If you asked me two weeks ago if I was going to see Dune: Part Two, I would have said “absolutely not”. I actually did say that to many people. I never watched the first one when it came out in 2021 and I honestly had no interest in getting invested in another popular franchise story. Or so I thought. Turns out, I suffer from what I’m calling “cultural fomo” (fomo as in fear of missing out, for the uninitiated). When everyone on the internet and every podcast I listen to was talking about Dune: Part Two, I couldn’t not be a part of that conversation. I wanted to be in on the jokes and analysis and understand this massive moment in pop culture. Blame it on my job or my personal interests in movies and pop culture or my “cultural fomo”, but, despite my initial disinterest, I felt peer pressured by the seemingly increasing power and impact of this movie to see it. The internet bullied me into seeing Dune (that’s like an MTV True Life episode title). 

Turns out, I am a perfect mark for this movie. I don’t do anything half-ass so once I decided I was going to see Dune: Part Two, I needed to first make sure I learned everything there was to know about this world (big shock, I know. I can’t just be normal about something). What I learned was, the original novel “Dune” came out in 1965 and is essentially the blueprint of modern fantasy and sci-fi storytelling. Watching the movies and delving into the story and the lore, I was reminded of Star Wars, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, and more. And then I realized, Dune came first. It inspired many of the stories I love. I felt already primed to be interested in this world because of the way it spawned tropes that are so familiar to me. 

Personally, I love lore. I love diving into a world where you can tell the story is so fully developed and fleshed out. Just watching the movies you get the feeling that there is more story, more detail, more history that’s in the books but the movies couldn’t possibly fully contain. That aspect reminded me a lot of Game of Thrones where there are so many references to thousands of years of created history that exist even if we as viewers don’t always get the full story. Harry Potter is the same way. It just makes these fantasy universes feel all the more real and tangible. I like to feel like if you asked anyone in Game of Thrones or Harry Potter or Dune about a historical event in their world or how some piece of technology or special power worked, they would have an answer. These stories don’t make things up as they go along and try to patchwork together a coherent narrative. They are rich, dense worlds with thousands of years of charted history that feel lived in. (That also creates a lot of spin-off potential from these stories because you could easily drop in to any point in the history and there’s a story there. We’ve seen this with the Fantastic Beasts movies from Harry Potter, House of the Dragon and more to come from Game of Thrones, and now Dune has a spin-off television show in the works as well. As a viewer and a fan, this is all for better or worse, but from an industry standpoint, intellectual property (IP) is hugely valuable and the more you can expand it, the more lucrative it is.)

Like I said, there is so much story here, and, despite my fairly extensive research, I am still just a newcomer to this world. So, I won’t be going deep on the plot. I also don’t want to spoil anything for anyone because I think people should experience it on their own. Dune: Part Two is the sequel to 2021’s Dune, both written and directed by Denis Villeneuve. The two parts together adapt the first novel in the “Dune” series. It is widely rumored this is intended to be a film trilogy with the next and final (?) film adapting the next book in the series, “Dune: Messiah”, but no formal announcements have been made yet. While some people argue the two movies are distinct, I really think they’re best viewed together as one long movie. Yes, they tell slightly different stories, and, yes, they are fairly different tonally, but, ultimately, I think you need both together to get the whole picture. Just one film on its own doesn’t display the full arc the movie is trying to communicate. The first film gives a lot of backstory and set up while the second takes off running with action. Part Two also picks up almost exactly where the first film leaves off, providing an easy continuation between the movies. 

On the broadest of levels, this is a “chosen one” narrative. Once again, strong echoes of Game of Thrones and Harry Potter where there is a widespread prophecy about a figure who will be coming to save the day. In Game of Thrones, all signs point towards Jon Snow (or maybe Daenerys Targaryen depending on your interpretation) as the “Prince That Was Promised” (sorry, GOT spoilers). In Harry Potter, Harry is literally referred to as “the chosen one”. In Dune, we get Paul Atreides, played by Timothée Chalamet. A powerful, magical sisterhood known as the Bene Gesserit have been secretly pulling the strings behind all ruling families for thousands of years, trying to create the messiah, or the Kwisatz Haderach (sidenote: I’m also obsessed with when a world creates its own language. Dracarys. Muggles. You get the point. A lot of the terms in Dune, in particular, are just really fun to say so I have a full new vocabulary I’ll be using). At the same time, the Bene Gesserit have been seeding the prophecy about the coming of this savior into various communities across the planets in this galaxy. Is Paul the messiah, “the chosen one”? How do we know? Is there actually something different and special about him? Or does a growing group of people telling Paul and everyone around him that he’s the messiah just create a self-fulfilling prophecy? I genuinely think this might be one of the most interesting chosen one narratives I’ve ever seen because of how thorny it is. Harry Potter is the clear-cut version. We know Harry is the one and we also know he’s a good person. There is purity in that story. But Dune is much more complicated. It questions the merits of messiahs and saviors. Especially of an outsider (white) savior of a native population. It asks if attention and power corrupts indiscriminately. It asks if prophecy is real or if it is all just propaganda. It asks if faith and hope are good or if they are just tools of oppression. There is so much to unpack and explore about what Dune asks us to consider about messiahs and prophecy that stands in stark contrast to other stories covering similar themes.

