Corwyn 🇵🇸’s review published on Letterboxd:
Power over Spice is power over all.
I've surely mentioned this on here before, probably more than once, but one thing which is always an absolute delight to me is when a movie feels like a genuine, capital-E Event. And given how over-saturated the market is with tentpole blockbusters vying to be the next big thing, it feels like we, ironically, get far fewer such movies these days. Everything costs $200 million, and nothing matters. Everything is big, but few are genuinely epic, feel genuinely monumental. Few that make you feel as if you've gone on a bona fide journey.
2021's Dune was an epic in the proper sense of the word, and as someone who's never read the books and had only the most limited idea of what to expect in of Paul Atreides's character arc here, it was truly astonishing to see just how far this sequel sured the original.
Every bit of set-up and worldbuilding from Part One pays off here in spades, and we get a story which feels at once both far more personal, and at the same time far grander in scope. All the myriad chess pieces scattered across Arrakis are making their moves, plans are springing into motion, and all of these actors on the war stage are set to collide with terrible consequences.
Timothée Chalamet is incredible. Zendaya is incredible. Austin Butler gives an absolutely unhinged and deliciously weird performance as the latest villain of the Harkonnens, Feyd-Rautha. Javier Bardem is a hoot. Everyone is great.
And the epicness... the grandiosity... dear lord. The scale and the action of this are simply remarkable. The top-tier of blockbuster filmmaking, gripping, thrilling, exciting, a thing of beauty and horror. Villeneuve takes everything that was great about the first movie, and dials it up to eleven.
The story is also, naturally, great, charting Paul's ascent/descent into his position as the Messiah whose prophecy has been foretold, and the fissures this causes; navigating his new position within the Fremen society with his desire for revenge against the Harkonnens and his fear of what he may inevitably become if he follows the only path available to him.
If Hollywood made more blockbusters with this much heart and soul and fire and spice, the industry would be in a much better position than it currently finds itself. This is what the big screens and the booming speakers and the massive crowds in sold-out theaters are all about.
Or, as I described it in the car afterward, "that movie blew my pussy wide open."
That there's still a third one on the way? I cannot wait.
Mom's thoughts: "I didn't like it. It was too dramatic."
➡️ 2024 Ranked
Exactly where we are
At the Centre for Holy Wars
Hope it never comes down again
Floating in the air
With the stars of the holy wars
Hope it never comes down again
