It made sense for about an hour, but went for closer to three.

I really loved the start of this film.  I adore Javier Bardem and most of the first part is just him hanging out with this goth-boy Paul on the sand teaching him the sand-ways.  And Paul getting lovey-dovey with hot sand-girl Chani.  It was fun and relatively straight-forward.  And I could listen to Javier all day.

Some spoilery bits.

But then after about an hour, it’s like it became a totally different movie.  I felt like suddenly I needed a giant flip out explainer of the family and dynasty tree.  And I come from a super-complex family, but that doesn’t make this one any easier to follow.

Suddenly there’s this sort of creepy-hot-psycho baldy, licking knives and killing everyone and eating their livers.  And the weird fancy dress nuns, as always, are doing weird stuff where they go and seduce him and get him to put his hand in a stabby box and sleep with him so they have his baby stashed away for bloodline bribery or insurance.  I don’t know, for a high-tech world they are quite lax on contraception.  Apparently this guy is played by the same guy who recently played Elvis and that’s even creepier.  Is his head really that shape?

Anyway, this psycho is sent to replace Dave Bautista, who was already pretty psycho, at running the sandworm planet.  I don’t know, then there’s more war and drama and killing of people.  And sort of boring political talking.  I reckon a day of Australian Question time might be more entertaining.

Paul’s Mum is pregnant and somewhere in there she drinks the bright blue worm liquid, used in all the 90s tampon ads.  I still don’t understand exactly how it works, sort of gives you forbidden knowledge or something.  She’s having a whack time with a foetus that just keeps hassling her about everything.  That thing legitimately won’t shut up.  

I got very confused by this Quizz-Annne-Sattaract thing.  I mean everyone in this film seems to have at least four different names and this is one of them.  I thought it was Paul, but then I also thought his Mum kept saying it was going to be the telepathic foetus.  So I don’t know.  I also don’t remember from the first film what it is or why it’s important.

There’s a lot of that.  There’s no catch up.  Sure, I could have rewatched the last one, but if I did that I would not want to watch this one.  So it’s doomed if I did, doomed if I didn’t.  So I don’t remember enough to make most of this story make sense.  It’s one for the fans, not one for the idle film goer.

Then back to names, Paul is like Paul, and Mordeeb and that means Kangaroo Mouse, but then he’s Usul which was… was it arch or column?  And he’s also A-Tradies which means he’s posh and not high-vis.  But then at some point we find out his grandpa was actually levitating-balls-slug-man (so he’s an Agamemnon or something) and he’s not too happy about that.  But everyone has too many names.

There are a lot more sandworms in this one, but I don’t feel you really get much insight into them… I mean they imply some things about how they ride them, but you’d have to really put your thinking hat on. They don’t really explain how the relationship with them came to be, or other interesting ecology things.  There are only four animals shown on this whole planet, some birds, some ants, the sandworms and the kangaroo mouse. 

Most of the storyline is just centred on this whole religious prophecy idea, and if it’s a control mechanism of the sand people or not.  And I think that’s probably an interesting idea, but it got sidetracked by too much man-talking.

J* gives it 2 stars

PS:  This one didn’t have the surprise of being new in terms of visuals, and it didn’t have Momoa, so it’s one star for sandworms & kangaroo mouse, one for the Javier and the desert-romance.  So not as high a score as Dune: Part 1 (2021).

PPS.  On the way in my partner told me there are something like six books and I think I’m tapping out now.

PPPS:  God I hate sand.