Villeneuve’s Dune Part 2 Climax Is as Rushed as Lynch’s
And other thoughts on the new adaptation
Like so many mainstream film-goers this month, I made the time to go to a theater to check out Dune Part 2, the third film based on Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi novel Dune and a sequel to the 2021 adaptation, which I really enjoyed, if not outright loved.
For the most part, I thought Part 2 was great and an improvement on its predecessor in almost every way. Though retaining the beauty and visual prowess of Part 1, the sequel replaced the cold, emotionally subdued performances with lively and engaging ones, while embracing the pulpiness and theatricality its predecessor seemed ashamed of. But once the movie reached its conclusion, I couldn’t help but fixate on one question: “Why was the climactic action sequence of Part 2 so rushed?”
ContentsThe Rushed Climax
Allow to me elaborate.
For its first two acts, Dune Part 2 is a very well-paced film. Like its predecessor, it moves gradually but purposefully. It has a slower pace than the traditional summer blockbuster, yet doesn’t really waste any second of screentime. For sure, there are some places here and there where you can potentially sense things have been cut down but nothing that ever really detracts from the experience or immersion.*
*I was particularly surprised that we never really see Paul actually cross the desert, with the film skipping over the resolution of this subplot in an elliptical manner, and am willing to bet a much longer version of the sequence is on the cutting room floor.
But then the third act comes around and the plot starts making huge leaps forward.
Paul takes the Water of Life, almost immediately assumes the role of ‘Lisan Al’Gaib’ and unites millions of Fremen into a single army, then gets the Emperor to come to Arrakis and goes on the offensive. Up to this point, we had seen relatively small-scale skirmishes between the Fremen and the Harkonnens. Now, the story suddenly plunges audiences into a BIG BATTLE to end all battles.
Paul launches (nuclear?) missiles against the Emperor’s ship, then Paul and his Fremen followers ride 3 Massive Sandworms against the Harkonnen and Sardaukar armies. It looks like we’re in for an elaborate, exciting, adrenaline-pumping finale, an all-out war with thousands of soldiers from both sides going up against each other!
But then – we cut back to the Emperor’s throne room.
The first Sardaukar defense line goes out into a smoke-filled hallway, only to vanish. Paul and his Fremen then enter, presumably having dispatched the troops with ease. This makes it clear to the audience that the conflict is over and Paul has won.
This means we only ever witness the beginning of the massive Fremen vs. Sardaukar battle and its conclusion, but the actual meat of it is completely SKIPPED OVER.* I’m pretty sure that anyone who understands film editing and can keep track of the cutting of a picture as it plays, found it quite jarring, much like I did.
*Sure, the movie does cut to the outside and allows us to see some more of the battle later, but it’s really just to showcase the one-on-one duel between Gurney Halleck and Beast Rabban.
Why? Why does Dune 2 spend over two hours building to a massive war for the fate of Arrakis, only to deny us the actual visual pleasure and spectacle of it?
Why does it tease the Sandworms for so long only to then unleash them for like a minute of screentime? Why is its big climactic action set-piece ultimately so rushed and dissatisfying? I don’t know for sure but I can offer three theories.
Theories
A runtime limitDespite having a runtime of 2 hours and 45 minutes, Dune Part 2 feels like it could’ve and perhaps should’ve been longer, especially during that climax. My estimate is that a proper runtime for it, given its scale and scope, would be around 180-190 minutes.
Such a length, however, likely wouldn’t have been accepted by Warner Bros. Discovery, given that this was an expensive tentpole production and the fact that 3-hour movies get less screenings per day than 2.5-hour movies.*
*The Batman (2022) got a 3-hour runtime, but it’s the exception rather than the rule.
So, even if Villeneuve indeed wanted a longer running time for the theatrical cut, he’d likely get pushback from studio executives on the grounds that a 3-hour duration would diminish the film’s total box office gross.
The budgetNot counting the print and advertising expenses, Dune Part 2 has a reported produc-tion cost of $190 million. Though in reality the film probably really cost around $230 million,* it is still cheaper than the past decade’s average summer blockbuster, which typically would have a cost of $250 million and a runtime of about 135-150 minutes.
*Studios almost always underreport their tentpoles’ budgets nowadays, so one can safely assume it is larger than the official number. 230 is just my estimate based on my knowledge of how much blockbusters cost these days.
The longer a movie runs, the more it tends to cost, especially when it comes to VFX-heavy tentpole films. So, it’s entirely possible that the climactic battle may have been initially longer and more elaborate, but had to be cut down to the bare essentials to save on money.
A deliberate choiceWatching both parts of Dune, one gets the sense that director Denis Villeneuve isn’t all that interested in high-stakes spectacle. Whereas most summer blockbusters nowadays tend to have at least one standout, large-scale action sequence that draws attention to its staging and craft, both Dune films tend to have action scenes that are largely functional. That is, they serve their narrative purpose yet don’t seem overly showy in terms of style or even all that exciting.
From this perspective, Villeneuve may have deliberately rushed through the climax, as he wasn’t all that invested in or comfortable delivering massive, crowd-pleasing action the way James Cameron or Christopher McQuarrie are.
The Lynch Comparison
Whatever the reasons ultimately were for the rushing of Part 2’s action climax, the end result evokes another Dune – specifically, David Lynch’s surreal and incoherent 1984 adaptation, where the final battle sequence lasts about 5-6 minutes and at times comes off as a cliffnotes-style montage (set to admittedly some excellent music).
