Road to the Oscars Review: ‘Dune: Part Two’ is a Massive Achievement that will be Snubbed at the Oscars

Every year, in the time between when the Academy Award nominations are announced and the actual Oscars ceremony is held, OFM movie reviewer and associate editor Julie River tries to watch all the movies nominated for Best Picture that year. In the years since the pandemic, this has become easier, as a lot move of the movies are now available on streaming.

Last year was the first year since they expanded the number of Best Picture nominees from five to 10 that River managed to make it through all 10 nominated films, and as she did so, she wrote reviews of them for OFM. This year, she aims to do it again, watching all 10 nominated films and writing about them for this site. She already saw and reviewed Emilia Pérez and I’m Still Here as part of her coverage of this year’s 47th Annual Denver Film Festival. That leaves her with eight films to watch and review. Can she make it through all 10 films again? Find out on OFM’s Road to the Oscars!

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Dune is a beloved sci-fi epic, and a friend of mine has long sung the praises of the 1984 David Lynch adaptation of the novels (I realize the Lynch version is not exactly beloved, but my friend keeps insisting it’s underrated), but I had never gotten around to watching or reading any version of Dune. Considering that I have a book coming out called Punk Rock and Science Fiction, it seems a glaring oversight on my part. So when the nominees for this year’s Oscars were announced and I knew I was doing this “Road to the Oscars” column again, I saw Dune: Part Two nominated for Best Picture and knew that I had to finally bite the bullet: I had to watch Dune. And, having not seen the first installment of Denis Villeneuve’s two-part adaptation of the epic novel series, I realized I had to watch both parts of Dune to prepare for this year’s Oscars. And so, this weekend, I strapped in and watched the entire two-part saga. It was long.

In part one of Dune, it’s the year 10,191 and we meet Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), the young, teenage son of House Atreides, one of the great houses in a great galactic empire. After years of House Harkonnen being in charge of mining spice—a powerful hallucinogen which also powers their ships—on the desert planet Arrakis, House Atreides is assigned to take over spice mining by the Emperor (Christopher Walken). But they must reckon with the Fremen, the indigenous people who live on Arrakis and use spice ceremonially.

Paul is the son of the Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) but also the daughter of Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), a member of a powerful religious order called the Bene Gesserit who have exceptional powers. Paul starts having visions of the future, of him with a Fremen woman named Chani (Zendaya), believing there’s more that awaits him on Arrakis than spice production. There are hints that Paul might be the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy, the Lisan-al-Gaib, an outsider who will lead the Fremen to freedom and a lush, green paradise. When House Harkonnen conspires with the Emperor to kill all of House Atreides, Paul and his mother escape into the desert to fulfill Paul’s destiny.

In part two, Paul and his mother are now living in the Arrakis desert and become accepted by the Fremen, with Paul adopting the name Paul Muad’Dib Usul and falling in love with Chani. Some of the Fremen, with the urging of Lady Jessica, who becomes a Reverend Mother of the Fremen, start to believe that Paul is the Lisan al-Gaib, while some of the younger Fremen, like Chani, dismiss the prophecy as superstition. With House Harkonnen taking over spice production again, Paul and the Fremen seek revenge on the Harkonnens, culminating in a final battle to force them off the planet and for Paul to challenge the Emperor for killing his family. As the film closes, Paul and the Fremen have defeated the Harkonnens, but the other great houses, still loyal to the Emperor, come to begin a war against the newly re-established House Atreides and the Fremen.

One of the main things I thought of when I was watching this film was, “How the hell did David Lynch tell the same story in half the amount of time?” Even writing out the plot synopsis just now feels like it took about four hours, and I left out entire important characters like Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler) and Stilgar (Javier Bardem). I’ve been criticizing some of the longer films that have been nominated for Best Picture for refusing to split themselves into parts and instead presenting themselves as ridiculously long, three-and-a-half-hour movies. Thankfully, Villeneuve had the common sense to split this massive epic into at least two parts, with discussions of continuing the series beyond part two, as the book series has six novels by the original author, Frank Herbert, and over 20 when you factor in the ones co-written by his son, Brian Herbert. But I think stretching the original novel into two parts was definitely a good choice.

In prepping for this year’s Oscars, I was essentially forced to watch three films starring Timothée Chalamet (both Dune films and A Complete Unknown), and I’ve developed an appreciation for his talent. There was no point in Dune where I thought, “Hey look, there’s Bob Dylan riding a giant worm!” He can play distinctly different roles with equal talent, and I don’t think that’s a skill that every actor has. Even some Academy Award-winning actors (Hilary Swank immediately comes to mind) are capable of playing only one type of character but playing it well enough that they’ve won an award for it. Chalamet can play wildly dissimilar roles and still pull them off very well, which is an exceptional talent.

The fact that Villeneuve himself wasn’t even nominated for Best Director is an absolute travesty, as the world-building in these films is spectacular. My biggest problem with the first Dune movie is that it’s virtually all world-building, with the real meat of the story not really starting until Part Two. But there’s so much painstaking detail put into these films. Take, for example, the ornithopters, the alternatives that the characters in Dune have to helicopters which fly by flapping wings like a sparrow. It wouldn’t have been hard to leave out that detail and give the characters a more conventional flying machine, but Villeneuve didn’t spare a single detail in building this intricate world, and that deserves, at the very least, a nomination.

Despite the fact that the first part of the Dune saga didn’t win any of the big-name awards like Best Picture or Best Actor, the film still walked away with the most Oscar wins at the 94th Academy Awards, it just happened that most of them were technical awards like Best Film Editing and Best Visual Effects. While it certainly deserved those awards, the fact that it was only nominated for such awards goes to show how little the Academy values science-fiction storytelling, which is a travesty. That looks to be repeated this year, as the Vegas odds* show Dune as a distant contender for Best Picture, and it wasn’t even nominated for anything else but technical awards. With nominations for Best Sound, Best Production Design, Best Cinematography, and Best Visual Effects, it’s likely to pick up some of those, but the Academy should be ashamed of overlooking this film for Best Director and some of the other big-name awards.

Regardless of what Dune: Part Two walks away with, though, Villeneuve managed to put together a truly epic saga that does justice to a great story with a great fandom. Everything about this film took painstaking attention to detail and a lot of hard work, resulting in one of the most ambitious science-fiction epics in a very long time. Dune: Part Two might not be in any serious discussions around Best Picture, but it absolutely should be.

Rating: 93/100

*I’m going to be referring to the Vegas odds on the Oscars because I think they’re a handy guide to gauge the likelihood of a film winning a particular award, but I do want to emphasize that betting on the Oscars is not legal in the state of Colorado, and this is just something I bring up for fun in my predictions. We are not endorsing anyone gambling on the Oscars in an area where it isn’t legal.

Dune: Part Two is currently streaming on Max.

All photos courtesy of social media