Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part One was the sort of adaptation that might be considered too faithful to the source material, but that’s not so much the case with Dune: Part Two. The sequel, which adapts the remainder of the first Dune novel, does pretty accurately adapt the story into movie form. but it also adds some crucial pieces of character work that have always been missing from the book.
Warning: The following contains spoilers for the ending of Dune: Part Two.
Frank Herbert’s style of writing isn’t your typical prose–his approach is more abstract, like reading a textbook about this story more than reading the story itself. The result being that Dune, the book, doesn’t really sketch out its characters as fully formed human beings. But Dune: Part Two, the movie, makes a very pointed attempt at changing that, particularly with Chani (Zendaya) as she tries to deal with Paul Atreides’ (Timothee Chalamet) inevitable ascendancy while it’s happening.
We see this happen very gradually over the course of the film, as Paul effortlessly adopts the ways of the Fremen, impressing Chani quite a bit and eventually drawing her into a relationship. But in this story, that’s just the start. Paul’s rise isn’t a spontaneous one, though. It’s the product of centuries of Bene Gesserit self-fulfilling prophecies. While most of the Fremen seem to embrace those prophecies very sincerely–Paul and the others refer to the true believers as fundamentalists–Paul and Chani both know the truth, that it’s all just a bunch of political machinations by these space witches.
Despite knowing exactly what’s going on, Paul leans into his role in fulfilling these Bene Gesserit prophecies. But Chani is very much not amused by all that. She thinks the fundamentalists are morons, and constantly tries to remind everybody that the Bene Gesserit both made the prophecies and arranged for Paul to fulfill them. But her pleas fall on deaf ears, for the most part, and it doesn’t help that Chani herself ends up being a fulfillment of one of these prophecies.
And so Paul, who adopts the Fremen name Muad’dib and keeps his true identity secret from the outside world, leads the Fremen against the Harkonnen forces, making huge progress toward winning back Arrakis from the house that murdered his father. With Arrakis and its spice being so important to galactic civilization, eventually the Emperor Shaddam himself (Christopher Walken), along with his daughter Irulan (Florence Pugh) and the Harkonnen terror known as Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler), head to Arrakis for a climactic meeting to end this conflict as soon as possible.
During this meeting, Paul duels Feyd-Rautha for control of Arrakis and wins. And from this new position of power, he makes another demand: that the Emperor, who helped arrange this bloodbath on Arrakis by backing the Harkonnens, abdicate the throne, with Paul marrying Irulan and becoming the new emperor. Shaddam agrees, and that’s that.
Chani, naturally, is not so amused by all this, and the movie ends with her storming off into the desert and trying to draw out a sand worm of her own to ride around on while she tries to burn off her annoyance with Paul.
But what speifically is it that Chani is mad about here? Sure, she doesn’t like that her committed partner is marrying somebody else, even if it’s just a political marriage–Paul and Chani remained exclusive partners even after this marriage with Irulan in the books, and in the film, Paul had reassured her that he would stay faithful even if this kind of thing ended up going down.
But, trust me, Chani’s frustration here is multi-faceted. It’s not necessarily jealousy, but rather just more of the same annoyance she’d had with Paul for much of the film over him leaning into that religious nonsense in order to embrace some grand, abstract destiny. At the end of the movie, she’s mad that Paul ignored all her warnings and ended up becoming exactly the thing she had tried to stop.
It’s a really compelling note to end on, especially if you know how things play out for Chani in Dune Messiah. But the real impact is in fleshing out Chani into a character with real substance in this movie–in truth, she’s far more of a real human and real character in this film than Paul ends up being. This is Chani’s movie. really.
This new and more forceful aspect of Chani’s character will make for a super interesting dynamic with Irulan in the next movie, should Villeneuve manage to get the script into a shape that he likes. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait too long for it.
Does Dune: Part Two have a post-credits or mid-credits scene?
No. Once the credits start rolling on Dune: Part Two, the movie is over, and there aren’t any bonus scenes during or after the credits.
