I had no real incentive to see this, considering that my relationship with the work of Denis Villeneuve has been trending downward since the release of Blade Runner 2049. But because of the overwhelming acclaim that this has received, including from people who also weren’t that into the first film, I decided I would take another chance on the man. And…look, my disdain for Villeneuve’s post-Arrival films has received criticism at every turn, and contrary to what some people may think, I don’t actually like always thinking the world’s new favorite blockbusters are overrated every time. So let me be perfectly clear that I’m being entirely honest when I say that Dune: Part Two is my very least favorite of all of Villeneuve’s projects. I had been considering my opinion that the first of his Dune films was entirely joyless, and I was wondering if that was a fair thing to say about a creator who never claimed to put that much humor into his films. The problem with these films in particular, though, is that there’s always been a sort of campiness around Dune, and I feel like playing it completely straight is entirely missing the point.

It’s for this reason that I kind of can’t tell if I hate the directing job or the screenplay or both. Certainly the screenplay is flimsy, has poor dialogue writing and has its fair share of ridiculous moments, but if this is an adaptation of a classic camp piece, should that be criticized? Or does it just become unappealing when it’s served with the director’s trademark serious style? Honestly though, I’m tempted to split the blame evenly between both aspects of the film. Denis Villeneuve fails to get convincing performances out of almost anyone, except for Rebecca Ferguson who remains the best part of any of these films. His interpretation of this world is like sand—dry and coarse and gets everywhere. The screenplay, meanwhile, is almost a complete disaster by most metrics. One of the main things that drew me to this film was the idea that it would depict Paul as something of a dictator who knows he’s turning evil but doesn’t know what to do about it. And granted, when those ideas are presented in the film, they’re clearly the best moments in the film. These moments might have meant something of worth if our central characters were more interesting, or if I could tell what our protagonist thought about what was happening to his family up until the climax.

I rated Villeneuve’s other post-Arrival works around the five and six out of ten marks because, you know, for all of the obnoxious, gratuitous vapidity, they at least generally had good production design and some interesting ideas, but I’ve also been feeling as though this director’s eye for technical elements has been worsening. There are moments of that genius in this film, like with the consistently beautiful costume work and fascinating set pieces that were either shot in a perfect place or crafted with stunning CGI work. But with that comes some pretty ugly color grading, the type of modern shadow work that means it’s, at times, impossible to see what’s happening in the frame, and a distinct sort of camerawork that starts to lose its power when you’ve seen it five times with increasingly little ion put into them. Not everything about Dune: Part Two is a failure—it was an empty theater so at least I got to stand up and cheer every time I saw a worm—but especially considering all of the praise that’s been lobbied at it, all of the negative and middling qualities really, really got to me in a way that I never wanted to experience with this director. This is the man who made an emotional masterpiece out of a science fiction film, but with his recent output, it would seem that Villeneuve’s creative well is quickly running dry. Running dry like sand.

Fucked Up Shit Ville Score: 6/10