So. Dune II's out. I could talk at length about the many things they changed. Some for the better, some not necessarily. Some are regrettable. But honestly, just overall:
Man what a movie . They stuck the landing on this one. It works, it's visually spectacular, they got the message across.
A few nonspoilerly comments: great action and crowd scenes. Some impressive cinematography. Good acting. More focus on characters who needed it, like the Bene Gesserit and Lady Jessica (Margot Fenring, is, sadly, quite reduced, but at least she's there). Bit more focus on just how weird the Dune universe sometimes is, with some entirely casual use of extremely high technology that the movie doesn't even give much focus to, it just happens. Possible main criticism: they did the Fremen a bit dirty, here, possibly because of runtime limits. It's already very long.
Spoilers for those who care, mostly about things changed from the books and whether I think they worked or not:
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Lady Jessica is one of the biggest changes. She's even more instrumental to Paul's rise. As soon as she's sent to the Southern Fremen, she goes into stone-cold Bene Gesserit manipulator mode and proceeds to build a cult. In fact, that's a thing that the movie strongly leans into, overall: Paul sees the future of the holy war, and he doesn't want it. But everyone else around him does, and they leave him no choice. He doesn't want to be Mahdi and start a holy war, but Jessica builds fanatic followers for him. He wants to be just one part of the resistance of the Fremen against the Imperium and not its leader, but Stilgar won't let him not lead and Gurney Halleck hands him a cache of atomic weapons only he can use. It works really well.
The second is the compressed timeline and Fremen culture. Instead of staying with the Fremen for years, Paul is with them for a few months: Lady Jessica is pregnant throughout and doesn't give birth before the end. And that means Fremen culture really suffers in the movie. In that, we aren't really shown it. We don't see the Southern Fremen much. We barely see the Sietches, other than some holy locations. Paul never has and then loses a child. Fremen religion is enormously compressed, we don't see what they do with the Water of Life, other than make Reverend Mothers, we don't see the Zen and Sufi inspirations, any of it. And of course they changed "Jihad" to Holy War throughout.
The third big change is that, interestingly, the Spacing Guild is entirely absent from the movie, for all their political relevance. Paul threatening to destroy the spice fields is what gets him Arrakis and the compliance of the emperor (plus a knife at the emperor's neck, of course), but it doesn't give him yet control over space. Maybe something for the third movie to focus on. I guess it works well enough and it simplifies the politics, but I really don't think another five minutes at the end where he blackmails a few guild navigators would have hurt the movie in any way.
Fourth, Chani. Chani in this movie is not religious, and does not believe the prophecy. She's just a freedom fighter, and by the end of the movie, actually breaks off from Paul who now calls himself Atreides again and retreats to the desert. Interesting for the sequel setup, well-enough acted, but suffers a bit from "actually is an enlightened modern atheist" syndrome and doesn't entirely fit in.
Dune II
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