Dune: Part Two (2024)
One of those Christ-returns-to-the-middle-east-to-kick-some-ass-type movies—a sci-fi Lawrence of Arabia. But while Arabic features prominently in the book, Arabic has been erased in this adaptation.. is this a clue? Given the current state-of-affairs its release is questionable; uh…too soon maybe? Do they show this movie in Tel Aviv? Perhaps never is too soon. A sequel even more super-colossal than its first part—back to back more than a five hours—it is the hugest of all movies in which Christ lets Christopher Walken know who rules the spice. The style and set-pieces are geared towards my nine-year-old self who trembles in the face of such massive spaceships. And yet, scale as an aesthetic technique is a one-trick-pony that goes all wobbly and dumb when the biggest thing ever is a sympathetic worm. I like the squatty sound that the ships make when they take off; the flying samurai space-dudes are intense; and its rad when the desert-assassin lasers cut apart the fascist war machines. I don’t know why they dropped the whole “his name is a killing word” bit: it’s a pretty good bit, science-fictionally speaking, and indicts our own crusader-world, Christologically speaking (Christ has always been a killing word). But for all the movie’s ambivalence regarding the messiah, its politics are loud and clear: you don’t mess with Zendaya.
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