Dune: Part Two film review — Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya and sandworms return in XXL spectacle
THE reviews are in for Dune:
Part Two, the new slab of science fiction from director Denis Villeneuve. “Much better than Part One,” gushes a fan. “There’s something more alive in it.” Oddly, that plaudit comes from Villeneuve himself, speaking last December, his reservations about his own 2021 original unmentioned at the time. At the new film’s London premiere, star Timothée Chalamet went further. One didn’t even need to have seen the first Dune, he announced, to be swept away by the sequel.
As gifted a performer as Chalamet is, that line died on his lips. But Villeneuve is probably right about a movie with a shrewd combination of epic aesthetics and human drama.
The hard sell hints at the back story. Financiers Warner Bros declined to fund this second episode until the first proved a hit, despite them being designed as two halves. Belatedly greenlit by Warner and co-producer Legendary Pictures, Part Two now moves with a certain vindicated ease, assured in its Machiavellian intrigue, gooey romance and punctuating battle aggro. Stripped down, the message is simple: more. The upscaling delivers vast sandworms and Olympic-size pools of liquid souls. (And this is why you do need to have seen the first film.)
We meet Chalamet’s plucky young duke Paul Atreides again, now hiding out among the native Fremen of resource planet Arrakis. To one side is Rebecca Ferguson, inscrutable as his pregnant mother, Lady Jessica; to the other is Zendaya, cast as steely Fremen warrior Chani, her seven minutes on-screen in the first Dune now much expanded.
Fresh out of the box are Florence Pugh’s noble princess, and Austin Butler, star of Elvis, as a killer scion of the grotesque Harkonnens. The actors are a clue to the disparate clans Villeneuve must again unite as ticket buyers: zealous admirers of Frank Herbert’s source novel; disenfranchised Game of
Thrones fans; but also a mass of floating Gen Zs, there to be lured by a cast of pretty faces, mostly under 30.
The film duly leans into the gleam of Chalamet and Zendaya. The romance between their characters takes flight with Fred-and-Ginger sandwalks, and more arduous dialogue for the male lead. “I’d very much like to be equal to you,” he whispers. Fittingly, we cut to screams, courtesy of Butler as sadomasochist Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. The movie dabbles in mental health diagnosis to call him psychotic. His snide air and fondness for leather suggest the doorman at a suburban fetish night.
Even at nearly three hours, other moving parts get shorter shrift. Pugh is underused; Léa Seydoux briefly pops by; the singular line readings of Christopher Walken are held in check. But then, Villeneuve is a pragmatist. To fix his audience to a multi-character saga flecked with thematic asides about belief systems, his focus is kept tight. And it falls mostly on young love on Arrakis, and the looming menace of Feyd-Rautha. (If you’ve seen Rocky IV, you will recognise the story arc.)
The formula works. It may take five and a half hours for his character to truly come to life, but two films in, Chalamet’s evolution as Paul gives everything a centre. And with the star taking care of the close-ups, Villeneuve can indulge in what he clearly likes most about filmmaking: XXL spectacle.
Military hardware, desert skies and those giant sandworms all dwarf puny humanity. The set pieces come with striking details: ink-black splashes of Harkonnen fireworks, the bass thud of bodies falling from on high. Villeneuve is often the most fun when at his grimmest.
But the heavy metal thunder is offset by the light and shade of the cast. Returning as a Fremen elder, Javier Bardem even gets a laugh out of the elastic nature of messianic prophecy. Like Part One, the movie is less deep than may have been intended. Still, any depth at all in a film with this much surface is impressive.
All that remains is another box office cliffhanger. Will a cashhappy Warners say yes to Dune:
Part Three? If so, Denis Villeneuve is sure to love it.