I’ve been mulling over Dune: Part Two over the past few weeks- I hesitated over writing this particular post because I’d originally intended to go see the film again but circumstances as usual got in the way of that (and indeed in the way of writing any posts here of late). I suppose I could wait for the film to arrive in our homes but I suspect that its arrival on 4K disc may be later than many hope (some folks are quoting May release dates but that seems a bit early).
The funny thing is, Dune: Part Two has gotten me thinking of Tolkien fans, and Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy. The LOTR films were widely popular and hugely successful, admired by public and critics equally. They are great films, certainly better films than anyone had a right to hope for. I grew up part of that generation that thought that the book was unfilmable, and films such as Willow, Hawk the Slayer and Krull only seemed to prove it. They may have been enjoyable fantasy films, but they were widely perceived as hardly something to take seriously – and readers did take Tolkien’s book very seriously. But it was a different time, back then in the 1970s and 1980s, living in a world where we had limits- it feels these days like technology means anything is possible, they could make any book into a film now, the limits have gone even if the skills of the film-makers themselves haven’t scaled up with that tech. But when I was growing up it was clear LOTR just couldn’t be done without editing the book down into a pale shadow of itself- I remember reading in Starburst magazine of John Boorman trying to make it (he would make Excalibur instead) and remember being horrified by Ralph Bakshi’s ghastly animated version that only told half of the story.
Beyond the impossibly complicated logistics of bringing Tolkien’s epic canvas to the screen, there is also the issue of its complex lore- the detail and thought behind the page and woven within it (and all those appendices!) It isn’t ‘just’ a simple good versus evil adventure yarn. The films may have succeeded beyond most people’s expectations, but Tolkien purists can be very dismissive of them, and I understand that Tolkien’s son, Christopher Tolkien, really didn’t like the films at all. I suppose Christopher Tolkien and the Tolkien purists who so disliked the LOTR films are outliers though- many of the people who had read the book also loved the film, as did millions who had never read the book nor ever would.
For my part, I have always had a strange relationship with the LOTR films- I liked them, was impressed by them artistically and in awe of the sheer audacity of their scale and of them being made back to back. Not only did they make theatrical versions that worked, they even pulled off making extended editions that were arguably superior. I bought the films on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K, have the standard and extended soundtrack editions that came out (even bought the book ABOUT the music that came with yet ANOTHER compact disc). But I never really fell in love with the films, never considered them in any of my top ten lists over the years. Even to me this seemed odd. Yes I enjoy them whenever I watch them, particularly Fellowship of the Ring, which is all sorts of perfect and the best of the three. But I never fell in love with them- admiration , not adoration. They are not bad films, you understand, I’m not suggesting that at all. Is it because I read the book first and there’s always this other voice in my head, judging the films as adaptation as much as films on their own terms?
Which brings me to Villeneuve’s Dune films. Again, clearly not bad films- they look amazing, and are certainly sincere in adaptation, and Villeneuve is clearly one of the very best directors working today. Considering where Hollywood has been of late with regards its popcorn blockbusters, its amazing how the Dune films have turned out as well as they have.
But I don’t love them. There’s just… something wrong. And I think, like with regards those Tolkien purists, its because I read the book all those years ago and loved it so much. The pictures in my head will always be different to what is on the screen. Sometimes Villeneuve’s images are superior to whatever I imagined, sometimes less so- I think its just that in my head, the book was stranger. The story takes place 20,000 years in the future, a future so far off that all the technology in it seems like magic, and the characters while human are almost as alien as anything in the Star Wars cantina. In Villeneuve’s Dune, things often seem so… grounded, ordinary, relatable.
Well, of course it has to be relatable, it has to work with mainstream audiences not just hardcore sci-fi nerds who’ve been reading this stuff for decades. Its a decision that Jackson also made with his LOTR films, making buildings, costumes etc look grounded in the Viking-era or Medieval times in terms of ‘look’. Its just that in Villeneuve’s Dune, Arrakis seems so….
Ordinary? That might not be the right word here. But Arrakis does not feel as alien as I think it should (sure, giant sandworms not withstanding). I hoped for bigger space, stranger sounds, alien stars in a night sky of bizarre moons, a sense of somewhere unique and strange, the sheer distance of those 20,000- years and being on some impossibly distant world. The heat- I just never feel sense of the heat. Arrakis is deadly, but it never feels as hot as it purports to be. Dry and dusty, sure, but where’s the sweat, the scorched skin? Its a case of criticizing a film for what it isn’t, rather than what it is. Which is not at all fair and also possibly extremely pointless.
