Worth: $18.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Javier Bardem, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Christopher Walken, Dave Bautista, Lea Seydoux, Stella Skarsgard, Charlotte Rampling
Intro:
…a true-blue(-eyed) triumph for modern mainstream cinema and an experience that can make even the biggest of projection screens feel even bigger.
This is epic sci-fi as it’s meant to be. Everything that gave the first part its awe-inspiring grandeur is here, from Melbourne-born DP Greig Fraser continuing his rampage as a one-man leviathan behind the camera, to Hans Zimmer and the sound design team crafting increasingly dense and sprawling soundscapes, to the truly breathtaking love and care put into the production design.
The black-and-white photography used for a key scene on the Harkonnens’ home planet gives Black & Chrome vibes in the best way, which fit the bleakness of the culture being highlighted. And with more visual focus being put on Arrakis as opposed to the Brutalist trappings of the Great Houses, there’s more of a serene beauty to the landscape.
The interior POV of the story, this time around shows it as a place of life, rather than desolation, that is being set upon by dragonfly ships, spice harvesters that look like oversized mechanical ticks, and ants armed with laser weapons. Nothing that a big-arse worm can’t handle.
The script (with Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts carrying on without Eric Roth this time) also builds on their already-impressive foundation, furthering the Game Of Thrones-esque political intrigue amongst the Houses and the shadowy forces controlling them, as well as turbo-boosting the religious side of things to create a noticeably darker experience. While the presence of Javier Bardem as Stilgar, the zealous yet earnest uncle of the main cast, allows for some pockets of comic relief here and there, the narrative stays true to Frank Herbert’s cautious scepticism about the rise and legitimisation of religious zealotry.
Timothée Chalamet handles the tragic trajectory of his character from angsty orphan to war messiah with suitable grit, and Zendaya does phenomenally alongside him as his external conscience. Even with all the work done to highlight just how bloody revolting the Harkonnens are (right down to Austin Butler as the vicious Feyd-Rautha, who could only be more unnerving to watch if he borrowed Sting’s winged underpants from the ‘80s version), it effectively conveys how the promise of a dark reflection of our main hero… may have already come to fruition with the hero himself. It reflects statements in earlier Villeneuve works (the bleak perspective on religious influence from Prisoners, the darkened moral compromise of Sicario, the totalitarian self-deception of Enemy) in a way that, much like rewatching Peter Jackson’s Tolkien adaptations in context to his early splatstick features, give the impression of the culmination of a director’s body of work up to that point, irrespective of specific genre.
Dune: Part Two is both as a closing-of-the-circle for the story of the first Dune book (with a further continuation already in the works, because this iron’s still hot, dammit!), as well as its own satisfyingly harrowing yarn about the nature of faith and control. It’s a true-blue(-eyed) triumph for modern mainstream cinema and an experience that can make even the biggest of projection screens feel even bigger.
