Dune: Part Two - Spoiler Review

Dune part two is finally in theaters which means that I can bring you my spoiler review so get your popcorn ready I actually have some popcorn ready right here uh oh so okay just reach in there oh oh god oh why it's salty hello everybody I'm Dan Merl and this is my spoiler review for Dune part two pornographic popcorn buckets or no now I've already done my non-spoiler review for Dune part two if you want to see that which has my general Impressions and my thoughts on the film you can check the channel or click on the little thing up in the corner so this is all spoiler stuff I'm going to go into my thoughts on the look of the movie some sequences that I like the performances my thoughts on the themes and other stuff so if you don't want to be spoiled for what happens in Dune part two go watch that other review go watch Dune part two then come back and watch this one and you've got a pretty full day ahead of you so first of all I just want to talk about how amazing this film looks just from a visual standpoint Greg Fraser the cinematographer has a lot to be thankful for as to the people who don't have to compete with him at the Academy Awards this year and right from the very beginning that escape sequence from the hekken and soldiers that visual of the heinens floating up to the cliff and then them falling off of the cliff which strangely reminded me of the happening but not like in a bad way it just was kind of a similar visual from the beginning this movie is just absolutely beautiful there are frames that I would print out and hang on the wall I mean it is it is absolute art it is an art form that's what Cinema is it is an art form even though not every movie Rises to that level and there are some moments in the film that are just a marriage of everything that makes movies great the music the visuals that scene where chny and Paul and it's weird for me because I'm listening to some of the Dune books and they say Cheney but in the movie they say Chie so I'm going to try to say Chie Chie and Paul are sitting on the Dune and they kind of Express their love for each other and they kiss and the camera goes out and it zooms to them sitting on the Dune and that great Han Zimmer score kicks in that's what I call a goosebump moment for me in a movie I've seen it twice now both times I've seen it that the hair on my arms just stands up because that to me is just an example of the full potential of what movies are as an form this transportational out ofbody kind of moment where you're so wrapped up in the story and everything else H I love it so much it's moments like those that make me excited to go to the movies and Han Zimmer score in this movie I think I liked even more than his score from the first movie which is saying a lot because I loved his score from the first dune also can we take a moment in that opening sequence to talk about how cold-blooded it is that the fman would just extract the water from all of those soldiers whether they were dead or not or whether they were unconscious or not like that is survival at its finest Bear Grills would have his water return to the well in about 5 minutes if he tried to make it on a racus these people know how to survive and outside of that opening there were several other sequences that I thought were fantastic the attack on the spice Harvester with the moving legs that Paul and shiny used for cover was really welld designed and executed and Paul riding the sandworm was one of those cinematic moments where it seemed like denel reached into my imagination and filmed something exactly as I pictured it when I was reading the book Den he has said that he has been storyboarding this movie pretty much since he was a teenager and I suspect that maybe that sequence was one of the ones that he had always been planning because that was just beautifully realized and again everything the cinematography the visual effects the acting the music it all worked together to create this great movie moment when the first couple trailers came out I was confused by the black and white sequences that were shown but I love that the explanation for that is that the hekken and home world is under a black sun and so everything appears monochrome it both explains why the heinens look the way that they do with their skin and their power and everything else and it gives the movie a chance to change things up in the way that it looks and to take you on this alien world that actually lets you feel like you're on an alien world and the adjustments in light when you'd be in a dark room and in the back of the room where the natural light wasn't coming in you would get the sort of Lush color but when you get closer it would all wash out I'm sure some of that was done practically and some of it was done with computers and post- production and all of that stuff I really really hope that this time next year in 2025 that the Oscars haven't forgotten Dune part two because it came out before the previous year's Oscars everything everywhere all at once was able to sweep even though it had been out for over a year because it would be absolutely criminal if this film got overlooked in the technical categories or didn't win because people didn't quite remember it I already thought it was CRI crial that denille didn't get nominated for directing the first dune did they think that that movie made itself so this is a movie that I hope is stuck in the Academy's mind for the next year because it deserves to be awarded as if it had come out late in the year as was originally planned and then we have that ending battle sequence which is done at such a massive scale and I've seen a few complaints saying that that sequence and some of the other ones were too short for some folks and I agree that this movie is speed running through a lot of different stuff but honestly I would rather a director take his budget and deliver a spectacle at the scale and the size that we saw in this movie for less time than to have to cheap out because you have more effect shots to do and give us the same kind of battle that we've seen over and over and kind of beat us over the head with it I've seen lots of battle scenes in movies but