Dune: Part Two

Watched in 70mm IMAX I had the chance to finish reading the novel before this rewatch, and it's because of that experience that I can't give enough praise for how well the story was adapted for Dune: Part Two. The events covered in this film is arguably five times as dense as Villeneuve's first film, but he navigates it with unbelievable ease. Pages worth of character sentiments and conflicting parties are condensed into mere minutes or even seconds. Never dull or cheap moments of exposition however, but instead powerful scenes that echo their narrative counterparts beautifully. During my first watch of Dune: Part Two, I initially thought that it moved too fast, but in actuality it follows the pacing of the novel quite closely. It does a damn fine job at streamlining the core ideology of Dune, and gives such a worthy presentation of characterization and epic that it could honestly scare off any filmmakers from adapting this franchise again. Regrettably, I still believe that Zendaya as Chani was a big miscast, solely because her screen time bleeds into the story a bit too much. It translates better for movie purposes, but for me it also invites the fact that I don't think she's that good of an actor. I've found her performances to fall short beyond her limited facial expressions and accent work, and for this film she doesn't fit the immersion at all. Josh Brolin's Gurney Halleck and Javier Bardem's Stilgar stood out to me a little bit extra this time around, probably my favorite secondary characters.