Half Two’ Is The Finest Sci-Fi Movie of the Decade

You don’t have to be a studio head or a theater proprietor to comprehend that everybody in Hollywood has their fingers crossed for Dune: Part Two. Certain, the Oscars are proper across the nook, and there are actually loads of nice movies from final yr which are price celebrating, however to this point 2024 has been an absolute shit present on the field workplace. Enterprise had been unhealthy and the product has been even worse. Granted, we’re solely three weeks into February, so the pattern dimension is small, however issues are tough in Tinseltown when trash like Argylle opens at No. 1 and the newest Marvel-affiliated widget off the manufacturing line at present sits on Rotten Tomatoes beside a fats inexperienced splat and a woeful 13% favorable ranking.
What does any of this need to do with Dune: Half Two, it’s possible you’ll ask. Effectively, director Denis Villeneuve’s hotly anticipated follow-up to his blissfully bizarre 2021 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s talismanic 1968 novel was initially slated to open final November. However due to the actors strike, Warner Bros. opted to push the movie to March 2024, little doubt in order that Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, and newcomers Florence Pugh and Austin Butler might peacock on the purple carpet and put it on the market to the heavens on the late-night discuss present circuit. In fact, sci-fi followers bitched and bellyached, as they do. However looking back the delay turned out to be a reasonably sensible transfer. In any case, again in November, all anybody was speaking about was Barbenheimer and Bradley Cooper’s fake schnozz. There wasn’t a whole lot of oxygen left within the room. However now? Now the stage couldn’t be higher set for the additional adventures of Paul Atreides. If the movies ever wanted a savior, it’s proper this second.
Glancing again at my review of the first Dune on this site back in 2021, I seen that I referred to as it “the most effective sci-fi film of the last decade.” Hyperbole? Not likely. Keep in mind, the last decade wasn’t all that previous but. And to be sincere, heading in to the brand new sequel, I stood by it. However strolling out was a special story. As a result of Dune: Half Two is even higher than the primary movie. The stakes one way or the other really feel exponentially increased, the ability struggles are much more mythic and Shakespearean, the onscreen world-building is richer and extra exotically filigreed, and the visuals are much more epic and dazzling—one thing I didn’t assume was attainable. Dune: Half Two isn’t simply a humiliation of narrative and retinal riches; it’s the type of big-canvas franchise storytelling we haven’t see since The Lord of the Rings got here to a detailed again on the shire.

