Denis Villeneuve has insisted that “Dune: Part Two” would be a direct continuation of its predecessor rather than a sequel, and the man has absolutely made good on that promise: Not only does this new movie pick up exactly where the last one left off, it also carries over the strengths and weaknesses that made the previous chapter so astonishing to look at but stultifying to watch.

Once again, Frank Herbert’s sand-blasted spice opera has been adapted at a scale that makes the average Hollywood blockbuster seem like a shoebox diorama by comparison, and while the last “Dune” was compromised by Warner Bros. brass’ decision to sacrifice it at the altar of a streaming platform that no longer exists, “Part Two” is poised to thunder into multiplexes around the world like the Shai-Hulud swimming through a dry ocean full of desert mice.

Once again, the biblical solemnity of Villeneuve’s approach — along with the tactile brutalism of his design — have combined into a Timothée Chalamet movie that shimmers with the patina of an epic myth. And once again, the awesome spectacle that Villeneuve mines from all that scenery is betrayed by the smallness of the human drama he stages against it, with the majesty of the movie’s first hour desiccating into the stuff of pure tedium as Paul Atreides struggles to find his voice amid the visions that compel him forward. It’s a struggle that “Dune: Part Two” continues to embody all too well.

This isn’t quite the same common — and ittedly boring — criticism that’s been leveled against massive studio movies since the industry first started making them. This isn’t a case of sound and fury signifying nothing, or one of special effects signifying even less. The artistry of this film’s craftsmanship and the sincerity of its application would in and of themselves make it disingenuous to compare “Dune: Part Two” to the likes of, say, “Jurassic World” and Disney’s “live-action” remake of “The Lion King.”

But there’s a more important distinction at play: Where those creatively bankrupt examples — motivated by desperate market forces — suffered from the mistaken belief that the future is a foregone conclusion no matter how awful it looks, “Dune” is an auteur-driven story about a reluctant messiah who’s tortured by his role in a terrible prophecy that only he has the power to stop. And yet, we’re never given any reason to think that Paul might actually do it, or even to care if he can.

If “Dune: Part Two” is more nuanced and action-packed than the previous installment, and Chalamet’s twiggy princeling a far less ive hero than he was the first time around, the relative density of the drama that Villenueve has packed into this movie is deflated by a similar uptick in the grandiosity of the spectacle that surrounds it. Much like his protagonist, the filmmaker is straining to reconcile a larger-than-life sense of predestination with the intimate pain of a moral dilemma, but his own failure to achieve that balance makes it all but impossible for Paul to succeed on the same .

The droning heaviness of Villeneueve’s direction is great at creating a sustained mood (in this case, one of mournfully pyrrhic victory), but it flattens characters into the sets around them until they start to feel like part of the scenery themselves. It’s as difficult to trace the granular changes in Paul’s thinking as it would be to notice a single chip in the giant slabs of gray concrete that form the gladiator arena on Giedi Prime (Chalamet’s gradual transition from reverent whisper-talking to empyrean scream-shouting is the closest thing we get to legible character growth), and that lack of detail becomes a fittingly enormous problem for this film as the transportive stage-setting of its first half gives way to the stunted fatalism of its second.

Yes, this is a vaguely Oedipal tragedy about a manchild lurching towards the same violent outcome that he’s so determined to avoid (you’ll have to wait for the not-yet-announced but inevitable “Part Three” to see how that plays out), and of course there’s an ancient power in the story of someone fighting against the fate that’s been written for them. But the iron grip of that inevitability should only make it more heart-wrenching to follow Paul as he tries to find his role among the Fremen of Arrakis and avenge his father without instigating an intergalactic holy war.

Instead, Paul’s growing prescience becomes a major albatross for a film too focused on the big picture to look for signs of life in each scene along the way, and watching this boy-god arrive at the only possible future among the many that he learns to foresee is as dull and emotionally disengaging as it was to watch him awake to that destiny in the first “Dune.” “Part Two” may be the more broadly entertaining of these two movies, but feeling unmoved by the climactic sight of Willy Wonka riding a 400-meter sandworm into battle against a Manhattan-sized disco ball is also a much weirder and more uncomfortable kind of disappointment than anything the last chapter had to offer.

~this review continues on IndieWire~