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.\u00a0 Once again, I\u2019ll give my impressions of the movie as someone hitting the story for the first time, since, as I mentioned before I\u2019ve never read the books and only have a vague sense of the story and the author\u2019s message, if there is one.<\/p>\n
First off, the cinematography is top notch.\u00a0 If the movie is blending actual desert landscapes with CGI it\u2019s seamless and extremely realistic.\u00a0 Or maybe the whole thing is CGI in which case it\u2019s even more remarkable.\u00a0 The acting is very good although casting Christopher Walken as the galactic emperor is jarring for me.\u00a0 It\u2019s almost impossible for me to see him in a film and not expect some kind of joke.\u00a0 But he has very little screen time and the rest of the cast is very, very good.<\/p>\n
The plot seems to be a combination of Lawrence of Arabia with a science fiction galactic political intrigue story.\u00a0 And that may sound sort of flippant but actually I think the storyline is handled very skillfully by the director.\u00a0 The pacing and the building to the climax is done with great skill and the final battle and its outcome are great.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And the Fremen are obviously modeled after the Arabs with \u201cspice\u201d as a stand-in for oil in the real world.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t 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.\u00a0 The protagonist and his friends are extremely likable and their adversaries are almost literally cartoon villains that in some cases seem hardly human.\u00a0 And watching their defeat is almost as much fun as seeing Paul victorious.\u00a0 One thing though, Paul\u2019s mother belongs to some kind of female religious magical cabal that has a lot to do with control over the nobility of the empire.\u00a0 I find myself repelled by all of them including Paul\u2019s mother.\u00a0 I\u2019d like to see all of them burned at the stake as witches.<\/p>\n
So, my take on all this is simple.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I can\u2019t see how I don\u2019t rate it as highly recommended.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 So, three cheers for Dune: Part 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237,4,243],"tags":[3349,1067,43,38,1355,265],"class_list":["post-36215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-movie-reviews","tag-dune","tag-frank-herbert","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-science-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\n