"Dune: Part Two" is, predictably, the greatest achievement in filmmaking crafts since "Mad Max: Fury Road" burned out all our retinas to the tune of six Oscars nearly a decade ago. It's also the rare sequel that improves upon its predecessor, much like "Terminator 2" or, yes, "Empire Strikes Back." But what pushes Denis Villeneuve's sand-blasted follow-up into a masterpiece of sci-fi cinema is the way in which it subverts the "Dune" project as cinemagoers know it — a franchise transformation ushered in by Austin Butler's seductive, demonic portrayal of the Harkonnen prince Feyd-Rautha.
This new "Dune" is morally bleak, sensationally freaky and alienating. In other words, the very things that made Frank Herbert's psychedelic 1965 novel a seminal work of sci-fi deemed unadaptable for the big screen. In the five novels that followed, Herbert went even deeper into Funkytown and rejected Western storytelling conventions — chief among them the hero's journey. Some book fans had trouble with the classical structure of "Dune: Part One," in which Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) joins the ranks of cinematic Chosen Ones, following in the pop footsteps of Luke Skywalker, Neo and Harry Potter. The boy who lived...after the fall of his House.
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"Dune: Part Two" sets up the second half of Paul's arc, to be completed in a third and final film based on Herbert's deeply subversive "Dune: Messiah." We pick up where we left off, with the Harkonnens again occupying Arrakis after annihilating House Atreides. Paul becomes a blue-eyed Fremen warrior alongside Chani (Zendaya, with blessedly more screen time than she had in the first film). He learns to harness the much-memed "desert power" he could only marvel at before, riding a giant sandworm, wielding a Crysknife and adopting the Fremen name Muad'Dib while his legend takes hold among the masses of fundamentalist desert dwellers who, after years of social engineering by the Bene Gesserit priestesses, believe that Paul could be their prophesied savior, the Lisan al Gaib.
All very deep "Dune" lore. But the danger of belief — how it mutates and infects — is the central preoccupation of "Dune: Part Two." Just as Paul's pregnant mother, Lady Jessica (another wickedly good performance from Rebecca Ferguson), uses her Bene Gesserit abilities to cement his status for his own protection and her own ego, Paul mounts vicious attacks on the Harkonnen's spice harvest for Fremen glory and personal revenge. The Fremen leader Stilgar (Javier Bardem coming in for comedic relief) is increasingly awe-struck as Paul dots every "i" of the messianic prophecy; Gurney (Josh Brolin) follows his new Duke Atreides in his quest for power; and Chani largely looks on in horror as groupthink takes hold on Arrakis.
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But, about Austin Butler, whose transformative performance marks the dark pivot point of Paul's story and Villeneuve's trilogy: Butler brings the magnetism he showcased in "Elvis" to Feyd-Rautha, the younger nephew of, and heir to, the gooey and gargantuan Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård, back in the hover suit). Unlike his ineffectual brother Rabban (the always-excellent Dave Bautista), Feyd-Rautha is a straight bat outta hell. He slinks around — bald, eyebrow-less, white as raw dough — with animalistic energy. He's alluring and disgusting at once, as existentially cold as Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh in "No Country for Old Men" and as twisted as Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth in "Blue Velvet." You cannot look away from him.
There's something pathetic about Feyd-Rautha, though. (In David Lynch's 1984 "Dune," Sting played the role with admirable gusto and camp.) He's described as a "sexually vulnerable" psychopath by the Reverend Mother (Charlotte Rampling) and her Bene Gesserit underling Lady Margot (Léa Seydoux), who intend to exploit that weakness for their own witchy ends. Butler's villain is even more impressive when glimpsed in the same frame as Christopher Walken's classical Emperor and Florence Pugh's largely unexciting Princess Irulan. They could have stepped out of Prime Video's "Lord of the Rings" series as a familiar fantasy-adventure pair. Butler's Feyd-Rautha, by contrast, is uniquely of the world of "Dune": Other than his sick love of gladiatorial combat, he has no parallel in the long history of sci-fi villains.
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Villeneuve's filmmaking, too, soars around Butler's performance. The Harkonnen homeworld of Giedi Prime is rendered in stark black-and-white, with highly stylized flourishes. One sequence (in a long, shadowy hallway with muffled fireworks just beyond the windows you can't see) is reminiscent of the noir aesthetics of "Blade Runner," which Villeneuve, of course, revisited in 2017. For a film so jam-packed with the biggest vistas you've maybe (probably) ever seen, Butler has unbelievable command when he's onscreen.
Whether Villeneuve sticks the landing in "Dune: Part Three" remains to be seen. If "Part Two" is any indication of his approach to Herbert's masterwork, blockbuster cinema is in for a weird ride.
"Dune: Part Two" hits theaters March 1. Watch the latest trailer here.