I've never seen anything like an atomic explosion wiping out a mountain range followed by Massive sandworms emerging from a dust cloud bearing thousands of soldiers on its back that's a first for me I thought it was also interesting that the long shot we see of chani fighting very closely matches Paul's vision from the last movie where he saw himself fighting in a very similar way now the first movie established that Paul's Visions are sort of imperfect that he sees things but they don't always necessarily turn out the way that he sees them he's still developing that gift so maybe he was foreseeing this battle and that he would have a role in it but it wasn't necessarily the role that was the on the ground role that ended up being ch's role or maybe he saw a version of the battle where he was more in the trenches he wasn't so much the leader or the Messiah he was down there with the fman helping them win their own freedom I think that's an interesting question as we look at these two movies together now so let's talk about Timothy shalom's Paul as well as some of the other performances in the movie Paul has more names than Apollo Creed paulot trades usul muad quis hok Lis Alay Mii it's one area where I was glad that I read the book in between the first Dune movie in this one I hadn't read anything when I saw the first film I read it and so I knew the background in the second one and if I didn't know what all these names already meant even though they were mentioned in the first movie the meaning behind them is so important and just Zips by I'm glad I didn't have to kind of run to catch up with the movie on that point I thought Timothy shelay really nailed the moments in the last half of the film when we see him take on the role of the lisan alib his domination of that council meeting the way he starts out to aggressive but then convinc es everybody of his powers and whips them into a frenzy was a note that I really haven't seen from Timothy shalamay as an actor before and you contrast that with the sensitivity he shows in other parts of the film that moment when he decides to go south and he's crying when he's talking to channie basically mourning for the billions of lives that he knows will be lost because he's given into to what he's been told is his fate I think when you watch both of these movies back to back his transformation across both of them is really impressive even more so than really his transformation just in this movie and you can tell even in the movie where his loyalties lie because you have the scene where he takes off his father's ring and he says I found my purpose when he's fighting with the fman for their freedom and then in the big council meeting he puts the ring back on as an indicator of his power and why he has the authority to rule the fan I loved the ju deposition of those two scenes and how he played those two scenes although I do have to say that I still can't take the words dual signant seriously in aie movie maybe it's the 5-year-old in me but I I snickered a little bit when I heard him say that I thought Zena was great in the movie she basically got nothing to do in the first one but they gave Chie again not Cheney but CH a character in this one even more so I thought than in the book or at least different than in the book I actually like that they give her the opposing Viewpoint in the movie where she's saying that the fman should be rescuing themselves and fighting for themselves and that this whole thing about a prophecy and waiting for someone to come rescue them just keeps them held in place I think you need that opposing Viewpoint from inside the fman so that the story is not painting them as some folks that will just follow anybody blindly I love that you have that conflict and that it is someone so close to Paul I think the movie benefits from that we'll talk a little bit later about adaptation and changing things and how different people view that but I think what you do when you take Chin's character and take her in this direction is to give these two movies this version of Dune sort of its own feel in a way that isn't contrary or counter to the book it's just a way of saying hey this is how we're telling this version of the story and not necessarily changing it because we don't like it Austin Butler is fade rotha I mentioned a little bit how much I liked him in my non-spoiler review but I didn't want to give away his performance Choice when I realized that he was speaking like Stell and Skarsgard at first I wasn't really quite sure what to think but I actually like that decision because it underscores first of all his role as the na Baron in the whole hekken and family but it also sets up a couple of different possibilities one of them is that he idolizes his uncle so much that he emulates his speaking voice which I think sets up an interesting dynamic between those two the other one being that perhaps the way that the baron speaks is some sort of a royal affect which is a little piece of family mythology that's thrown into the movie I don't know whose decision that was if that was his decision or Den Evil news but I liked that choice and fed rotha is just an absolute psychopath I mean you in that animal intensity the way that he's roaring and growling in that Arena fight against what they think is the last of the atres clan he is ass sociopath psychopath in all the best ways I wish that I could see a whatif version of this story where he wins the knife fight against Paul we'll talk about that also a little bit later and ascends to the throne and what the universe and the Galaxy would have looked like if that had happened stellen scar scar didn't get a whole lot to do but he made the most of his screen time and my favorite sequence was him in in the Box watching fed rotha fight as he says show me who you are I think it was a great insight into the games that the hekinan play with each other this is not a loving family this is a Cutthroat family as we've seen many times in this movie and the previous one and this idea of almost Evolution and survival of the fittest and the fact that we're just going to throw you to the wolves and if you don't survive well then you weren't meant to be in power