Dune: Part 2 is a visual treat, but strays from its source in critical ways

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

After decades of waiting, devotees of Dune may be feeling like their time has finally come — that the sleeper of their fandom has awakened with the epic big-screen adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel Dune in the form of two two-plus-hour films, the second of which premiered on March 1.

I’m pleased to report that I left the theater on March 2, 2024 feeling pretty OK about the prospects for further big-screen exploration of the Dune universe.  

First the good: Timothée Chalamet continues to ably inhabit the character of anti-messiah Paul “Muad’Dib” Atreides, deftly moving from gifted-but-unsure duke-ling to confident Fremen-in-training to war leader grappling with the dire implications of his burgeoning cult of personality. 

Courtesy image.

Of all the cast members — except Javier Bardem as Fremen leader Stilgar — Chalamet’s Paul hews closest to the intent of Herbert’s original. Which is very good, because without Paul’s trajectory from galactic noob to jihadi-emperor (and the accompanying psychic freight of his universe-spanning “terrible purpose”) there’s not much to Dune other than sandworms.

Dune: Part 2 remains a gorgeous spectacle demanding and deserving the biggest screen and best sound system possible. While fly-bys of the sweep and brutal grandeur of the landscape gobble up a good portion of the runtime, much more action animates the surface of Arrakis in the second installment, with thunderous battles on the sands culminating with an almighty götterdämmerung for Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) and Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV (played by an inscrutably cast Christopher Walken). Much can also be praised in the expanded views we get of the vicious black-and-white Harkonnen homeworld Geidi Prime and its scion, the ultra-psycho Feyd Rautha (Austin Butler).

The scenes of Paul’s ascension to demi-god and how that plays out politically among the Fremen are the narrative highlights of the film, though they hint at some of its problems. Mainly, how they represent Paul’s fated Fremen partner Chani (Zendaya), his Bene Gesserit-trained mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) and “preborn” sister Alia (Anya Taylor-Joy… sort of).

Now the bad: Dune: Part 2 has a problem with its female characters. Villeneuve and his script doctors made the understandable decision to expand Chani’s role from the source material, in which she is first little more than an image in Paul’s dreams, followed by a devoted shield-maiden and quasi-wife. 

Making Chani an equally central character in the movie is great; but in the film she’s the surliest 20-something Fremen atheist in Sietch Tabr, then reduced to Paul’s alternately clingy and pissed off girlfriend. Chani in the book is a hardened, unsentimental warrior in a semi-nomadic desert tribe that rides giant killer worms. That Chani would have no time for romantic possessiveness or petulance, but this Chani kicks ass on the battlefield then stomps out of rooms when her boyfriend is annoying her.

Likewise, the Lady Jessica of the book is as strong, wise and devoted to her son as she is possessed of powers ranging from access to collective memory to controlling every muscle and nerve in her body. Yet, as in Dune: Part 1, the film version of this character is simultaneously weakened bodily and emotionally and turned into the Machieavellian villain of the whole story — manipulating her son and by extension the Fremen into the universal warfare that Paul dreads.

Finally, there’s Alia. She’s a fetus who awoke to consciousness in the womb when Jessica ingested “the water of life” (a.k.a., sandworm blood) in order to transcend space and time to become a reverend mother. Alia is not only fully aware in utero, she has all the powers of an adult reverend mother.

That’s weird, I know, but instead of leaning in, Villeneuve chose to keep Alia as a sentient bun in the oven for the whole movie, albeit with a few lines delivered second-hand by Jessica and a quick vision of her grown-up self (Anya Taylor-Joy). This is despite the fact that in the novel, Alia is supposed to have been born and aged enough to play a critical part in the final battle for Arrakis. 

OK, fine, but by not allowing Alia to be born in Dune: Part 2, we’re left to conclude that the action of both parts of the film took place in fewer than nine months, which is a change to the original story that is as unnecessary as it is absurd.

But I’m not naive — the only people who will care about these quibbles are hardcore Dune fans; and, even as one, I can tell you this movie is a joy to look at. It’s obvious that Villeneuve could clearly do without much of the source material in favor of more conventional storytelling, but we’re a faithful bunch, so here’s holding out hope for whatever a third installment of the Dune films might bring.