It’s coming. I see a holy war spreading across the galaxy like unquenchable fire. A warrior religion that waves the Atreides banner in my father’s name. Fanatical legions worshipping at the shrine of my father’s skull. A war in my name.
I remember how I felt when it was announced that Denis Villeneuve would be doing the Blade Runner sequel. I’d been a huge fan of Villeneuve’s ever since Prisoners. That was the first one of his I saw and I’d seen all of his movies after that in the theater and absolutely loved all of them; yes, even Enemy, which . . . okay, look, we’re not here to talk about Enemy. We’re here to talk about Blade Runner 2049. Before we talk about Dune. Anyway, I received the news about the Blade Runner sequel with a sinking feeling. I was kind of like, “Well, he had a great run.” I just didn’t think that anybody really could pull of a Blade Runner sequel. The reasons are obvious, right? So, I was incredibly surprised when I saw Blade Runner 2049 in the IMAX theater and was absolutely blown away by it. I kind of feel like it’s every bit a worthy partner film to the original; I mean, when I watch the original now, I pretend there’s no sequel, but then when I watch 2049, obviously I accept it as a worthy sequel. Kind of a Terminator/Terminator 2 situation.
Anyway, after that incredibly positive experience with 2049, I allowed myself to actually hold out some hope for Dune. Like a Blade Runner sequel, Dune was a thing that I just kind of thought no one would ever really pull off. It’s not that I’m a devoted acolyte of the book or anything; I’ve read it and I enjoyed it without ever really becoming super-fanatical. But it’s just such a complex book and such an epic that I just wasn’t sure that anyone would ever be able to really capture that epic feel. And I suppose part of that is the character of Paul Atreides. That part just calls for a very specific kind of performer, a very not-Kyle-McLachlan-type of performer, if you get my drift. If you’re gonna buy the Messianic stuff here, or at least buy that the other characters buy it, if you know what I mean, you’re gonna require someone really special.
And I just have to say that I feel like Timothee Chalamet absolutely knocked it out of the park here. When I first heard that it was him, I was excited because I think he’s really perfect for the role and a great actor. And he didn’t disappoint. I think his performance here is amazing; naturalistic enough to seem down to earth and real, underplayed at all the right moments, not overplaying the themes of destiny, but finding a real human character in Paul. He’s ably supported by a really wonderful cast. I think I’d have to give highest marks to Rebecca Ferguson, who gives a really emotional performance as Jessica. Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin and, somewhat surprisingly, Jason Momoa are all perfectly cast and give excellent performances. Isaac’s last scene in the film is absolutely heartbreaking; the tragic journey of that character is devastating in a lot of ways. Stellan Skarsgaard is going full throttle as the villainous and repulsive Baron Harkonnen and Charlotte Rampling (!) is absolutely phenomenal as the leader of the Bene Gesserit cult. David Dastmalchian (a guy I first noticed in a very small, but scene stealing, role all the way back there in Villeneuve’s Prisoners) as a Harkonnen henchman, Sharon Duncan-Brewster as a bureaucrat caught in the middle of the political conflicts at the heart of the film and Neil Bell as the absolutely terrifying leader of the Emperor’s commandos, are all excellent.
There’s a couple of weaker performances here. Dave Bautista is giving it all he’s got in his small villainous turn, but his shouting often feels a bit forced. Too bad; he gave a genuinely great, very atypical performance in Blade Runner 2049. Here, he’s a cardboard thug. Zendaya, so excellent in Spider-Man: No Way Home, is also a bit at sea here; her performance never quite coalesces, but I don’t really envy her the fact that she’s playing a really central character who hardly ever actually appears. As I understand it, the second half of Dune didn’t even exist in script format when they filmed this one, so she really had almost nothing to go on in terms of finding her character. I’d anticipate her being better in Dune: Part Two.
