Dune Part 2 Was BAD and Here's Why (Nerd Review)

The editing erased all tension. I couldn't put my finger on it at first but a bunch of stuff gets touched on and then it moves on without elaborating

There were some bad edits that confused me. Stillgar sends Paul out into the desert for a solo camping trip. How did that solo trip end? Did Stillgar find out that Chani helped Paul? Nope. Suddenly the movie jumps to some fremen attacking a spice harvester. Is this attack happening while Paul is on his solo camping trip? Who are these masked fremen? Oh! It's a Paul and Chani! Whaaa? I guess the solo camping trip is done and everthing went great...?? No problems with spiders or centipedes, I guess. And Stillgar was OK with Chani going with Paul on his solo trip? Another bad edit is the scene where Paul drinks the blue gatorade. The build-up to that scene was way too short. Paul is suddenly at the temple where he goes straight for the beaker of juice. No hesitation. No fear. Just give me the juice so we can get to the next scene. No explanation. No big deal. How did Paul get to the temple ahead of his entourage? It felt like that scene was over edited, too much was cut out. I initially thought it might be a pre-cog dream where Paul dies...but Nope! He drank the juice and that scene is done. Wasn't that scene supposed to be the most important turning point of Paul's life?

They did Alia so dirty and they completely skimmed over the Baron’s death by having Paul do the job instead of Alia.

Chani’s character was so dry and impossible to believe, 4/10 acting all around, cinematically amazing

Oddly enough, I felt the movie was rushed. After reading the book the movie felt like the cliff notes (and not the good ones). If I didn’t read them, I would have been totally lost. And, they reinvented the story all the while getting it totally wrong. So they screwed it all up and it’s going to take 40 years on before anyone else will attempt to make a movie (or tv series) again.

Didnt read the books...but found Chani extremely annoying. She makes fun of the prophecy but sleeps with the chosen one (after he gets the biggest worm in town). She loves him in one scene, then accuses him of wanting to enslave them, then she wants to kill him in the temple, but then she gets jealous of him marrying the princess, so she leaves angry at him etc etc...at the final battle they are all over the place. They start planning the attack at the west side of the valley (from where the nukes are shot), then magically Chani is teletransported and appears under the sand with hundreds of wariors. Paul is in the west, then magically appears in the north with thousands of warriors. The nukes destroy a mountain creating a tsunami of massive boulders and dust that its about to destroy the "palace", but then nothing happens and only some soldiers are killed, but then Stilgar attacks from the opening and nothing is there from the nuke's rubble. The emperors army is supposed to be the best in the universe but they get killed so easily, even in one to one combat. In the first movie they were unbeatable. So many more plotholes and contradictions.

I just want to say thank you for affirming that I'm not completely insane by being completely dismayed by the critical reception of this film...or at the very least that I'm not alone in my insanity. Also, when you mentioned the power range scene...THANK YOU! I literally said the EXACT same thing to my brother when I watched the first movie! I burst out laughing all of the sudden and I had to explain to him afterward. Holy crap. I'm so unbelievably comforted right now.

I never read the books but even I think its not a good movie. At least not as good as the hype make it seem.. It just never felt like the fremen were fighting a superior force. They were never in any danger. The villains were built up to die patheticly. The romance gave me a headache. There is no chemistry. The villains keep randomly killing their own goons to show how crazy bad they are which really amounted to nothing, felt cheap.

Rushed, shallow, non sensical, soulless....talking about the movie.

Are the Harkonnens also comically stupid in the books? Cause in this movie they were fucking pathetic. All the fights were so one sided it felt like there was no conflict at all.

So much missing... No spacing guild, the importance of spice is undermined, The Emperor looks like he ran away from an old folks home, what is even a Mentat, what is the Kwitatz Haderach, Harkonen cruelty is minimized into random and senseless murder of their own, why is Shai Hulud so important to these people??? Paul now owns the galaxy because nukes??? Chani hates Paul or what??? Theres just so much NOT going on that I left the theater disappointed. Spectacle over substance is a perfect way to put it. I think people are just desperate for movies that arent just a vehicle for "representation and inclusion". Which, I get it, but this isn't it. 5 out of 10. I said what I said.

Not a book reader nor have I seen the Lynch version but I actually loved Part One. However I was super disappoInted with Part Two. The Harkonens seemed lame and weak in this one. The Fade and Rabban duels were anticlImactic AF. I still don't really understand the value and power of Spice. I don't connect with or like any of the characters, especially Chani. Also is the Emperor supposed to seem like the weakest man in the Universe?

In the end, the Harkonens were reduced to a non threat. They all died quite easily and anti-climatically. Feyd Ruhta was presented as this super insane, super threatening challenge and after he arrives on the planet he's just another generic villain. The Baron was presented as such a threat and is simply stabbed as he lays on the ground saying nothing! After everything the Beast had done, Gurney kills him in a second. Their deaths were just so disappointing to me. For all the build up to Paul taking revenge on them for the destruction of his house, there was barely any emotion to their defeat. Also, the big reveal that Paul and Jessica were Harkonens by blood led to nothing! The ending also just felt really rushed and felt like a setup for a Part 3. By the time the final battle started I was expecting a HUGE epic battle but it felt like it was over as it was just getting started. I didn't hate the movie, but the last hour was super disappointing to me.