But both Dune films also remind me of the worst failings of Christopher Nolan; darling of the cinematic firmament as he is, it might seem foolish of me to have something negative to say about Nolan at all. But as I have noted before, his films always leave me cold and I just have such a similar feeling with the Dune films. I don’t FEEL anything. I don’t feel like I know any of the characters at all, any empathy with Paul or anyone, really, in the Dune films. Its like I’m coolly watching events unfold, and as technically profound as they may be, I just don’t feel involved in any of it. The Harkonnen attack on the Atreides in Part One looks impressive but I don’t feel any of the horror, the terror of it, that I should, and at the end of Part Two I don’t feel a cathartic sense of satisfaction with Paul’s victory, it doesn’t excite me (that last battle is also bloody short and anti climactic, the Fremen suddenly supermen and the Sardaukar suddenly weak and easily beaten). Maybe its Hans Zimmer’s music not working the way it might- most people seem fine with it but its curious that Zimmer composed scores for so many Nolan films too. Its gotten to the point now that Zimmer’s music has become so… generic? Which comes back to that nagging feeling I have that everything looks so ordinary- impressive, sure, but… you know, some of Lynch’s film, for all its own faults, some of its art direction at least looked more strange and unworldly, and the same applies to the music, maybe. I’m not suggesting that Villeneuve’s films needed a rock score or anything, but maybe more something that sounded more strange. Like how strange Jerry Goldsmith’s score sounded for Alien. How exotic Vangelis’ score for Blade Runner seemed.
Is it a frustration born of knowing about the Butlerian Jihad that the films never refer to, or why there are Mentats, or what they are or what they do, or why there are no A.I. computers, or knowing details of the Spacing Guild and its navigators folding space, their dependence for Spice that drives everything we see happening in the Dune films. Its clear that Villeneuve was avoiding going the ‘info dump’ route that David Lynch felt compelled to in his own Dune film, but I do feel Villeneuve’s film suffers because of it. Again I think back on the LOTR films, and just how masterful and delicate all of the exposition in Fellowship of the Ring really was, how natural it was to the narrative. The sense of a backstory, of a mythology explaining the world we see.
Villeneuve’s Dune films come so close… but they just don’t click properly, not for me. Not quite the masterpiece everyone is telling me it is. Maybe the third one will prove the charm. Or maybe rewatching both Part One and Part Two at home in a few months time, it will finally work for me the way its seems that it does for others.
the ghost of 82 
I think it’s going to be impossible for anyone who read the books back then and has their own decades-old mental image of the world of Dune to come away from these adaptations without some complicated feelings.
I’d imagine if you’d just read the book recently and went in it might be different, but us old people [and my father’s generation of really old people] have entrenched mental images of Arrakis and fairly strong feelings about the books. So we kind of need to cut the movie some slack there. No-one of our generation is going to be 100% happy.
For the record, I also had a slight niggle with how much of the SF stuff they ditched. The Butlerian Jihad would have been a very timely theme, given the sudden panic about AI going on in our world. The whole ‘no laser guns on the battlefield’ rule was abandoned too. Remember they don’t do that because if a las-gun beam strikes a shield, the resultant energy discharge will kill everyone for miles? Now you have las-guns firing willy-nilly, which begs the question, why doesn’t one faction just train aim one at the massed approaching army on the battlefield and cut them all into pieces?
More serious is the whole business of Spice and how it allows Guild Navigators not to fold space [a David Lynch concoction] but to see all the possible futures ahead of them in their near-light-speed journey and choose the one that will allow the ship to avoid disaster: all that was omitted and they apparently stuck with ‘folding space’ – or opening up wormholes – if a single shot in Part One is to be believed.
This causes serious problems for any adaptation of Dune Messiah, because the whole last act of that book is a blind Paul desperately sifting through all the possible futures on the go trying to find the least tragic one.
There was some slightly confusing reference to this nascent ability in Part One with the Jamis scenes, and there’s a bit of it in Part Two when Paul’s taken the water of life, but it isn’t really clear enough.
I fear they minimised this in order to emphasise the ‘manufactured messiah’ theme that runs so deep through Part Two. I actually really liked how hard they leaned into that, and stayed away from the ‘white saviour’ thing that Lynch’s movie got so wrong. But I didn’t get the sense that by the end of Part Two Paul actually was a superhuman. He really is the Kwisatz Haderach, able to see all past lives and all future possibilities. That was a real shame.
How did you feel about some of the structural and character changes? I see a lot of online knuckle-draggers have been complaining because the adaptation gave Chani something to do rather than just have babies: ‘woke killed this movie’ etc.
I personally quite liked having another character to play off all the Atreides goings-on and I would definitely not have liked her sitting back and saying ‘fine I’ll be your concubine, whatever’ at the end, even if it is canon.
And I really, really liked the ending leading into the oncoming holy war in Paul’s name. Dune the novel wasn’t necessarily written with the events of Messiah in mind, but the film is: things are about to get very very bad, and they set that up nicely even in Part One. Had the film ended with everything cut and dried and all tied up neatly it would have felt fake to me.
