A month after it was released and became the top-grossing movie of the year, it’s fair to declare “Dune: Part II” a box-office success. That said, it has to be one of the most unusual blockbusters to come out in a long time. The novels may be well-known, but they’re not exactly tailor-made for popular consumption, nor does Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation do much to make it more accessible. His movies are ponderous, slow, and extremely serious. The characters are less human beings with personalities and more Jungian archetypes fulfilling their predestined role in an indifferent cosmos.
True, the movie is visually stunning, and the action sequences are superbly choreographed, but these scenes mainly serve to punctuate several long stretches of literal and metaphorical desert. This tends to make the experience of watching both “Dune” movies a more meditative and reflective endeavor than an engaging or fun one.
So why is “Dune: Part II” so popular? I believe it’s because it presents a compelling vision of the distant future that touches on some unseen current realities. Something about it clearly resonates with audiences. Behind the endless sand, royal houses, mineral extraction, bulbous spaceships, and colossal sandworms, the saga detailing the rise of Paul Atreides and the indigenous Freman speaks to today’s audiences.
Even though the movie critic Titus Techera makes a good case that “Dune: Part II” essentially adopts a leftist narrative in which a liberal atheist man-child harnesses the power of colonized fundamentalists to overcome exploitative fascists and liberate the
