Genre-defining films are a rare breed, especially in genres as oversaturated as science-fiction. When you have countless Marvel movies, remakes or sequels to 20th-century classics à la “Jurassic World” and the classics themselves, many films are vying for limited attention. It’s especially difficult for a film to bury itself in the hard sci-fi constants of esoteric world-building, strange plotlines and hard-to-grasp characters, while still competing with the fun, lighthearted competition of the likes of Star Wars. Denis Villeneuve’s (“Arrival”) “Dune: Part Two” shatters these reservations by not shying away from them; Villeneuve instead uses every technique in his filmmaking repertoire to create one of the greatest science-fiction films — no, one of the greatest films — of all time, the enigmatic story and all.
Despite covering a huge chunk of plot, “Dune: Part Two” keeps its pacing tight and story coherent. It starts right where the first film left off: House Atreides has lost the desert planet of Arrakis to the rival Harkonnens who were helped by the Emperor (Christopher Walken, “Pulp Fiction”). Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet, “Little Women”) and his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson, “The Greatest Showman”) have taken refuge with the Fremen, the native people of Arrakis; while with them, Paul falls in love with Chani (Zendaya, “Spider-Man: Homecoming”), a Fremen woman passionately wishing for her people’s freedom. Paul is seeing prophetic visions where he becomes the messiah to a warrior cult, the Lisan al Gaib, made worse by both his mother’s active promotion of these beliefs and the Fremen leader Stilgar’s (Javier Bardem, “No Country For Old Men”) devout faith in Paul’s prophecy. Paul attempts to strike a balance between preventing a “jihad” that would result in a war spreading across the universe and killing countless innocents with wanting to avenge his family’s downfall.
And yes, it is a jihad; even if the film westernizes the language to “holy war” or “crusade,” the film keeps the influence of Middle Eastern and North African cultures of the book. It doesn’t shy away from other Arabic-influenced words like Shai-Hulud, the Fremen name for the giant sandworms that dominate Arrakis. Instead, it only sanitizes the word jihad for audiences who might be uncomfortable with its use, weakening the film’s otherwise powerful message on the relationship between imperialism and indigenous groups. The first film, “Dune,” was rightfully criticized for its lack of representation in its cast, and the continued use of “holy war” follows this same trend of Hollywood silencing diverse voices in the name of profitability.
Paul’s quest for power is contrasted with the Harkonnen heir Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler, “Elvis”), a violent sociopath who is being manipulated by the Bene Gesserit, a clandestine religious group that is seeking to replace the Emperor with a candidate from their eugenic breeding program. Paul and Feyd-Rautha are both vying for the throne and control of Arrakis, and as the religious fervor around Paul increases, war seems inevitable.
The complex story is supported brilliantly by the film’s fantastic performances. Villeneuve draws greatness out of each of his actors, and every single character gets their time to shine. Every performer is given time at center stage, allowing them to flex their acting muscles and show that even if they aren’t the main character, they deserve attention. Josh Brolin (“Avengers: Endgame”) especially benefits from this in his performance of Gurney Halleck, an advisor and friend to Paul. He uses his limited screen time completely, fulfilling one of the most tragic revenge arcs in only a handful of scenes. Zendaya as Chani straddles the line of loving Paul while still questioning the honesty in his desire to help the Fremen. The list of standout performers could go on — Butler, Ferguson, Bardem. Countless performances in this movie would stand above the rest in a lesser film, but Chalamet is the one who takes the cake. He seamlessly jumps between Paul’s fury, terror and desire, deftly balancing the conflicting emotions inside of Paul. The scene where Paul finally accepts his destiny and mantle of messiah is the most heart-thumping climax in recent memory. I’ll leave it unspoiled because I lack the words to describe the way it makes me feel.
Villeneuve’s Dune is not a carbon copy of Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” and often for good reason. With less time to develop characters and plot lines than a full-length book, Villeneuve removes many auxiliary elements to emphasize “Dune’s” most important elements: Paul’s rise to power and its dire consequences for the universe. Multiple secondary characters are removed whole cloth, a two-year time jump is replaced with a continuous plotline and simple characters are given new complexity, all to the benefit of the film. Instead of learning what happened to the kids of a Fremen character who died halfway through the story, the audience sees Chani voice her opinions, make decisions that impact the world around her and have real human emotions — all things that were lacking in the book. She criticizes the Fremen religious cult arising around Paul, seeing through the illusion of freedom the prophecy presents to its truth — it’s just another form of control. The film adds a more character-driven angle to the book’s original story, creating an impassioned journey for the audience to join along on.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the costumes — they are exquisite. All of the outfits from the previous film are on full display, and the film’s attention to detail allows the audience a chance to examine them in finer detail. Sandsuits are still impossibly complex, yet tattered by the desert. Bene Gesserit headdresses and veils provide a combination of religious evocation and sinister concealment. However, our new characters’ clothing — or sometimes lack thereof — provides the audience with an immediate understanding of what kind of people they are dealing with. The Emperor’s daughter Princess Irulan’s (Florence Pugh, “Midsommar”) bejeweled dress doesn’t stop at a typical neckline, instead stretching to the edges of her face, punctuating her unimaginable power over the universe. Feyd-Rautha is decked out in a bizarro version of the Fremen’s stillsuits: While their gear emphasizes speed and minimal waste, Feyd-Rautha’s beefy black armor implies strength and brute force. Combined with the striking hair and makeup work on Butler, even a still image of the Harkonen nephew is unnerving. Every single costume and detail contributes to the film’s characters and visual storytelling, adding to the world without the audience having to think about it at all.
