Dune: Part TwoReview: Timothée Chalamet Is Back in a Sequel That's Even Better Than the Original

Chalamet with Zendaya on planet Arrakas.Photo:Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros. Pictures

Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros. Pictures

But the 166-minutePart Twois even better, rising at the end to a stirring climax that could be called a cliffhanger — which indicates the need for aDune: Part Three,although such a project has yet to be announced.

Part Twowill certainly make you want the story to continue. (Imagine ifStar Warshad stopped at the end ofThe Empire Strikes Back,with Han Solo frozen forever and Luke Skywalker still reeling from unexpected daddy issues.) After enough time, you might even feel compelled to wallow intoFrank Herbert’s mammothDunenovels and digest sentences like this:

“Above all else, Muad’Dib was thekwisatz haderachwhich the Sisterhood’s breeding program had sought across thousands of generations.”

Part Twois largely about the further struggles of Paul (Chalomet), scion of the once great, now kaput House of Atreides, which inPart Onewas wiped out in a grand tangle of hostilities involving the Emperor (Christopher Walken, new to the franchise) and the grotesque Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard), who looks like a sea elephant that got caught in an oil spill.

Hiding out on a desert planet Arrakis (accent color: cinnamon), Paul has joined forces with a rebel people, the Freman, and is developing a nice if still tenuous relationship with a brave female warrior named Chani (Zendaya). Meanwhile, his mother (Rebecca Ferguson) glugs down a liquid that has the crystalline aqua-blue of a commercial mouthwash or dental rinse. In fact, it’s the Water of Life, which elevates her to a state of exalted reverence and mystical insight among the rebels. She really ups her game!

Butler and Seydoux.Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros. Pictures

The film’s bounty of new characters and performers give it a heightened sense of drama that’s at once both grander and more nuanced thanPart One’s.Florence Pugh, as the Emperor’s daughter, Princess Irulan, isn’t given much to do here other than wear a metallic headdress that has a certain Art Deco flair — her costume cries out for bugle beads — but she conveys a tactical intelligence and resolve that serve the princess well in the end. As Lady Margot, member of that aforementioned Sisterhood that has everything to do with Paul’s destiny and nothing to do with traveling pants, Léa Seydoux is seductive and secretive.

And Walken is marvelous — querulous, petty, cruel — as the Emperor. He emits a thin hiss of neurotic energy that unexpectedly complements the film’s august seriousness. (This serves as a reminder that,despite Walken’s recent BMW ad,he can be imitated, but not equaled.)

Anya Taylor-Joyshows up for a brief cameo, just long enough for her gimlet eyes to register onscreen, as a woman who’ll be significant if a thirdDunemovie ever gets going.

The only point of concern, unfortunately, is Chalamet: His performance inPart Onewas both passionate and intelligent. Here it’s hard to say whether he quite grasps Paul’s emerging ruthlessness and will. Paul, in the Shakespearean manner of fantasy epics, must mature into the leader that fate demands. In the big finale, Chalamet mostly seems flustered and annoyed, like someone disappointed with his hotel accommodations. You wonder if he wasn’t better off making thoseWonkachocolates. Oh, Timbo!

That much-needed third film, of course, might put those troublesome doubts to rest. No rush. But it’d be good to have.

Dune: Part Twois in theaters March 1.

source: people.com