anyway again it's a very subtle way of saying this is how this family and this system operates Rebecca Ferguson is mother Jessica as a transformation in this movie that was actually pretty scary for me because I think it Taps into a primal fear for a lot of people which is what if the one person who was supposed to protect you your parent turns against you or can't be trusted for all of her resistance to the bener and saying that she's looking out for Paul once she's transformed into the freman version of the Reverend mother she begins manipulating Paul just as the Benz wanted to do just in her own way I think it Taps into something something that some people do experience but most people hope that they don't which is just the unreliability and who do you turn to what do you do when you can't go to the one person that you've always been able to count on and I think that it plays so much into Paul's decisions and what he wants to do and doesn't want to do because he essentially realizes that the one action that he can't take is to follow his mother and do what she wants him to do Javier BM does a lot of the dramatic lifting later in the movie Once Paul gains a little bit more power but he's also pretty funny in the early part the film I loved his setup telling Paul to watch out for the Jin in the desert it's great when you can see that an actor has been given the latitude to have some fun and you could tell Javier bardam liked this expanded role as sgar I also think that Dave Batista as Rabon got a little bit short shrift in the storytelling I get it he's not that important to the story but I loved his desperation he's so fixated on not making a mistake that he then stumbles into mistake after mistake after mistake it's a very human thing it's very relatable and because you have to set up fed rala they can only spend so much time with Rabon but Dave Batista I think is a great actor and this was another I think really solid performance some people might think that it's a bit one note because he does shout and scream and yell for most of his screen time but again I think that that shows you the desperation of that character and I loved the scene where he had them assault and then land and you're in this sand not Sandstorm but like a sandcloud and his men are getting picked off one by one and he sees Paul and he doesn't know Paul but he sees muad emerging from the sand because what that does is to set up the legend of muad Paul says that the only tool that they really have is fear and I think that that sequence is there to show you why people feared him because he had this almost mystical presence and that's something that is in the book but I thought that that was really well translated in that sequence I think it was a great way to take the text and distill it into something that was really effective and it was because it was through rabon's eyes and Dave Batista's eyes that that really had the power that it did so I liked what he was given in the film Josh Brolin's return is gurnie was welcome but he's another character I wish we'd gotten a little more time with we do finally get to see him play the biset which is great the anger and pain that he pours into that line for my duke and for my friends when he stabs Rabon just shows you what a great actor can do with a smaller amount of screen time a few other cast members that we got just a little bit of Christopher Walkin is the Emperor I thought was good I mean I think he's such a cultural presence that people forget that he is actually a really strong actor I especially like the scene with Paul where he was explaining why it was that his father had to go and why he wasn't a great ruler and I think the part that's the worst about that is that the audience in Paul understands that he's actually a little bit right that lato was someone who ruled with his heart and that in this world that's not necessarily the most effective way to rule so I thought that that was a well- written and well acted scene Christopher Watkin's role in this movie by the way was pretty reage by the great prophet Fatboy Slim in the late 1990s because there was a music video for a song called weapon of choice that starred Christopher walk and as a guy who was dancing around in a hotel lobby and one of the repeated lyrics in that song was you walk without Rhythm and you won't attract the worm which of course is a reference to Dune which Christopher Walkin would star in about 25 years later Florence Pew as Princess iron was good because she's a great actress but I feel like she was mainly there to set up the next movie I liked her scenes with walking especially but I feel like we're really going to get to see what she does in the next film if they make it and then any Taylor joy as Paul's sister Aaliyah is obviously there to lead into the third film and I understand that people are upset that Aaliyah was cut from the film and that lato II was cut from the film but denil has been very upfront about the fact that he doesn't necessarily like plotting movies he likes visuals and cutting those characters allows him to sort of streamline that story you can agree with that or disagree with that but again he's not necessarily I don't think disrespecting the spirit of Dune he's just saying this is how I interpret it this is my version of Dune and obviously this is a book that was heavily adapted more so even in the second movie than in the first movie and there are going to be some people that compare it to the original and aren't happy with the end result I've seen a lot of those people in my comments about the last air bender as well the Netflix live action series because it cut so much from the animated show and changed things Etc but for me the way that I judge an adaptation is even if you change some things story-wise is it true to the spirit of the original work whether it's a book or a TV show or whatever else is it able to capture what the original intention was from the author or from the showrunners or is it changing it in a way that feels counter to what those things were trying to say Jurassic Park for example is one of my favorite movies and also a book that I really enjoy but the movie changed so much from the