The new Dune movies (part 1, and now part 2!)

[RI]

Part 2 greenlit for October 2023!

[RI]

Dune 2 was phenomenal, of course. The Geidi Prime and Paul-in-the-South sequences were simply on another level. I generally don't like Chalamet that much as an actor, and was pretty neutral on him in the first one, but he absolutely nailed Paul's turn to the darker side. He was legitimately frightening.

I presume that the general politics of the films are rather less right-wing than the novel (not that that's hard!) and that the homophobic elements of the story are largely excised?

I saw the whole thing thing as an extended anti-colonial metaphor, the aesthetic of the Harkonnens was clearly similar to space Nazis (although that likely has more to do with imitating previous works that were imitating Nazis for the villains rather than a direct link), and the Fremen are like the scrappy indigenous peoples battling for their undeveloped homeland. In the vein of Avatar.

It's pretty clear the Fremen liberation is not exactly a good thing, though, unlike most "anti-colonial" movies. Their liberation requires mass genocide across the entire galaxy. Not that the Harkonnens or the Imperium are correct either.