Dune 2 review

2024-03-29T14:50:23Z

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.

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Dune 2 review