The first movie was an artsy pretentious documentary rather than a sci-fi movie. Wherein the first movie probably had 1 hour of wasted time such as useless establishing shoots and lingering camera on people doing nothing, we do get a bit more of the story and overarching geopolitics in this movie. It is not enough, and we still have no clue about anything, but at least a small positive.
A lot of things is a lot worse here though. And we get even more things which are never explained. The scheming mother is over the top, and every time they fight or have a war scene I keep thinking: "so... where are all the high tech weapons that can track and detect and blow people up across the planet?" There are some Sci-fi weapons and shields and such of course, but these sand people would not stand a chance even against an army from earth, so how are they able to survive in these movies? How do people get up and down from the sand-worms? How do the shields work? Why are they fighting with swords and spears? Why can a baron kill a duke? How are things ruled? Why are the people living in this planet in the first place and why has no one offered them water in exchange for the spice? How does spice work? Etc. Etc. The questions are endless and absolutely nothing is explained. This is the movie with the most plot holes I have ever seen.
All the new characters are horrible with Walken as the biggest disappointment. Most deaths are underwhelming to say the least. And in the end this movie turns into some weird mix of GOT season 8 and Avatar, and no, that is not a good thing. The villains are the worst in movie history. Absolutely useless villains. We could just have skipped over all of them. These movies do not need the villains, they are just there to be killed as the useless crash test dummies as they are.
My final major complaint is that the editing feels wonky. It is almost like entire scenes are missing sometimes, and many jumps from one scene to the other is too abrupt. In the first movie we jumped from establish shoot to establishing shoot with looooong dragged out scenes, here it feels like they cut some of that out i.e. Perhaps they did not listen so much to the criticism but rather just cut out some unnecessary fluff.
This is really bad nonsense and complete waste of money. A very generous 2/10 for the cinematography.
A lot of things is a lot worse here though. And we get even more things which are never explained. The scheming mother is over the top, and every time they fight or have a war scene I keep thinking: "so... where are all the high tech weapons that can track and detect and blow people up across the planet?" There are some Sci-fi weapons and shields and such of course, but these sand people would not stand a chance even against an army from earth, so how are they able to survive in these movies? How do people get up and down from the sand-worms? How do the shields work? Why are they fighting with swords and spears? Why can a baron kill a duke? How are things ruled? Why are the people living in this planet in the first place and why has no one offered them water in exchange for the spice? How does spice work? Etc. Etc. The questions are endless and absolutely nothing is explained. This is the movie with the most plot holes I have ever seen.
All the new characters are horrible with Walken as the biggest disappointment. Most deaths are underwhelming to say the least. And in the end this movie turns into some weird mix of GOT season 8 and Avatar, and no, that is not a good thing. The villains are the worst in movie history. Absolutely useless villains. We could just have skipped over all of them. These movies do not need the villains, they are just there to be killed as the useless crash test dummies as they are.
My final major complaint is that the editing feels wonky. It is almost like entire scenes are missing sometimes, and many jumps from one scene to the other is too abrupt. In the first movie we jumped from establish shoot to establishing shoot with looooong dragged out scenes, here it feels like they cut some of that out i.e. Perhaps they did not listen so much to the criticism but rather just cut out some unnecessary fluff.
This is really bad nonsense and complete waste of money. A very generous 2/10 for the cinematography.