Dune: Part Two first impression praise it as "masterpiece," better than Part One

The first Dune movie, which came out in 2021, took Frank Herbert's classic 1965 sci-fi novel and gave it a glossy, textured, big-budget Hollywood makeover; the movie was packed full of stars and shepherded by a director — Denis Villenueve — who clearly loves this stuff. It was a hit, but I think the sequel, Dune: Part Two, will be even bigger. The new movie has even more stars (Florence Pugh! Christopher Walken!) and will be a lot more action-packed, since the back half of Herbert's book is more intense than the first.

For instance, Dune: Part Two will feature a scene where budding messiah Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) ride a sandworm, one of the enormous beasts that inhabits the dunes of the planet of Arrakis. He does this on purpose to prove himself to the Fremen, the native people of Arrakis, who have taken in him and his mother after they're cast out of their home by the vile Harkonnens. Fans who attended a special IMAX screening of the first Dune movie the other night were lucky enough to get to see this scene, which played after the credits rolled. According to Inverse, the scene was epic, which is easy to believe given what little we've glimpsed in trailers and teasers.

As an interesting side note, the scene apparently contains a nod to David Lynch's 1984 adaptation of Dune, where Fremen leader Stilgar (played by Everett McGill in the older movie) says that Paul has called "a big one" once the sandworm emerges. In Villeneuves movie, a Fremen man tells Paul to "call a big one," and once it emerges, Stilgar (now played by Javier Bardem) frets, "Not that big!"

Dune: Part Two is "a true modern sci-fi masterpiece"

There have not been press screenings of Dune: Part Two as of yet, but there was a distributor screening held this week, and one person who saw it — @EmpireCityBO on Twitter/X — has been giving their thoughts. "I have now seen [Dune: Part Two]," they write. "I can say without reservation that it is INCREDIBLE, a true modern sci-fi masterpiece by Denis Villeneuve."

They went on to say that Part Two is "so much better" than the original, "and I love the first one." They even said that Warner Bros. Discovery has already greenlit another Dune movie, an adpation of Herbert's book Dune Messiah, although we should probably see how Dune: Part Two performs before we fully embrace that. Villeneuve has talked about wanting to adapt Messiah as part of a Dune trilogy and WBD has shown interest in turning this into a franchise, so I imagine it will probably happen, but nothing's official til it's official.

We'll know more when Dune: Part Two drops into theaters on March 1.

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