When Dune was revealed to actually be Dune: Part One, I was a bit disappointed. If it was a Lord of the Rings situation in which it was all already filmed and Part Two would be coming out a year later or something, it wouldn’t have bummed me out. But Part Two wasn’t even greenlit until after Part One was released, meaning I was in for a years long wait. Because of this, my reaction to the first film was a tempered, “That was great, but I can’t wait to see the full story.” It felt like a great introduction with all the truly amazing stuff yet to come. This meant my expectations for the sequel were somehow even higher than they were for the first film. So perhaps it’s not that surprising that my reaction to Part Two is just, “That was pretty good.”
This is similar to my experience with Oppenheimer last year. I watched it and liked it, but when I saw other reactions to the film, I wondered what I had missed (with Oppenheimer, I came around with multiple viewings and now consider it amazing). I keep seeing terms like “masterpiece” and “achievement” being tossed around in regards to Part Two along with some high profile names like Christopher Nolan calling it Denis Villeneuve’s Empire Strikes Back. Now, I liked both of these films, but I did not come away thinking it was a masterpiece.
Rather than get into problems I had with the movie (which are vague, anyway, along the lines of, “I wanted to be blown away, but instead I just liked it a lot”), I wanted to focus instead on the moment created by the film. This is a moment a dork like me fears when something weird I like is embraced by the mainstream. Dune should be something I’m kind of embarrassed to like; instead I’m seeing sites like Barstool Sports posting about digging it unironically.
I should be embracing non-dorks liking a movie that features an extended black and white gladiator arena sequence on Giedi Prime that even features weird Harkonnen fireworks. I can, and will, get past that just as I have with every other dorky property that achieves massive mainstream success. What’s harder to get past, as a writer of movie stuff, is critical hyperbole.
Despite the stereotypical reputation of critics and dorks being stubborn pop culture elitists, I constantly second-guess myself. When I walked out of Oppenheimer last year, my thoughts weren’t, “Why did everybody like that movie so much more than me?” Instead, I wondered what I had missed. What was wrong with me if I couldn’t recognize the genius of that film?
Dune: Part Two made me feel like the northern Fremen compared to the southern fundamentalist Fremen in regards to Paul. The northerners were impressed with his abilities, but he wasn’t a god to them…yet, while the southerners were all-in immediately. I’m like Chani, but I want to be Stilgar, using even discouraging examples as evidence of the film’s greatness.
Sometimes I need multiple viewings for a film to win me over, which is why this isn’t a review of Dune: Part Two. I don’t feel comfortable judging it until I’ve been able to watch it at least one more time. That’s just me; it’s perfectly fine to not be in love with a movie after one viewing, and then just move on. But when people are calling this one of the best science fiction films of all time, I can’t just move on when my response isn’t on the same level.
While there are moments in Part Two that I love (the aforementioned Giedi Prime sequence, Paul riding a worm the first time, the realistic depiction of religion), overall it didn’t feel as momentous as I thought it should. I’m hoping that another viewing will have the same effect of Paul addressing the elders, or better yet, I want another viewing to use the voice and shout “Silence!” at me when I start to doubt its greatness.
Until then, unfortunately, I’m Chani riding away on a sandworm with a tear in my eye while seemingly the rest of the world has chosen to believe something I still have doubts about.