Now that Paul Atriedes made the leap to battle-tested hero, Chalamet actually lets it fly, summoning a extra attention-grabbing efficiency.
When you haven’t revisited the primary Dune because it left the multiplex, you don’t want to fret. The opening moments of the movie get you proper again up to the mark with out sending you to Wikipedia. Choosing up nearly precisely the place issues left off within the opening chapter, we’re reminded that the Home of Atreides has fallen with the loss of life of Oscar Isaac’s Duke. The dreaded, pasty-faced Harkonnens have taken over the profitable spice-mining commerce on the desert planet of Arrakis. And our hero, the Duke’s son Paul Atreides (Chalamet), and his mystic mom Woman Jessica of the Bene Gessirit (Rebecca Ferguson), are actually embedded with the native Fremen freedom fighters on Arrakis (Javier Bardem, Zendaya, et al) as they wage guerilla warfare on the colonialist Harkonnens—and now, by extension, the Emperor (Christopher Walken) and his daughter and one-day successor Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh), who’s been groomed for energy by Charlotte Rampling’s black-veiled Reverend Mom. I’m positive that final sentence in all probability seems like a whole lot of nerdy gibberish to the uninitiated (to not point out armchair grammarians), however then once more nobody would ever confuse Frank Herbert with Hemingway. Simplicity wasn’t his factor. However because of Villeneuve and co-writer Jon Spaihts’s elegant, economical script, all of it scans extra simply than you’d anticipate.
For many who have been monitoring the suits and begins of the Dune franchise on-line, I don’t assume I’m gifting away something by saying that Dune: Half Two is a center chapter within the franchise. Sure, like the primary movie, it ends on a cliffhanger. However this time round, it appears like a steeper and extra rewarding cliff. And, in contrast to most center chapters of a trilogy, this doesn’t really feel like a jerry-rigged bridge connecting two extra attention-grabbing tales. In truth, a who’s who of welcome new faces arrive on the scene so as to add layers the primary installment solely hinted at. Because the Emperor, Walken dials down his worst mannered tendencies to concurrently convey a heavy-is-the-head-that-wears-the-crown world-weariness and a craven sense of realpolitik expediency. The Emperor is sufficiently old to have seen how these energy struggles play out and he is aware of that his time on the throne is finite, however on the finish of the day loyalty is just as useful as it’s helpful.
Villeneuve exhibits us the magic of films—a model of magic that’s all too usually invoked, however all too hardly ever felt nowadays.
As his royal daughter, Pugh appears to bristle on the concept of being a pawn in an even bigger sport and the way she’s solely being advised a part of the story. And as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, the psychotically merciless nephew of Stellan Skarsgard’s Jabba the Hutt-like Baron Harkonnen, Austin Butler is all however unrecognizable behind his character’s alabaster pores and skin, shaved eyebrows, and heavy steel bondage gear. He appears like a youthful model of Robert Blake’s specter in David Lynch’s Misplaced Freeway crossed with probably the most badass member of the Borg collective. His ambition is limitless. His morals are nonexistent. And his bloodlust is unquenchable. Butler, so good in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, goes large and offers us a villain to essentially hiss at. Regardless of all of Villeneuve’s dear, future-shock CGI, Butler often is the director’s finest particular impact.
Whereas different new additions embody Léa Seydoux and Anya Taylor-Pleasure (no spoilers right here), Dune: Half Two is, at its coronary heart, a hero’s journey. And as unique as Dune could also be, its arc is straight out of Joseph Campbell. Which convey us to Chalamet’s Paul Atreides. As wonderful and against-type because the actor was within the first Dune, his character’s evolution couldn’t actually skirt the truth that he needed to begin off a little bit bit whiny and petulant, not in contrast to Luke Skywalker in A New Hope. However now that he’s made the leap to battle-tested hero, Chalamet actually lets it fly, summoning a extra attention-grabbing efficiency. Torn between avenging his slain father and fulfilling the messianic future that most of the Fremen (together with Bardem’s Stilgar) need from him, Paul takes on an attention-grabbing new complexity that brings to thoughts Willem Dafoe’s fallible, self-doubting Jesus in The Final Temptation of Christ, proper all the way down to his push-pull romantic reference to Zendaya’s Chani. Ferguson, in the meantime, is allowed to let her witchy facet free much more this time round. Her Woman Jessica is now pregnant, and he or she not solely speaks with the infant daughter rising within her, she makes use of the unborn as a pawn to control Paul’s subsequent transfer. It’s a deliciously freaky puppet-master efficiency that manages to attract you in and creep you out.

Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) takes on a complexity that brings to thoughts Willem Dafoe’s fallible Jesus in The Final Temptation of Christ—proper all the way down to his push-pull romantic reference to Chani (Zendaya.)
Nonetheless, if Villeneuve’s movie was only a gallery of characters combating for energy, warring over spice, and spouting metaphorical mumbo jumbo, it wouldn’t be half the film it’s (though it will nonetheless be fairly nice). No, the director is aware of that we’ve paid to go on a experience. A deep, philosophical experience to make certain, however nonetheless a experience. And Dune: Half Two by no means forgets that it’s before everything a shock-and-awe eye-candy blockbuster. In an period after we go to the films solely to be bombarded again and again with the identical drained visible tropes and clichés, Villeneuve delivers enthralling, shoot-the-works set items that really feel like high-wire acts of visible poetry and boundless originality. Witnessing Paul discover ways to experience a large sandworm like a rodeo cowboy waterskiing on a high-speed bullet practice is as breathlessly thrilling as watching Charlton Heston racing a chariot in Ben-Hur.
Like its predecessor dialed as much as eleven, Dune: Half Two is a spectacle that you just really feel together with your head and your coronary heart, nevertheless it additionally by no means lets your eyes take a break for a minute. It’s a movie of grandeur that asks a whole lot of its viewers and rewards us for happening its journey. My recommendation is don’t simply see it, see it on as large a display screen as you probably can and simply soak it up. As a result of Villeneuve exhibits us the magic of films—a model of magic that’s all too usually invoked, however all too hardly ever felt nowadays. He’s given us nothing lower than lovely and weird sci-fi masterpiece bursting with large concepts and even larger visible wonders.