I see many paths forward

You could go an entire lifetime as a cinephile looking for a single shot in a blockbuster sized art project that genuinely transports you-- from the radiance of the brilliant primary colors, to the vastness of the scale being used to render an entire otherworldly biome of sand dunes-- and makes you rethink what is possible with the medium. Dune Part 2 has about a million of those shots.

I can think back to when I was a wee lad, maybe when Jackson was building Tolkien's middle Earth from the ground up, as the last time I felt this fully immersed and transported by something. Denis Villeneuve's latest entry in the 'Dune' saga moves and breathes like a new classic, a ravishing universe fully realized by countless auditory and visual amazements. This is what movies can do, this is what they were fucking made for. This is the apex of big screen panoramic filmmaking, brash and unwieldy, made by creative minds working on a heightened plane of imagination. It's hard not to melt into a puddle of superlatives while talking about it, but I can't fucking believe that Villeneuve and his crew of technical wizards are actually pulling something like this off. It takes a masterful tactician, along with a studio gutsy enough to give faith and finance on the magnitude that it takes to get something like this bankrolled, to realize a vision that's this grand and imposing.

Every design has been exhaustively poured over and brought to life with a magical blend of digital augmentation and practical effects. The planet of Arrakis is a sun and sand swept wonder that Villeneuve shoots like a shimmering mirage that stretches into infinity, as if a thousand stories could have been told before this one. The gorgeous reds and ambers reflect off the sands of Arakkis, and the sunlight scorches the edges of nearly every frame. Something I've always appreciated about Villeneuve's work is how he seems to be able to incorporate all the known senses into every sequence, and that skill is put to fantastic use here. You can taste the spice in the air. You can feel the sand as the wind sweeps across the massive dunes of the desert. The sun is blazing in the daytime, and glows a melancholy blue gold in the twilight hours. Zimmer's score thunders in the background like war drums. Cinematographer Greig Fraser, who is flexing on modern blockbuster DPs with a toolbox they could only dream of, is as much a key player in the construct as any of the actual marquee talent on the poster.

'Dune 2' takes a lengthy side trip to the Harkonnen home world, a place with monumental brutalist architecture and spires that seem to reach forever into the sky, lit in striking monochrome black and white by the eerie blackness of a nearby star. This is where we get to meet Austin Butler's Feyd Rautha during brutal gladitory combat with Arakkis captives. He's the sleekly sadistic nephew (previously played by Sting in the Lynch version) to the Baron. The way Butler plays this guy is like the deranged lovechild of Ledger's Joker and an otherworldly vampire with a taste for savagery and blades. He savors pain and covets the thrill associated with the brink of death, but his charisma is magnetic. He's a sickening lunatic that you can't take your eyes off of. If Elvis didn't make him into a star already, Feyd Rautha should do the trick.

That's not to say that 'Dune 2' isn't a glorious act of narrative ambition. As the forthcoming clash between religious fundamentalism and dangerous blind-faith fanaticism of Paul Atreides' destiny foments a universe shattering holy war somewhere on the horizon, the tendrils of this all encoming sci-fi epic continue expanding outward in all directions. It's not a 'chosen one' savior journey like the ads would have you believe, but a troubling conflict of spirit and deep seeded alliances. Chalamete is afforded ample time to grow and change, and his allegiance to the Fremen (and specifically to Zendaya's Chani) gives this massively scaled epic an emotional intimacy. The stakes are more palpable than I could have imagined considering how much was left on the table at the conclusion of part 1. The fact that we might not have gotten this movie is unthinkable.

There's an attack on the Fremen temple around the mid point that's as devastating as anything you'd experience in any prestige drama, because of how acutely the society and these relationships have been fostered. None of that even touches on the constant political puppetry being enacted by the Beni Gesserate cult of space witches as they continue to orchestrate conflicts on a galactic scale in order to achieve ascendance and gain the power to predict the future. This is a spectacle that dares to leave viewers with the uncomfortable twinge of corrupted faith and betrayal in their stomachs, and to examine a hero who makes potentially terrible choices.

Everything about 'Dune 2' is gargantuan in scale and delirious in its ambitions. It's a transporting experience if you give yourself over to it, and you owe it to yourself to do just that. Some people might quibble with the pace, but when a piece of art offers sights previously unseen, sounds previously unheard of, what's the point in arguing how long the journey takes? This is decadent bombast of the highest order, elegance being returned to the big screen that deserves its place in the pantheon of great science fiction. Outstanding.

The spice flows