[though I did chuckle a bit when everyone immediately started piling onto spaceships to go to war, RIGHT THERE AND THEN. It reminded me of the end of Attack Of The Clones]
I absolutely see you rcomparison with LOTR. I think these are handsome, intelligent adaptations that have found a massive audience and will be the definitive versions for a generation, and you can’t really argue with that. Could have been far worse. It’s certainly better than all the young adults now who grew up with the Lucas prequel trilogy and think they’re amazing and that they define what Star Wars is.
I sold a kidney earlier this week to go see Part Two in IMAX again later this morning, so I’m going to sign off now.
As a footnote, I picked up a copy of Rendezvous With Rama the other week for £1 in a charity shop and read it for the first time, knowing that DV is attached to a potential adaptation. Oh boy, there’s a book that needs completely rewriting from the ground up for any adaptation. But the visuals will be astonishing. Have you read it?
I never read Rama; always wanted to, its one of those books that I think “one day…” and I think the premise is fascinating. I’d love to see Villeneuve tackle it (I think Fincher was connected to an adaptation at one point?). I suppose with Dune being a success it opens up the opportunity for some more ‘real’ sci-fi in film, less of this comicbook nonsense we often get. God knows there’s so many great sci-fi books that could be great movies.
Breaking away from the book, with Chani apparently leaving Paul….I liked that too. I’ve actually wondered if they intend to make her the adversary in Part Three, that maybe she is the one who reins Paul back from the whole messiah/murderer of billions thing -they seem to be setting her up as Paul’s moral compass (Jessica is a busted compass on that front). I’m a little conflicted because I don’t think the actress is as great as she thinks she is and I found the romance part one of the least convincing things in the film. I wonder how they will be brought back together in order for Chani to have his children… or is she already pregnant now?
Regards the Paul as messiah thing, yeah, I enjoyed that too- in fact I was surprised how far they went with it, how close it got to some of the real extremism we’ve witnessed the last ten, twenty years, that single-minded religious fervour that seems to devour all reason or moral code. They even went into Life of Brian territory at times, teetering on making it seem like idiocy or madness.
Of course the mad extremism part has to be established because we’re talking about a religious war across the galaxy, the deaths of billions.
I was bugged however, because the logic seems to break down in that headlong rush at the end of Part Two- the Fremen ships can’t go anywhere without the Spacing Guild taking them, and the Guild has no reason to blindly assist in a Holy War that threatens to destroy the Galactic Empire/Economy- well, they do but we don’t even have any presence of the Guild on Arrakis to allow some kind of threat from Paul (“take my armies to Planet X or I’ll torch the Spice fields!”) to resonate/get agreed. Or maybe I missed it in the rush at the end of the movie? Its ironic that even after spending five hours at it, the end of Part Two seemed such a mad rush, I really disliked that pacing issue and almost hoped for an extended cut (never happen, Villeneuve has said so) to soften the edges a bit.
The ending with the Fremen piling onto the ships struck me as rather funny too. Its clear that Villeneuve sees his Dune project as three films and the endings seem deliberately written teasing that. I rather hope that when all three are done and can be watched together as a whole it will all click into place, subverting the ‘hero’s journey’ that Lucas etc got us all comfortable with. It could be great.
I wondered if maybe Paul seeing Jamis in his visions in both films is hinting that he’s ‘seeing’ alternate futures/realities (I hesitate to use the word ‘multiverse’ for obvious reasons…) and that perhaps is something Villeneuve intends to explore in the third film? Its curious that the scenes have Paul chatting with a dead man that he himself killed. Paul can’t be seeing a possible future because Jamis is dead, so what is he seeing/experiencing?
Pity they couldn’t have had those scenes with Duncan Idaho instead, because at least then it might have been his ghola Paul was ‘seeing’ in a future we haven’t seen yet. Duncan was someone Paul looked up to and admired, so if those scenes had been a flash-forward to something at the end of Part Three, assuming they feature Duncan’s ghola in it… Or, looking at how Part Two ended, maybe it would have made sense for those scenes to have been with Chani. Actually that might have been great, that the whole point of his dreams of Chani while still on Caladan were not visons of a romantic future, but rather that she would be his moral guide in Part Three, the solution to the nightmare his war would create. Subverting that ‘boy meets girl/ falls in love’ trope that we think the dreams mean. Agh. Its all a bit of a minefield.
Great review. I really appreciate your honesty here. This is a movie that has been endlessly praised with very few criticisms. I like the fact that you were honest about certain things in the film that didn’t work for you. I’m still really looking forward to watching the movie soon. I was such a massive fan of the first “Dune” which I consider to be a science-fiction classic. I’m curious to see how a sequel could possibly live up toward high standards set by superior predecessors. Here’s why I loved the first “Dune”: