Back in 2021, we all had to raid the thesaurus for words to adequately convey just how big Denis Villeneuve’s Dune felt. Having exhausted the world’s supply of synonyms, I fear the time has come to simply steal from other languages — because there’s no getting around it, Part Two’s impeccable machines, planets, arenas and worms are très grande.

From blindingly stark gladiatorial combat in near-monochrome to a sandstorm so vividly howling you could nearly feel the grains in your face, the sehr groß spectacle enlivens every set-piece here, with some early rebellion against hulking mining equipment feeling like the best insurgent takedown of a titan since Hoth. As in the previous outing, the script has an elegant focus on these incredible scenes, weaving together events and consequences so deftly that it manages to elide a great deal of exposition about the exact details. Once again, the details are there if you look for them, or they have at least informed the construction, but they are not taking up time. It’s all become fabulously lived-in texture.

Some other parts of Frank Herbert’s prose have been smoothed over, too — with narrative elisions to streamline us down to a mere two-and-a-half hours, and avoiding the sight of a hyperintelligent toddler in favour of Rebecca Ferguson speaking for a foetus. It sounds odder, but it’s easier to swallow. And you don’t have to have seen David Lynch’s Dune to realise that cutting this half of the story down to 25 minutes would never have ended well.

Despite a sprawling cast of reliable players and well-known faces, Timothée Chalamet gets plenty to do as Paul Atreides, with Zendaya as a brilliantly deep foil. She was little more than a pretty face seen in visions before, but Chani is a fully realised character this time around and the film is richer for it. But it’s the story of the Lisan Al-Gaib that forms an impressive spine to everything. I criticised Dune for a “creaky” chosen one narrative which I’d also tired of in the book (though I was told later books deconstructed this more).

Well, either I read the book very badly or Villeneuve has imported some of that later criticism, because this film’s bittersweet ending is a grave vision indeed. Paul’s journey to assuming the mantle of the Fremen messiah no longer feels like a rote choice, it feels like a cynical manipulation of religion and a brutal means to an end. There’s no glory to be found here, with the epic scope of the film reframing itself as a vast tragedy waiting to happen. It’s an impressive achievement — one that notably escaped Lynch’s truncated telling — and marks out Dune: Part Two from the pack. And by “the pack”, I mean the last American space opera I watched, Rebel Moon — to which this is so laughably superior, it’s like watching Shai-Hulud eat a scurrying Muad’Dib for breakfast.