A remarkable proportion of Denis Villeneuve's epic science-fiction sequel, Dune: Part Two, is about giant worms racing through the desert at breakneck speed. They do it so often, in so many key scenes, that you may eventually find yourself asking how it's possible. What exactly is propelling these enormous legless, eyeless monsters? They don't wiggle like snakes, and worms aren't generally known for their swiftness, so how do creatures as big as bullet trains manage to move as fast as bullet trains, too?
The answer is that you just have to shrug your shoulders and go with it. And the same goes for almost everything else in Dune: Part Two. After about an hour, it becomes clear that the filmmakers have abandoned logic and clarity, but once you accept that it isn't going to make much sense, you can stop worrying, and wallow in one of the most jaw-droppingly weird pieces of art-house psychedelia ever to come from a major studio.
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Adapted from the second half of Dune, Frank Herbert's influential 1965 novel, the film begins where the last one left off back in 2021: in the desert. Timothée Chalamet returns as Paul Atreides, an interstellar aristocrat whose family has just been massacred by the evil Harkonnens: Stellan Skarsgård is the Marlon Brando-ish Baron, and Dave Bautista is the brutish enforcer who murders so many of his own employees that he makes Darth Vader seem like Santa Claus.
Paul and his mother (Rebecca Ferguson) are now hiding out with the Fremen, the native tribespeople of the planet Arrakis, including their doughty leader (Javier Bardem, providing some much-needed down-to-Earth jollity) and a young warrior, Chani (Zendaya, who does lots of frowning). There is a good chance that the Fremen will help Paul fight back against the Harkonnens, but first he has to win their trust. And that, as you may have guessed, entails learning how to ride on the back of a gargantuan worm, like an illegal train surfer.
The film has so many grand themes, and such a powerfully doom-laden atmosphere, that it more than justifies the price of a cinema ticket
One odd aspect of Dune: Part Two is that Paul's desert sojourn is the film's main plot, although there are plenty of subplots to make up for it. There is some cryptic chatter about the blue "water of life" which looks like toilet cleaner, there are some mystical visions and dream sequences, and there is some political and religious debate about whether Paul is the Messiah promised by the Fremen's ancient prophecies. Meanwhile, on another planet, Christopher Walken and Florence Pugh have a few conversations as the galactic emperor and his daughter, with Léa Seydoux as their slinky sidekick. And on yet another planet (I think), Austin Butler turns up as a new Harkonnen baddie.
Dune: Part Two
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh
Run time: 2hr 46m
There's certainly a lot going in Dune: Part Two, then, but Paul himself doesn't do much except hang around with the Fremen, so viewers may soon come to understand why Luke Skywalker left Tatooine in the first hour of Star Wars: it turns out that there's only so much sand that you want to look at. In a cast stacked with an absurd number of contemporary cinema's finest actors, it's Butler who steals the show as a vampiric sadist with some of the strutting rock'n'roll sexiness that the actor had in Elvis – and in many ways, he is more of a protagonist than Paul is.
Unfortunately, no one else makes much of an impression. That is, they make an impression, visually, because they're so gorgeous and their costumes are so dazzlingly ornate – in the future, it seems, everyone will dress as if they're Janelle Monáe at the Met Gala – but no one in Dune: Part Two is a distinctive or rounded individual.
The romance between Paul (Timothée Chalamet) and Chani (Zendaya) is key to the story (Credit: Warner Bros)
Villeneuve and his co-writer, Jon Spaihts, just don't give any of the characters enough interesting things to say or do, despite the 166-minute running time at their disposal. The heart of the film is, supposedly, the romance between Paul and Chani, but it's so underdeveloped that it's impossible to care whether or not they will live happily ever after. And who knows if they do live happily ever after, anyway? Dune: Part Two takes us to the end of Herbert's first Dune novel, but numerous plot strands are left hanging, presumably in the hope that they'll be tied up in Dune: Part Three.
You might expect a big-budget space opera to exhilarate you and move you, and on those terms Villeneuve's sprawling, pretentious folly has to count as an abject failure. But if you want to feel awestruck, that's another matter. Proudly grave and portentous, the film has so many grand themes, and such a powerfully doom-laden atmosphere, that it more than justifies the price of a cinema ticket. The alien rituals and languages are so detailed, and the otherworldly design is so elaborate, that at times it really does feel as if you're watching the product of a distant civilisation. Some viewers will be driven up the wall, and out of the cinema, but others will be spellbound. Everyone will agree that it's light years away from the average Hollywood blockbuster.
In the 1970s, the visionary Alejandro Jodorowsky planned to make his own Dune film, and one of the people he employed was HR Giger, the Swiss artist who would go on to design Alien. Their project collapsed, but parts of Dune: Part 2 seem just as monumental, lavishly bizarre and downright disturbing as anything that Jodorowsky and Giger can have had in mind.
★★★☆☆
Dune: Part Two is released on 1 March.
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