These will be general impressions of this film, whereas my review of the first film was more detailed as far as characters and plot goes. In its initial release, many cinemas have been screening Dune and Dune: Part Two back-to-back, which I would recommend if you haven't seen the first film yet. The story is dense and you would be completely lost if you start watching this series with the sequel. That being said, there is handy plot exposition in the dialogue at the start to refresh your memory of what happened in the first film (I saw the first film in the cinema in early December, 2021 and didn't rewatch it prior to seeing Dune: Part Two today, although I have read my Dune review a few times since then, so that was also a refresher, of sorts).
Not being fanatical about this story as far as reading the source material or watching the first Dune more than once, I have to say that I don't think that I grasped everything that happens in the sequel. I was vague on details about who people were or the origins of peoples. E.g. At the start of the film, I was thinking that a young woman was our hero's (Paul Atreides, played by Timothée Chalamet) sister but it turns out that she was his mother. My review of Dune doesn't mention that she looked too young to play his mother but she does. That Paul says "sister" around her sometimes didn't help me. Later on I saw an older man in a scene and I thought he might have been one of the good guys from the first film but since he was in a spice harvester now, I was confused. Why was he in that? I'm not sure that that is explained satisfactorily but that does raise one issue that I had with this film: being able to clearly understand the dialogue being spoken. Sometimes it was unclear due to characters' accents, other times due to ambient noise and other other times due to stylistic effects being utilised. It would have been good if I could have heard the last thing that Paul says to Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (played by Stellan Skarsgård). It's at times like these that being able to rewind the film or turn on closed captions would have been appreciated.
Not being able to recall how romantically involved Paul was with Chani (Zendaya) in the first film, it did seem that in the sequel their romance blossomed at a very fast rate. Perhaps more time had elapsed that I realised within the sequel itself, as far as that went. Sometimes the transitions from one scene to a different one was unclear. For instance, there's one scene where Paul is meant to be having a trial in the desert by himself and in the next scene it wasn't clear to me that the man in a military ambush was him but in my defence, he did have his face covered in the latter scene. So, maybe these switches were handled too abruptly or maybe I just lost concentration during the transition.
There are many times in Dune: Part Two where some of the 'natives' on the planet Arrakis comment that their religion is just a means for others to manipulate them for the other's political ends. Similarly, the same sentiment is expressed by some of the colonisers too. At the risk of sounding like comedian Kenny Everett's character Quentin Pose: "religion is the opiate of the masses and yet...". And yet, on the other hand, the all-female religious order does have what seems like supernatural abilities. In other words, it's hard to be definitive about what is happening with the hero's journey here.
Another time I felt more detached watching this film was just finding silly how Paul exceeded the prophecies concerning 'the chosen one'. The signs or proof of Paul's prophetic status are magnified and overblown. Then there's the issue of him being white and being worshipped by the non-white 'natives'. No doubt there is a post-colonial critique to be made here. Just a question for myself: are the 'natives' of a Arrakis genuinely of this planet or were they just the first colonists there? Did the first film explain that? Did the book explain that? My last word on finding the film silly at times would be those scenes where characters worm-ski. Really? It's probably fortunate that no attempt is made in the film to try and rationalise that, because I doubt that I could suspend my disbelief.
Towards the end of the film there was a point where I thought that that conclusion would serve as the end point of the series, perhaps. However, the story continued and made it obvious that that wouldn't be the case. Since I haven't read the book on which the films are based, if I was to hazard a guess, I would say that this Dune story would be a trilogy but I wouldn't rule out a 4th film in this arc. In other words, this would be a 3 or 4 film adaptation of the original Dune book by Frank Herbert (I imagine part 4 as being some sort of 3 hour epilogue). I'm still interested and invested in this story. I want to see how the relationship between Paul and Chani evolves. With this sequel, the worlds depicted did seem quite alien but the thought occurred to me that it would be familiar to people who lived in earlier times, for instance, those attending the Nuremberg rallies or the Colosseum 'back in the day'.
Note: I didn't see a listing for a 3D screening for this film in cinemas here but the closing credits makes it clear that such a version exists. I can't vouch in that case as to how worthwhile it would be to view that version. When I saw one of the Disney Star Wars films in 3D it was laughably woeful on that front. The first Avatar film is the benchmark on that front.
Random notes:
* I toyed with scoring this film 70%, then 75% seemed most likely but I decided to add a "+" sign to that, which is my tipping point for adding a star to my rating, as IMDB does not do half stars.
* I laughed out loud when one character said words to the effect that Paul's denial of being the messiah was proof Paul was the messiah!
* Christopher Walken is such a distinctive looking individual that he stands out like a dog's bollocks, visually. The rest of the cast didn't have that 'baggage' with me, even though I've seen some of them in unrelated films. In other words, I thought "that's Christopher Walken" when I saw him. Perhaps you could say that his presence affected my 'immersion' in this world.
