Cinema is Reborn with “Dune: Part Two”

Several years ago, Hollywood briefly released a slate of medieval-themed films coming from sizable and talented directors. Films like Green Knight, The Last Duel, Benedetta, and The Northman were released in short order from one another. They seemed to reflect a curious malaise among Hollywood towards the medieval age—with the films waxing philosophical about the innate patriarchal nature of the Roman Catholic Church and the evils of superstition, chivalry, and masculinity.

Coming out in the late pandemic era, these films largely tanked at the box office. As many analysts have noted, Hollywood is in severe decline, especially financially. Films that were billion-dollar worldwide hits in 2019 struggled to make back their budgets in 2023, with even massive sequels like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and recent Marvel movies underperforming at the box office. This has left the entire industry scrambling to find ways to make back its money, often through mass layoffs and deleting entire films like Batgirl and Coyote vs. ACME for tax write-offs.

The reverse side of this trend, though, is that a handful of recent movies have become massively successful and lauded. In 2022, Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water blasted through the box office with some of the most intense billion-dollar box office success in years. Last year, the dual release of Oppenheimer and Barbie made for the cinematic event of the year as audiences flocked to both films and made them, respectively, the most successful films in Christopher Nolan and Greta Gerwig’s careers.

This year has already found one such runaway success with the release of Dune: Part Two, the follow-up to 2021’s first entry that adapts the beloved 1965 Frank Herbert science fiction novel into one of the largest Hollywood blockbusters since the last two times Hollywood failed to adapt Dune to the big screen.

Dune II has already eclipsed its predecessor’s COVID-afflicted box office success in the first week after it premiered in theaters. In just two weeks, it grossed $217 million on a $190 million budget and appears to be on track for a strong theatrical run that will likely necessitate a third film in the series. There is talk of a possible Dune: Messiah and/or Children of Dune as sequels.

Part of what has made Dune’s success so exciting has been how much of a unifying experience it has been in the theaters. Shy of a few dissidents complaining about supposed woke casting, changes from the novel (despite all film adaptations varying from their original sources), and a few activists misreading the themes as a “white savior” story, word of mouth on the movie has been remarkable and is fueling continued viewing. The filmmakers are passionate about the film as an accomplishment, in and of itself, and audiences are speaking very positively about it.

It is tempting to try and read some sort of contemporary political compass into the film, given that it is a story about an exiled prince embracing a false identity as a messiah leading a coup against a decadent tyrannical political order and sparking an interstellar war in the process. Is there something about Americans in 2024 that makes us receptive to stories about the dangers of charismatic leaders, organized religion, and violent revolution? Are audiences pouring their frustration with Donald Trump, Christian Nationalism, or “Wokeness” into their decision to see the movie?

As my colleague, fellow critic, and VOEGELINVIEW contributor Ethan McGuire has argued, Hollywood is in a fascinating spot when it comes to its depiction and exploration of masculinity on film. Less successful anti-medieval films and larger films like Top Gun: Maverick and Oppenheimer are benefitting from their exploration of the anxieties of young men, delving into the struggles of a society that is struggling to teach men how to gain maturity and discipline.

“Concerning young men, [these films are part of a] recent series of medieval and fantasy adjacent films that contemplate the ways young men might interact with greatness, especially The Green Knight and Dune,” he writes for The Dispatch. “The Green Knight asks how a shiftless young man might regain a combination of both greatness and goodness if he is living with a dying generation who was both good and great but did not properly pass their knowledge down to their children. Dune asks how a young man might yield greatness if he does not desire it but has it thrust upon him.”

If anything, Dune II certainly speaks to a cultural fascination with flawed men and their capacity to leave a negative impact on the world, much like Oppenheimer and Barbie and how they explored men’s ability to destroy the world in various ways.

The cynical part of me thinks that the simple answer to these recent successes is merely that the film is fulfilling a craving in the public for genuine spectacle and passion. I’m not sure Americans are deeply invested in Paul Atreides’ interstellar jihad, just as they likely aren’t in Sully’s oikophobic war against humanity in the Avatar films. Many people simply want to see movies that engross them, take them to new places, and give them feelings they’ve never felt before. They want to live vicariously through film and forget about their lives outside of the dark theater for a few hours.

Few recent films have felt as massive and engrossing as Dune II, with its impressive use of scale, massive crowds of extras, and a climactic final battle that rivals the visual intensity of any film in the past decade. And yet, its most impressive scenes are simply its character performances. Seeing Timothée Chalamet transform from a wimpy prince into a tyrant who can command armies and silence rooms with only his voice is remarkable. These scenes alone are the kinds of performances that create movie star-defining moments, and it is blowing audiences away.

People are genuinely connecting with Dune II in a way audiences haven’t with recent massively successful films like Avengers: Endgame or Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker which seem to have bounced off of humanity’s collective memory. Even a few short years later, how many people talk about those blockbusters? My audience genuinely audibly gasped at a few points in the final act of the film, showing that they were sincerely surprised and horrified by the film’s implications and deeply connected to the characters they were watching make bad decisions.

The last decade of filmmaking has given Hollywood many bad habits. It has become used to superhero films like Avengers, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Batman grossing enough money to keep the lights on at the studios. But with the pandemic having inoculated most audiences to stay home and watch Netflix, old paradigms are breaking down. Audiences are willing to flood back into theaters, but they aren’t willing to do it for movies that they can get on Disney+ in four months—particularly when the average cost of taking a family of four to the movies now exceeds $60.

While it is hard to draw any sort of direct connection for why differing stories like Dune II, Top Gun: Maverick, and Barbie have all scratched our culture’s collective itch, the short answer to their success is simply that these are massive movies made by talented craftsmen. Audiences felt genuinely excited to see these spectacles on the largest screen they could afford, and many people made the act of seeing these films into a personal pilgrimage—for many being the first time since the pandemic that they’ve been inside a theater.

With more modest low-budget recent successes like Creed III and Godzilla Minus One showing that audiences are receptive to less bloated and more efficiently produced movies, it is certainly possible that a new golden age of cinema is on the horizon—with modest successes and great spectacle masterpieces being the next wave of cinema.

Audiences want to see something new—to feel something fresh and original. While Hollywood has a long way to go in terms of reverse engineering the success of films like Dune II, its success is still a wonderful sign for the film industry. Despite all the laziness and lack of creativity exhibited by studios like Warner Bros and Disney, there are still people in Hollywood who are receptive to moving the industry forward in the right direction. Dune II is prime evidence of this, and you should watch it to get a glimpse of what the best of future Hollywood may have to offer.

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