I still sitting alone next to this nice couple when I watched part one on opening night. The wife offered me some popcorn and asked me if I’d ever read the book since her husband was a fan. I hope they’re doing well. 

Anyway, I can’t believe this movie is finally here. I didn’t talk about my lore with the franchise back then but I read Dune and Dune: Messiah like 3 years ago. I also started Children of Dune but it was kinda boring so I stopped like 30-40 pages in to read other stuff but I really wanna read God Emperor of Dune so I gotta finish it eventually. I liked those first two books but I’m not especially attached to them. 

So I was definitely surprised that this is somewhat of a looser adaptation than part one but it lived up to all of my expectations regardless. 

Yeah it’s simply perfect. I’ll have to talk about some spoilers so be warned. But one of the things I was most excited to see was Paul’s character arc. Him going from a rather agreeable individual to a kooky maniac after drinking the evil juice was definitely my favorite part of the book. I don’t if the line “lead them to paradise” was in the book or not but it captures his character perfectly. He can see the future now and knows that he’s too far gone to stop the jihad, knowing that he’ll be leading everyone to death. This ties in with the other theme of blind fanaticism that stuck out to me from the book. Stilgar and the other fundamentalist Fremen are literal embodiments of this. Even though it’s occasionally played off as a joke, many other Fremen are also like this and outnumber those who are against the so called Messiah, like Chani.

Speaking of Chani, it was really cool that she, Feyd-Rautha, Jessica, and Irulan all got slightly expanded upon compared to their book counterparts. Granted, someone like Irulan wasn’t actually present in the book much but I don’t her having this much personality until the second one. Don’t have much to add on regarding Chani but the whole love not being enough thing really adds some tragedy to everything. It also reminded me of Anakin and Pe in Revenge of the Sith so seeing Lucas become the blueprint once again fills me with joy. 

Some other changes like Alia not having any physical presence or (redacted book character) not being here at all didn’t bother me much. They could only do so much here and leaving those threads for the third part makes sense. Though I honestly can’t tell where some of it’s gonna go which is kinda exciting. 

Anyway, I don’t need to tell you how good the actors are or how beautiful it looks because that was all a given going in. 

It’s just so cool to be seeing another epic like this again and I’m glad I exist at the same time as this movie. I really really can’t wait for Messiah.