On March 1st, 2024, Dune Part 2 was released to theaters for the first time. As a fan of the books and the first movie, I decided to see it and do an in-depth review on it. The story Dune takes place in the year 10191 where the population of the “Known Universe” is controlled by the Great Houses. Those houses include House Atreides (the protagonists), House Harkonnen (the antagonists), House Corrino (the spacing guild and the Emperor), House Ordos, the Fremen, the Mercenaries and the Smugglers. In the story, there is a special substance called the Spice-Melange, which only grows on the planet Arrakis. The spice, when consumed, unlocks the human mind’s full potential. When consumed, one can see all possible futures and even wormholes through time and space. For centuries, House Harkonnen has had complete control over Arrakis, making trillions upon trillions of dollars off of the spice buisness.
One day, The Emperor orders House Harkonnen off of Arrakis, and gives the planet to the Atreides. While most members of House Harkonnen like Piter or Beast Rabban are infuriated by the Emperors orders, the leader of House Harkonnen, Baron Vladmir Harkonnen, remains completely untouched by the occurrence, hinting to the fact that he is working with the emperor to sabotage House Atreides. The Duke of house Atreides, Leto Atreides, his son Paul, and his wife Jessica, travel to Arrakis with the rest of the Atreides army. Once on Arrakis, the Atreides spend a week trying to form an alliance with the sand people, the Fremen, until they are attacked in the night by House Harkonnen when the Atreides personal Doctor, Yueh, Betrays them and lowers the shields. When the Baron Harkonnen orders his Mentat Piter to kill the Atreides Royal family, he lets the Baron kill the Duke, but suggests that the wife and son be thrown into the desert so the sandworms can kill them and destroy the evidence. Paul and Jessica survive in the desert and find the local Fremen tribe; this is where the story of the second half of the book or Dune Part 2 begins.
Dune part 2 begins with how every chapter in the book would begin, with Princess Irulan talking about a moment in the history of the Imperium. This time, she was talking about the Sabotage of House Atreides and the death of the Duke Leto Atreides. She talks about how the Emperor, her father, blamed everyone around him for the death of the Duke. He had claimed that Leto was “like a son” to him. Dune has been widely considered throughout Hollywood to be “unfilmable,” due to its complex mixture of thoughts and the power of the mind in the book. The book focuses on Kwisatz Haderach, who was originally thought to be Paul but later found to be his unborn sister Alia, achieving the full potential of the mind without the consumption of spice.
The reason why the book is considered to be so hard to film is because when filming someone’s thoughts in a movie, it can be very hard to do without looking very stupid or goofy. The reason why Denis Villeneuve was able to achieve making this film and its predecessor so book-accurate, is because he went for a much different approach than earlier Dune adaptations. Instead of filming thoughts, and the power of the mind, he went for a more action approach with scenes like Feyd Rautha in an arena on Geidi Prime. He also showed a showdown between Beast Rabban and Gurney Hallack. This was significant because Hallack was enslaved by Rabban his whole life and got a large gash on the side of his face after he escaped and joined the Atreides.
In summary, Dune part 2 was very book accurate, pleasing to the eye, and just the right amount of confusing. With the downfall of Paul Atreides portrayed perfectly and a very cinematic fight between Feyd Rautha and Paul, Dune Part 2 is a must see in today’s cinema.
