"You want to control people? You tell them a messiah will come. They'll wait for centuries."

Magnificent. Thrives in every place that I felt the first part failed. Gone is the sterile and a weightless, replaced by mythological images carved in stone and traced in the sand. The action is far improved, for starters. Villeneuve sticks to the bigger set-pieces, and it works in his favor. The scale of this one feels so much larger now that we've escaped the geometric halls of the arrakis palace, living in tune with the Fremen amongst the beautiful rock formations and endless sand dunes. Even the hand-to-hand fights are better, taking advantage of the sand and the overhead sun to obscure the choreography in deep contrast, rendering the images with more definition and gravity.

The spiritual aspect of Dune is also far stronger in this second part, now allowed to flourish as the story delves further into those worlds. The dream imagery is given the exact touch-up I had hoped for, more of the haunting and abstract.

Most fulfilling of all though, is the story. The all-corrupting nature of power and the falsehood of the white savior. Where Paul begins trying to deny his deeply implanted tyrannical birthright and uplift the Fremen through their own means, he ends forcing them to bow before him, the glimpses of his anger we saw in the first film flourishing into entire monologues and a shift in demeanor. The Fremen have been doomed by their societal programming to be unable to see a savior within themselves. Even within their massive numbers, they lay in wait for the mystical foreigner to bring about change and peace, until Paul leads them into complete galactic war.

Bardem as Stilgard is a superb performance. His few scenes in the first, he commands the camera with very little dialogue. Here, the descent into fanaticism is captured with just as much finesse. A sniveling zealot, shivering and bowing at the sight of his leader.

Every setup in the first pays off in this second entry. It honestly makes me feel warmer on it without even a rewatch. A pinnacle of modern blockbuster filmmaking. The best Villeneuve I've seen yet.