If given the option, I never go with IMAX, as it costs a whole hell of a lot more and I hate assigned seating like you’re attending a baseball game or you’re in a middle school classroom. Who doesn’t love being forced to sit next to a complete stranger for 3 hours. What uncomfortable fun!
The benefits to seeing Dune Part 2 at an IMAX theater however is pretty obvious. The sound quality. I didn’t really notice much of a difference when it came to picture quality, I think maybe for that you need a true IMAX theater.
With a less than stellar picture, sound however delivers a hell of a punch, physically hitting you as you watch the movie. You feel it when a gun fires or a bomb goes off. Unlike the first half of Dune, part 2 really delivers on the action.
You feel basically like that guy in those old Maxell cassette tape ads, as the sound effects hit you like a wave.
I also haven’t seen a theater this packed since pre-covid days. Maybe not since I saw the last Avengers film. So that tells me this film is going to do well. It also tells me a lot of normies are going to be so damn confused while watching this movie.
I’ve actually never read any of the books, however I’ve seen everything produced based on the books. SYFY channel covered the first book and Children of Dune. And of course there is the David Lynch film.
There are two books that have never been adapted and that’s Dune Messiah and God Emperor of Dune, which I hear are batshit crazy and maybe a bit horny.
Part 1 and Part 2 of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is the complete first book, with Dune Messiah being the next and most likely final film in his trilogy.
I know I was a bit hard on the first film when I reviewed it because of it not being advertised as only half the story. I believe later they did correct this, by adding “Part 1” to the title, but everyone first going into this didn’t get that privilege. At least not before hand, you had to find that out when the title screen popped up.
And the fact that the movie ends in such a strange place in the story too, like technically in the second act of the story it just ends.
Part 2 picks up immediate after the first half with Paul and his mother being guided through the desert to where the Fremen rebels dwell.
Right away you know things are going to be different this go around as we are immediate hit with an action sequence.
I wonder if Denis Villeneuve got a bunch of studio notes to make things more exciting. I can easily see studio heads being so confused by the story and requesting to at least make it exciting with things blowing up and with amped up action sequences.
This wasn’t a completely pointless action sequence we get at the start, as it shows how the Fremen collect water, by using dead bodies like from Tank Girl.
I’m not sure if this is a book thing or not, but it might be. That’s the problem when you have an older source material, other things are going to be inspired by it and basically claim it for themselves.
Examples being The Matrix, hell they even call Neo “The One” in that. Not to mention the sequels aren’t even hiding it anymore and are blatantly just Dune. Game of Thrones you can clearly see the inspiration there with Jon Snow.
The savior plot I guess isn’t exactly new when comes to storytelling. It might go back as far as John Carter of Mars, another example of the source material being so old, it inspired several things after it.
In other words, everything is a rip-off of something.
Paul and his mother get led to where the Fremen hide, deep in the mountains to the north. People like Stilgar played by Javier Bardem see Paul as the messiah, The One to lead his people to victory over the invaders.
Some suspect them to instead be spies, though that never really goes anywhere. It’s quickly brought up, but they never do anything with it. Paul’s mother Lady Jessica is pretty quick to turn the people on Paul’s side, convincing them he is their messiah.
To stay in the tribe, Lady Jessica needed to drink the water of life, a liquid made from sandworms that kills the men who drink it but gives a higher enlightenment to women.
Lady Jessica is pregnant when she drinks the liquid, giving her unborn child the gift as well. She actually plays a much bigger role in the book from what I understand. She was also more prominent in other adaptations as well.
This is actually kind of where things slightly go off course when it comes to the plot or at least the pacing of this adaptation.
Many times in the film, they will quickly transition to things with a time jump, however it’s never told to the audience that is what’s happening. The first example that I can remember is when Paul is giving tasks to perform to be initiated into the Fremen group.
He is sent off into the desert and made to survive the journey on his own. He then later meets with Chani, played by Zendaya. She’s basically the Trinity of the story if we are comparing it to The Matrix.
She teaches him a couple of things like sand walking as to not alert the sandworms and how to properly gather water. But immediately after this they cut to Paul and Chani raiding spice harvesters. Which is a fantastic and exciting scene, but it just comes at you out of nowhere.
Things like this happen a few times in the film, suddenly you see a character doing something, then it is immediately followed up with seeing them doing something completely else.
Like one minute they are riding on a sandworm to a destination, then the next we see them landing at that destination flying one of those dragonfly helicopters from the series Lexx.
Originally all this takes place I think within a few years, during those years Lady Jessica’s daughter Alia is born, who has a psychic link to her thanks to the water of life.
She plays a much bigger role going forward, but in this movie, she isn’t even born yet. Which means everything happening in this movie has been within a few months or so.
Paul later gets a vision of her as an adult and she’s played by Anya Taylor-Joy, who seems to be in everything nowadays.
