It’s a great movie that was pretty accurate to the source material (from my rather spotty memory of the book which I haven’t read in years).
Can I say that they really managed to make House Harkonnen just so creepy?
But I have to say that, visually, this movie wasn’t as impressive as Part 1. I watched both at IMAX, but couldn’t help but think that it wasn’t necessary for Part 2. If anything, Part 2 seemed to have so many more close-up shots of people’s faces that watching it in IMAX was uncomfortable (I kept having to lean back to see their whole face/expression).
Where were all the spaceships that were so big that they couldn’t fit the frame? They tried to show the worms that way, but it just ended up looking like people were sitting on a rough surface with strong wind blowing at them.
The pacing also saw a big deviation from the previous movie. Part 1 spanned what felt like a few days worth of story (ignoring travel time), whereas Part 2 tried to compress months into a three-hour movie.
If you watched the two movies back-to-back (which I didn’t), I could imagine that you’d be thrown for a bit of a loop at their first time skip (it wasn’t obvious and it took me a little bit to realise that a few days, if not weeks, have passed).
I’m not saying that they should have split this into two movies, but it was just strange to see how Part 1 took its time, but Part 2 was “full steam ahead”.
I’d be interested to see what the next movie would be like.