I'm still of the minority opinion that Dune: Part One (2021) was a better film than 2024's 'Part Two,' and I like how adaptations deviate from the source material Kubrick/Verhovenn style. There was not a single cut in Part Two that matched the cut from the first shot to the second in Part One in of juxtaposition, "shortening-of-the-way" as Frank Herbert put it. The opening shot of Part One was recycled here as well as Zendaya's opening line elsewhere. Thus ends all comparisons with Part One.

Dune: Part Two is a hollow movie with it's opening scene lifted from War for the Planet of the Apes and the Harkonnens calling the Fremen "rats," which is ironic because Maud'dib would later name himself as the planet's desert mouse. The ending was the most interesting part of Dune in my opinion but changes to the it are not interesting in the slightest and perhaps ruins the trajectory of Dune Messiah, which is the next chapter in the Vileneuve-verse. Fight scenes do not have the kinetics of The Battle of Algiers and the coliseum battle is worse than that of Attack of the Clones, not Gladiator.

The most subversive part of Denis Vileneuve's Dune was making fans of the books no longer care about their phony white Messiah story and have Film Twitter (i.e. Letterboxd) eat up a misrepresentation of the story. Frank Herbert, who was homophobic enough to shun his own son, is rolling in his grave, and I suppose that was the mission of these movies.