Dune It Two

Well, we finally watched Dune: Part Two (2024). I say finally, because we have been getting it from the library for weeks, but never watching it, due to its length and our busy schedule. Also, we tried it once, and I fell asleep about an hour in. Ms. Spenser was not having that. So it took a while to clear some time early on an evening.

It starts right after Part One ended. Paul, Chani, Ladt Jessica and the crew are headed for a sietch. They are carrying the body of the Fremen that Paul had killed in a duel. A band of Harkonnen attack, using antigrav, but the Fremen fight them off. Chani thinks Paul was distracted, and she is right - he is having prophetic visions due to the spice he is ingesting. 

In the sietch, the Fremen want Lady Jessica to take the poisonous Water of Life and replace their aged Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother. After she takes the drink, they realize that she is pregnant - meaning that the child, Paul's sister, will be affected. I wonder how a Reverend Mother could have missed this. 

This middle section mainly deals with Paul joining the Fremen in fighting the Harkonnen, disrupting the spice harvest and falling in love with Chani. Of course, Chani still doubts that Paul is the Mahdi, considering it to be Bene Gesserit propaganda. Paul gets his names Usul and Maud'Dib in there, and meets up with old Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin), who has been doing some guerilla spice harvesting on his own.

They are doing so well that Baron Harkonnen demotes Beast Raban, and replaces him with Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler), who is even sicker and nastier. So Paul's group retreats to the deep South. There, Paul is convinced to drink the Water of Life, and see his fate, and the fate of the universe. 

It goes without saying that we loved this movie. It was beautifully made, with some great acting. That said, we also were a little ... not disappointed, but maybe amused by it. The battle tactics never quite made sense. They never discussed the uses and limits of shield technologies, so you see soldiers switch from lasers to swords for no special reasons. Slow-knife fights could be so cool on film, but not here. 

The romance between Paul and Chani never really took off for us, either. She was always too skeptical of him, so when he betrayed her in the end, it didn't quite work. 

The worm-riding scenes were pretty cool, but again, seemed to lack some logic. Ms. Spenser complained, "The segments open the wrong way!" Also, seeing the worms scooting around in the background emphasized their speed, but made them seem a little cartoonish - zoom!

Oh well, this is a hard story to adapt, particularly because the noble hero knows that he is destined to kill billions, and that's his best chance. Villeneuve and Chalamet do a pretty good job of showing how Paul sort of goes dead inside when he accepts this. Of course, this facet of the tale really develops in the next movie. I guess we'll have to wait a while.