The grandaddy of all scifi space epics has now been fully adapted on screen, with a pair of finely crafted movies totaling five hours and encoming an entire galaxy's worth of drama, war, and apocalyptic tragedy. In between the release of part one - which I have now watched seven times - and the sequel, I finally picked up Frank Herbert's legendary novel and poured my attention into its thematically rich, poetic, ahead-of-its-time narrative.

The book was instantly engaging and kept doubling down on the intrigue and mystical sense of wonder as its complex characters clashed and wove a tapestry of violence and power across the desert planet Arrakis. This was a profoundly immersive tale to sink into at age forty; I can't imagine how much impact it would've had on teenage me. Arising from the ashes of genocide to lead an indigenous nation of warriors in righteous revenge against the colonizers who supplanted his family on the resource-rich planet, plagued with terrifying visions of the darkest prophecy, Paul finds that every step he seemingly takes away from fate ends up bringing him closer to that abominable future. The inexorable gravity of his rise comes across more and more like a curse as the young Muad'dib careens toward a final confrontation with his family's great enemies.

Splitting the story into two feature films works wonders in retrospect: the triumphant fist-pump ending of the first half, so full of promise and hope, gives way to a vicious climax where our apparent hero finally embraces the future he's seen and leans into the awesome power of belief that he'd reluctantly harnessed across an entire planet. It's a towering gut punch that lands with the weight of real life history as we watch what happens when even the most well-intentioned people are given too much power. It's one thing to cheer on a protagonist exacting vengeance upon his horrific enemies; it's something else entirely to watch him nuke them into submission and then grasp the highest power in the known universe, knowing full well that this is the first step on the path to a galactic jihad that will claim the lives of millions.

Now that we've got the full story, I feel confident stating that Dune is the cinematic Lord of the Rings of our time, the true spiritual followup to those sumptuous epics of twenty years ago. In the time since, we've had dozens of epic adventures in the scifi and fantasy realms, but nothing has approached this level of care and detail, patience and affection for such a rich text, coming across with such sincerity and grace and sheer timeless appeal. These are movies I'm going to be rewatching for years to come, and I hope that if Villenueve and company make a third Dune film, it's just as pure and earnest in its approach to the material. In the meantime, I'll be reading further into the series because now I'm hooked.