This is a comment I wrote on Penguinz0s moist meter glowing review of dune part 2 as I could not believe why this film was recieving so much praise. I did really enjoy part one however, differing from your perspective in that way. :I am incapable of understanding how anyone can think of part two as anything other than an absolute mess, the tropes, the underdevelopment of the love story, the unexplained plot point of the family atomics, the sillyness of the raids on the spice harvesters and feyd rautha's brief appearance. The extent of the love story in the film was basically Paul and Chani fighting mini bosses and chani goin "great job for an idiot foreigner" Paul pretty much just looks at her and they are 'in love'. On the topic of the spice harvesting machine mini bosses, these fight scenes are absurd, the fedeyken being in the exact place the ships will land seeming entirely coincidental or not explained. Then, they effortlessly dispatch the Harkonen soldiers and gunships. However this seems entirely pointless when, after all of that effort, they just annihilate them with an all powerful laser gun. Paul's scenes of becoming fedeyken were also lacklustre, with him basically speedrunning improving his sand walk, and then immediately transitioning to riding the biggest wurm ever seen. (Also, the ease with which the fremen harness and ride the sandworms really detracts from their position as the apex predators of the desert which was disappointing.) Feyd rautha also seemed to me like a poorly developed character, he just pops up all psychopathic and then utilises the gunships to destroy the seeches. (which I guess had just been floating around doing fuck all previously?) Also in the final fight between Paul and Feyd, we see the old trope of taking a serious wound to land the final blow on an enemy (pretty much Thorin vs Azog.) I would also have preferred to see the characters depravity and cruelty rather than him simply beating up on some dudes in an arena, similar to Ramsay Snow/Bolton from GoT. I think the plot was simply too boring and predictable even as someone who has not read the original novel, everything being explained in a way that was painfully patronising and ultimately boring. The characters seemed to face really very little adversity and development with every scene just revealing new information or seeing the characters develop new skills at an extremely surface level and at face value. For example, the 'water of life' pretty much just turning Paul into an omniscient super being and entirely changing his character. I simply think there was not enough mystery and organic character development through dialogue and interactions to create compelling, endearing characters. I would compare many of the scenes to pantomimes with Stilgar, Paul and Chani taking turns to pronounce their opinions at each other with the rest of the fedeyken cheering like canned applause when one of the main characters said something important. The visuals and music were great granted, but they entirely dismantled the emerging ambiance and mystery of arrakis in exchange for repetitive action scenes and clunky dialogue and character development. I was either bored or cringing for almost the entire film and was massively disappointed in what could have been a tense, thrilling culmination of the political, religious and romantic storylines at play yet the film fell apart on everything besides the visuals.

Where is Thufir?

So glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. Feel like the world's gone mad.

So many important parts of the story left out. If you haven't read the books, half the crap in the movie make little sense as to why anything is happening.

What I disliked most about this movie is that it tries very hard to depict the most nuanced parts of Herbert's books by simply having the characters repeat worlds. It was actually annoying to hear Lisan Al gaib repeated to the point it's become a meme. The same could be said about the character constantly muttering Muad dib and kwizats haderach and mahdi. All those ideas had substance in the books but were reduced to buzzwords in the film. I think FH would detest the thought of trying to turn his magnum opus into Hollywood intellectual property to be exploited through a trilogy.

There are several points which massively could improve this waste-of-a-time-movie: Take the last 20 minutes of the last movie and take that as a setup for the beginning of part 2. The Harkonnens are almost non-existant and that means a lot when they are the antagonists in a 167 min movie. In the book the Baron is one of the main characters and also VERY verbal, explaining a lot about the world of Dune. Without reading the books first, a viewer is completely lost during some scenes. The Emperor looked like a guy ready to die. Sure he was 79 in the books, but he was said to look like 40. Christopher Walken was severely miscast. He sticks out as a sore thumb. Irulan was a wasted character as well- going from a key political figure to a mere bystander, who has a plot going with the Bene-Gesserit until she suddenly stops to be relevant. Paul and his messiah-like position was played for laughs, especially the scene that was basically a copy from "Life of Brian". His problem of not-wanting to become a prophet due to the resulting millions of lives lost is simply gone after mentioning it once. Channi was again a non-character except for antagonizing Paul for most of the time. The movie basically skips 2 years and we should just imagine why Paul fell in love with her. This never works in a movie. Just because characters are male and female and close in proximity doesnt explain a relationship. The biggest joke to me however was when the Emperor came to Arrakis and "he brought all his ships and entire military power", just so they could defeat him in like 5 minutes. I basically thought the nukes missed the Emperor's ship, but the movie treated it as if the idea of nuking the mountains and then riding the worms through the resulting opening to fight the Emperors army was better than simply nuking his army directly.... like what? For being more than 2 and a half hours long this movie wastes so much time on nothing.

Was anyone else irritated/pissed off that Otheym was not even in this film?! Otheym has always been one of my favorite characters from Dune, even my PSN ID is Otheym. Was SO super excited to see him only to find out that his character was absent. 😢