So that kind of screws up the timeline a bit and how things unfold as she is the one to actually kill The Baron.
In the David Lynch version, I think she hilariously tosses him into the mouth of a sandworm.
Because of these raids on the spice harvesters and factories, The Baron sends in Feyd Rautha, played famously by Sting in the original David Lynch adaption. This go around he is portrayed by Elvis actor Austin Butler. Who I swear was Bill Skarsgård.
Clearly no one can beat Sting’s performance, but Austin Butler did okay. It’s just hard not seeing Elvis. Which is kind of ironic, don’t you think?
The way they show he’s crazy is he likes to test his blades on his lady slaves and lick the blade. He’s so quirky. I’m not sure why he wasn’t introduced in the first half alongside Dave Bautista’s character Rabban.
Now the one in charge, Feyd Rautha puts the hammer down on the Fremen, wiping out the northern rebels. Those who remain must head south to the uninhabitable parts of Arrakis.
Paul’s mom is already there gaining support for him as the new Messiah, as the south are religious zealots.
Paul refuses to head south due to a vision he had where he will be the cause of billions dying because of a holy war.
He isn’t left with much of a choice as the Harkonnen’s are on the warpath. During one of the Fremen raids, Paul runs into an old friend, Gurney played by Josh Brolin.
He shows Paul where his father kept the stockpile of nukes every household has, which come into play later in the film.
To truly become The One, Paul must drink from the water of life, which will kill him. Again, the whole savior needs to die to be reborn as the messiah. Matrix, Jon Snow… etc.
During his death, he sees a beach on Arrakis and learns that his mother is the daughter of The Baron. I know the waters on Arrakis thing is from the book, however I have no idea if Paul actually being a Harkonnen is.
That feels like something thought up for the movie, but I could be wrong. It feels like it was made up to fill in the gap in the story left by making Alia still in the womb.
Now with the gift of foresight, Paul challenges The Emperor as he was the one behind the eradication of the House Atreides.
Paul takes the princess as his bride and challenges The Emperor to a duel, who he chooses Feyd-Rautha as his champion.
I was a bit disappointed they didn’t have the line “I will kill him!”, a line made famously by Sting in the David Lynch version. I used to have one of those Yak Bak toys that recorded a few seconds of audio, and for years I just have Sting yelling, “I will kill him!”.
After Feyd-Rautha’s defeat, Paul become the new ruler, but the other houses refuse to bow down, so he sends his followers out to “send them to paradise”, starting off the holy war that he envisioned.
That’s the end of the first book. The thing is, Dune as a film will never be complete, not unless Denis Villeneuve adapts every single book, which he won’t. So, you’ll never have the full story no matter what.
Because of that I’m looking at Dune Part 1 and 2 as a complete movie and as a complete movie I think it’s fantastic.
Denis Villeneuve is a very visual type of director, almost like the polar opposite of someone like Quentin Tarantino, who uses dialogue as a way to move things forward or build tension. Denis Villeneuve does this visually, giving the audience beautiful scenes all of which could be turned into wall art.
He is less concerned about what characters say, but how they look when they say it, which at times looks like models posing on a runway.
The casting is a bit odd, however I get it. He got the two hottest celebrities right now to star in it to pull in an audience that otherwise would ignore this type of movie.
You wanna make your big budget, cerebral, hard to follow science fiction film, well you gotta cast Timothée Chalamet as your lead. It doesn’t matter if he fits the part or not.
Actually, I don’t really have anything to complain about when it comes to the casting, I know others have brought it up as a major issue with the films, but I honestly saw no fault in it.
I mean, I’d rather have a slightly younger looking actor for a role than someone like 35 years too old to be playing the part like the awful looking Borderlands movie adaptation. What the hell were they thinking?
I was also made aware of the soon to be released Crow reboot where they made Eric Draven played by Bill Skarsgård look like if Machine Gun Kelly had a bastard child with Jared Leto’s Joker. It looks awful!
So, trust me, things could have been worse with the Dune casting.
Denis Villeneuve pulled off a hell of a thing here, as it got people to be into Dune of all things. Something usually reserved for nerds and nerds alike.
It’s also come a long way since the David Lynch failed adaption.
If I hand one major issue with the film, it would be the rating, as it is very PG-13. I think another reason he was able to get this made was making it accessible to a larger audience with a lesser parental rating than the R rating is clearly deserved.
People use knives and swords but there’s never a drop of blood. It gets really frustrating to see after a while.
As much as it annoyed me, I still give Dune Part 2 a SEE IT rating, as not only did it redeem the first half that came out 3 years ago, but it makes it better because of it. The visuals are incredible, the sound makes it absolutely worth seeing in theaters.
Absolutely check this one out.
Seeing as it comes out in June sometime, I think I might be back with my review for the new Crow remake. It seems so bad I can’t escape it. So, look forward to that in a few weeks.
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