Finished
Dune 2 last night. This was my second view (since I saw it once in the theater).
I have to say the home transfer is amazing, especially the sound -- I only had it at 50/100 (I usually put it at 50-60) and the sound palette is so diverse with enough bass frequencies that I could feel the air throb in some sequences (especially with the sandworms). The sound palette was really important for this film in particular and the 4K disc delivers.
I wish I felt as strongly about the rest of the film. It's still pretty decent, but I don't really feel a lot during, except maybe in the last quarter of the film -- unlike Part 1. Emotionally:
- They had so much plot to get through and characters that a lot of film feels more plot-based (moving people around), versus having time to focus on the relationships.
- I didn't feel like they really sold Chani and Paul's relationship well. Aside from Paul seeing Chani so much in his dreams, I didn't really feel like they had a lot of chemistry. I know Villeneuve said he struggled with the romantic dialogue, and while it is polished and far better than Star Wars (as an example, lol), it didn't really evoke much while I watched it.
- In fact, much of it is this way. I was hoping the Princess would make me feel something (since she's trapped in this political shitshow) and I really wanted to feel bad for her. Or maybe feel more about Feyd, since he was such a dichotomy -- savage and cruel on one level, honorable on another. So many of the characters, I never felt like I really got into.
- This includes Jessica, who I felt so much towards in Dune 1, but here she seems to go dark side pretty quickly and just seems obsessed with pushing Paul and the situation towards the jihad. Which is fine, but I wish it would have been tied to her loss of Leto or something really personal.
I guess Paul never really committed to the jihad until after drinking the Water of Life and could see everything laid out around him and realized it was really the only way through. Does that make him evil or bad, though? If it's survival and then justice for Atreides?
I really got Gurney. They did a little more with his silly music here, but it was very brief. But his emotions are palpable, and we know exactly why he is invested in all of this.
Of interest in the final knife fight, this time I started thinking about how the Bene Gesserit viewed Feyd as an option for their messiah figure and someone they could control, and he was also genetically bred for this. Well, I started to get the idea that maybe Feyd also has been having dreams and maybe those were also guiding him like Paul was being guided. This is primarily coming from how the Bene Gesserit viewed Feyd, but also from something Feyd said -- in the arena, he says, "You have fought well, Atreides" as he kills the last captive (winning that fight) but then repeats it verbatim fighting Paul, after he seemed to think he would win but then says it anyway. It reminds me of Paul's visions, where he saw himself die originally but ended up living; they seem to have second sight but it's only partial and not always accurate, until Paul drinks the Water of Life... and Paul never seems to doubt the outcome, he simply is hurt by what he knows it will cost him personally. [I didn't finish the book yet, so I don't know what Herbert wrote about that fight.]