Saw it last night in IMAX. Really enjoyed it.
The art direction remains stellar and in some instances was amped up for this film.
As has been noted, it deviates from the source material at some points. I thought, however, that the deviations worked really well within the context of this version of the story.
I think what I appreciated the most was that these deviations were done to explore themes that are very present in the original work, but also to really enhance your understanding of these characters as people, which is kind of missing from the original. There's a heightened quality to the original work that makes the people feel...less real, less grounded and thus somewhat alien. That's fine on the page. On film, though, I think it doesn't work well, and you see that on display in both prior versions (Lynch, and Sci-Fi Channel). There's an awkwardness and artificiality to the characters because they are sticking closer to the words of the book.
What I think Villeneuve's Dune 2 does is adhere more to the meaning of the book, and it does that in large part by grounding its characters. Towards that end, it rearranges elements of the story and alters others to help enhance the thematic cohesion and present the characters with situations that lead them down the path the story needs to go to convey that core meaning.
Herbert's book(s) is/are in some respects more complicated than what I think can be conveyed on film. That's just the nature of the different media, as between literature and cinema. You can do different things in literature than you can in cinema, and vice versa. I think Dune 2 is a fantastic adaptation of the literary version of Herbert's work to the cinematic medium and, much like the way that Mike Flanagan really gets how to adapt Stephen King to the screen, Villeneuve gets how to adapt Herbert.
I'm curious to see where Messiah (and/or Children, and/or God Emperor?) goes, whether it will actually showcase this bloody crusade that Muad'Dib is about to unleash upon the galaxy, or if -- like with the books -- we'll see him grappling with the aftermath. I suspect it'd be a mix of the two, with some visuals of the carnage, but otherwise not really spending a ton of time on it.
One of the interesting discussions I've found online is about Paul's nature. The Lynch version steers hard into the hero trope, where Paul valiantly avenges his House and father, and assumes his rightful place as Emperor and Kwizatz-Haderach. The Sci-Fi version does a bunch of this, but then upends it with the Children of Dune miniseries. Villeneuve's version...really does not paint Paul as a hero at all. Rather, he seems like a victim of destiny, and someone who very much is reluctant to take on the role set before him, but who cannot escape where his path leads him. Taken as part of a much larger work (namely the first four Dune novels), I think this is a terrific read of the character, and I think it would feed amazingly well into similar cinematic adaptations of the next 3 novels. We'll see where it goes, but I'm up for the ride.
