I agree entirely. The first did a good job. The second I wish I didn’t watch it. By the end and zendaya is having a hissy fit bec he’s marrying for strategic reasons it was the last straw. This desert people used to extreme hardship living a completely austere existence - knowing little of happiness - and she acts like a 14 year old girl whose boyfriend just looked at another girl … after an entire movie that seemed at odds with itself and as you mentioned a hero that looks and acts more like a pouty boy band singer I couldn’t take it anymore. Chalamet seems like a stringy pasty depressed emo boy not the first born of a great king who spent his life preparing for leadership."Dune: Part Two" - 2024. The library finally coughed up the DVD.
Denis Villeneuve directs T. Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Florence Pugh and more in the second half of the story of Frank Herbert's book Dune, basically: desert rebels fight an evil empire and somehow wind up on top due to their control of a crucial industrial material.
I was not impressed.
I should say that I was a huge fan of Dune the book as a teenager, and still consider it a wonderful feat of imagination and an amazing piece of writing. I've also seen the Lynch movie, and the SyFy series, and of course the 2021 movie of the first part. And here with part two the cinematography and the CGI is very well done, I'll admit. Of course, we have come to expect that from a modern movie.
So why am I not jumping up and down with joy for this version? I think there are three reasons.
Firstly, it strikes me as directorially over-indulgent, even ridiculously so. The two parts together go on and on, with many scenes of blowing sand which are splendid enough in a sort of visual equivalent of Wyndham Hill music, but which are ponderous and mood-killing in a movie about a band of hardscrabble rebels fighting to overthrow a galactic empire. Every scene is twice as long as it should be, often with deliberately ponderous soundtrack which may be designed simply to keep viewers from falling asleep.
Maybe this isn't Villeneuve's fault. Maybe it's Warner Brothers. After all, two movies instead of one means two ticket sales instead of one. Maybe there's just too much going on in the book. But David Lean could have managed this with one movie. And did. And yes, I know that the original book was published as two separate serializations.
Secondly, a little niggle, but it bothered me. The Fremen are often outside without face coverings! Or even head coverings! Herbert must be turning over in his grave. This is a problem with actors and directors -- you're paying for these stars, you'd better show their faces. So you sacrifice consistency with the story. All through the Paul & Chani scenes on top of dunes, what I was thinking was, "You're losing water!"
Finally, and this may be the real killer, I didn't find Chalamet convincing in the role of Paul Atreides. He has all the dynamic charisma of a wax statue at Madame Tussaud's. Sure, his romantic scenes with Zendaya outside ("Cover your face! You're losing water!") were fine, maybe because Zendaya actually is a good actor, maybe because they were filmed "in remote locations in Jordan, during the golden hour". One of Chalamet's problems is that the rest of the cast is very good, and acts very well, so there's a contrast. For me, he just doesn't work as the messianic leader of a great crusade, or even as a duke. For those who go to see this as sequence of great cinematography, an art piece, that won't be a problem.
Statistics: Posted by KBR — Sun Aug 11, 2024 3:26 pm — Replies 11705 — Views 2220821