Fairly Short and Hopefully Spoiler-Free Review: Dune Part 2

But first, let me point you at, and briefly reconsider, my review of Part 1. I rewatched Part 1 at home last week in anticipation of seeing Part 2 (which Tamara and I did at the theater last night), and now I think I was harder on it than it deserved.

Trailers:

TL;DR:

Part 2, added to Part 1, completes the basic story line of the source material, Frank Herbert's 1965 novel. It does so with significant deviations from canon, several of which I find personally dissatisfying. But taken togther, the two films -- total running time about 320 minutes! -- get the job done pretty well.

Longer version:

I'm crotchety about film adaptations abandoning canon. For example, the omission of Tom Bombadil and Glorfindel from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. It bugs me.

That said, any adaptation of a hefty novel or series of novels is going to have to make sacrifices because, well, time.

I noticed the canon sacrifices less in David Lynch's 1984 version of Dune than in this one because ... well, because I hadn't read the book. I'd tried, but just couldn't get past the first 30 pages without starting to get lost in the details. The friends I went with bellyached about omissions, etc., but what the movie did for me was make the novel accessible. I've since read it at least five times, probably more. So now, the canon sacrifices pop right out at me.

Since I don't want to include spoilers, I can't really detail them, except for one, and the explanation for it: Mentats and the Spacing Guild were barely noticeable in Part 1 and are pretty much completely absent from Part 2. A web piece I read the other day explained that this is because director Denis Villeneuve knew he could only do one angle justice and chose the Bene Gesserit as his focus.

One thing I really like about this adaptation is that it sets up "Part 3" and one, i.e. the novels Dune Messia and Children of Dune. Lynch's version treated the first novel as a self-contained story with a positive ending. If you've read the novel you there's no "happily ever after" at its end. There's still plenty of bad shit to come. I won't call the ending a cliffhanger. Rather I'll simply note that it's not an ending.

Great special effects. Great music. Austin Butler absolutely kills it as Feyd Rautha; I was interesting to see if his Elvis turn was one-time lightning in a bottle. It isn't. That guy is good.

Worth seeing. But obviously you have to see Part 1 first, and it would really pay to read the novel, watch the Lynch version, and see if you can find the early 2000s SciFi Channel mini-series (which I haven't seen since its initial run and don't remember well enough to review here) as well. Dune is a planet, but Dune is a universe, and apparently one which Villeneuve, like Herbert and his son and other collaborators, intends to return to in both future and past. Its past is especially relevant now that we're in the age of AI (look up "Butlerian Jihad" for more information if you're lazy).