Okay I can it to being wrong. I recommend the first movie mostly based on its technical aspects as the story kind of just washed over me, so I fully expected to feel the same about this one. Maybe it's just watching it in a theatre on IMAX that causes you to be more invested, but either way I did think this was pretty great.

Where all the talk of spices and houses last time sort of bored me, this just seemed to move faster despite the long runtime and kind of felt like the Empire Strikes Back of this universe (spoiler, that's a good thing). Visually it is stunning in just about every way and there are some amazing effects and cinematography and the score is excellent. The cast is full of recognizable actors of course and there isn't really any performance that isn't strong.

The story was more gripping this time and even though I've seen all the live action adaptations, I don't them and I didn't read any books, so I really was unsure how it would end up. So colour me surprised that this isn't the end? I had no idea this wasn't the conclusion, so that was shocking. Either way this retroactively made me appreciate the first movie more and it's a great sci-fi epic that maintains some of the deeper philosophical ideas but is also just more purely entertaining.