"You shall die. You may see. The beauty and the horror."

***

There were two scenes from Frank Herbert's Dune that I had hoped would make the leap in adaptation from page to screen, yet neither of which ultimately did during Denis Villeneuve's epic duology of films covering the first book.

In Dune: Part One, it would've been cool to see the bit from the book where Lady Jessica, newly settled in to the palace once owned by the Harkonnens, finds the inner sanctum greenhouse area, where a bountiful supply of lush plant life and valuable water was intentionally indulgently lavished on this secluded room, when all that water could have been given to thousands of Fremen beyond the walls of the elite rulers hoarding these resources for themselves. She also finds a hidden Bene Gesserit message imprinted on a leaf, if I recall correctly, confirming and informing her of the Sisterhood's past presence on Arrakis, influencing things with their infinite plans within plans. But that last part wasn't as important as the establishment of the Harkonnen's cruel decadence, their willingly wasteful misuse of water a potent symbol of ruling classes keeping all forms of wealth to themselves, while allowing those under their rule to wither and struggle and fight to survive without the resources unfairly kept from them. It's a chilling moment in the book, but I get why it was cut from Villeneuve's version, because the essence of what that scene communicates could be expressed elsewhere in the film. A decent alternative to it in Part One came in the form of that scene where Paul strolls outside the grounds of the palace, and sees the guy watering the ancient sacred trees, while water-starved Fremen watch from outside the gates. In Paul's queries about why the water couldn't be given to the Fremen instead, to which the man replies that they'd refuse it because they see the sacred trees as more deserving, the scene efficiently communicates both the ideas of the wealthy and powerful being wasteful of things the poor would benefit from, and of how religion is used as a tool of control, leveraged by those seeking ultimate power.
(And anyway, the book's scene I mentioned does at least turn up in the Frank Herbert's Dune 2000 miniseries, so that's something.)

Now, as for Dune: Part Two, my biggest hope was that it would bring to life my favourite scene from the book: the confrontation between Gurney Halleck, Jessica, and Paul, and their emotional reconciliation.
Unfortunately, in the adaptational streamlining process, Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts (whose surname I just realised sounds like Tim Curry's pronunciation of "space" in Red Alert: Command & Conquer 3) chose to cut the subplot of the paranoid suspicions Gurney and Thufir Hawat had for Jessica potentially being the traitor in their midst, who eventually turned out to be Dr. Yueh.
Once you cut that out, Thufir doesn't have that distrust manipulated by the Harkonnens into making him serve as their new mentat, so then there's not much else for his character to do, hence the omission of Stephen McKinley Henderson from the film being a sad collateral result of that excision. And then, if there's no previous established notion that Gurney thought Jessica was the traitor who allowed the Harkonnens to surprise attack and destroy House Atreides, then Part Two has no need for a scene where Josh Brolin, Rebecca Ferguson, and Timotheé Chalamet have an intense dramatic stand-off, where Paul has to convince Gurney that Jessica had nothing to do with it. When I read the book, I could imagine the scene so clearly, and see these fine actors crushing their given monologues.
Just imagine Chalamet performing these lines, facing off against Brolin while Ferguson tensely braces against a knife held to her back, emotions high, Hans Zimmer's score only subtly creeping in at the end, building to a dramatic, emotional crescendo:

“What you have not done,” Paul said, “is heard my mother sobbing in the night over her lost Duke. You have not seen her eyes stab flame when she speaks of killing Harkonnens.”

“What you have not done,” Paul went on, “is ed the lessons you learned in a Harkonnen slave pit. You speak of pride in my father’s friendship! Didn’t you learn the difference between Harkonnen and Atreides so that you could smell a Harkonnen trick by the stink they left on it? Didn’t you learn that Atreides loyalty is bought with love while the Harkonnen coin is hate? Couldn’t you see through to the very nature of this betrayal?”

“The evidence we have is Yueh’s own message to us itting his treachery,” Paul said. “I swear this to you by the love I hold for you, a love I will still hold even after I leave you dead on this floor.”

“One of the most terrible moments in a boy’s life,” Paul said, “is when he discovers his father and mother are human beings who share a love that he can never quite taste. It’s a loss, an awakening to the fact that the world is there and here and we are in it alone. The moment carries its own truth; you can’t evade it. I heard my father when he spoke of my mother. She’s not the betrayer, Gurney.”

But alas, I'm afraid this powerful enactment of that scene shall have to forever remain a figment of our imaginations.

Yet even with these gripes from the perspective of someone who's read the book, they ultimately pale in comparison to the only thing that matters about Dune: Part Two, which is that IT. IS. BREATHTAKING.

If there's a snowball's chance in Arrakis that I could find a way to afford the ticket to London, and the BFI IMAX ticket to see this in full 70mm, I would go see this again in a heartbeat. After all, having gone to see Oppenheimer at that venue last year, I now know just how much of the image has had to be cropped out to fit on a regular-sized cinema screen, and that's a disservice to what is already apparent as some of the most monumental, jaw-dropping, grand-scale imagery Villeneuve and his crew have ever conjured. (Cinematographer extraordinaire Greig Fraser is practically on god (emperor) mode with his work on this film, it's insane.)

Until then, I opted for the immersion of 4DX to sweep me up into the film's action, and boy oh boy, let me tell you... experiencing the sandworm-riding scene, with the exhilaration afforded by those rollercoaster-esque seats transporting you into feeling every twist and turn and bump along the way, is an all-time cinema-going highlight I will never forget...