Dune: Part Two, 2024 - ★★½
To the IMAX at Waterloo last Sunday, with a group of fellow writers from the Spectrum group. As I said, I wasn't that impressed when I watched part 1 on Netflix. Still, this would be wholly different, not least because of it being on a giant screen.
Which was true enough. That screen is almost too big, certainly when you're sitting in row G and there's a closeup: Timothée Chalamet's face shouldn't be gigantic! Luckily there weren't too many of those occasions.
More to the point, this a spectacular movie, in the literal sense: it's all about the spectacle. And there's plenty of that. Battles, explosions, sandworms, duels.
And it's all a bit… not that good really, I thought. I liked parts of it. But really disliked the overall narrative arc. As I said last time, I remember the book hardly at all. So the transition of Paul Atriedes from teen duke trying to find his way with the Fremen, to world leader and messiah figure challenging the galactic emperor himself? Frankly, I don't buy it, and I didn't like it.
My favourite moment was Chani (Zendaya) turning away and walking out when everyone else bowed down to him. In fact in acting terms Zendaya is the best thing about this film. She can express so much just with her face, it was incredible.
Of course that ability might have been exaggerated by her face being the size of a bus, but no one else was doing that.
The worst thing about it in a ways was that it didn't feel like the end brought us to a conclusion. It felt like the middle volume of a trilogy. And I'm quite sure the original book didn't feel like that. I know there are several sequels, but I don't believe it was written as the start of a series. It was a self-contained work.
In fact I started the second one, Dune Messiah (and yes, that title should have given me some clues to the above complaints) all those years ago, and couldn't get into it. Didn't finish it.
The odd thing about all this is that it makes me slightly want to go back and read the book (and maybe carry on this time).
Anyway, there we are. There had do be someone who didn't think it's the best thing since freshly-baked baguette.