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March 7, 2024

MOVIE REVIEW: A contrarian's take on Dune: Part Two (don’t bother)

By Andrea Widburg

I like Ben Shapiro, but I don’t always agree with him. He raved about the new movie Dune: Part Two, so I not only watched part one to get up to speed but took myself to see the new Dune. Now, I wish I could get back those 2 hours and 45 minutes of my life. (This review has spoilers, so stop now if you still want to be a Dune virgin.)

Ben Shapiro’s review claims that “these two movies [Dunes 1 and II] constitute the single greatest science fiction epic movie achievement of all time. They look absolutely phenomenal.”

Shapiro then raves about the quality of the CGI, the well-done plot, the fine acting, the glories of Paul (the hero) learning the ways of the Fremen people, and the film’s surprisingly pro-life slant. He’s right about the first point (sort of) and definitely right about the last. Everything else? No.

For those unfamiliar with Dune’s plot, as I was, it takes place in a future world (the 11th thousandth century AD), where various evolved human life forms occupy myriad planets. They’ve formed an empire ruled over by an emperor. In Dune: Part Two, the emperor is played with mumbling lassitude by Christopher Walken, a normally interesting actor, who looks and acts very much like Biden at a press conference.

Image: Saudi dunes (the real stars of the movie) by Meshari Alawfi. CC BY-SA 4.0.

The most important ingredient in the whole empire is “spice,” a powder found only on an almost completely waterless planet called Arrakis, which is inhabited by the aboriginal Fremen and giant worms. The Fremen use spice for nutritional and mystical purposes, but the empire needs it to power spaceships. The evil Harkonnen people control Arrakis, but the emperor ostensibly gives Arrakeen to the Duke of the Atreides, who just wants to live in peace with the Fremen (while still taking the spice).

However, upon the advice of the powerful Bene Gesserit, a women’s only cult with physical and mental superpowers, the emperor secretly joins with the Harkonnen to slaughter every member of the House of Atreides. Paul, the Atreides heir, and his mother, a Bene Gesserit, survive the slaughter and make their way to the Fremen. Dune Part One tells this story.

Part Two picks up with Paul learning the ways of the Fremen and then leading them to battle with the Harkonnen, who, in turn, are planning a genocide against the Fremen. You can guess where the plot goes.

My biggest problem with the movie is that the entire vibe is that the Shia Arab world has finally found its missing or hidden iman, Muhammad al-Mahdi, and is now militarily invincible and ready to start a caliphate. Arrakeen, with its endless dunes, is obviously the Arabian desert, with “spice” being the oil that imperialist forces steal from the Arabs…er, Fremens.

The Fremens are waiting for the return of the Lisan al Gaib, who’s also called the “Mahdi.” Between the “al” in the formal name and the direct homage to the “Mahdi” in the Shiite faith, it’s not subtle. Indeed, IMDB trivia explains that the language created for the Fremen and the Mahdi’s name are intended to draw on Muslim Arab culture.

During the movie, we’re told by Chani, a ferociously competent female Fremen fighter and Paul’s love interest—played by a wooden Zendaya (smile, frown, grimace, rinse, repeat)—that the Mahdi are a culture of perfect equality, free from capitalist desires and sexism. (Not in those exact words, but that’s the gist.) Her only problem with her people is that they’re religious and keep wanting to find that Hidden Iman…er, Mahdi. (Speaking of Zendaya, she, like all the other actresses in the movie, marks a definitive break from the old Hollywood tradition of using women pleasing to the eye.)

After I sat through almost three hours of this, I would have called the movie “The Revenge of the Mujahadeen.” And yes, I know that Herbert established the Muslim-Arab tone in the books, but the movie irritatingly highlights the connections.

I had other problems. Zendaya, as I noted, is less than exciting. So was Timothée Chalamet, who plays Paul and must carry the movie. He’s very pretty and, like Zendaya, has nice long legs that look good as they stride through endless dunes of CGI sand, but he’s merely competent. He’s most certainly not charismatic. Before an epic battle, he tried to sound like Laurence Olivier on the eve of battle in Henry V but merely came off sounding like your middle-aged 8th-grade math teacher yelling at the class for acting out.  

Dave Bautista and Stellan Skarsgård play two of the three main Harkonnen baddies. They—and, indeed, all the Harkonnen shown on screen—are bald, white, and filmed in black and white. They all look exactly like Uncle Fester:

Public domain.

The one exception is Austin Butler, who plays Skarsgård’s nephew and is supposed to be a psychopath even by the psychopathic standards of the Harkonnen. Yes, he, too, looks like Uncle Fester, but there’s another reason I started laughing every time he came on the screen. Butler energetically struts, scowls, and growls with Hollywood psychopathic fervor. The problem is that he’s the double of Sam Brinton, the cross-dressing, suitcase-stealing nuclear physicist from the Biden administration. I am not the only one who made that connection:

The CGI sand renditions were impressive. It was easy to forget that all that sand existed in code and not in reality. But CGI sand does not a movie make. I also thought the CGI was very obvious in the vast crowd scenes, whether at a Harkonnen coliseum or as troops lined up for battle. Indeed, in the climactic battle, as in all modern action movies, the CGI was so darned busy and generic that you couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad.

The only pleasant surprise about the movie was how pro-life it was. Paul’s mother is pregnant with his sister, who remains in utero throughout the movie. However, she’s a real character who is shown developing and who communicates with both her mother and her brother.

As I left the theater, I reflected on the one good thing about my time there: Thanks to my senior discount, I was out only $9.

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