book there's very little that's actually similar they change characters around but the movie and the book feel like they're telling the same story and they have the same message and I think that they can stand apart as two different versions of the same story whereas the movie version of Watchmen is extremely faithful to the comic but I don't think that it's a very good adaptation of the story because I feel like the messaging is counter to a lot of what the original Watchman story was trying to say there are lots of different ways to judge adaptations but for my money I would rather somebody take Dune or whatever else and put it through their filter remain true what the story was trying to say but have a really creative way to say it than to have somebody slavishly recreate what the original work was but missed the entire point of what it was trying to say I will make a couple notes on the adaptation however one thing I think that could have developed a bit more was Paul drinking the Water of Life and what it did to him they address it with some dialogue but if I was going to beef up one part of the narrative that would be it they say it but I think you needed to see a little bit more that this was his point of no return that after that happened he was a different person he was a changed person the Paul that we knew was gone and he became the Lian alib he became this Messiah that he was prophesied to be and I think it's important to note that because it's not like a coronation him getting those powers of foresight Etc it shouldn't have been treated and it wasn't treated like it was some moment of Triumph where he is attaining the ultimate power and now he's the hero that he was born to be because that's not the story that dune's telling and dille newv gets that I think it's very dubious that him becoming the leas on alib is in anyone's best interest most of all his but I feel like they rushed through this part of the story and ch's part in it a little bit too quickly as well as the reveal of the harken and ancestry inside the atres line denila said he likes visuals and also said that sometimes he may cut too much out of a movie and this is one case where not necessarily from an adaptation standpoint but for the plot of this movie I think he he could have put in a little bit more detail on exactly what was happening and the consequences of that there is something I want to talk about though on a broader level and not just this version of Dune but I've seen this criticism aimed at the movies and at the book Etc which is that it's been accused of being this so-called white savior narrative the idea of an outsider who comes in to save a race of people who are indigenous and that he comes in and does things that nobody else can and there certainly have been other stories that are like that but Dune is abs absolutely not that in none of its forms is it like that and I think it's it's actually an indictment of that it talks about how dangerous that mindset is and how you don't want something like that to happen and how it's wrong for those things to happen I don't think Dune is any kind of a white savior narrative I think this is very much a cautionary tale and it is a story about power the people who want Power the people who need power what people think power is and what happens when you get that power the Benes think they have the power because while Paul isn't the quisty Tock that they wanted they still believe that they can turn the situation to their advantage they're always plotting hence the Reverend mother's comment to Jessica at the end that there are no sides in this conflict but in their arrogance they lose control of the situation and find an Abomination on the throne and this is the same power and the same Throne that the benad jeser have been trying to achieve by breeding throughout Generations that's something else that the books go into a little bit more than the movies the idea that this whole thing with the quit hok was supposed to happen but not with Paul it was supposed to be somebody else who they could control the way that they try to control fed rotha in the movie as well the hekinan think that they have ultimate power because of their leverage over the emperor and the great houses but that power is of no use really and the hekinan are soundly defeated the Emperor of course believes that he has the power because of his station and the assumed loyalty of his subjects but his position is ultimately weak and he finds himself out of power even even Paul for all of his stated intentions about wanting to help the fan win their freedom really wanted to use them to get revenge on the hearkening so even though Paul rejected the idea that he was a messiah he still wanted to use that concept or that fear to his own ends now you can argue at some point did he lose that was he ever actually altruistic was he turned I think that that's what makes Paul a very complicated character but he's not a complete innocent Paul uses the atomics he uses the fman he overthrows the emperor and think the big question at the end of this and something that's going to be gone into should they make this third movie is to whose benefit what happens when you get that power and what do you do next of course the only people with any real lasting power in Dune are the fman the desert power that Paul's father spoke about and while lato respected that desert power even he was looking to exploit it for his own gain the atres didn't come to araus to save the fan they didn't come on a mission of peace they came on a mission of profit maybe when they didn't ask for but one that they were certainly determined to succeed at doing this is not a story to me about a man who saves a race of people this is a story about a race of people who are subjugated many times over for other people's purposes and ultimately they go to war for a messiah that is not even of their own making I think it's a tragedy not an adventure story and I think that the character of sgar is a really important part of the puzzle when we talk about the effects that this has on the fman because it's established in the first movie that he is is not a dumb person he's very smart he's respected and