* Nice misdirection in the final fight scene.
* American pronunciation of "Dune" by Paul, as in "doon".
* As per my review of the first Dune film, I've collected another IMDB "Iron bladder" trophy.
Not being fanatical about this story as far as reading the source material or watching the first Dune more than once, I have to say that I don't think that I grasped everything that happens in the sequel. I was vague on details about who people were or the origins of peoples. E.g. At the start of the film, I was thinking that a young woman was our hero's (Paul Atreides, played by Timothée Chalamet) sister but it turns out that she was his mother. My review of Dune doesn't mention that she looked too young to play his mother but she does. That Paul says "sister" around her sometimes didn't help me. Later on I saw an older man in a scene and I thought he might have been one of the good guys from the first film but since he was in a spice harvester now, I was confused. Why was he in that? I'm not sure that that is explained satisfactorily but that does raise one issue that I had with this film: being able to clearly understand the dialogue being spoken. Sometimes it was unclear due to characters' accents, other times due to ambient noise and other other times due to stylistic effects being utilised. It would have been good if I could have heard the last thing that Paul says to Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (played by Stellan Skarsgård). It's at times like these that being able to rewind the film or turn on closed captions would have been appreciated.
Not being able to recall how romantically involved Paul was with Chani (Zendaya) in the first film, it did seem that in the sequel their romance blossomed at a very fast rate. Perhaps more time had elapsed that I realised within the sequel itself, as far as that went. Sometimes the transitions from one scene to a different one was unclear. For instance, there's one scene where Paul is meant to be having a trial in the desert by himself and in the next scene it wasn't clear to me that the man in a military ambush was him but in my defence, he did have his face covered in the latter scene. So, maybe these switches were handled too abruptly or maybe I just lost concentration during the transition.
There are many times in Dune: Part Two where some of the 'natives' on the planet Arrakis comment that their religion is just a means for others to manipulate them for the other's political ends. Similarly, the same sentiment is expressed by some of the colonisers too. At the risk of sounding like comedian Kenny Everett's character Quentin Pose: "religion is the opiate of the masses and yet...". And yet, on the other hand, the all-female religious order does have what seems like supernatural abilities. In other words, it's hard to be definitive about what is happening with the hero's journey here.
Another time I felt more detached watching this film was just finding silly how Paul exceeded the prophecies concerning 'the chosen one'. The signs or proof of Paul's prophetic status are magnified and overblown. Then there's the issue of him being white and being worshipped by the non-white 'natives'. No doubt there is a post-colonial critique to be made here. Just a question for myself: are the 'natives' of a Arrakis genuinely of this planet or were they just the first colonists there? Did the first film explain that? Did the book explain that? My last word on finding the film silly at times would be those scenes where characters worm-ski. Really? It's probably fortunate that no attempt is made in the film to try and rationalise that, because I doubt that I could suspend my disbelief.
Towards the end of the film there was a point where I thought that that conclusion would serve as the end point of the series, perhaps. However, the story continued and made it obvious that that wouldn't be the case. Since I haven't read the book on which the films are based, if I was to hazard a guess, I would say that this Dune story would be a trilogy but I wouldn't rule out a 4th film in this arc. In other words, this would be a 3 or 4 film adaptation of the original Dune book by Frank Herbert (I imagine part 4 as being some sort of 3 hour epilogue). I'm still interested and invested in this story. I want to see how the relationship between Paul and Chani evolves. With this sequel, the worlds depicted did seem quite alien but the thought occurred to me that it would be familiar to people who lived in earlier times, for instance, those attending the Nuremberg rallies or the Colosseum 'back in the day'.
Note: I didn't see a listing for a 3D screening for this film in cinemas here but the closing credits makes it clear that such a version exists. I can't vouch in that case as to how worthwhile it would be to view that version. When I saw one of the Disney Star Wars films in 3D it was laughably woeful on that front. The first Avatar film is the benchmark on that front.
Random notes:
* I toyed with scoring this film 70%, then 75% seemed most likely but I decided to add a "+" sign to that, which is my tipping point for adding a star to my rating, as IMDB does not do half stars.
* I laughed out loud when one character said words to the effect that Paul's denial of being the messiah was proof Paul was the messiah!
* Christopher Walken is such a distinctive looking individual that he stands out like a dog's bollocks, visually. The rest of the cast didn't have that 'baggage' with me, even though I've seen some of them in unrelated films. In other words, I thought "that's Christopher Walken" when I saw him. Perhaps you could say that his presence affected my 'immersion' in this world.
* Nice misdirection in the final fight scene.
* American pronunciation of "Dune" by Paul, as in "doon".
* As per my review of the first Dune film, I've collected another IMDB "Iron bladder" trophy.