THB #498: Dune, Part II (Duner)

Denis Villeneuve is a master filmmaker. Like Christopher Nolan, his leanings as a young filmmaker were to high art and his work as a more mature filmmaker has pulled commercial cinema towards those leanings much more than the other way around.

Dune was released into what we would come to understand was the end of the COVID brutality on movie theaters. But it still became a major event worldwide. Villeneuve made clear that his intention was to not speed through the first 2 books of Dune by Frank Herbert, but to do it his way, hoping the first film would lead naturally to the second film. Perhaps a third.

The final words in Dune are, “This is only the beginning.” The final words in Dune, Part II are (paraphrasing and trying to avoid a spoiler), “The war has just begun.”

Denis power.

Dune Part II starts, as Dune did, with the voice of a Bene Gesserit making a statement of fact against an empty screen.

The film’s first full sequence - after establishing that House Atreides has been almost co…