The second film also features returning stars Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin, as well as fresh faces Austin Butler and Florence Pugh.

In one of the most arresting sequences in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, the Fremen fighter Chani (Zendaya) teaches the Atreides Duke Paul (Timothée Chalamet) the correct way to sandwalk.

Fremen society and Paul’s relationship with Chani are among the threads that get more robust consideration in Villeneuve’s highly anticipated sequel. Dune: Part Two maintains the grandiose visual style introduced in Dune while also paying more attention to story and character development. Plot takes precedence in this second installment of Villeneuve’s planned three-part adaptation of Frank Herbert’s series.

Running close to three hours, Dune: Part Two moves with a similar nimbleness to Paul and Chani’s sandwalk through the open desert. The narrative is propulsive and relatively easy to follow, Hans Zimmer’s score is enveloping, and Greig Fraser’s cinematography offers breathtaking perspectives that deepen our understanding of the fervently sought-after planet. All these elements make the sequel as much of a cinematic event as the first movie.

Still, Part Two is plagued by a nagging shallowness when it comes to portraying the Fremen, an indigenous people fighting for self-determination within the empire; the film has difficulty fully embracing the nuance of Herbert’s anti-imperial and ecologically dystopian text. 

It’s not that Villeneuve is uninterested in the Fremen. Paul’s integration with the Arrakis natives makes up most of Part Two; the director does explore how their society works. After killing Jamis (Babs Olusanmokun) in Dune, Paul earns the respect of Stilgar (a sharp Javier Bardem), a religious Fremen army leader waiting for the Messiah, and the tentative approval of Chani. The pair help the eager royal acclimate to life in the desert by teaching him how to have a relationship with the land. Through their lessons, Paul sees the planet as more than a place from which to extract the psychotropic melange known as Spice. He learns to work with the parched terrain instead of trying to dominate it, an approach that improves his combat skills.

When the film moves beyond the fight scenes, the approach to Fremen traditions is a bit shakier. As Paul builds trust among the Fremen army, his mother plants rumors among the people in the caves that her son is the Messiah. Despite Paul’s protestations, Lady Jessica and her “pre-born” fetus want to fulfill the mission of the all-powerful matriarchal religious group Bene Gesserit. (“Pre-born” is a term used to describe a fully aware being who can access ancestral memory.)

Chalamet and Ferguson’s performances are strongest when mother and son tussle about the right thing to do. Through these arguments, Chalamet sheds the boyish innocence of the first film for a darker, more complicated persona. Ferguson’s character also enters more morally ambiguous terrain when she is asked by the Fremen to become the group’s Reverend Mother. Accepting the role means inheriting the memories of the Fremen. It’s here that Villeneuve’s film could have seized the opportunity to interrogate the implications of Paul and Jessica, two outsiders connected to the imperial regime, inheriting the secrets and traditions of the indigenous Arrakis. That transference, a fellow critic noted after the press screening, is its own kind of colonial violence.  

Instead, Dune: Part Two undercuts attempts to complicate this more textured understanding of imperialism by repeatedly and subtly playing the Fremen’s religiosity for laughs. It would have been far more interesting to parse, even briefly, why there are intra-Fremen divisions about the existence of a Messiah in the first place. Why does Chani (a compelling Zendaya) vehemently fight Paul’s increasing popularity, whereas Stilgar falls over himself to embrace it? Can these factions be attributed to more than Bene Gesserit machinations?