Dune 2 film review:
Dune 2 is spicy-white savior film* that is gorgeous and timely but bone-dry of joy and humor. It has some of the best visuals ever put on film. My filmmaker friend described it as “the most expensive perfume commercial ever made.” Director Denis Villeneuve and his team are true visionaries. The sets, costumes, battle choreography and special effects are mouthwatering. The music and sound design deserve the biggest speakers you can find.
The center of this world, Paul Atreides, is supposed to be a charismatic leader. I can’t see his gravitas in Timmy Chandelier’s performance or his chemistry with Zendaya. Every time he flirted or raised his voice, I snickered. I'd so rather watch a daddy desert buddy movie with Javier Bardem & Josh Brolin! Austin Butler shed the Elvis accent to play a convincing psycho, Dave Bautista yells a lot. Rebecca Ferguson is effective in her Lady Macbeth turn. Florence Pugh feels miscast. While the Baron (Stellan Skarsgård) takes more of a backseat here, he is still one of our grandest Queer-coded villains.**
The messiah stuff gets a lil' campy. I realize this was part of Frank Herbert’s point, and why some folks won’t call this a white savior film, but it’s not explicit enough here. The old-timey orientalism and Arabic cosplay are cringy (it's in the book too). Many Americans will sympathize with the oppressed Fremen but fail to see the metaphors for American imperialism. We're the Harkonnens baby! Still, Dune was a defining book for me when I was younger. Dune 1 and 2 come close to what I imagined. They manage to distill the plot like Fremen taking water from a corpse. It’s worth seeing in a theater but I'd read the book first.
*On the White Messiah (Industrial) Complex
An old debate is raging: Is Dune a white savior film? The Dune books were actually a critique of that trope. Paul Atreides was not a good guy. Author Frank Herbert famously said, “Charismatic leaders ought to come with a warning label MAY BE DANGEROUS FOR YOUR HEALTH.” He was so disturbed that audiences didn’t “get it,” that in the 1969 sequel, Dune Messiah (spoiler), Paul leads a galaxy-wide holocaust that kills 61 billion people.
But just because the books spell it out, doesn’t mean the films work with the themes. An audience, especially a young one, will only see a white twink move in with "the natives" to learn their ways and take them "to paradise." It’s still Dances with Wolves or Avatar. A blockbuster with this budget has to play into that trope. I’m not expecting Starship Troopers satire here, but the new Dune films want to have their cake and eat it too. They bury the subtext and want to be rewarded when they make a nod to it. It still feels mostly from the perspective of one set of colonizers in reaction to another. That’s why I called it a “spicy” white savior film. They can put as much hot sauce on it as they want, but until Dune 3 makes it clear, in script, marketing, and function, Dune 1 & 2 are still part of the white messiah industrial complex. They don’t get a pass because of their source material.
**On the Queer-Coded Baron
In the Dune books, The Baron Harkonnen is a homosexual incestuous pedophile who drugs and rapes young male slaves. It alludes to an attraction to Paul as well as a sketchy relationship with his nephew (who tries to assassinate him by hiding a poisoned needle in a boy’s thigh.) 1984’s Dune film leaned into the homophobia and HIV hysteria of its era by covering an effeminate version of the Baron with AIDS-like sores which were not in the book. The new film is very careful with this issue, saving the coding for a disturbing family kiss between The Baron and his nephew. Plus he wears silky pajamas the whole time.
The Baron is meant to represent the most sadistic, gluttonous, unnatural elements of the entire universe, so of course they had make him a homo. But hey, sometimes I prefer my homophobia straight up. It can be more fun that way and the Baron is insane fun.
Author Frank Herbert had a very complicated relationship to Queerness; he had right-leaning politics and an estranged Gay son, an activist who died of AIDS.
More media analysis through a Queer lens in my debut book “POST.” Order here.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Herrera Words to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.