Member-only story
Film Review
Dune: Part Two (2024) — an overpowering, immersive, and terrifyingly messianic epic
Paul Atreides unites with Chani and the Fremen while seeking revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family.
“Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.”
These words define the final moments of Denis Villeneuve’s opus Dune: Part One (2021), a landmark achievement in science-fiction adaptations that concludes with the annihilation of House Atreides. Manipulated by the whims of Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV (Christopher Walken), Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) and his entire clan have been massacred by the vicious House Harkonnen. This scorched-earth trail of death relinquishes control of the desert planet Arrakis to the Harkonnens’ barbaric rule, granting them unfettered access to melange, the superhuman ‘spice’ that controls the socio-political landscape of the known universe. With this resource, the Harkonnens could become the most influential force known to humankind, a terrifying prospect to anyone who knows of their unrelenting brutality towards all who oppose them.
Among the few who’ve managed to escape are Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson). Now residing with the Fremen, the indigenous people of Arrakis who are deeply familiar with the desert’s ways, they are both in hiding.
The Harkonnens believe Paul and Jessica to be dead. This necessitates their constant evasion as the Harkonnens attempt to exterminate the Fremen from Arrakis to resume unfettered production of the psychotropic substance known as ‘spice’. However, this conquest is fuelled by a significant underestimation of the Fremen’s strength. As Paul and Jessica discover, this underestimation may cost the Harkonnens their dominion over Arrakis.
