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Dune 2 review
Mar. 29th, 2024 09:50 amWent 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.
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.
