'Dune: Part 2' review: Missing flavor, despite all that Spice

Denis Villeneuve's return to Arrakis is a rushed, occasionally thrilling spectacle

Dune: Part 2 is like a sandworm plowing across the desert; it’s a gargantuan, nearly 3-hour-long film that often feels like it’s in a hurry.

Plot points seem to be getting checked off a list with little to no time for character development or lingering emotion. The grandiose atmosphere of Denis Villeneuve’s first film- its sense of menace and palace intrigue- was the work of a confident director painting on a vast, gorgeous canvas.

Dune: Part 2 does conjure that feeling again at times, to be sure. In its back half, when dueling galactic armies battle for control of the resource-rich desert planet Arrakis, Villeneuve creates an awe-inspiring clash of sand and metal that is fueled by rage and a mounting sense of unease.

Before I dive further into the particulars of this film, though, let’s back up a bit.

Dune is the story of Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet), who in the first film goes to Arrakis so his family can oversee the production of Spice, a precious substance essential for interstellar travel. Spice also doubles as a drug that gives users heightened senses and, sometimes, visions of the future.

In the climax of the first film, the Atreides family is betrayed by the Emperor, who appears on screen for the first time in Part 2, played by Christopher Walken. The Atreides compound is assaulted, and Paul’s father is murdered by the sinister Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård). Paul and his pregnant mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) are sent out to the middle of the desert to die.

But the Baron is unaware of the prophesies and visions that surround Paul. Jessica, a member of a superhuman, vision-having sisterhood called the Bene Geserit, has secretly been training her son in their ways. At the end of the first film, Paul and Jessica meet Stilgar (Javier Bardem), the leader of the Freman clan, who has adapted to survive in the harsh desert landscape. They also encounter Chani (Zendaya), a young Freman woman who Paul has been seeing in his visions.

The first third of this sequel finds Paul being initiated into the ways of the Freman and falling in love with Chani. He learns to ride a gigantic sandworm, helps sabotage the Spice mining operation his family once oversaw, and tries to convince doubters within the Freman that he is not trying to take control of the tribe to fulfill the messianic prophecy that Stilgar whole-heartedly (and sometimes comically) believes in.

This stretch is by and large where the movie falls flat.

Villeneuve shies away from the particulars of how the Freman operate, what motivates them, and how exactly they survive in the desert. Their beliefs and the divisions that an outsider, would-be messiah like Paul stokes are barely explored.

This failure reverberates through the rest of the movie because everything is built on it, from Paul’s quest for revenge to his romance with Chani. At one point, he looks doe-eyed at Chani as she repairs some machinery, and in the next, he’s plotting with his mother to manipulate the Freman and exact revenge on the Baron.

There’s no emotional consistency in Chalamet’s performance or the screenplay. Paul unconvincingly changes his priorities from scene to scene. (It doesn’t help that there’s a distinct lack of spark between Chalamet and Zendaya, either).

It’s not all bad news, though.

Where Paul’s ascension to the reluctant head of the Freman is clunky, his mother’s rise as a spiritual leader of the clan is a high point. This is largely due to Ferguson’s performance and the close-ups that Villeneuve lavishes upon her narrow, determined eyes. You can see every chilly calculation and the quiet relishing of her growing authority.

Where Dune: Part 2 really soars, though, is in its depiction of unabashed villainy. Skarsgård is reliably excellent as the hulking, sinister Baron, but it’s the introduction of his nephew Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler) that really elevates the film. We first see him preparing before a gladiator-like stadium duel; he inspects his blades, pulls one up to his tongue, and runs it across before testing it out by murdering two female aides.

The colosseum battle, shot in the stark, unsubtle black and white shades of the Harkonnen home planet Giedi Prime, is a birthday celebration of sorts for Feyd-Rautha. He can slaughter a couple of drugged prisoners, as a treat.

Both the Baron and the Bene Gesserit see this psychotic killer as a means to an end: specifically the end of the increasingly effective Freman rebellion. After a sadistic, sexually charged test with the Bene Gesserit member Lady Margot (Léa Seydoux, making the most of minimal screentime), Feyd-Rautha is sent to Arrakis to slaughter the Freman.

Part 2 culminates in a wonderfully staged assault on the Harkonnen base on Arrakis during a visit from the Emperor. Soldiers, sandworms, and ornithopters collide as Paul and the Freman armies assault the compound from every direction.

Here, Villeneuve is back in his wheelhouse. He and Chalamet successfully establish Paul as a queasily selfish leader ahead of the presumed third installment. Dune: Part 2 seems to be riding at warp speed to get to the next movie, though, rarely lingering in the contradictions that would make its main character more interesting, and disturbing.