Dune: Part Two gets totally awesome early, when the bad guys with blackout-orb helmets float up the cliff. Director Denis Villeneuve gives their levitation real heaviness, a palpable mass effect. With blades and exo-suits, they look like Bowsers doing Mario jumps. They’re killed, splendidly, during an eclipse. The movie leaves room for political resonances and philosophical trips, but great moments like this are pure hardcore space fantasy, knives and atomics, the score never far from a blaring synth WOMP.
I didn’t read the books. I like the flawed 1984 adaptation because I like David Lynch anything. 2021’s Dune: Part One was frustrating, with a layabout second act that felt very “What if two Hobbit movies were three Hobbit movies?” Villeneuve’s big genre breakthroughs were 2016’s Arrival and 2017’s Blade Runner 2049, two glossy projects that left me cold. So I’m not a Dune guy and I’m not a Villeneuve guy, except now I’m both. Cannot wait for Part Three. I have drunk the Water of Life. And thinking so much about Dune has made me appreciate something else in a new way.
It’s debatable, I think, just how much Dune George Lucas inhaled into his own space saga. Yes, a magic boy on a desert planet. Yes, rebels and an Emperor. Yes, stray dialogue about “spice mines” and a “spice freighter.” I wouldn’t call it a robbery. With Star Wars, the core added value is how busted everything looks: warp engines on the fritz, ships practically duct-taped together, Threepio’s recycled silver leg. A “used future,” Lucas called it. Tricky style to get right. You have to worldbuild twice, envisioning the cosmic foundation beneath ancient grime.
1977’s original Star Wars nails it. But it also instantly perfects something I barely noticed before. At crucial moments, the characters relax. See Luke Skywalker on the couch with his toy ship. Listen to the Mos Eisley band. Enjoy the Millennium Falcon’s game lounge. We inherit a lofty idea about what a Skywalker is, but at first Luke is any car-loving backwater everyboy. His allies were a mystic coot, two smugglers, a fussy robot, and a beepcan. They meet a royal, sure, but she’s Princess of rubble. We’re staring at this epic showdown over the shoulders of misfits.
Frank Herbert’s books occupy a grander space right away, I think, with their Messiahs and God Emperors. I can’t speak to the adaptation strategy, but the new Dune movies reflect a very 2020s focus on Very Important Rich People. Timotheé Chalamet’s Paul Atreides is an aristocrat whose best friends are employees. His mom’s allies build his public brand. He struggles with his own celebrity persona. This warlord fights other warlords, including one enemy who kills prisoners in an arena while millions applaud.
Villeneuve and his co-writer Jon Spaihts embrace the regal setting, and challenge it. Zendaya’s Chani becomes the outsider looking in. Raised in tunnels riding kaiju worms, she cannot picture the luxury Paul comes from. But she’s also the local youth wincing at her own elders’ religious customs. Any messiah talk, she says, is a con job. She’s skeptical of hokey religions, which makes her more like Han Solo than the various Brolin-Momoa dudes faithfully serving Paul’s family. Zendaya’s shifting expression, from sarcastic eyeroll to furrowed-brow concern, guides you to distrust anyone named Atreides.
Does Chani have hobbies, though? Do Fremen chill? Dune 2 feels like the cover of a science-fiction novel brought to life for almost three hours. That operatic success makes me realize how Off Broadway Star Wars really was. Pure necessity, of course, all that banter filling spaces between star battles the inventive special effects were straining to achieve. But the whole original trilogy keeps veering playfully off its plot course. I’m thinking of Luke on his Dagobah spirit retreat, or the creature carnival in Jabba’s Palace. Hell, the Mynocks.
To be clear, Dune is a more complicated tale. The Force’s Light/Dark divide is much simpler than Dune’s spicy portrayal of a rebel turning despotic. Did that flatter spiritual foundation stage more random acts of creativity? The sandworms of Dune are awesome, and they always mean something; when they accept Paul, it’s his first ascendant moment. When Luke meets a different animal in a harsh climate, the bear-yeti just wants to eat him.
I guess I never appreciated just how revisionist and cock-eyed the original Star Wars’ version of science-fiction really was, embedding you among runty mechanoids and snarky gearheads. This was not, of course, the franchise’s eternal mood. With more money and digital infinity, Lucas gentrified his perspective up to power brokers and priestly soldier-knights. Ignoring for a moment who invented what when, the new Dunes come off like best-case revisits of the Star Wars prequels: More compelling anti-Christ, weirder plot-crucial fetus, way cooler stormtroopers. Can’t wait for the third one. I expect space pyramids, flying thrones, titanic metropo-vessels, a galactic clash of wills. This Dune trilogy is a Michelin restaurant. But there are times I just want a cantina.