'Dune: Part Two' Review Megathread

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Rotten Tomatoes -- Tomatometer 94% (354 reviews) // Audience Score 95% (2,500+ verified ratings)

Metacritic -- Metascore 79 Generally Favorable (based on 62 critic reviews) // User Score 8.3 Universal Acclaim (based on 420 user ratings)

The year’s first surefire blockbuster is a sequel that outdoes Denis Villeneuve’s first epic 2021 sand opera. OK, it’s a tad long and solemn, but Chalamet and Zendaya are destiny-kissed lovers to die for, and the thundering spectacle is off the charts.

-- Peter Travers, ABC News (review)

Villeneuve’s great talent lies, I think, in invocation. He may be less perfect when it comes to conclusions but he’s brilliant at summoning -- a sense of doom, a suddenly appeared spacecraft, a sandworm.

-- Jake Coyle, Associated Press (review)

As blockbuster movies go, Dune: Part Two is a thrilling ride that totally earns its two-and-a-half-hour running time. The filmmakers add much-needed heft to their display of virtuoso filmmaking by adding serious real-life themes.

-- Murtada Elfadl, AV Club (review)

You might expect a big-budget space opera to exhilarate you and move you, and on those terms Villeneuve's sprawling, pretentious folly has to count as an abject failure. But if you want to feel awestruck, that's another matter.

-- Nicholas Barber, BBC.com (review)

Even as we marvel at the stunning and immersive and Oscar-level cinematography, editing, score, visual effects, production design and sound in Denis Villeneuve’s Part Two, we’re reminded at every turn that this is an absolutely crazy story...

-- Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times (review)

What Villeneuve and company achieve in Dune: Part Two is every bit as impressive and, in its peak imagery, hypnotic as part one.

-- Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune (review)

Part Two possesses state-of-the-art cinematic qualities that reward soaking in its grandeur... After the initial promise, though, the film only sporadically rises to the level of its sky-high expectations.

-- Brian Lowry, CNN.com (review)

The technology here is magic: something to be felt in your soul, not puzzled out in your head.

-- Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph (review)

Another epic helping of sci-fi wildness from Denis Villeneuve that’ll take true believers to paradise — even if it’s a bit too much Spice to digest in one sitting.

-- Ben Travis, Empire Magazine (review)

It may take five and a half hours for his character to truly come to life, but two films in, Chalamet’s evolution as Paul gives everything a center.

-- Danny Leigh, Financial Times (review)

This is a real epic and it is exhilarating to find a film-maker thinking as big as this.

-- Peter Bradshaw, Guardian (review)

Plagued by a nagging shallowness when it comes to portraying the Fremen... the film has difficulty fully embracing the nuance of Herbert’s anti-imperial and ecologically dystopian text.

-- Lovia Gyarkye, Hollywood Reporter (review)

There are moments in Dune: Part Two that feel so audacious, they play out as if they were already etched onto the cinematic canon.

-- Clarisse Loughrey, Independent (review)

A sci-fi epic for the ages: a sweeping tragedy of mythic proportions, a cautionary tale of the perils of zealotry. It’s a towering feat of sci-fi cinema that will put Dune: Part Two in contention for the pantheon of greatest sequels ever.

-- Hoai-Tran Bui, Inverse (review)

An instant landmark of its genre.

-- Joshua Rothkopf, Los Angeles Times (review)

It belongs firmly to Zendaya, who gives the second half of Denis Villeneuve’s Frank Herbert adaptation an emotional tangibility that the first, in all its exotic majesty, eschewed.

-- Alison Willmore, New York Magazine/Vulture (review)

Our blockbuster drought is over, thanks to a brilliant sequel set on a sweltering desert planet.

-- Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post (review)

Those of us who retain a stubborn fondness for Lynch’s much maligned adaptation will sense what’s missing from Villeneuve’s: an imaginative density, a hint of psychoerotic danger, the grotesque, teeming aliveness of a fully inhabited world.

-- Justin Chang, New Yorker (review)

The first film tackled the hard work of arranging the game pieces on the board, so Part Two swiftly sets about bashing them into one another. All those factional conflicts roiling away throughout the first film finally get to boil over at last.

-- Glen Weldon, NPR (review)

The second Dune instalment is jaw-on-the-floor spectacular. It elegantly weaves together top-tier special effects and arresting cinematography; it layers muscle, sinew and savagery on to the bones of Part One.

-- Wendy Ide, Observer (review)

“Dune: Part Two” is a robust piece of filmmaking, a reminder that this kind of broad-scale blockbuster can be done with artistry and flair.

-- Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com (review)

Villeneuve has outdone himself. More importantly, he’s done justice to the scope and scale and sheer weirdness of a stoner-lit touchstone’s back half without, pun intended, sanding away its edges.

-- David Fear, Rolling Stone (review)

Stands in stark contrast to so many other shallow blockbusters of recent years.

-- Matt Singer, ScreenCrush (review)

Villeneuve has taken the worst and most preachy bits from Avatar, about how imperialism is fuelled by the exploitation of natural resources, and seemingly repackaged them with an orange Instagram filter and a couple of dozen heavy brass “braaaaam”s...

-- Kevin Maher, Times (review)

The movie fairly throbs with conflicts and intrigues, all the more so if you see it on an IMAX screen with the deep bass of Hans Zimmer’s majestic score rumbling through your body.

-- Peter Howell, Toronto Star (review)

Part Two rights the cosmic battleship with plenty of staggering visuals, all the gigantic sandworms you’d ever want, plus a deeper thematic exploration of power, colonialism and religion.

-- Brian Truitt, USA Today (review)

Heavy with spectacle and theme as it is, Part Two is often surprisingly nimble. As a filmmaker, Villeneuve has long had trouble balancing plot with picture, but here he almost gets the calibration exactly right.

-- Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair (review)

Whatever you do, don’t mistake this follow-up for a sequel. It’s the second half of a saga...

-- Peter Debruge, Variety (review)

Instead of a theme park, it's more of a cathedral -- solemn, sober, beautiful and forbidding. Greig Fraser's photography and Hans Zimmer's score are full of majesty.

-- Kyle Smith, Wall Street Journal (review)

“Dune: Part Two” builds a world that’s undeniably spectacular, compressing a sprawling, borderline incomprehensible story into an efficient narrative-delivery system.

-- Ann Hornaday, Washington Post (review)