Dune: Part Two spoiler review
Big fan of part one, and have been a fan of Denis’ since I watched Prisoners back in the day, so take this in mind as a frame of perspective. Let’s do this, shit sandwich style.
Pros: great skirmishes in the desert, if all they did right was the action, I would have been happy. Opening shot starts with sort of 8 on 8 skirmish, beautiful colours, cinematography, design. The orange and grey purples of the desert sand against the storm, coupled with the high gloss black of the spacesuits, as the anti gravity tech gives us that sci-fi wow factor: Mmmm.
Loved the first spice tank takedown, gave me a super Nausicaa vibe, with the scale of the tank versus the size of the Fraumans, the almost silent machinegun spray from the arial dragonfly, the deep shadows of the underside of the spice tank, the action payoff of the bazooka hits, and the more sicario-esque deep worry of the timing of the run.
Cons: A lot of browbeating with some cheap shot Jesus imagry: round circular tombstone being rolled back onto the Atomic warheads chamber, Paul “dying” and coming back to life after drinking the worm piss, a lot of icky White Savior shots of the crowd of Fraumens worshiping Paul, a lot of talk about the One, is he the one? Is he not the One? It just felt cheap to me, sorry.
Too long. Maybe I just don’t have enough of an attention span anymore, but this movie was a bit of marathon to stay engaged with, and believe me, I tried. There’s only so much self absorbed seriousness set in the desert that I can take. There were a few chuckles here and there, but more comedy would have been nice, a little less seriousness. I get it, there’s a war happening, everyone could die. But you know what? In real war people joke. Humor is a part of war.
The PG-13 rating detracted from the seriousness of the situations somewhat. Let Denis do his thing! He gets dark sometimes, don’t tie this man’s hands, yo. All those throat slashes with no blood? No thanks.
There was such a great horror tone in the Part One, I was missing it in Part Two. There were some scenes that felt evil, but nothing really matched the human spider, the witches arriving in the rainy dark, the fat man on the ceiling. I wanted more horror!
Back to pros: This wasn’t just another watch and forget movie, which you could say is almost the entire Marvel canon. I was uncomfortable with what I thought the director/script writer was trying to say with the story, and have to pay attention to the perspective being set forth here. Not something I have to do with a lot of other blockbusters these days.
The angles of the shots could be super fun in this one: A dragonfly crashing into the sand being set in the background as Paul walks in front of the camera, so that for part of the impact we are only looking at Paul’s head? Good stuff. The top-down shot from the dragonfly as the gunner shatters shots into the underside of the space tank? Also very tasty.
***
Too loud in theaters, but that’s just me.
Great colours, almost monochromatic in a lot of places, but in a good way. Loved the almost blown out shots of the desert views.
Design was everywhere in the film. So composed.
