Return to ‘Dune’ is a sandy sci-fi spectacle with overtones of a scarily familiar world
Dune: Part Two
Starring Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem & Dave Bautista
Directed by Denis Villeneuve
Rated PG-13
In theaters Friday, March 1, 2024
Summon your sandworm! One of the most anticipated movies of the year has arrived.
Returning director Denis Villeneuve’s sequel to his 2021 blockbuster certainly won’t disappoint fans of the acclaimed sci-fi franchise (which was also turned into a movie in the 1980s, and later two TV miniseries). It’s a spectacular, sprawling extravaganza that shows the remarkable effects, star-studded casting and thrilling big-screen world-building wallop a budget north of $120 million can get you.
It looks epic and feels epic—mainly because it is epic, a gobsmacking, action-packed, emotionally stirring return to the characters and story based on author Frank Herbert’s 1960s novel about humanity’s future on a distant colonized desert planet called Arrakis, sometimes known as “Dune.” And it sounds epic too, thanks to another masterful soundtrack by Oscar-winning Hans Zimmer, whose grandiose orchestrations perfectly underscore the excitement, danger and drama onscreen.
You heard of “dry counties.” Well Dune is even dryer, a dry planet where water is so precious, it’s extracted from dead bodies on the battlefield. The superheated desert air and relentless sun aren’t so great for humans, but they’re fine for the sandworms, monstrously large carnivorous alien creatures that burrow just underneath the surface. The desert dwellers on Arrakis use the gigantic worms as transport, summoning them with sounding devices then jumping aboard, clamping down and holding on, surfing the sandworm highway.
And sandworms are fundamental to the reason anyone lives on Arrakis, where the nightmarishly inhospitable conditions favor a secretion of the worms called mélange, or “spice.” It was discovered millennia ago to be a psychoactive narcotic that can make life better for humans in many ways, including precognition, seeing what’s coming before it gets there. And the whole ecosystem of the planet depends on harvesting the sparkly sandworm stuff.
The Duneverse, as it’s called, is dense with its own language, nomenclature, characters, history, mythos and symbolism; it might remind you of Lord of the Rings star-crossed with Game of Thrones and The Empire Strikes Back in a massive movie sandbox—and if you just happen to wander into it unaware, you may feel a bit overwhelmed and lost in the desert. It’s about nomads and royals, blood feuds and civil wars, enemies and allies, rebels and renegades, faith and hope, spies and traitors, and a world with a rigid, sometimes cruel caste system of slaves, barons and emperors. It’s about a love story that starts in a sand-swept cauldron of war, generational grudges and power struggles, and a people who’ve been promised “paradise” and look for a messiah to lead them there.
Even though the story is set in the distant future, it has overtones and undertones of our past, and even our present—conflict, religion, politics, exploited resources, war machines on the move. One side dehumanizes the other as “rats” to be exterminated, refusing to acknowledge them as human. The desert setting gives a definite vibe of the Middle East, where “spice” could be seen as a metaphor for oil, and people have been in-fighting for, well, centuries. Dune: Part Two draws comparison to some familiar territory—Hitler’s rallies, the atrocities of the Roman arena, holy wars, and even modern geopolitical, genocidal situations.
It’s a richly detailed, fine-tooled sci-fi depiction of a culture and a people in a faraway futuristic world that nonetheless looks and feels a lot like our own—what our world has been, and what it could again become.
And the cast—wow. You probably won’t see more stars in one place this side of the Milky Way, with many of them reprising previous roles. Timothée Chalamet leads the ensemble as the heralded heir of a disposed royal house, continuing to seek revenge on the conspirators who destroyed his family. Zendaya is Chani, a young desert warrior who falls in love with the exiled duke. Austin Butler (above) is a million movie miles away from Graceland (and his all-American Elvis swagger) in the role of a psychotic, ghost-faced sexy-beast villain. Stellan Skarsgård is a fat-cat baron who’s often seen soaking in a tub of black ooey-goo goop. (Hey, this is Arrakis, not the Catskills.) And then there’s Florence Pugh, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Charlotte Rampling and Léa Seydoux. It looks like everyone wanted to be in this movie. Even Anya Taylor-Joy makes a “surprise appearance.” It’s almost easier to name actors who aren’t in it.
So, sci-fans, the wait is over. Come for the stars, stick around for the sandworms. And stay tuned for even more: Dune Part 3 is already in the works.
—Neil Pond