A few years ago I watched Denis Villenue’s Dune adaptation and quite liked it, especially in comparison to the book. That movie only covered about two thirds of the source material, specifically the good parts, so let’s see how Denis can handle the part of Frank Herbert’s book that I really didn’t like.
(Spoiler warning: I’ll be talking about two fairly significant late-stage plot points in both the novel and this movie)
Part Two picks up pretty much immediately where the first movie left off: Paul Atreides has joined the Fremen of Arrakis in order to get revenge against Baron Harkonnen for slaughtering his House and family, his arrival plays into a religious messiah story planted into Fremen culture by the Bene Gesserit (all-female Jedi) as part of a long-term ploy to influence Imperial politics in their favour, Paul attempts to resist the messiah role because his Spice-influenced visions of the future have shown him that if he fulfills the prophecy it will start a galactic holy war that will kill billions of people. But when the Harkonnens bring in weird little freak Feyd Rautha to fight back against the Fremen uprising, not using the Bene Gesserit prophecy to his advantage starts to look less and less viable.
Also he smooches a hot Fremen girl.
In terms of the broad plot, this all plays out basically the same way as it does in the book. I’ve seen some people characterising the movie as a major departure from the original story, which isn’t really true—the major story beats are all the same. But those story beats are cast in a different light, which in some cases alters the tone of the story significantly. One major character serves the same basic role as they do in the novel, but whereas the novel casts their actions in a fairly neutral light, here they’re portrayed as explicitly sinister, to the point of arguably becoming an outright villain.
The same is true of Paul’s relationship with Chani: it plays out basically the same way as in the original story, but Chani’s reaction to what happens has been altered significantly in order to give her a more active role in the story. This is to the advantage of the movie as a whole, for reasons I’ll get into later.
Elsewhere, Part Two continues with the pragmatic adaptation choices that the first movie engaged in. For example, Denis and co clearly realised that the super-genius Twilight baby was never going to work in live-action. The solution they chose to get around this is still a little goofy—I just don’t think “psychic baby pulls the strings of galactic politics” is a concept that can ever not be kind of silly—but it works a lot better than any of the alternatives would have.
The movie also continues the balancing act played with the Harkonnens, where they’re somehow even more cartoonishly grotesque and inhuman than in the book, but simultaneously feel less like cartoon villains. The way both movies do this is by amping up the Geiger-esque alien body horror while de-emphasizing the lazy shorthands for evil that the book uses. The original story leans really heavily on gluttony, ugliness and sexual violence to make the Harkonnens seem evil; while these are all still present in the movies, or at least implied, we’re not expected to hate the Harkonnens solely due to those reasons. The fact that the Baron is fat and slovenly is probably the most human thing about him in the movie version of the character, given how alien his overall portrayal seems, whereas in the book his body and eating habits are used to dehumanise him.
This is not to say that the Harkonnens aren’t over the top. Like I said, they’re even more over the top than they were originally. It’s just that the movies are more thoughtful about which particular dials they amp up to eleven and which ones they take a more subtle hand with.
If you’ve looked up anything about Part Two you’ll have noticed that it’s over two and a half hours long. I said earlier that it’s adapting roughly one-third of the novel, plus a scattering of material from the preceding two thirds that didn’t make it into the first movie. That’s a lot of movie for not a whole lot of book. Is this another Harry Potter/Hunger Games/Twilight case of a movie adaptation unnecessarily splitting itself into multiple parts in order to milk more money out of the source material?
Actually, no. In my post about the first movie I mentioned that the book’s last section—the part adapted by this movie—feels like a rough, unfinished sketch. Part Two takes that sketch and fills out the details. A lot of the action in this part of the book basically happens off-screen, with the characters talking about things that have happened or are happening but not actually living through them on the page. In the movie version, we get to see everything actually play out. Feyd Rautha gets more of an on-screen presence to turn him into an active villain and set up the conflict between him and Paul more, the Fremen’s reaction to Paul and his messianic overtures get fleshed out to create some more stakes and drama, and there’s even some fun action set-pieces added.
All that said, the story follows the same outline as the book, and as such there are still things about the plot that I don’t like. Chief among them is Paul’s big gambit to lure the Emperor to Arrakis. As in the novel, Paul sends him a DM that says “fight me bro”, the Emperor comes down to Arrakis with his entire army, Paul and the Fremen ride in on sandworms and win easily. The only obstacle remaining after that is Paul’s duel with Feyd Rautha, which you know he’s obviously going to win because it happens near the end of the story.
And yes, I know the drama here is supposed to come from Paul and Chani’s relationship and how the choices he makes affect that—and to be fair the movie makes some changes that significantly increases that drama—but the thing is, I don’t care about Paul and Chani’s relationship. I can barely recall a single paragraph that Chani was in from the book; Zendaya’s movie version is a lot more memorable, but it’s not enough to make me give a shit about her and Paul’s love story. At the end of the day they both feel like people who fall in love because they’re the main characters of a fantasy story and that’s what’s supposed to happen.
What I am interested in is what the planned next movie—an adaptation of Dune Messiah—will do with Chani, as her reaction to what happens at the end of this movie is by far the biggest story change and based on what I’ve looked up about Messiah, pretty much guarantees that a hypothetical Dune Part Three will have to deviate significantly from the book. Based on how much more I’m enjoying Denis Villeneuve’s movies than the original novel, that can only be a good thing.
