Rating: 9.5/10
Watched on Feb 25th, 2024 @ Fan First Premiere event
Format: (Digital) IMAX
It's safe to say that Dune Part 2 is basically an expansion of Part One. More characters are added, the story is now more complex and 10x interesting with much going on, and the world of Dune is bigger.
However, with lots of negativities in my opinion, the positivities are much stronger to not ruin the experience nor lower the rating.
Director Denis Villeneuve proves himself again in Part Two that he is the perfect director to direct the Dune project. In addition, all the crew that helped in delivering this project truly did an accurate and amazing job to deliver this world the way it is supposed to be delivered.
The VFX in this film is absolutely amazing and not noticeable expect for very few scenes that is obvious about the use of green screens but this will not ruin the experience at all. Also, the cinematography that captures Arrakis (where most of the film is held in) absolutely supports the VFX in capturing some great shots that most of them are long wide shots to capture the beautiful desert. Moreover, most of the times the characters are positioned to be in the middle of the long wide shot to capture the size of the character comparing to the world around them mostly to show off their vulnerability or their strong abilities depending in the character.
The film is so much inspired by the middle eastern culture in terms of the language, clothings, production design, movements, and all the beliefs that most of the characters follow.
Hans Zimmer's music is perfectly composed and really loved how in most of the fight sequences, there is no music to be played in the background making the whole attention pointed towards the fight movements which increases the nervousness and tense vibe.
Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya are absolutely amazing. Paul Atreides (played by Timothée Chalamet) have reached his peak and prime level. By the end of this film, he is no longer the young Paul Atreides, he is the most powerful man in Arrakis and no one can top him nor control him. He is written with so much care that will make you recall the version that we saw in Part One and how his long journey that we experienced with him wasn't that easy. And this might be one of the greatest character studies/character development stories in cinema history, and Timothée Chalamet had a huge part in achieving that. By the end of Part Two, you will realize that Chalamet is indeed the perfect actor to portray Paul Atreides due to Chalamet's deep portraying during the different stages that his character goes through in this film and mostly moments of anger and strength on other characters. However, the real surprise is Rebecca Ferguson as her character really went through many changes in this film in which it was really shown due to Rebecca's acting. She was absolutely able to deliver the terrifying and powerful characteristics of her character Jessica. The second biggest surprise is Austin Butler as Fyed-Rautha as both his make-up design and acting was able to bring this character to screen the way it is suppose to be in the book.
For the negativities:
-With the same mistake that is in Dune Part One, Part Two (and the whole Dune saga) highly needs to be 'Rated R' to allow some gore, bloody, and disgusting violence scenes to be present in the film, and part Two has the perfect chance due to the amount of fight sequences specifically with Austin Butler's character, Feyd-Rautha that had epic fight sequences that were shot in Black & White and I think it's obvious the reason behind shooting them in Black & White.
-Unfortunately the seriousness in this film has been lowered significantly. Especially with Javier Bardem's character Stilgar that cracks most of the jokes. What happened to Stolgar that walked in on Oscar Isaac's Duke Leto Atredius in Part One with much confident and seriousness refusing to give anything about his people?
Also, Dave Batista's character Glossu Rabban is so weak in this film and we barely saw him defending himself or even being powerful which is something that does not fit with Batista's physical appearance nor the character's characteristics or the 'brutal' House Harkonnen that he represents.
-(NOT A SPOILER AS IT WAS ANNOUNCED BY DIRECTOR DENIS VILLENEUVE)
Lastly, in case you didn't know, during the London premiere of Dune Part Two, actress Anya Taylor-Joy appeared at the red carpet and it was announced that the actress will be having a small surprise appearance role in the film. Can I understand why this was announced and why wasn't it kept as a surprise like it was this whole time????? Since when do actors and actresses that have a surprise role in a film appear at the red carpet premiere? This makes her appearance at the carpet very much useless and it truly ruined the surprise that was kept hidden perfectly the past few years.
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