I greatly enjoyed Dune 2 more than Dune 1, though much that comes down to the viewing experience. I watched Dune 1 on my home screen with my headphones jacked into the TV so that the sound could be as loud as necessary without waking up sleeping children or disturbing my working spouse. For Dune 2, I had the ideal view experience: a moderately full theater on a Saturday night, a bag of Reese’s Pieces and a seat next to a large Black man who during the previews wondered aloud why anyone in the monastery featured in Immaculate would think that Sydney Sweeney is pregnant with Jesus rather than the antichrist and who at the end of the movie patiently but thoroughly explained that to his partner that he didn’t like Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) because she supported a “totally unnecessary [sic] genocide”. He was quiet during the movie.
To say that I enjoyed Dune 2 more than Dune 1 is slightly misleading. The two are pieces of a whole that would be incomprehensible alone. The question of whether they were comprehensible to people who have not read the book or who have not seen any of the other adaptions is beyond my ability to answer. What I can say is that I enjoyed the film, an experience that attribute entirely to Villeneuve.
At two hours and forty-five minutes in length, it is totally reasonable to be afraid that the film would be a slog. See, for example, any of the recent offerings from the DC universe. Instead, the time flies by: Villeneuve is a master of action, and with his credit as one of the film’s screenwriters, he has reduced the dialogue to a manageable level so that the action can take center stage. And by action I don’t just mean battles: all of the depictions of worm-riding and rituals are filmed with a precision and with a sense of the exaggerated scale that is at the heart of the Dune books.
There are of course battles and fights, ranging from gladiatorial combat on Giedi Prime (shown a washed black and white with the explanation that system has a black sun), to the assault on the Emperor’s (Christopher Walken) camp on Arrakis. For that particular battle, Villeneuve threads a tricky needle. On the one hand, it is the complete works, as it combines worm riders and atomic weaponry in the midst of a gigantic sandstorm. On the other hand, the film makes clear that it is the negotiation with the Emperor that is the true climax of the story. That is the negotiating table (albeit one mixed with one-on-one combat, because, well, why not?) that is the climax is clear because Chani (Zendaya) leaves her beloved Paul, having become convinced that he has sold his soul in the process of becoming the master of the universe.
Chani’s disavowal highlights what I consider a weakness of the film: I didn’t find the romance between Chani and Paul particularly convincing and nor did I really follow Paul’s decision-making process about his destiny. As a result of the former, the stakes of the later are much lower. Villeneuve clearly knows that Paul feels about his (Beni Gesserit created) destiny as the Lisan al Gaib, but the mixture of factors – his desire for revenge for his father, his hatred of the Harkonnens, his fear of unleashing the Holy War, his love of Chani and the fremen), appeared to me more as confusing ambiguity rather than dramatic ambivalence.
And while I certainly trust Villeneuve with action, I don’t with landscapes. Perhaps here I simply hold the Canadian to too high a bar. But the fact of the matter is that deserts have been the subject of many great directors, whether David Lean or John Ford. As a result of their work, images of lone camel riders positioned perfectly in the middle of a bright blue sky appear in my mind whenever I am asked to think of a desert. I can’t say the same of either of the Dune movies.
David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia is important for Villeneuve for other reasons, as in that film, the eponymous Lawrence feels that his leadership is a failure. In the novels, Paul’s destiny is not so much failure as, my seatmate put it, “unnecessary genocide”. Dune is unlike the DC movies in that it requires a critical distance from its audience, something that David Lynch’s adaptation failed to cultivate. Villeneuve, very importantly, is cultivating that distance. I wonder how many people will show up to his promised Dune 3 knowing that the title of the adapted novel Dune Messiah is ironic?
To say that I enjoyed Dune 2 more than Dune 1 is slightly misleading. The two are pieces of a whole that would be incomprehensible alone. The question of whether they were comprehensible to people who have not read the book or who have not seen any of the other adaptions is beyond my ability to answer. What I can say is that I enjoyed the film, an experience that attribute entirely to Villeneuve.
At two hours and forty-five minutes in length, it is totally reasonable to be afraid that the film would be a slog. See, for example, any of the recent offerings from the DC universe. Instead, the time flies by: Villeneuve is a master of action, and with his credit as one of the film’s screenwriters, he has reduced the dialogue to a manageable level so that the action can take center stage. And by action I don’t just mean battles: all of the depictions of worm-riding and rituals are filmed with a precision and with a sense of the exaggerated scale that is at the heart of the Dune books.
There are of course battles and fights, ranging from gladiatorial combat on Giedi Prime (shown a washed black and white with the explanation that system has a black sun), to the assault on the Emperor’s (Christopher Walken) camp on Arrakis. For that particular battle, Villeneuve threads a tricky needle. On the one hand, it is the complete works, as it combines worm riders and atomic weaponry in the midst of a gigantic sandstorm. On the other hand, the film makes clear that it is the negotiation with the Emperor that is the true climax of the story. That is the negotiating table (albeit one mixed with one-on-one combat, because, well, why not?) that is the climax is clear because Chani (Zendaya) leaves her beloved Paul, having become convinced that he has sold his soul in the process of becoming the master of the universe.
Chani’s disavowal highlights what I consider a weakness of the film: I didn’t find the romance between Chani and Paul particularly convincing and nor did I really follow Paul’s decision-making process about his destiny. As a result of the former, the stakes of the later are much lower. Villeneuve clearly knows that Paul feels about his (Beni Gesserit created) destiny as the Lisan al Gaib, but the mixture of factors – his desire for revenge for his father, his hatred of the Harkonnens, his fear of unleashing the Holy War, his love of Chani and the fremen), appeared to me more as confusing ambiguity rather than dramatic ambivalence.
And while I certainly trust Villeneuve with action, I don’t with landscapes. Perhaps here I simply hold the Canadian to too high a bar. But the fact of the matter is that deserts have been the subject of many great directors, whether David Lean or John Ford. As a result of their work, images of lone camel riders positioned perfectly in the middle of a bright blue sky appear in my mind whenever I am asked to think of a desert. I can’t say the same of either of the Dune movies.
David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia is important for Villeneuve for other reasons, as in that film, the eponymous Lawrence feels that his leadership is a failure. In the novels, Paul’s destiny is not so much failure as, my seatmate put it, “unnecessary genocide”. Dune is unlike the DC movies in that it requires a critical distance from its audience, something that David Lynch’s adaptation failed to cultivate. Villeneuve, very importantly, is cultivating that distance. I wonder how many people will show up to his promised Dune 3 knowing that the title of the adapted novel Dune Messiah is ironic?