Should I address the criticism that this movie is dramatically unsatisfying because it’s “incomplete” in some way? I guess I will. It’s extremely widespread, coming from critics that I’d have expected to know better. I suppose it’s an easy criticism to lob at the movie, but I think it’s totally wrong. I think this film breaks at exactly the right moment; it really is a crucial character moment for Paul and, while the ending of this film certainly points forward to more events and even more character growth, I just think Paul has a really solid character arc in this movie, from a privileged boy who doesn’t want to go to Arrakis to a young man who has lost everything understanding that his path has always been leading him here, into the desert. That’s more than just “prologue” or “set-up” for his character arc in Dune: Part Two; it’s a compelling story, packed with intrigue, action, heartbreak and great character work on all sides. This really is a complete movie to me. This part of the discussion around this movie reminds me of the debate around Infinity War when it first came out and the way some people were absolutely adamant that Infinity War ended on a “cliffhanger,” when, to my mind, it was always a complete movie, just a movie where the heroes lost. There’s something similar here. I think our obsession with franchises has lead us to view anything but extremely on-the-nose buttoned-up endings as nothing but set-up. Paul going into the desert at the end of this movie is being viewed as “franchise-care,” as setting up a future movie. But why can’t it be viewed as what it actually is, a conclusion of one character arc, a satisfying dramatic beat? I find this criticism very strange because it really just doesn’t speak to my experience of the movie at all; the “my road leads into the desert” line was a chill-bump moment for me in the theater; everything has been leading to this.
But since I bring up the chill-bumps, let’s talk about the epic nature of this story and just how well I feel it succeeds. I think everything in this production really works together to create this massive feeling of scale. I think that even the people who didn’t care much for this movie are pretty well all agreed that just in terms of the technical elements of the production, it’s kind of amazing. The costumes, the landscapes, the hair & makeup, the score, everything just really adds to this strange feeling of weight and deep meaning. I’m often a skeptic of Hans Zimmer, but I think he’s contributed a really great score here. I think some of the most exhilarating moments here are moments where the weird and somewhat uncanny are played for horror. This is true of the Harkonnens, of course, and the Sardaukar, but one of the best examples is that first sequence with the Bene Gesserit. These moments are disturbing and frightening because they’re so strange. Every bit of the Messianic stuff here really worked for me. Like I said, I think Chalamet’s performance is really perfect and so are the performances of those around him, to the degree that something as simple as the way he wears a stillsuit are freighted with deep meaning. Those moments for me really were stirring and compelling.
But this movie is dissecting the very Messianic narrative as a whole. Paul feels pushed into a corner where at one point you can tell that he thinks assuming this Messianic mantle is the only chance he has at survival. He’s prepared to “pretend” to be the Messiah, but once one is pretending, it seems dangerously easy to slip over the edge. He feels forced toward this move by outward circumstances, not an inward certainty of his status; would any Messiah in history say any different, I wonder? And when one sets out to self-consciously fulfill the prophecies, well, do the reasons really matter when what you’re doing is fulfilling the prophecies? There’s a lot going on here and the film is packed with moments that just really landed for me, sometimes epic moments and sometimes very quiet ones. I hate to bring up the comparison because it seems a little lazy, but I can honestly say that no movie has felt as epic as this movie feels to me since . . . yeah, since The Lord of the Rings. The similarities between the two books and this movie and Jackson’s original trilogy are obvious, so I don’t need to go into it. This movie just absolutely worked, that’s all I know, and I was just knocked out at just how powerful it felt to me. It’s thought-provoking and gorgeous and emotionally devastating at times . . . I know some people are talking about having a chilly reaction to the movie and, well, all I can say is that wasn’t my experience. Villeneuve is a guy who, like Christopher Nolan, has been dogged by the “emotionally cold” criticism in ways that I don’t understand; I was reading Justin Chang’s review of Dune the other day and he said that Prisoners was an emotionally distant movie and that ******* movie made me sob. I don’t know how someone could not be deeply moved by Prisoners. Very strange. But we’re not here to talk about Prisoners. We’re here to talk about Blade Runner 2049. We’ll get to Dune in a second.
No, seriously, I’ve said enough about Dune, I guess. I’ve been pretty open about the fact that the list of Best Picture nominees this year has . . . shall we say, extremely little overlap with my favorite movies of the year. (Next review: King Richard; oh, boy). But Dune is one of the few places where my top ten does overlap with the Oscars’. It’s an astonishing piece of filmmaking, storytelling, mythmaking. It’s pure cinema.
What the **** was that spider-thing though? Good Lord. That wasn’t in the book. Was it? Well, anyway, what a movie. 4 stars.
tl;dr – filmmaking at its most epic and massive, but with a gripping ground-level story and compelling characters; a great cinematic achievement with all involved working at the top of their form. 4 stars.