Is ‘Dune: Part Two’ really better than ‘Dune: Part One’?
It’s been seven years since Denis Villeneuve first signed on to adapt Dune to screen. It seemed like an impossible task: to take Frank Herbert’s dense source material, his descriptions of spice and sandworms, his discussions of power and politics and condense them down into a feature film runtime. David Lynch had tried and failed, shamed into disowning his attempt, but Villeneuve refused to suffer the same fate.
When Dune finally arrived in 2021, it was clear that the French-Canadian filmmaker was working on a completely different scale to Lynch. In fact, he was working on a completely different scale from any of his contemporaries. He awarded Herbert’s story the weight it deserved, building worlds with cameras. Slick cinematography and production brought Arrakis to life, while Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, and Oscar Isaac had the same effect on House Atreides.
Villeneuve had reinvented the idea of the blockbuster, the sci-fi franchise, and the art of adaptation all at once. Leaving viewers with Paul’s encounter with the Fremen and a first real glimpse at Zendaya’s Chani, anticipation for a follow-up was high. As huge names like Austin Butler and Florence Pugh became attached to the sequel and rumours of an appearance from Anya Taylor-Joy began to fly, the pressure on Villeneuve to deliver only mounted. But how could he possibly top Dune?
With epic sandworm shots and an infrared interlude, Dune: Part Two certainly upped the scale and spectacle of Villeneuve’s Duniverse. It boasts a runtime even lengthier than the first instalment, expands an already impressive ensemble cast and pushes special effects to their absolute limit. Rather than diminishing, the hype around the sequel only seemed to heighten with its release, as critics and cinema-goers alike helmed it as one of the best sci-fi movies ever made.
Dune: Part Two already seems to have eclipsed its precursor, but is it really that much better than Part One? While it certainly outdoes it in spectacle and technical prowess, drawing you in with sandworm playpens and epic black-and-white shots of Butler, it doesn’t quite leave you with the same feeling as Dune did.
Despite stretching its story across almost three hours, Dune: Part Two sometimes struggles with time-keeping. Speeding events from the source material along, the film uses time skips to fast-track Paul’s immersion into Fremen culture, keen to move onto sandworms and epic shots of Chalamet strolling across the sand. It scrambles to fit more plot and more spectacle into a similar structure to keep you interested throughout its runtime, but it might even have benefitted from extending it further.
This element of the movie is of particular detriment to the love story placed at the centre of Dune: Part Two. While Dune gradually interspersed its runtime with Paul’s visions of Chani, hinting at their future relationship, Dune: Part Two is nowhere near as subtle in its approach. Zendaya has mere minutes of screen time in the first film, only formally introduced to us in non-dream form in the closing moments, so to see Chani professing her love to Paul so soon into Part: Two is somewhat jarring.
Romance certainly isn’t the main priority in Dune, but it becomes a major part of the plot in the second instalment. Though they’re both stellar castings in their own right, and Part: Two allows Zendaya more space to explore Chani, there’s a lack of chemistry between the two leads. The material they have to work with does them no favours, as their brief and rushed interactions fall into clichés.
“I’m afraid I’ll lose you,” Paul admits during one such interaction. “You will never lose me as long as you stay who you are,” Chani responds. It’s a less-than-subtle hint at what’s to come, but it falls flat in terms of developing their relationship. Declarations of love are made too soon and too unconvincingly, lessening the payoff of Paul’s eventual betrayal.
While characters like Chani and Lady Jessica are afforded more screen time for character development, Dune: Part Two adds so many new faces that it sometimes struggles to balance them. Butler gives a stunning performance as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen and has entirely served his purpose by the time the film ends, but Florence Pugh’s Princess Irulan can barely get a word in.
Zendaya’s sprinklings of screen time in the first film felt considered and calculated, but Dune: Part Two sometimes leaves its characters behind. Part of the issue, too, is that these aren’t really new faces at all. There are a few unknown castings in the Duniverse. Between Christopher Walken and Léa Seydoux, Arrakis could do with its own Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Though Butler’s image is starkly different from any role we’ve seen him in before, it’s sometimes difficult not to see Pugh as Amy March or as the star of Midsommar, and a brief appearance from Anya Taylor-Joy only prompts gasps because of her recognisability. This seems like yet another slight reliance on spectacle over story, which is both the appeal and the downfall of Dune.
Don’t get me wrong, Dune: Part Two is a masterful work of sci-fi. It’s a cinematic experience unlike any other and a peerless entry into the blockbuster realm, certain to take home countless awards for visual effects and production. Still, it just might have got too caught up in those elements. Dialogue and development get a little lost amidst them, leaving Dune: Part Two with just slightly less shine than its predecessor.
