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Notes -
Thoughts on Dune Part 2
I'm a huge fan of the first 6 books, read the first 3 times (though granted it has been a few years), and thought the first movie was a very well-made, faithful adaptation. It had a few flaws, such as no mention of the thinking machines, Butlerian Jihad, or guild navigators, and also the Harkonens being a little too cartoonishly groteque. But it took itself seriously, was visually dazzling, and I really liked that it captured the psychedelic/religious ecstasy elements of the book.
The second one, I'm much more lukewarm on. Much more significant changes from the books (rarely for the better) and just wasn't as dramatically impactful. Spoilers for both movies and Book 1 to follow:
|| Much shorter timeline, so Alia isn't born yet by the end of it. Jessica taking the Water of Life was a very intense scene and I thought the image of the fetus' eye opening conveyed a lot to the audience in a simple but direct way, but there were no visuals explaining her newly acquired access to her genetic memories, it's sort of just explained to us later on. I recalled this Villenueve quote from an interview:
And this scene largely fails at that, especially compared to the first. With this movie's $190 million budget, I'd have liked to see something like this scene from the Northman that really drives home the point that "hey, this is a big deal, this woman now has millennia of memories from her female ancestors, it's not just a creepy voice possessing her every now and then".
Paul's Water of Life scene is thoroughly underwhelming. No trippy psychedelic visuals, just a brief glimpse of an adult Alia and a vision of a baby Jessica in a crib with the Baron watching over her, revealing her parentage. Later we see a shot of starving people crawling across a dry desert floor with Jessica walking around them completely unbothered, suggesting the jihad (though they unfortunately but unsurprisingly stick to the phrase "holy war" in the movies) was largely her doing.
Stilgar is much more noticeably zealous. I actually liked this change, added some tonally appropriate humor to the movie (unlike Marvel heroes quipping in the middle of a battle).
Chani isn't the consistently loyal, supportive wife in all but name from the books. Zendaya (playing the same role she plays in every other performance) is defiant and is by the end of it the only Fremen who openly disapproves of Paul's actions. The final shot is her frowning into the camera waiting to ride a sandworm away from Arrakeen. Contrast that with the book's iconic "history will call us wives". This dynamic could have been much worse in today's climate, there's no girlboss moment where the competent, self-assured woman teaches the incompetent, overconfident man a lesson, but I still get the sense, like with the Wheel of Time show, that Hollywood just can't commit to a hero's journey story truly centered around a male protagonist.
This line was dropped:
Absolutely no mention of the Spacing Guild or CHOAM. 2 of the 4 factions that run the Galaxy and the ones most directly reliant on Spice production, a pretty significant omission. Granted, this is a complicated power dynamic to explain but we could have at least gotten a shot of them in the ships above the planet discussing the political situation like we did in David Lynch's adaptation. Come to think of it, I'm not sure how anyone who hadn't read the books would have understood just WHY the spice is so important. Sure we see Paul and Jessica unlock some new abilities with it, but that doesn't itself explain why all the Imperium's houses are so invested in this one planet.
Chalamet is just not the best choice to play Paul IMO. Book Paul had an edge to him, Tim mostly doesn't.
The final showdown in the throne room was in general, VERY underwhelming. In the book, Paul's internal monologue really conveys the psychic weight of this scene. It's exactly the sort of moment that could have used the first movie's dramatic Middle Eastern chanting and slow-motion. The future of the humanity hinges on this one point forseen in Paul's visions. But the cinematography was very dry and it was over as soon as it started.
Lasguns everywhere. Fun to watch but totally immersion-breaking. Why are the Sardaukar bothering with swords at all if lasguns-shield explosions aren't truly mutually assured destruction?
This change really bugged me because it just feels so thematically off-the-mark. In the book, it's established that Paul's ultimate control of the spice hinges on the fact that he knows how to trigger a chain-reaction that would kill all the sandworms. This is unique to him as it depends on his knowledge of the planet's ecology he learned from the Fremen and their fanatical devotion to him. The Landsraad accepts this and surrenders to him as the de facto Emperor, though there's a jihad anyway. In the movie, Paul threatens to somehow use the family atomics to destroy the spice supply. The noble houses reject this and this kicks off the jihad. This sets up a Part 3 more clearly but ecology is too thematically integral to the plot of the books to justify this change.
Feyd Rautha's character gets much more screentime than the books. Gives as an aesthetically pleasing black-and-white scene on Giedi Prime, but he seemed far too robotic for me, doesn't even react to being fatally stabbed other than to congratulate Paul on fighting well, which is totally out of character. ||
Overall this isn't a terrible movie by any means, and I imagine if you liked the first and haven't read/don't particularly care for the books you'll enjoy this one. But it was a letdown especially compared to the high bar set by the first.
I thought Austin Butler was a great Feyd-Rautha. Great use of microexpressions in many scenes, like the one where Baron Vlad gets murked. Throne room showdown was OK as well.
There was a lot more of changes to the book than in the first movie, particularly Chani's expanded role. I had seen people complain about this before the movie and had dismissed it as similar to some people bitching about Lady Jessica's greater role in Part 1, but here the complaints had more valence - while I've never understood the people who think that Zendaya is ugly (unless it's just plain because of, well, her heritage), particularly since she's playing a survival-oriented desert nomad here, but she's just not that good of an actor, and I'm not sure how Villeneuve's going to handle Messiah with the changes they did here. OTOH a lot of cutting decisions were good (the confusing Gurney-vs-Jessica plot from the book, for instance, and I was even OK with how Alia was handled, probably better to do it like Denis did here instead of a murder toddler.)
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The movie felt incredibly rushed. The time skip when Paul went off to cross the desert by himself as an right of initiation made me and my girlfriend go huh.
As arbitrary numbers go, I'd have called the first movie a 8.5 on visuals and cinematography alone, this one barely a 7. The only memorable scene was the soldiers mantling up that mesa at the start with their jet packs, even the use of nuclear warheads (one of the biggest taboos in the setting) felt underwhelming, as did the final battle. Nothing else compared to the Sardaukar's praise for McDonald's in the first.
I think the first movie was slightly over indulgent and slow when it came to its pacing, this one rushed and disorienting, especially for people who hadn't read the books. The geopolitics were rushed, and I would have appreciated at least some mention of CHOAM being on the take when it came to the surveillance of the lower hemisphere and so on. The first movie's music felt a lot more compelling.
Well, at least I got the mild enjoyment of telling my girlfriend all the absurd things that happen down the line, like "will you love me if I turn into a
sandworm" and other Dune fever dreams. Or Duncan Idaho being resurrected over and over again till he's like a neanderthal in relation to the moderns. She didn't believe me, but I doubt the movies will ever go there, so it's just something to chuckle over.More options
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If any story should have the hero's journey problematized, it's Dune. In the books Herbert could both show Paul's internal monologue and just straight up write a sequel novella to hammer it home, Vileneuve wasn't going to go the way of Lynch though so someone had to fill in that role instead.
Not accurate to the books but it actually makes sense with the condensed timeline. Paul rode up saying he didn't want to be the leader and wasn't the Mahdi and in the span of something like 9 months totally made the Fremen his creatures. It'd make sense for someone, especially someone close like Chani, to get whiplash
My real concern is what this does to any adaptation of Messiah.
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