Now, one cannot know for certain if Lynch would’ve delivered a longer climax had he not been limited to a 2-hour runtime by producer Dino DeLaurentiis. But this is quite likely, given that in terms of storytelling the film as a whole is a rushjob from start to finish, especially in its second half, and Lynch had been famously denied the option of releasing a 3-hour theatrical version during post-production before later being prevented from completing a 4-hour director’s cut for video.*
*Giving further credence to this is the fact that the sequence ends on an out-of-context shot of Paul’s kid sister Alia seemingly in bliss on the battlefield with a crysknife in one hand and a gom jabbar in the other, apparently part of an actual scene or scenes from the book, where she would be running around on the field murdering Sardaukar and Harkonnen soldiers.
In other words, the rushed climax in Lynch’s Dune was a natural byproduct of the need to whittle the movie down to a too-short mandated duration. Having seen it, I thus had the natural expectation that Villeneuve and co. would succeed, where Lynch had not. So, you can imagine how surprised I was that the new Dune ironically also ended with a rushed climax, despite having had over 5 hours to tell the whole story.
Though my personal sense of disappointment was magnified by the fact that this is the second time it has happened cinematically, I wouldn’t say that this ruins the film as a whole. Dune Part 2 is simply is too well made to be undone by its climax.
And it helps that although the big climactic setpiece is a disappointment, the film still nails the smaller, more personal action sequences. Paul and Chani’s guerilla attack on the Harkonnen spice harvester, for instance, is a great example, as is the final one-on-one knife fight between Paul and Feyd-Rautha, which is carefully and methodically staged, as well as receives the breathing room that the assault on the Emperor’s ship lacked, partially making up for the disappointment of the action preceding it.
Indeed, if this fight weren’t as well as executed as it was, I don’t think there would be nearly as many people coming of Part 2 ready to declare it a masterpiece. In my opinion, Part 2 doesn’t deserve that accolade but it is nonetheless a massive cinematic achievement. I just wish it hadn’t stumbled a little towards the end there.
Thus, I hope by the time Villeneuve gets around to making Dune 3, he will have grown more comfortable with making climactic large-scale action setpieces.
His saga thus far works incredibly well on an artistic or formal level. Now, it’s time to amp up the entertainment level…
Additional notes
Overall, I’m really happy that Part 1 and Part 2 were made separately from one another, rather than back-to-back. Villeneuve clearly assessed what worked and didn’t work in Part 1, using the feedback from that to make Part 2 better.
I’m quite certain that one thing the director realized is that the dialogue in the first movie was sometimes a wee bit indecipherable and so ensured that Part 2 had a clearer sound mix. At the very least, I never once struggled to understand Timothee Chalamet or Rebecca Ferguson here, even in those instances when the characters are whispering their lines.
I love Stilgar (Javier Bardem) in this film. He is a laugh riot and I am convinced that when the film comes out on video, somebody will make a supercut of all the times he says “Lisan Al’Gaib.”
Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler), as written and portrayed as a murderous larger-than-life psychopath, is the biggest evidence of Part 2’s tonal shift. He simply could not exist in the more grounded and tonally subdued reality of Part 1.
Lynch overall wins out when it comes to the portrayal of the Harkonnens though. He treats them not so much as characters but embodiments of human vice and never shies away from the operatic aspects of the source material. The death of the Baron in Lynch’s version is grand and over-the-top, while in Villeneuve’s it is swift and ignominious.
One of the difficulties with the source material is that the heroes and villains almost never share any scenes together. Feyd and Paul don’t meet until the end and so have little opportunity to truly develop an antagonistic relationship before they face off. (Though I like the ‘cousin’ dialog.)
I do wonder if in a few years, we will get an extended version of Villeneuve’s Dune trilogy, maybe as a TV miniseries a la The Godfather Saga, despite the director’s claims he will never put out the deleted footage. In my opinion, given the amount of cultural penetration the new Dune films are having, there will simply be too much demand for the cut scenes to remain unreleased at a certain point.
If an extended cut does indeed happen, I hope that: a) the climax of Part 2 will be lengthened and given enough time to play out; b) the cut subplot with Thufir Hawat will be restored.
But what do you think? Did “Dune Part 2” provide a satisfying action climax for you?
Did you also find the film a bit too short or somewhat rushed? Or was it the perfect length for what it was trying to do? Can Villeneuve pull of a Christopher Nolan-esque improvement when it comes to directing action? What are your thoughts on the adaptations? Would you like it if he ever made an extended cut or released the deleted scenes? Please,
I definitely felt the rush in the transition from North to South; I wish we had spent more time in this period because, for me at least, I found Paul's final turn toward darkness to have been weakly motivated (onscreen). And it's worth talking about how the movie chose to cram something like 5-10 years into perhaps 6 months. Also, honestly, most of what happens around the blue juice didn't work for me. I also didn't buy Jessica's turn, and then, despite Paul having spent so much time fighting his destiny, the blue juice ex machina / script focusing largely on the surprise Harkonnen connection, didn't land for me. That to me then leading into the issues you described here really made me wish we had an additional 15-20 minutes (and I look forward to a Director's Cut with More).
I would have cut the arena scene. For me, it added nothing. It wasn’t central to the “Paul/Fremen/Worm” storyline. This movie haunts me in a way the first didn’t.
Paul could have chosen love, but chose power instead.