Villeneuve's cinema is one of subtraction and limited horizon. He never challenges what's possible, only affirms for his audience what isn't. It's one of the reasons I really like Villeneuve but do not love him and the same can be said of his films. I came very close with Blade Runner and Sicario but there is always something that keeps me from going over that edge. That delivery feels like the byproduct of catering to an audience that demands verisimilitude over all other concerns.

So in that way my problem with Villeneuve is also my problem with modern audiences and the modern studio system. He is the best it can produce and it just doesn't rise to the level of masterpiece. It never will. And that's depressing to me.

Enough with the complaints because I did rate this a 4.5/5 after all. That fealty to verisimilitude serves Denis well in some instances (Paul's first Sandworm ride) and less in others (where the fuck is my spice orgy you Quebecois nerd!).

Not a single part of this production is less than awesome. The sound, the score, the cinematography, the acting etc. There isn't something you can single out that "just wasn't working" in the film. Chalamet feels like he's not going to be remarkable until like Paul, he claims is destiny and arrests the film from everyone else. Very well executed.

It was hard to focus at first on the film, I feel like I couldn't stop contrasting the book (of which I am a major fan) to the film because so many changes were made and they were quite significant. So I got hung up interrogating the purpose behind these choices and what they meant for the themes and perspective of the film. But to it's and Denis's credit I never once thought a change was poorly made for adapting to the constraints of film.

Everyone is talking about Chani being so thoroughly changed she might as well be a different character and while that's true it does serve the film. I'm not 100% on board with it though as it throws the inevitable 3rd film into a narrative black hole. My other concern is that by making her an audience surrogate to more directly convey the messages and themes to the intellectually lazy they have also flattened her yet again, this time into a character that is never wrong which makes for a boring and distracting character when this fiction is defined by its uncomfortable grey qualities.

The other big change that shocked me how much I was on board with it was the Lady Jessica. She is my favorite part of the first book and essentially a co-protagonist with her son Paul. Her perspective on Paul and his changes and her hand in those developments... well she is the audience surrogate in the book. I'd be less on board with turning her into a more sinister figure if Rebecca Ferguson didn't do it so well. She definitely captures Jessica's power if not her wisdom and capacity for reflection.

The movie is almost 3 hours long and Austin Butler plays Feyd Rautha for about 23 minutes. He also makes every last one of them count. He created a layered and enthralling character with so little space I haven't been able to get him out of my head two weeks after my first viewing.

Stilgar was perfectly used and perfectly played. Excellent use of the long game having us love him like that goofy uncle at family gatherings until later when the context changes but he doesn't and suddenly he is a much more horrifying figure, or rather what he represents. It's obscene and repulsive and you are aghast at your own complicity.

Dune Part II completely upstages Part I for me so much it's become a litmus test for me when talking to other movie goers.

*May thy knife chip and shatter*