Dune: Part Two is not a good movie

Amid the praise for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune (2021) The New Yorker’s often maligned film critic Richard Brody gave a rare dissenting opinion. He compared it negatively to David Lynch’s hated 1984 adaptation, a visually inventive film that is crushed by its ambition to fit the whole of Frank Herbert’s Dune into a two hour movie. Brody wrote that the new adaptation is ‘without an unconscious’, which is a good description of all of Villeneuve’s films: his style is one of broad spectacle, the visuals and events stand only for themselves. Villeneuve is a very literal filmmaker, his style works best for a mystery film like Prisoners where the labyrinthine plot and the spectacle serve the same purpose. Wherever a story may meander or explore, Villeneuve seems uninterested.

I agree with Brody’s criticism but I still enjoy Part One for what it is: a well-made, impressive looking, unadventurous film that faithfully adapts the book and sets things up for Part Two. The story unfolds in a slow burn, lets every scene breathe, the opposite of the mad rush of Lynch’s film, and for something so expensive-looking the filmmakers are never smugly impressed with themselves.

This is all a way of saying that I didn’t expect Part Two to be something it isn’t: I expected it would be good and bad in the same ways Part One was. But even on its own terms Dune: Part Two is a bad movie…