendaya.
Fellow returnees from Part One Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista and Christopher Walken are all warmly welcomed back into the Dune fold together with an almost unrecognisable Austin Butler and cameo from Lea Seydoux in a film and dare I say franchise once again that I heartily endorse to you.
If the opportunity arises, go see “Dune Part Two” on the biggest cinema screen you can find and if you’re lucky enough, go see it with someone you love.
You weren’t expecting a detailed analysis and spoilers for the film were you? That sort of dross can be found here and elsewhere within The Matrix.
Oh and it’s beautiful! And the musical score from Hans Zimmer is a dream.
I bet you weren’t expecting to see the oldest iron bridge in the world either at this point?
That’s me.
Full of surprises.
Thanks for reading. There’s well over 300 individual articles and conservatively double that number in spoiler free film reviews contained within my archives here. Alternatively, here are my three most recently published articles in this genre:
"Poor Things" (2023) Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
"Ferrari" (2023) Directed by Michael Mann
"Society of the Snow" (2023) Directed by J A Bayona