$182 Million Weekend – Dune: Part Two Review (No Spoilers)
I saw “Dune: Part Two” last week and I was not disappointed.
As both a sequel to the first part and as a movie on its own, it did excellently. The first thing to mention is the stunning cinematography and visuals. This along side the deep, booming, sound design and amazing score by Hans Zimmer brings such an impactful presence to the story, world, and characters.
Overall the acting was good. The set design was excellent. And they did a good job of taking a fairly long second half of the book and condensing it without sacrificing much of the story. They might have overdone the dramatic slo-mo entrances a bit, but they were still pretty cool.
Dune’s opening weekend had a Domestic box office of $82.5M and a International Box office of $100M bringing Dune to a very strong $182.5M box office total. That number is just shy of Dune: Part Two’s entire budget, which is estimated to be $190M. This is very impressive, particularly when compared to many recent action movies that have struggled or failed to recuperate their budget during their runs in the theater.
I normally do not like it when movies lack color and the saturation is turn way down leaving everything drab and dirty looking. However, it is not out of place in Dune, both because of the setting and because of the thematic elements of the books. Being a desert planet, it does not have many colors outside of shades of orange and yellow, which makes sense. Thematically, the books are on the darker side, so the color de-saturation did not seem out of place and I thought it was a good choice.
Like the first part it is a long movie, with a runtime of 2 hours and 46 minutes. However, they do a good job of not letting it drag. I noticed the length a little more than watching the first one, but I did not find myself getting bored or hoping it would end soon.
Were the movie faltered for me was with some of its deviation from the book. Particularly where it came to the character of Chani (played by actress Zendaya). Some of the movie’s general changes were understandable, and others quite necessary to insure a smooth pacing. However, when it came to the character of Chani, she felt somewhat out of place and was more in line with what you would expect from a teen action drama film or book from the 2010’s.
Despite my small criticism, the film was otherwise exemplary. I think it will be hard for anything else this year to top it and I would certainly recommend it!
If you like action, Sci-Fi, or just good films this is one you will probably not want to miss out on.