Dune: Part Two (2024)

I know it’s an old story, coming from Herbert’s 1965 novel, but I can’t help but see the parallels to other films with same story. I’m thinking of the search for “the One” in “The Matrix” and the outsider falling in love with a local and passing all the tests to become her tribe’s leader in “Avatar”. Are there really a limited number of stories to tell?

The story, as best as I can follow it, is good. But as a fantasy, my engagement is limited. It’s hard to keep track of characters, races, tribes, place names… Maybe I’m unusual in this respect, but without an anchor to a familiar reality, it’s tough for me to enjoy movies like this.

With fantasy stories, I also find it difficult to stifle my natural scientific curiosity and suspend my disbelief and accept that all the fantastical things that move the story forward. I try my best, and I’m usually willing to tolerate some of it, but there’s one fantastical detail in this film that bothered me… How do those enormous sandworms, with rough skin, no limbs, and lacking any obvious method of locomotion, move at impossibly fast speeds underground through the packed sand of an endless desert?

ChatGPT offers some interesting thoughts on this:

These creatures are able to move rapidly underground through a few different mechanisms. First, their skin is covered in tough, overlapping scales that can be manipulated. By lifting and lowering these scales, the sandworms can change their shape and volume, effectively altering the pressure around them. This action, combined with the contraction and relaxation of their segmented bodies, allows them to push themselves forward through the sand.

Moreover, the sandworms’ movement is facilitated by their ability to liquefy the sand around them. This is theorized to be achieved through vibrations or a chemical secretion, reducing the friction and enabling them to “swim” through the sand much like a fish swims through water. This method of locomotion is similar to the real-world process known as “sand swimming,” employed by certain earthworms and other burrowing creatures, though on a vastly larger scale.

Chalamet is pretty good. His easygoing nature, puppy dog eyes, and slight build lack the intensity I would have liked in a lead, but he fires it up nicely for the film’s climax. Zendaya’s performance is strong, and her constantly furrowed brow is cute. Butler plays one of the most evil characters in recent years.

Villeneuve’s building a body of work featuring epic stories and visionary, impressive CGI. But I fear he’s falling into the trap of filling every scene with blaring, climactic music. Everyone wants a dramatic story, but it’s best to build it with measured storytelling than it is to artificially pump things up with music and effects.

Apparently, there were many sequels to the source novel, and by ending this film with the start of holy wars and a pissed off girlfriend, the door is wide open for more.