yet he more than anybody believes in the legend of Paul and that he is going to be this Messiah as loud a voice as chanani is on one side of the argument sgar is just as determined that even when Paul says he's not this Messiah it's just more proof that he is and I like that scene where Paul says I'm not the MTI and stoar says see the MTI is so humble he says he's not the MTI which means he's even more the MTI this is the sort of Blind Faith that can be dangerous and we see that danger in the movie I don't think the movie is saying that all faith is bad necessarily but I think it is making the point that fanaticism is bad and can be wielded even by people who don't intend at first to use it destructively as a powerful weapon because at the end of the story does it really matter what Paul's original intentions were he's betrayed the woman that he said that he would love forever and he's now leading the people that he said he would lead into Paradise into a war that will apparently cost billions of lives including assumedly a lot of the freman I think it's interesting to debate the lisan alib and whether this savior is actually something that is real I mean obviously Paul fits this mold but this was also an idea that was planted on arus by the benzar so how much of it is Paul fitting the mold because he is a mystical figure and how much of it is Paul fitting the mold because this is the way that things have been manipulated the Benz have the power of sight Paul has the power of sight there are going to be things mystically that line up and I understand that maybe this is a little cynical but I'm of the opinion that while Paul certainly had many gifts that were special because of his genetic breeding and because of taking the water of life and everything else I don't think that he is some unkillable Messiah and I think that basically the future of his family and oracus and the Galaxy and everything else came down to a knife fight with fed rala that he almost lost I don't think Paul was destined to win that fight I think think he could have died fed rotha would have ascended to the throne and his child would have been born perhaps the one that becomes the quat HCK that the bzar want and that they could control my main point with all of this is saying that there are some people that just want to paint this story with one brush and say well this is what this story is whereas I think that this is a really psychologically complex rich and deep narrative that goes into societal questions both inside the text and outside of the text and this is all pretty heady stuff for a Blockbuster movie to take on it also has that big spectacle that people show up to the theater to see as I'm recording this the opening night preview grosses on Thursday night came in at around $10 million it looks like Dune part two might be heading toward an opening weekend of around 80 million I think that it would be great if it went above that I went to see it a little bit early for my first review and then I went back for the fan preview screenings that happened this past Sunday and first of all the movie was sold out which in my market is pretty rare I can probably count on both hands the number of sold out movies that I've gone to the crowd that I saw it with the movie ended and there was sort of a beat of Silence where I was just like oh no did they hate it and then somebody just goes holy and then people started applauding so it seemed like it kind of left them a little bit stunned or in awe of the movie which I think Bodwell perhaps for Word of Mouth going forward I know that this is pretty deep rich heady sci-fi that can be tough to find a mainstream crowd but if any movie can do it I think this one can and then the question becomes what's next it seems like this movie's well positioned financially and the third film has been all but confirmed and evil new has said that he's begun work on it already but that it's still a few years away I'm currently about halfway through the second book Dune Messiah and honestly I'm curious to see how Den Vu plans to adapt a series of long conversations at least at this point in the book but it again does go to that adaptation and finding the spirit of the material and how he wants to tell the story but even if this third movie doesn't happen and these are the only two that we got when you look at it and you look at the of it and you look at what this story entails and the themes that are brought into this the performances that we got the technical side the music the cinematography the visual effects I'm thankful that we got these two films because I think it was a great adaptation of a very dense story and one that some people said was unfilmable I think that dendy vuv really did something special here and the cast did as well and if this universe continues then I will be anxious to go deeper into the Dune Universe which I've heard gets pretty pretty crazy so those are my spoiler thoughts on Dune part two what do you think is this your favorite of the two do you think the two movies together are a good adaptation of the source material let me know down in the comments below and as always please stay tuned right here on the channel hit that subscribe button if you like this review please share it if you want to hit the Bell that tells you when I upload a new video that would be great as well we really want to grow the channel because I love talking about movies and I love talking about movies like this and I'm very thankful that I get the opportunity to do it here with you thanks for spending part of your day here with me until next time stay safe and I'll see you then all right let's just get why did I go [Music] [Applause] back

Channel: Dan Murrell

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Keywords: dan murrell, dan murrell movies, movies, dune review, dune 2 review, dune part two review, dune part 2 review, dan murrell dune review, dan murrell dune 2 review, dan murrell dune part two review, dune two, dune two review, dune spoiler review, dune 2 spoiler review, dune part two spoiler review, dune part 2 spoiler review

Id: qiNNI_xuppM

Length: 27min 54sec (1674 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2024