Although Dune: Part 2 did not achieve perfection in my eyes; it was disconcerting and chaotic at times, it created a luxuriously dense plot for viewers that fulfilled all of my visual, musical, and storyline expectations, nevertheless.
The movie begins with Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh), who is a completely new face to viewers, and immediately I was given the impression that she was an intelligent, intriguing, possibly protagonistic new character. The beginnings of this film were confusing to me, even in hindsight, so don’t be discouraged if you feel lost, because most viewers are in the same boat here. While some may find that a point of negativity in this film, I didn’t find that this initial confusion made enjoying the movie any more difficult.
After the opening scene, viewers are then immediatly thrust into a high stress and action-packed scene in which Paul (Timothee Chalamet) and Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) hide from Horkennen soldiers, who they believe are hunting them.
It was around here that I picked up on how subtitles only appeared on screen to translate the Fremen and Harkonnen dialogue when Paul would have understood. So at the beginning of the movie, little of the Fremen dialgoue was translated for us, but as the movie went on, we caught more and more of what they said as Paul learned the language himself.
Once the threat of the Harkonnen soldiers was extinguished, Paul, Jessica, and their Fremen allies treck to Sietch Tabr, the underground Fremen city. Promptly, the prince and his mother are met with increasingly hostile civilians; then, suddenly, the mood changes entirely and the citizens begin to bow and praise Paul as the Lisan al Gaib (the prophet).
One of the most visually and thoughtfully stunning scenes in this film is the scene in which the Sietch Tabr sacred pond is shown and explained. Underground, the Fremen have a huge man-made pond, surrounded by inscribed sandstone reminiscent of Ancient Egyptian tombs, that contains the water from their dead, which is collected seremoniously after death. The tomb is physically breathtaking in the film, the score matches etherically, and a magical, evocative moment was created for viewers.
Jessica drinks the Water of Life as a part of a ceremony to become the Sietch Tabr’s new Reverend Mother, which will kill her if she is not destined and/or trained enough to be a Revered Mother. The scene becomes increasingly high-stress as Jessica chokes violently on the eerie-blue liquid and we see it seep into her fetus’s womb. Nevertheless, she comes out of it alive, contrary to all of the spectators’ predictions, and takes over all of the former Reverend Mothers’ spirits as passes on; thus, Jessica becomes the high priestess of Sietch Tabr
At this point in the movie so much has already happened, but so much more is going to fit in as well. Within the remainder of this movie, there are three especially awesome moments: when Paul and Chani (Zendaya) singlehandedly take down a Harkonnen attack helicopter and then all of the Fremen warriors are able to destroy the entire Harkonnen warship in a fiery and intense scene, when Paul completes the last step to becoming a true Fremen—riding a sandworm—and my favorite element of this score occurs to match this magnificent moment and when the Fremen blow up a spice depot which is awesome in pyro-lover kind of way.
There are several subplots that develop through the rest of the film. One of those is the romance between Paul and Chani, which was left off in the first Dune film with a single kiss, but around the middle of this movie, this romance begins to pick up pace, and by the ending credits has become something quite serious and not without present and future turbulence. While my heart was warmed at some points by this romance, at other points, I cringed, and found some of their dialogue cheesy and out of place within the plot.
Another layer of this film’s dense plot is Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen’s (Austin Butler) entire storyline. We meet him on the Harkonnen’s own planet, and he is absolutely horrific. He’s hairless and his teeth are black, but otherwise, he looks essentially identical to his real-life self, it’s the sadistic murdering for sexual pleasure, sport, political gain and everything in between that make him so terrifying. During the rising action of the movie, Feyd-Rautha fights in a Harkonnen-style gladiator ring against the “last three” Atreides, while several Bene Gesserit women spectate above. It is here that we meet Margot Fenring (Léa Seydoux), where she very quickly reveals herself as a powerful, seductive force. I won’t disclose too much, but just know that I am a Margot Fenring fan, and I hope there is more of her to come in the next Dune film.
It is here that I will note the FANTASTIC costuming of this film, done by Jacqueline West and Bob Morgan. I loved every detail about these costumes, but my favorites were, of course, the Bene Gesserit. Specifically, Margot’s black and blue hooded gown that she wears during her encounter with Feyd-Rautha, Princess Irulan’s chainmail dress with a matching headpiece and mask and Lady Jessica’s draped headdress/dress with face tattoos to accessorize.
There are an innumerable number of other little details that I would love to note, but that’s the beauty of this movie to me. There’s so much going on visually, musically, and story-wise, which may be some viewers’ gripe with the film, but it is the reason why I enjoyed the movie so much. I am no cinephile; I don’t know how to “actually” critique film; but I’ve watched and enjoyed many sci-fi novels and movies, and I can say with that background that I thoroughly enjoyed my experience watching this in theaters.
