Dune 2: The Rise of Muad'Dib

The first 250 words of this will be spoiler-free. Then there will be a header saying “SPOILERS.” Read beyond that at your own whim. I saw Dune 2 in theatres last Sunday night, IMAX, horrific seats, but that’s what you get when you go opening night and only buy tickets a week beforehand. I’d love to say the crowd was a cross-section of Portland’s finest nerds and geekerie, but in fact, it was a lot of families and old people, which influences this review quite a lot. I think I misunderstood the first Dune in that I incorrectly thought it was for people like me, dweebs who grew up with the books and really wanted to see Paul Atreides win one for all of us who yell a lot in their internal monologues and wish we were Percy Jackson. In fact, Dune is the summit of the walk that was Star Wars 40 years ago, it's for your grandpa and I mean that in the best way. It’s the saga, it’s about the sort of storytelling that’s generational and vast. The costuming in this film was superb, the acting was dramatic and evocative. The best part was finally seeing the fighting; you should watch it just for the big Paul fight towards the end. I’d say about an hour in it becomes a Vietnam War picture, and then at the end it becomes something post-9/11. The colour and cinematography will throw you out of your chair. Make sure to see it in IMAX; the worm sound is everything. I give it an 8.5 out of 10, let’s hear it for the Muad’Dib, folks!

SPOILERS

So what’s really spectacular about Dune 2 over the first Dune is that the pacing is much better. You get three films in one and it’s only two hours and forty minutes. It feels like a tight ninety because at the end of the first hour the perspective swaps, much like the books do, to be that of the Emperor’s daughter. From this new diplomatic viewpoint, the narrative is explained much more briskly and you see the early conflicts between Fremen and Harkonnen forces as though it were a Vietnam War film. A scene like this occurs in Dune but it’s much less dramatic; the Fremen special forces emerge from a small sandstorm that the Sardaukar are wholly unprepared for, eliminating them piecemeal in moments as the most useless nephew in cinema history looks on. What’s funny is how well the visual narrative of the film reveals the ideological underpinnings of these various factions. The Harkonnen obsession with pain and suffering is repeatedly their undoing, as when this large nephew tries to go to battle with a battalion of Sardaukar and a flail. His flail is useless immediately against a fast and unseen foe, and so he’s forced to flee to his ship and evacuate posthaste. On the flip side, Paul is almost never even seen with a weapon. He can improvise and get by better than any of his opponents. The real mirroring is between the na-Baron and Paul. 

Obviously, Paul is presented as the Christ parallel and it is his journey toward revealing his status as mahdi that propels the plot, in opposition to the na-Baron, who is revealed about halfway through, and follows an opposite narrative arc. However, it is the parts where they fully mirror, with Paul showing humility while the na-Baron slays anyone who annoys him, Paul using Speech to get his way while the na-Baron is a psychotic killer, Paul winning the final fight while the na-Baron fights dirty to kill the Atreides soldiers and try to kill Paul, that shows the depths of this story. I think this film does a remarkable job at humanising Paul and attempting to make him relatable while also foreshadowing the unfathomable shift coming to him in the third film/next set of books. I think Paul reminds me a lot of Ender or Holden Caulfield in this part of the story. He’s got so much quirky emotion fighting against itself and everyone around him. When he rages and uses the Speech, you really feel like he’s being taboo in much the same way Desert Spring is; and of course, his true and undying devotion to Desert Spring is the other crux of this story that makes it wonderful.

Unrequited love is always adorable and prescient. What makes the one in Dune 2 special is that it is especially obvious how the romance between these two is fated in the two moons by how much chemistry exists between the stars when they’re fighting. Zendaya’s Chani blows Princess Leia and her role as Rocky from Shake it Up out of the water with how defining and consuming a performance it is. You cannot take your eyes away as she bullies and negs the young Atreides starting with his “drunken lizard” sandwalk. I cried when he declared his undying love for her, what a beautiful interracial partnership, enbies everywhere hollering for vibes this pure.  The most critical performance in the film is of course the Emperor being played by Christopher Walken. At 80 years old, he brings the cinematic gravitas needed for this incredible role, and it’s one of the most impeccable performances I’ve ever seen. You need not worry about Darth Vader or Emperor Palpatine, the most threatening force in any galaxy is Walken clad in all white atop his throne. When he’s playing senility, you feel that you’re seeing a great beast forget to flick a horsefly from its hide. His daughter is a convincing double agent. But the real show stealer performance is from Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica. Her descent into the power of Reverend Mother is awe inspiring; I gasped when the film opened with a vision of the foetus of her daughter (Realheads know she’s the best character in the Dune saga). Seeing Paul’s mom drive the wisened Fremen to anxiety with her conversations with her daughter is something I wish they studied in acting school. RUN do not walk to see Dune 2 in IMAX. See it five times. This is a 15/10 film. Better than Star Wars. I’m excited to see the finale in a few years.