Just as with my review of the first installment of Dune, this will not be one of my usual reviews where I describe the plot. Once again, I’ll give my impressions of the movie as someone hitting the story for the first time, since, as I mentioned before I’ve never read the books and only have a vague sense of the story and the author’s message, if there is one.
First off, the cinematography is top notch. If the movie is blending actual desert landscapes with CGI it’s seamless and extremely realistic. Or maybe the whole thing is CGI in which case it’s even more remarkable. The acting is very good although casting Christopher Walken as the galactic emperor is jarring for me. It’s almost impossible for me to see him in a film and not expect some kind of joke. But he has very little screen time and the rest of the cast is very, very good.
The plot seems to be a combination of Lawrence of Arabia with a science fiction galactic political intrigue story. And that may sound sort of flippant but actually I think the storyline is handled very skillfully by the director. The pacing and the building to the climax is done with great skill and the final battle and its outcome are great.
What the filmmaker went for here was a combination of a personal story about Paul and his friends and family against the backdrop of a spectacle which is the revolt of the Fremen against the off-worlders who have dominated their world for centuries. The reason I mentioned Lawrence of Arabia is because Paul is an outsider who is accepted by the Fremen just as Lawrence was accepted by the Arabs in their struggle to liberate themselves from the Turks. And the Fremen are obviously modeled after the Arabs with “spice” as a stand-in for oil in the real world.
I don’t know if the movie is very faithful to every detail in the novels but in my opinion both this installment and the previous movie provide top-notch science fiction cinematic entertainment. The protagonist and his friends are extremely likable and their adversaries are almost literally cartoon villains that in some cases seem hardly human. And watching their defeat is almost as much fun as seeing Paul victorious. One thing though, Paul’s mother belongs to some kind of female religious magical cabal that has a lot to do with control over the nobility of the empire. I find myself repelled by all of them including Paul’s mother. I’d like to see all of them burned at the stake as witches.
So, my take on all this is simple. The plot is consistent enough to pass the suspension of disbelief hurdle and the action of the plot is lively enough and entertaining enough to keep you watching right through to the end. I can’t see how I don’t rate it as highly recommended. And the movie ends in the middle of a giant war so obviously we all have to save up our pennies to see the third and possibly further installments when they arrive. So, three cheers for Dune: Part 2.