Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of watching Dune: part two. I shared my thoughts with my film group, which i’m adding in edited form here:

I greatly enjoyed watching Dune part one. While I have not yet watched this film on the big screen, its scale and humanity come across strongly. Watching it again on Netflix was a pleasure: I have read the novel in the meantime, and seeing the details: a foreshadowing here, a glance there; was thrilling. But, as Chani said, this story was only beginning and I was looking forward to watching part two.

While my cinema trips are still rare, I was very excited to watch this film on an IMAX screen. Yes, the picture is impeccable, but also the audiences are better behaved too. No one’s here to chat or look at their phone (at least in my screening): the focus was fully on the screen. What was on screen was stunning.

From the first words of the Navigator against that black screen, the film immediately dropped you into this new universe. I liked the way it started a few moments after part one finished, and once the Sadukar started floating up the rock formation, only to be obliterated by the Fremen’s hidden army, I was completely invested in and convinced by the story.

The screenplay visualises Frank Herbert’s novel with economy and imagination: Feyd Rautha’s psychopathy comes across in one (or two) strokes; the ambiguity of Paul’s adopting his holy warrior role is played out in the zeal, skepticism and horror of other characters. Zendaya externalised this perfectly and I loved how the story ended on her standing alone, away from the war to come.

Director Villeneuve got terrific performances from his quite astonishingly good looking cast. Some interesting observations have been made on how using different lenses emphasised Paul growing into his role, but his performance was riveting per se. Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin’s comic chops were used as well as their ability to menace. Christopher Walken’s stillness showed his power amid this war – so much so that you could fully see his coming to Arrakis was an act of weakness. The quartet of Ferguson, Rampling, Pugh and Seydoux made the Bene Gesserit a hyper-Machivellian force to be reckoned with. Skarsgard, Bautista and Butler made the Harkonen’s into pretty much the most terrifying family since the Borgias. Even Anya Taylor-Joy’s cameo as Alia was spot on.

As with part one, the film’s sense of scale, combining design and location with the tangibility of the visual effects creates worlds that you can fully believe in. (Geidi Prime, with its bread, circuses, pollution and division, is a wholly convincing future Earth.) The sound, with a few moments of muddiness around dialogue, was impeccable, combined with imaginative editing and Hans Zimmer’s most beautiful score.

I do think back to David Lynch’s film of Dune. He did say that he “slowly went crazy,” during its production. Its myriad voiceovers and muddled storyline points to just how difficult this work was to adapt: Villeneuve and his team must be praised for doing this so successfully. I wonder what Hollywood will learn from this: even bigger budgets, more stars of the moment in lead roles, lots of worms and many-fingered crustaceans?  Or maybe they’ll look for well crafted stories? The box office success of Barbenheimer, along with American Fiction and Anatomy of a Fall’s screenplay awards gives me hope.

By the way, it might seem churlish to add that no one in this film has actually said what the Spice is used for, or that on the announcement of a holy war, I blanched slightly at the prospect of witnessing yet another battle scene. But the story paused just then; it felt like a perfect break.

The water of life looks delicious. Roll on part three.