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Dune: Part Twois one of the most successful sci-fi movies of the decade so far, andits singular journey doesn’t hold much room for other characters despite its nearly three-hour length. Denis Villeneuve’s epic is massive in its scale and yet intimate in the evolution a character has to go through to match the threats facing him.Dune: Part Twomakes the wise choice not to include Paul and Chani’s son from the source material, Leto II. Adding this character to the movie would have stretched an already stacked cast too far, not just because it would have been an extra face on the screen, but because of what it would’ve meant to the pacing and narrative arc of the film.
Dune: Part Twofeels like the second installment in a trilogy. Much like the first one, it’s a piece about transition, a transition of faith, leadership, and self-belief. When these things come into conflict with each other, the path to destiny can leave some casualties along the way.Dune: Part Twoshows the beginning of Paul and Chani’s relationship, and showing their son would have interrupted the subtleties of bothTimothée Chalamet’s and Zendaya’s performances. Both of these young performers probe the outer shell of young angst, and by the end, their dynamic has been entirely shifted.
Leto II’s inclusion would have risked compromising this delicate power shiftthat can only come when the weight of the galaxy rests on the flow of authority. It wouldn’t have worked because inDune: Part Two, Paul still needs to feel like a young man figuring out his route to power, even if he is completing it at an extraordinary pace.Dune: Part Twois a movie about children becoming adults, and coping with responsibilities greater than themselves.
The Intimacy of ‘Dune: Part Two’
Dune: Part Two
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Credit should go to Villeneuve for how he makes a sci-fi space opera feel so intimate, only to rip that intimacy away when the stakes become too big for anything else to coexist.Dune: Part Twotears down the bond between Paul and Chani as quickly as it built and leaves us wondering what else we expected to happen. Throughout the movie, we are told that Paul’s destiny is bigger than himself, but Villeneuve takes his sci-fi plot and almost blends it with a heightened coming-of-age tale about outsiders and prophecy. Our entire perspective on their relationship is distorted through the lens that other people impose on Paul, stripping him and Chani of a natural evolution.
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Their development doesn’t have the space for Leto II because they still have so much to figure out for themselves. Sci-fi love stories can be hard to execute because the stakes always overshadow personal relationships, butDune: Part Twocreates a chain of consequenceswhere one cancels out the other. The relationship story collapses because sci-fi needs to take its place, not necessarily because Chani wants this, but because it has to happen. All of this is happening around the two, as the ‘grown-ups’ around them seek to control their connection and distort it through theprism of heroes and villains.
‘Dune: Part Two’s Ending Sets Up Where Paul and Chani Will Go
One of the final shots of Chani inDune: Part Twois an appearance of confusion and anger but not of surprise. She tries to change Paul’s trajectory, but as the credits roll, she knows this is pointless. The movie begins with Chani as the mythic character, but it ends with Paul becoming too important for factions and tribes. Adding Leto to this story would have disrupted Villeneuve’s sense of tragic inevitability, which reaches its climax at the end of the movie.They are already dealing with so many threatsand struggling with what it all means, so Leto would have sped up an already intriguing dynamic between Paul and Chani.
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Dune: Part Twohas the experienced fighters and survivors looking to Paul for guidance, and by the end, it feels as if they have accomplished their true objective. They’ve successfullypushed Paul’s transition forwardto where it needs to be and, as an indirect result, interfered with Paul and Chani’s connection. Class is also an interesting fact of the film. Paul was coming from House Atreides to a lower tribe of people, and he is seen as a trespasser as soon as he enters their territory at the end ofDune. He wants to be a Fremen, and the moment he becomes one, surrendering his class, he is elevated to a position above anything he has been before. It’s a weaponization of class that forces the Fremen into his trainers for a purpose bigger than any of them.
What Could Leto II Add to ‘Dune: Messiah’?
Few details are known about what Villeneuve plans to take fromFrank Herbert’s novel, but he has said he intends to make it his last movie in theDuneuniverse. Leto II would add an extra layer of expectation and pressure to Paul’s quest for power and emphasize how minimal Chani could be in Paul’s overall journey when taking into account the powerful people who can help him achieve his next steps. How closely Villeneuve will stick to Herbert’s story, following how Paul’s new position impacts his relationship with Chani and how she is now viewed concerning him, remains to be seen.
Dune: Messiahis a story about consequences. Villeneuve has done a good job of adapting the stakes of the source material onto the screen, but the addition of Leto in the final part of his trilogy could be the defining moment. Combining the personal and daunting journeys of the characters has been his strong suit, and he’s never been a director to shy away from showing thedisconnect between love and reality. Leto II would take this to another level for Paul and test Chani’s resilience in ways she hasn’t had to do before in the two films. Leto would create a cyclical irony to Paul’s journey, and potentially unlock his full potential as a leader.DuneandDune: Part Twoare now onNetflix, andDune: Part Twois also available onMax.
