Dune: Part Two

At a moment when words like “jihad” and “genocide” fall perpetually from the lips of pundits, professional activists, and policy makers, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two seems a rather subversive spice to sprinkle into our combustible culture. While both parts of Dune comprise a complex film that defies simplistic one-to-one allegory, at times Villeneuve’s richly imagined epic places a finger on the familiar, the historical, just as it points its others toward a fiction set amongst the stars.  In the second half of this adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel, Paul and his mother, Jessica, have escaped the initial assault on House Atreides to shelter with Fremen insurgents, but Harkonnen death squads pursue them.

With strikes over, the streaming model still wobbling and Barbiemania in the rear-view, 2024 looks sety to be an interesting year for film and TV. To start, two superhero movies. Last year saw superheroes die at the box-office — apart from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, every superhero film bombed, with Blue Beetle, Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom, The Flash and The Marvels losing tens to hundreds of millions. Because of this, there are far fewer superhero films releasing in 2024. But two of the most anticipated and interesting films to come happen to be of that genre. They’re both sequels, R-rated, somewhat odd and are going to be hits, as were the films they follow; but otherwise, they couldn’t be more different. I’m speaking of Deadpool 3 and Joker: Folie à Deux.

The news that Denis Villeneuve’s keenly anticipated Dune sequel is to be delayed from its previously announced November release date until next March is both unwelcome and far from unexpected. It also brings back memories of the pandemic, when films were routinely postponed for months, even years; it is not hard to remember how the Bond film No Time To Die ended up having its original release date of April 2020 put back until October 2021, by which time Billie Eilish’s theme song had acquired all the familiarity of a much-loved old standard, and the film’s trailers had long since melted into ubiquity. And countless equally delayed pictures simply flopped at the box office, as audiences stayed away, bored by seeing the same marketing materials forever.