Film Review: DUNE: PART TWO (2024) – A Good Movie that’s Impressive at Times; Missing Greatness through Wasted Opportunities

The Story’s Largest Flaw: Chani

Not all of the elements in Dune: Part Two work at all times. The film’s largest flaw is Chani (Zendaya). That flaw becomes more and more apparent as the film progresses, right up to her final moment on-screen.

When Chani is being instructive? Ten. When Chani is being loving, kind, or understanding? Ten. When Chani is upset, angry, or enraged? Three. The viewer doesn’t quite buy it. It is a combination of many things, but mostly it has to do with how those scenes are written.

The foundation is laid throughout the film that Chani is hot-headed when she is passionate about something, e.g., the Fremen and Paul Atreides.

When Paul ultimately betrays her for prospective peace in the empire by proposing a marriage to Princess Irulan Corrino, Chani is taken aback, grows angry, eventually turns, and leaves. In these key moments, where is Chani’s irrefutable passion? Where is fiery Chani? Where is the raised voice that Paul has used her, lied to her, betrayed her? Where is Chani getting in Paul’s face, calling him a bastard? Where is the attempt to take Paul’s life—to literally stab him in the back—the way he has just figuratively done to her? The foundation for all of this is there but isn’t utilized; it is such a pivotal moment, a third pivotal moment, built up and up to through two major combat scenes, and just when a third confrontation could occur and bloom, an emotional verbal combat scene, nothing.

Chani is respectful of the situation (a rarity given her pugnacious nature), leaves with what pride she has left, and slinks away, but to the detriment of the scene, the heightened moment, and the film. Chani’s last action in Dune: Part Two, calling a worm, is wanting, limp, and unsatisfying. The banality of it, after two pivotal battles have just occurred, is a noticeable descent from visceral heights the viewer shouldn’t have been allowed to descend from. Chani’s betrayal and heartbreak moment should have matched the two preceding battle scenes, ameliorated them, and sustained the accumulated momentum by adding to them through another intense turn of events instead of what the viewer ultimately receives—a wasted opportunity.

Closing Thoughts

Dune: Part Two is a film of ebbs, whose overall direction is upward. Villeneuve excised multiple scenes and characters out of the final cut of the movie to tighten it and strengthen what the viewer sees on-screen. Chani’s presence and prominence should have been truncated in a similar, less aggressive fashion, while fully exploiting when she is on-screen. That oversight (or directorial indulgence) notwithstanding, we are given Feyd in Dune: Part Two; we are given worms; we are given closure; and we are given new beginnings. Good enough.

Rating: 8/10

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