The colors of “Dune: Part Two” strip back the visuals to their bare bones. The vibrant oranges of Arrakis open and end the film, with the surprising energy and life of the harsh desert planet setting the stage for immersive visual storytelling. Sandwiched inside are softly lit scenes of the Emperor’s homeworld, stark and brutal black-and-white scenes of the Harkonnen planet Giedi Prime and kaleidoscopic dream sequences that fragment natural landscapes into a chaotic mess of colors, spice and fear. Each unique setting has such a distinct visual design and color palette that they are instantly recognizable from just a few-second sequence. Despite the otherworldly settings, the audience is never lost; they can always look up at the sunlight for guidance, like a traveler in the desert.
These alien settings don’t stop the film from being topical, either. In one striking scene, Harkonnen forces, led by the brutal war leader Rabban (Dave Bautista, “Guardians of the Galaxy”), fly over the deserts of Arrakis in a military formation, looking straight out of a modern military documentary and evoking imagery of American military forces in the Middle East. There is constant commentary on colonialism’s need to exploit a native population and their natural resources, as the Fremen are killed for the valuable spice melange found on Arrakis, only for them to retaliate with guerrilla attacks on mining rigs. The Fremen have a dream of a green Arrakis as their home, a goal that cannot be achieved without their independence from imperial control. Paul makes promises to fulfill these aspirations but never shows real earnestness to follow through; his focus is on gaining the power necessary to enact revenge. These themes coalesce into a gut-wrenching ending where the audience comes to realize that no matter who is in power, exploitation is inevitable. The film might have hidden from the language of the Fremen’s struggle, but it didn’t hide from weight.
While the technical aspects of the film — the acting, the plot changes, the visuals and the costumes — contribute to the film’s magnificence, these parts are eclipsed by the whole. Quality lighting and camera work alone do not make a film one of the greatest culminations of filmmaking ever, and don’t get it wrong, “Dune: Part Two” is a genre-defining film. “Dune: Part Two” is great because it encapsulates an absolute terror of a future war balanced against a burning desire for vengeance unseen in any other piece of art. When Paul finally takes power, the audience is swept along in the fervor, ignoring the burning pits in their stomachs that tell them Paul is not the ambivalent savior he presents himself as. The audience cannot help but understand how the terrible things occurring come to pass, since Paul’s terrifying influence is reaching through the screen and affecting them as well. Paul is not a white savior, because he is not a savior. The film is not a retelling of the reductionist myths where a white man saves the “barbaric” native people; it is a story of one imperial power being replaced by another imperial power backed by a planet worth of zealots with their own ambitions. The scariest, most intense and best part of the film is that the audience experiences this fanaticism themselves, only to realize it isn’t the solution either: You can’t just put a new king on the throne, you have to blow up the entire castle.
Dune succeeds in all metrics. Its visuals, plot, pacing, character work and music all land miles above the norm of sci-fi fare. All this, and yet the film seems to reach beyond the sum of its parts. Some may point to the fact that things have been done backward — the great sci-fi epics of our time, especially George Lucas’s Star Wars trilogy, owe a fair share of their inspiration to Herbert’s story. Seeing the origin of the modern sci-fi fantasy blockbuster in its full glory provides a certain catharsis.
But there’s more. “Dune: Part Two” will go down in the hallowed halls of “the best of all time” not because it looks good, nor because its source material is so influential to its genre. The awe factor comes from the fact that the story is eternally relevant and perpetually worth telling. Colonialism runs rampant. The ultra-powerful strip lands of their natural resources. There’s a reason Dune has so much Biblical imagery: It is supposed to be as old and as familiar as the parables we still tell from thousands of years ago. Paul’s reckoning with the nature of power isn’t a shoehorned hero’s journey like in similar protagonists in the countless tales of Dune’s ilk. It feels real and means something.
Managing Arts Editor Zach Loveall can be reached at zloveall@umich.edu.