Dune Part Two
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson
Genre: Spicy
Can three sci-fi or fantasy novels fit into two or three movies? If you haven’t read the original Dune “series” of three books in one then following Dune Part Two will be as much a challenge as following the Lord of the Rings movies if you hadn’t read J.R.R. Tolkien’s three books.
That doesn’t mean the movies (Dunes and Tolkiens) aren’t worth seeing. They are truly epic with massive battle scenes, extraordinary landscapes and interesting characters.
But to truly understand all of the above you need to understand what’s missing.
A classic example in Dune is the questionable inclusion of the Emperor in the movie if you haven’t read the book. But in the book, the Emperor and his princess are central to the interactions of the battling Houses (families) and the history of the universe.
Dune Part Two (more so than Part One which mainly sets the tone and the imagery) often rushes from scene to scene. Sure, most of them are fascinating, but the missing details mean that if you’ve read the books it feels like some of them are just a shortcut back to the main scenes on Arrakis, the planet where the battles take place. The complex House Harkonnen interactions, Trump-like but even more extreme (you heard that here first), aren’t nearly as understandable or fascinating as they are in the books.
So for those who haven’t read the book(s) and don’t intend to, don’t worry. It all boils down to the sand worms, the one element which the movies (including the 1984 David Lynch version) spend plenty of time gleefully portraying.
Rating: Four generations of extremism
