Dune 2 review

[lotesse]

Went to see the second part of Dune the other day, after water pipe issues led to jackhammers in the street on Sunday afternoon.

On the one hand, yeah, that's a science-fiction film. In an early shot, uniformed people shift seamlessly from walking to grav-boot flight up the sheer face of a cliff, an absolutely breathtaking example of SF's ability to disturb the comfortable with grace and beauty. The fashion, the space-ship design, and the heraldry aesthetics are all on-point, unique, and worth seeing.

While I don't have a lot of time for Léa Seydoux on the whole, her Margot Fenring was pretty darn hot.

And, in a similar, see-it-on-the-big-screen way, Paul's first ride on a sandworm is like the most exciting GoPro footage ever sent back by a wilderness athlete. Watching it is like watching people sail alone around the world, with the real power of nature made visible: the small human making their way through/with that power, fearful but competent.

On the other hand, these films aren't catching all of Herbert's Dune, not by half. I miss the planetary ecology, the worm biology, Alia, and the religious awe. It's not fashionable to explore the pleasures of belief; but imo that's a big core of Dune's textual erotics, and the story gets less sexy when you center disbelief, instead. This Paul feels like a fake messiah, not like a boy becoming possessed by his own godhood, and it's the latter pleasure/horror that I think really hooked me into Dune in the first place.

Comments

[senmut]

That's my issue just from reading reactions, on what it missed, mostly with Paul. I felt the SciFi miniseries captured how LITTLE Paul wanted to do this, and how much Leto embraced the necessity, and I feel like they took that embracing and transferred it to Paul.

Which is NOT how I read the books at all. Paul always came off as reluctant to me, in having to complete what his mother set him up for in her desire to provide her Duke with what he wished.

[lotesse]

Yeah, movie!Paul is much less appealing to me as a character. I like that reluctant hero business, lol. I think one of the reasons why the books appealed to me as a teenager was that I found resonance between Paul and Tolkien's Frodo as reluctant and tormented by being a hero/protagonist, and Frodo was my main early model of true heroism.

[senmut]

That is a solid parallel, and I love it!

[desecrets]

That last bit is a really fascinating description of Dune. I haven't watched the films and I got about 100 pages into the first book before giving up on it, but that made me more interested in reading them than anything else has done so far!

[lotesse]

I got sucked into Dune harcore on first reading as a teenager. Funny how different things hit for different people! I think Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and original Star Wars all prepped me to get interesting things about faith and apotheosis from Herbert; for sure I went in already interested in a lot of those topics & tropes

[oakfarm]

The last time I saw a friend of mine he said he definitely preferred the older movie version. So what do you think about the early movie?

[lotesse]

None of the older adaptations hit the right aesthetic note for me, which Villeneuve's does; and, to me, the aesthetic is also an essential part of Dune. I can see why other Dunes came out camp, but I don't know that Dune the book is really camp, as such. Honestly, the newest attempt works the most for me. It's just still such a long way from the whole of the thing!