On the other side of the coin, this movie is honestly just so cool. Unbelievably cool. A feast for the senses. A visual spectacle. Whatever you want to call it, I found myself smiling in the theater a few times just reacting to what I was experiencing. The style of the film is different from anything I’ve seen before and, in this day and age, that is so hard to do with a sci-fi/action movie. Ships and weapons and technology and creatures and even people move and function in ways that seem entirely new. The costumes and the fashion evoke both ancient and futuristic styles while still feeling fashionable. The colors and the views on Arrakis (the desert planet) are stunning while the starkness and angles of the Harkonnen planet are shocking. The movie goes from dark to bright, quiet to loud, hectic to calm. The final battle scene is breathtakingly quiet, allowing the fight choreography to really shine. The action sequences shake the whole theater. One of the most talked about scenes, where Paul rides a giant sandworm (in Dune lingo known as Shai-Hulud), you can almost feel yourself being blasted with sand. In this moment, along with a few others in the film, the sheer scale of what we’re seeing is almost terrifying. In the same way that I find whales scary just because of how big they are. It’s hard for the human mind to even process. This movie communicates scope and scale so well. I was thinking about other movies that have elicited a similar feeling for me and I don’t know why but the scene that keeps coming to mind is from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight where a semi-truck is flipped over lengthwise. Every time I watch that movie, that scene gets my heart racing because it is just simply awesome. It’s exciting and insane and jaw-dropping and portrayed in a way you’ve never seen before. Dune: Part Two is the same. Even if you don’t pay attention to the story, I think the movie is worth seeing for the impressive spectacle it creates on screen.

Dune: Part Two also flaunts a murderer’s row of talent. The cast includes Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Léa Seydoux, Stellan Skarsgård, Javier Bardem, Anya Taylor-Joy, and more. I particularly want to call out the combo of Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, and Anya Taylor-Joy. These are all young stars aged 27-32 who are really the faces of this film and this franchise. They have all become well-known names on their own but the group of them in a movie like this really showcases the next generation of actors and movie stars. It’s a cool moment to see and I feel like we’ll look back in 10, 20 years and marvel at how crazy it was to have had so many giant stars in one movie together. It should also be noted that they are all fantastic in the film. Zendaya has never given a bad performance or looked bad on a red carpet in her life. She has to communicate so much with just her face in this movie and pulls it off with ease. Austin Butler continues to prove that he’s a very weird guy but that makes him a pretty good actor. His character, Feyd-Rautha, is a delightfully enjoyable psychopath, aided by Butler’s chaotic energy that makes you believe he could do anything at any time. Timothée Chalamet has a hard task as his character becomes increasingly complex, and I would say his performance worked for me 90% of the time. His character does take some sharp turns in ways that I’m not sure are earned in the film, which is probably more of a storytelling issue than anything Timothée does, but there are certain shades to his personality he doesn’t always convince me of. That being said, he is spot on for most of the movie and has my attention for all of it. Of the older cast, Javier Bardem brings a fun, warm, comedic relief while Rebecca Ferguson might just be one of the coolest people alive. I could watch her stare down the camera all day. All around, every single person in the cast is firing on all cylinders and it is so cool to see the mega-wattage of star power all together on screen. 

As a recent convert to this world, I feel like it means even more when I say I recommend it. You don’t have to be a longtime fan and expert on the book to enjoy this movie (or movies). I feel like you can be as much or as little invested in the universe as you like. I do think the density of the story and the existence of such deep lore might be a barrier to entry for some people and that’s understandable. For me, though, that’s a selling point. I can take it at face value or fall down the rabbit hole of mythology (I’ll probably land somewhere in between). If you’re a fan of any modern fantasy or sci-fi stories, I think you should definitely check out Dune. It has the familiar elements of all the stories we know and love but presents them in an interesting and murky way and asks questions of these tropes that I hadn’t considered before. On top of that, it looks incredible and has some of the most major talent in the world right now. Dune: Part Two is a cinema and pop culture event and the experience of all of it coming together is nothing short of epic.

2024 Count: 8 seasons, 14 movies