A solid, even excellent film, though I put it slightly behind the first one. Part One had the advantage of stopping where the book gets extra-unfilmable, where Herbert started throwing weird crap in non-stop before just plopping the ending.
Part Two is, shockingly, a lot like Part One. Villeneuve('s team) continues to convey loads of exposition in a crisply efficient manner. I watched this film in a slightly detached, oh, I see what you did there sort of way. The technician's mastery was impressive, but I was left slightly cold. Every individual choice made here was better than in the 1984 film, but taken as a whole, that movie had more heart. I believe this is mostly due to the book, and I'm disinclined to criticize an adaptation for staying true to the source. Likewise, near the end, it feels like the director is speed-running a checklist. This is from the book; Herbert is on record saying he intended that effect.
My only real criticism of the film is that it feels "focus group-y" in a way that Part One didn't: insert romance subplot, insert more female agency, insert comic relief Stilgar, insert sequel teaser character. Kind of like the MCU, except here they had the sense to keep it in low gear. The dynamic of rational young skeptics against stupid old fundies ("He denied being Mahdi. So humble, he must be the Mahdi!") felt more like an injection of 2024 viewpoints than what Herbert was theme-ifying about in the book, as did another scene where Paul oddly starts to tell Chani that she's sandwalking wrong because he read something in a book.
Now the positive: this film is straight-up beautiful. So many expensive films nowadays look like crap. This looks great. The acting is excellent. I wasn't sure how Chalamet, whom I've only seen play nice guys, would do as a raging guerilla leader, but he nails it. Butler completely disappears into his role. No longer Elvis, he is now an Evil Bald Man, more Evil and more Bald than any Evil Bald Man to ever shave. My favorite was Ferguson. This film asks her to do a whole bunch of strange things, and whether or not she's having a bad acid trip, raving about "the beauty and the horror," being a tatted-up cult leader, or conspiring with a fetus to dominate weaker minds, she sells everything. Florence Pugh, Zendaya, Stellan Skarsgard—everyone in this prestige film turns in a solid performance.
There is one exception. Christopher Walken is so Christopher Walken in this that I half-expected him to threaten to stab someone in the face with a soldering iron. He's not bad, but unlike Butler, I can't unsee the actor. Walken is more meme now than man, beautiful and horrible. This comes around to the "focus-groupiness" mentioned above: Walken has internet fame for being in a Dune-referencing music video. I suspect he got the role because some joyless hack at the studio thought, "insert meme, raise revenue one-fifth of one percent."
TLDR: Part One fans can rest assured that Villeneuve doesn't "Game of Thrones" it. There may not have been enough faith in the source material, but it's still a great film and probably the best we're likely to get given the difficulty of the source material and the fact that investors expect to make money.
Careful Handling of Difficult Material.
A solid, even excellent film, though I put it slightly behind the first one. Part One had the advantage of stopping where the book gets extra-unfilmable, where Herbert started throwing weird crap in non-stop before just plopping the ending.
Part Two is, shockingly, a lot like Part One. Villeneuve('s team) continues to convey loads of exposition in a crisply efficient manner. I watched this film in a slightly detached, oh, I see what you did there sort of way. The technician's mastery was impressive, but I was left slightly cold. Every individual choice made here was better than in the 1984 film, but taken as a whole, that movie had more heart. I believe this is mostly due to the book, and I'm disinclined to criticize an adaptation for staying true to the source. Likewise, near the end, it feels like the director is speed-running a checklist. This is from the book; Herbert is on record saying he intended that effect.
My only real criticism of the film is that it feels "focus group-y" in a way that Part One didn't: insert romance subplot, insert more female agency, insert comic relief Stilgar, insert sequel teaser character. Kind of like the MCU, except here they had the sense to keep it in low gear. The dynamic of rational young skeptics against stupid old fundies ("He denied being Mahdi. So humble, he must be the Mahdi!") felt more like an injection of 2024 viewpoints than what Herbert was theme-ifying about in the book, as did another scene where Paul oddly starts to tell Chani that she's sandwalking wrong because he read something in a book.
Now the positive: this film is straight-up beautiful. So many expensive films nowadays look like crap. This looks great. The acting is excellent. I wasn't sure how Chalamet, whom I've only seen play nice guys, would do as a raging guerilla leader, but he nails it. Butler completely disappears into his role. No longer Elvis, he is now an Evil Bald Man, more Evil and more Bald than any Evil Bald Man to ever shave. My favorite was Ferguson. This film asks her to do a whole bunch of strange things, and whether or not she's having a bad acid trip, raving about "the beauty and the horror," being a tatted-up cult leader, or conspiring with a fetus to dominate weaker minds, she sells everything. Florence Pugh, Zendaya, Stellan Skarsgard—everyone in this prestige film turns in a solid performance.
There is one exception. Christopher Walken is so Christopher Walken in this that I half-expected him to threaten to stab someone in the face with a soldering iron. He's not bad, but unlike Butler, I can't unsee the actor. Walken is more meme now than man, beautiful and horrible. This comes around to the "focus-groupiness" mentioned above: Walken has internet fame for being in a Dune-referencing music video. I suspect he got the role because some joyless hack at the studio thought, "insert meme, raise revenue one-fifth of one percent."
TLDR: Part One fans can rest assured that Villeneuve doesn't "Game of Thrones" it. There may not have been enough faith in the source material, but it's still a great film and probably the best we're likely to get given the difficulty of the source material and the fact that investors expect to make money.