Dune Part Two review: Timothée Chalamet’s sweeping sci-fi saga leaves us hanging for an ending

When the first chapter hit cinemas in 2021, this sequel – the second chunk of Villeneuve’s bisected adaptation of Frank ­Herbert’s seminal sci-fi epic – hadn’t been given the go-ahead by studio bosses, lest we forget.

Had that first film’s reception been lacklustre or, heaven forbid, another pandemic had ­cocooned movie goers for months on end, Villeneuve’s Dune might well have gone the way of earlier failed or unsatisfactory attempts by Alejandro Jodorowsky and ­David Lynch, perpetuating a Hollywood hex over the franchise.

Dune: Part Two - Official Trailer

But we’ve learned to never doubt Villeneuve, the canny French-Canadian who has shown a Midas touch time and again whatever the project. Healthy ticket receipts and awards success greeted his two-and-a-half-hour sci-fi event. Goodbye Dune curse, and hello at last to a worthy cinema treatment for the novel that inspired Star Wars and Avatar.

For all this, a slight caveat persists. While this sequel is as sweeping and visually unforgettable as its predecessor, there comes a familiar feeling in the ­final passages. As in part one, we’ve just sat through a very good film but not a complete one. The payout you expect after 165 minutes is diluted because, while Herbert’s original doorstop has been covered, we’re still left asking: ‘Yes, but how does it all end?’

Aside from a cliffhanger ending, plot, mythology, and characterisation fly at us, condensing story into the gaps between the extraordinary action sequences.

Villeneuve has said that if he gets his way, he’ll make Dune: Messiah – the second novel in Herbert’s series – to round off what he has always envisaged as a trilogy. By the time the credits roll on Dune: Part Two, it’s obvious why this narrative capstone is necessary. For now, we must accept that only two-thirds of the job is done.​

When we last saw Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), they had fled an ambush by House Harkonnen and joined Arrakis’s desert-dwelling natives, the Fremen.

Fremen leader Stilgar ­(Javier Bardem, providing whiffs of comic relief here and there) is convinced Paul is the one the prophecies foretold. Not everyone is so sure, including gutsy warrioress Chani (Zendaya).

With his people massacred and the Fremen now presenting a potential army to mete out revenge on House Harkonnen, Paul goes fully native – desert-walking, sandworm-riding, and getting lost in Chani’s blue eyes.

Forced by the Fremen to drink sandworm blood, Jessica is transformed into a kind of dark witch with her own power ambitions.

Paul, meanwhile, is tripping on spice and seeing visions of ­catastrophe coming down the line.

All the while, Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) is having his spice harvest destroyed by Fremen guerilla raids led by Paul. To bring Arrakis to heel, Harkonnen must dispatch his nephew and eventual successor (a ghoulish Austin Butler).

With all that going on, we have a different house to monitor, that of an all-powerful emperor (Christopher Walken) and his intuitive daughter (Florence Pugh) who have skin in the game.

Should Villeneuve’s Dune project remain a two-parter then it will be a lopsided diptych, the first film full of sensation and mood and the second busy with plot dynamics (that all but point towards a climactic third film).

In all other ways, this second Dune is an accomplishment in sci-fi cinema told in a heightened register. Hans Zimmer’s score thunders away. Greig Fraser’s desert cinematography (filmed in Jordan and the UAE) remains startlingly beautiful. Chalamet continues to come of age as a leading man for a new generation, and every familiar face in a crowded all-star ensemble appears key to the elaborate task.

Villeneuve himself, meanwhile, seems somehow able to toggle between horizon-wide action spectacle and patient, up-close intimacy.

His Dune project is an at-times breathtaking, thrilling departure for a genre rarely able to take us to genuinely new territory.

It’s just that you can’t help but feel this is ultimately a stepping stone before part three eventually comes along to finish the job.

Four stars