Return to Arakis

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, March 1st. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: one of the most anticipated sequels of 2024 makes its way into theaters this weekend.

When the film Dune came out in 2021, it was held out as one of the best science-fiction epics of all time. The movie grossed more than 400 million dollars worldwide.

EICHER: That was a pretty impressive feat considering theaters were still in the grips of the pandemic and Warner Bros. put the film on its streaming service the same day it came out in theaters.

The movie wowed critics and fans and ended on a bit of a cliff hanger—building some high expectations. Does the second installment meet them?

Here’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino.

COLLIN GARBARINO: It’s time for Dune fans’ long awaited return to the desert planet Arrakis.

Dune: Part Two arrives in theaters this weekend, concluding Denis Villeneuve’s screen adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic science-fiction novel.

In the last movie, House Atreides had been all but wiped out by the evil Harkonnens who desire to control the universe’s most valuable commodity… spice, the psychotropic dust that makes interstellar travel possible.

Dune: Part Two picks up where the last movie left off. Paul and his mother, the Lady Jessica, have fled into Arrakis’s desert wasteland hoping to find sanctuary with the planet’s native inhabitants known as Fremen.

STILGAR: Don’t try to impress anyone. You are brave. We all know that.

The desert is a harsh place. Besides the scorching heat and lack of water, enormous sandworms swallow humans and vehicles whole. Paul and Jessica must learn the ways of the Fremen to survive, and the first third of the movie depicts their attempts to gain acceptance by these fiercely independent people.

STILGAR: Nothing fancy.

PAUL: Nothing fancy.

STILGAR: I am serious. Nothing fancy, or you will shame my teaching.

PAUL: I won’t shame you. I understand.

When the wicked Harrkonens try to wipe out the planet’s Fremen population, Paul rallies his new allies to exact revenge for the fall of House Atreides.

PAUL: May thy knife chip and shatter.

Most of the cast returns for this sequel. Timothee Chalamet plays Paul as a young man who grows into his role as a reluctant messiah. Rebecca Ferguson is Paul’s calculating mother who wants to see him fulfill his destiny more than he does. Javier Bardem plays Stilgar, one of the Fremen leaders, and he brings some surprising comic relief to an otherwise somber franchise. Zendaya, as Paul's love interest, gets much more screen time than she did in the first installment.

CHANI: Here. We’re equal. Men and women alike. What we do, we do for the benefit of all.

PAUL: Well, I’d very much like to be equal to you.

We also get some newcomers in this film. Austin Butler joins the film as Feyd-Rautha, the talented, yet depraved scion of House Harkonnen. Christopher Walken plays the desperate emperor of the universe, and Florence Pugh his enigmatic daughter.

PRINCESS IRULAN: What if Paul Atreides were still alive?

MOTHER MOHAIM: Enough. This must not come out. Even to your father’s ears.

Dune: Part Two is rated PG-13. Like the first installment, this is a war movie, so there’s plenty of violence… much of it up close and personal. And the bad language is pretty mild compared to other PG-13 movies. Part Two includes a little more sensuality than the first film, but Villeneuve shows some restraint. We see two lovers lying together, but they’re only filmed from the neck up.

SHISHAKLI: Hey, Muad'Dib. [speaking Fremen]

I have a few minor quibbles with the film. Since these movies take place over a matter of months rather than years, Villeneuve showed his willingness to depart from the novel. To be honest, I wish he had departed a little more. Dune 2 is two hours and 45 minutes long, and I think Villeneuve could have improved the pacing by cutting Austin Butler’s character from the story. I know Dune purists will find that suggestion heretical, but it would have made for a more cohesive movie. On the whole though, I think Dune: Part Two is a worthy follow up to the first movie, which was probably the best film of 2021. Villeneuve is actually planning a third installment based on the second novel in the series to complete Paul’s story.

STILGAR: Shai-Hulud decides today if you become Fremen. Or if you die.

Dune is an epic adventure, but it’s also a morality tale. It’s about the dangers of co-opting religion for political power. Paul is destined to become the Fremen messiah, but he knows the prophecies he’s fulfilling are political fictions. He hates what he’s becoming, but he becomes it anyway. How else can he stop the Harkonnens?

I doubt Frank Herbert had Augustine of Hippo in mind when he wrote Dune, but the book’s themes resemble the fifth-century Christian bishop’s critique of a world without grace. In Dune, the elites manipulate the common man with their prophecies. Ancient Rome was the same way with the educated classes promoting a civic religion to help control the population. Augustine also says the Romans didn’t possess real virtue. Rather they possessed splendid vices that kept even worse wickedness in check. Paul Atreides is cut of the same cloth. He must embrace his role as a dark messiah to thwart the even greater wickedness of the Harkonnens. In a world without grace, vengeance is possible, but redemption is not.

PAUL: He who can destroy a thing has the real control of it.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

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