Dune 2 Desert of Zendaya

Dune Part II, directed by Denis Villenenvenuve, is a film on the cusp of excellence but at the precipice of brilliance it was turned into a complete waste, like a fremen pissing into the sands of Arrakis. A diamond turned into trash, hot garbage boiling at the temperature of the planet Dune’s equator. It was not, believe it or not, ruined by the extraordinarily fugly visage of Zendaya—those electrons that rendered her on my LED screen now permanently cursed until the heat death of the universe simply for participating in such a horror show—no, it was the self-insert HR lady of Chani dialogue “um, actually, this is bad, you know” as she frivolously undermined her twink-messiah husband in contradiction to the overwhelming zealous support by his tribe, and basically everyone else on the planet.

Villenenvenuve’s Dune showed viewers the prophecy of Lisan al Gaib more attentively than the Lynch film, with practically every scene, for what felt like an hour of runtime, being specifically dedicated to Paul Atreides fulfilling this or that component of the Bene Gesserit-seeded prophecy, with much cynicism on Paul’s part. This was all very well done, except that every few minutes we were “treated” to the lecturing of Zendaya, saying “Sir! Sir! You cannot overthrow the Imperium here! This a Wendy’s!” Unfortunately for the screenwriters, who insisted on the telling the viewers that they are supposed to interpret Paul Atreides’s actions as those of a bad man, these writers cannot actually fundamentally change the story, and no matter what, Paul will complete his quest of masculine vengeance against evil for the betrayal and murder of his family by the Emperor and Harkonnens (and a galactic jihad in his name is cool and good, actually).

Much like shitlibbery in general, only by defying all natural human faculties can one convince oneself of this belief—that the story told in Frank Hebert’s Dune is one of warning against the excesses of religion and aristocracy. It is, in fact, a story of honor, duty, and loyalty to the family, and the power that a religious people can summon against evil forces. I really wish it was simply the astoundingly unattractive Zendaya that ruined this movie, but alas, it’s her dialogue that really did it in. There is some hope, however, that fan edits could remove most of her scenes and place the film in the tier of “respectable, if imperfect, adaptation.” Until then, there’s always this: