“Six hours after the movie and I can still find sand in my underwear; that’s how good Dune: Part Two is.” This review from Letterboxd member TheGreatBeef beautifully sums up the community’s general consensus on Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic: the continued story of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) is so immersive that it has physically manifested desert power into cinemas. And other areas.

“Villeneuve cultivates his full desert power, star power, [Hans] Zimmer power into pure cinema power,” raves LeShroeck. “I was so into it. I was flowing with the spice. And wanting so much more. Oversized cinema.”

Dune: Part Two premiered globally on March 1, and quickly entered the Letterboxd Top 250 at number six with a miraculous 4.6-out-of-five-star rating—almost a full star above Dune’s 3.9. If these cosmically high statistics provoke apprehension rather than excitement, listen to Kit Lazer: “Don’t fear the hype. Fear is the mind killer.”

That hype has been building for some time now; the second Dune installment, which covers the rest of Frank Herbert’s seminal 896-page novel of the same name and thankfully includes much more of Zendaya as Chani, was crowned Most Anticipated of 2024 in our 2023 Year in Review. Much like the (falsely?) prophetic Paul, the Letterboxd community sensed the wormsign and saw the rise of Dune: Part Two coming. (The sequel gets a 4.5 rating from Laura Victor on Letterboxd, referring specifically to “4 Sandworms + that one weird tiny Sandworm out of 5 Sandworms.”)

As such, we co-hosted a special 70mm IMAX screening of Tenet last month, featuring a sneak peek of Dune: Part Two plus an in-person 25-minute conversation between Villeneuve and none other than Christopher Nolan. The cerebral filmmaking titans discussed the latter’s twilight world and the former’s desert planet, then bonded over their mutual love of a galaxy far, far away.

I had the same question when I interviewed Villeneuve, though I refrained from asking it. Instead, we discussed the black-and-white color palette of the Harkonnens’ nefarious planet Giedi Prime: “We have the same approach as Frank Herbert did with Arakkis for the Fremen,” the man experienced in luscious worlds like Blade Runner 2049’s explained. “Giedi Prime is a plastic world, an artificial world cut from nature, a totalitarian environment where the ruler is fascist. I thought that this idea to subtract color from their world will say something about their way of thinking.”   

Ana V finds Villeneuve’s exploration of political corruption compelling: “In an age of hundred million dollar blockbusters that never quite manage to justify their cost, Dune: Part Two feels like nothing short of a miracle,” she writes. “[It’s] a tale about the corruption that stems from power, the dangers of the faith that can only come from religion and those who wield it as a weapon, and most importantly how the common people are those who suffer due to the whims and ambitions of the ruling class.”

One facet of what makes the spice world of Dune so compelling is that, for the most part, its characters cannot be cleanly slotted into the “hero” or “villain” boxes. That is, unless we’re talking about the irredeemable House of Harkonnen: Stellan Skarsgård (Baron Vladimir Harkonnen) and Dave Bautista (Rabban Harkonnen), told us—as well as Josh Brolin (Gurney Halleck)—whether they prefer to play the baddies or the good guys.

“I always think it’s more fun to be the bad guy, even when I was wrestling,” said Bautista, while Skarsgård answered, “The thing is that I want to have a varied diet, so right after I’ve done a nice guy like Bill [from Mamma Mia!], it’s a pleasure to do a guy like this.”

Brolin had a more complicated answer: “I don’t prefer anything. Even when I played Dan White [in Milk], it was like, ‘Can I feel compassion for this guy even though I hate him?’ What’s great about playing villains is, you take away the titles, and you go, ‘How would this human being react?’ We’re all flawed in some way.”

While all three actors are reprising their roles from the first part, a coterie of new cast members have joined the ever-expanding Dune crew. Yes, Oscar Isaac’s Duke Leto and Jason Momoa’s Duncan Idaho are out in the sequel, but Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Christopher Walken and Léa Seydoux are in.

“So glad that Denis understands when you only have Léa Seydoux in your film for five minutes that each solitary second is precious and should be treated as such,” says Emma of Seydoux’s all-too-brief appearance as the ethereal Lady Margot Fenring. Meanwhile, djwalter laments, “Need more Florence Pugh wearing space chain mail in my life.”

We could spend all day spotlighting your hundreds of thousands of glowing reviews of Dune: Part Two, but the double moons of Arakkis are rising, so we’ll sign off with this stellar write-up from Taylor Leverage: “With the Hans Zimmer score peppering a series of blaring, grand crescendos at key moments, galactic politics playing out alongside characters whose emotional maturity hasn’t evolved with their technology and visuals that sell the idea of a universe steeped in mysteries, Dune has really come into its own as the space opera to define this generation.” All hail the Lisan al-Gaib, Denis Villeneuve!