I searched, and though I swear there was one, I couldn't find a Dune thread.
I went and saw Part 2 in IMAX today, and came out of it with mixed feelings. Overall, it's a beautiful film. You could take a snapshot of any scene and frame it for your wall. The story, however, fell short IMO.
While the first movie felt at times like they were stretching things out, the second movie really condenses the story. I think this is where it's a bad thing that I both saw and enjoy (and have rewatched several times) the Dune miniseries that was on the SciFi network years ago. With a miniseries, you really got to know characters more than you can in a movie (or even two movies in this case). It also had an easier time showing the passage of time.
spoilers:
In the miniseries, it's clear that it was several years between the fall of House Atreides and Paul's victory over House Harkonnen and ascension to Emperor. We know this because Paul's sister, Aliya, is born and is about 5 years old at that final battle. In Dune part 2, it can only be between 7-8 months, as Jessica is still pregnant. |
end of spoilers
Characters also don't get much time to shine. Princess Irulan is a tiny role in the book, IIRC, and she doesn't have much to do here either, but she is featured well. Christopher Walken and the Emperor, on the other hand, I think had 5 lines and just looked old and feeble most of the time he was on the screen. The Baron, who had such an over-the-top presence in the miniseries, barely did anything at all and was a major disappointment for me. Even Jessica's role was diminished in this movie.
It's not to say it was bad. This movie felt more about how Jessica, and to a lesser degree Paul (until the end of the movie), used religion to manipulate the Fremen. There are actually a few scenes that got laughs from the audience that dealt with that through Stillgar. For as little as she did, I enjoyed Florence Pugh as Irulan, and this movie clarified to me that she was also a member of the Bene Gesserit, which I never really got before. Ghetty Prime had a very different look to it that was beautiful to look at. And almost everyone who got time to gave really good performances.
Overall, it was a very good movie, and I look forward to getting it on 4K so I can watch both parts at home back to back. In the meantime, I'm going to go back to the book (I haven't read it in about 20 years) to see if the ending in the movie is the same as the book.