The spice must flow! And it’ll be flowing into your local cinema later this year as Dune Part Two arrives in New Zealand on November 2.
Adapted from the huuuugely influential novel by the late Frank Herbert, and once again directed by Denis Villeneuve, Dune Part Two of course follows on from 2021’s Dune. It traces young Paul Atreides’ (Timothée Chalamet) rise to religious and war leader of the nomadic Fremen people on the desert planet of Arrakis following the betrayal and murder of his father, Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac) by the evil House Harkonnen, led by the monstrous Baron Vladimir (Stellan Skarsgård). There’s more to it than that, of course, but we don’t have the word count.
Returning for the second part of this massive, cerebral science fiction epic are Josh Brolin as the loyal general Gurney Halleck; Rebecca Ferguson as Paul’s mother, the Lady Jessica; Dave Bautista as the brutal Rabban; Javier Bardem as Fremen chief Stilgar; and Zendaya as his daughter Chani, also Paul’s love interest and hopefully getting more screen time this round.
They’ll be joined by erstwhile Elvis Austin Butler as Harkonnen heir Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, Florence Pugh as the Princess Irulan, and, in a stellar bit of casting, none other than living legend Christopher Walken as Emperor Shaddam IV, ruler of the known universe and the ultimate villain here. That’ll be something to see.
There’ll also be plenty of battles, duels, messianic visions and esoteric drug use, along with a horde of absolutely ginormous worms, because this is Dune.
The COVID pandemic and a simultaneous digital release kind of dimmed Dune’s fire at the box office. So it remains to be seen if the sequel, which is getting an exclusive theatrical window, will do better business. But perhaps we should be grateful we got a follow up at all. It doesn’t take a Mentat to know this is the must-see sci-fi flick of the year, and it’d take a full legion of Sardaukar to keep us away on opening day.
All those weird names were written from memory, by the way. Pretty proud of that.
