A movie about the dangers of religious fanaticism that will undoubtedly inspire fanatics of its own.

Denis Villeneuve whips the audience into frenzy and reverie with Greig Fraser's imagery, Joe Walker's editing and Hans Zimmer's heavy metal in an IMAX experience both awe-inspiring and terrifying — much like Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet), a young hero on the cusp of unimaginable villainy as he leads a rebellion on the desert planet of Arrakis.

The viewer's hero arrives in the form of Stilgar (Javier Bardem), a leader of the Fremen clan on Arrakis that welcomes Paul into the fold. In 2021's DUNE: PART ONE, Stilgar was a rational, taciturn presence; here, he's the much-needed comic relief as Paul's prowess on the battlefield — and his mother's (Rebecca Ferguson) machinations — makes Stilgar a true believer in Paul's prophesied ascension to intergalactic rule.

Stilgar's near-instant transformation into Paul's starry-eyed hype man is both hilarious and foreboding. Even 8,000 years from now, we haven't learned anything about blindly following a charismatic leader.

As spectacle, DUNE: PART TWO is mounted on a scale we haven't seen since perhaps Peter Jackson's THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, and with the same on-the-ground perspective and sense of geography seen in Gareth Edwards' THE CREATOR. The showstopping sequence comes halfway through as the action shifts to the homeworld of the villainous Harkonnen house. Brutal killer Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler) enters the film in a cavernous arena under the black sun of Giedi Prime, dispatching prisoners in a striking two-tone action scene that invokes GLADIATOR, the STAR WARS prequels and even, with some curious liquid fireworks, TRON: LEGACY. Frank Herbert inspired countless writers and filmmakers when DUNE hit bookshelves in 1965, and Villeneuve's movie often feels like a culmination of the ensuing 59 years of cultural influence and interpolation.

The film keeps upping the ante as giant sandworms and even atomic weapons the arsenal, but the personal stakes are never lost. Which leads us to Chani (Zendaya), the Fremen fighter who falls in love with Paul but knows the horrors his ascension may bring. She is Villeneuve's audience surrogate, voicing skepticism in the face of her people's growing fanaticism. Of all the threads left hanging for the presumptive forthcoming adaptation of DUNE: MESSIAH, hers is the most intriguing, and perhaps the most ripe for diversion from Herbert's text.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. DUNE: PART TWO is here now, and it's a landmark achievement. I will be seeing it on an IMAX screen as many times as I can.