Dune: Part Two (2024) Script Review
A stronger, more action-driven adaptation focusing on the second half of the Frank Herbert novel.
Welcome to Script by Line. This week, we’ll be taking a look at Dune: Part Two, and breaking it down.
Let’s dive in.
Logline: Paul Atreides unites with the Fremen while on a warpath of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family. Facing a choice between the love of his life and the fate of the universe, he endeavors to prevent a terrible future.
Written by: Denis Villeneuve & Jon Spaihts
Based on: Dune by Frank Herbert
Pages: 119
Scenes: 137
If Dune: Part One is about a boy learning to be a man, then Dune: Part Two is the fall of a hero. It is the opposite of its predecessor; where Part One was both a coming-of-age story and a mother-son story, Part Two is a tragedy and doomed love story. It is a cautionary tale, a warning against the dangers of prophecies and blind believing that a single person can solve the problems of a nation.
Dune: Part Two opens up the world that Frank Herbert created. A new character, Princess Irulan, provides a recap of the events in Part One, musing about the fate of House Atreides and the lack of reaction from the Emperor— her father. The script then picks up moments where Part One ended, plunging straight into an action scene in which the Fremen, Paul, and Lady Jessica battle a troop of Harkonnen soldiers. The outcome foreshadows Paul’s fate— in Part One, Paul was forced to take a life for the first time to win the trust of the Fremen. Here, he kills his second man with less scruple, a warning that Paul is getting a little comfortable with ending lives.
Stilgar, the leader of the Fremen, takes Paul and his mother, Lady Jessica, to Tabara. Stilgar believes that Paul is the prophesized messiah; everybody else is less convinced. Still, practical matters take priority—Paul is young enough to be useful to the tribe; Lady Jessica, however, is forced to become the Fremen’s Reverend Mother. Not that she has a choice. If she doesn’t, then the Freman have no place for her; no place for means immediate death.
At this point, two parallel journeys begin. Lady Jessica, having survived the process of becoming the Reverend Mother (though nearly killing the baby she’s carrying), uses her new station to influence the Fremen into supporting Paul. Meanwhile, Paul rejects the prophecy and wins over the non-believing Fremen by proving himself to be a capable warrior instead. Paul sincerely does not want to be the “Mahdi” but to learn the ways of the Fremen. His commitment and qualities win over Chani, the warrior who becomes his lover. All this happens in 33 pages, the first Act.
Unlike the previous script, Part Two cuts away from Paul’s story to show what’s happening outside Arrakis. Baron Harkonnen, displeased with Rabban’s failure to stop the Fremen, sends his other nephew, Feyd-Rautha, to contain the Freman attacks on Arrakis. Paul learns to ride a sandworm, but Chani grows concerned with the religious fervor surrounding Paul, and remains skeptical about the prophecy. Gurney, surviving the House Atreides massacre, reunites with Paul and discloses the secret location to the House Atreides nuclear weapon stockpile. He urges Paul to rally the Fremen and use the nuclear weapons to attack the Harkonens but Paul resists. He has seen visions of the destruction that he will bring. Jessica heads South, Feyd-Rautha destroys Sietch Tabr, and Paul reluctantly chooses to accept his destiny. He goes East and drinks the Water of Life, which enhances his powers but almost kills him. Chani is able to revive him, though she’s furious. Through his enhanced powers, Paul discovers that he is connected to the Harkonnens through Jessica’s lineage. Paul travels South, and rallies the Fremen to attack the Harkonnens, much to Chani’s dismay.
In Act 3, Paul attacks the Harkonnens, takes the visiting Emperor and his entourage prisoner, and kills Baron Harkonnen to avenge his father. He challenges the Emperor for the throne and battles Feyd-Rautha in combat. Despite injuries, Paul prevails and kills Feyd-Rautha. To legitimize his ascendency, he declares that he will take Princess Irulan as his bride. The other Houses, however, refuse to recognize Paul as the new Emperor. Knowing that he is about to unleash destruction in order to bring peace, Paul orders the Fremen to attack, sparking the beginning of his Holy War. But it is a pyrrhic victory; Paul wins, only to lose the person he cares about the most: Chani. She leaves Paul and summons a sandworm, refusing to cry even though her entire world has crumbled around her.
One of the most remarkable things about this script is that it only clocks 119 pages, despite the film having a nearly three-hour runtime! Like the script for Part One, it accomplishes this by keeping descriptions of the world sparse and the battles brief. Seriously— the harvester attack lasts only 2.5 pages…
… while Feyd-Rautha’s arena fight with Lanville is 2 pages…
… the attack on the Harkonnens only 4 pages…
… and the final battle between Paul and Feyd-Rautha runs for 2 pages.
The brevity is a masterclass, a perfect example of how to say a lot with little. It also makes for a compelling read, and assuages executives that this epic sci-fi film won’t be excessive. For instance, Paul’s first sandworm ride takes up four-and-a-half pages; the filmed scene lasts _ minutes.
But most of all, the ability to tell this story within the industry norm of 120 pages means that it moves briskly and is structurally sound; the brief action lines and the 137 scenes get fleshed out into sprawling sequences.
How Denis Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts wrote Dune: Part Two
For Part Two, only Denis Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts returned for scripting duties. For Spaihts, the second part offered a different challenge. Part One did most of the heavy lifting, setting up the world and the principal characters; Part Two let them explore the world of Dune, freeing them up to play around. But first, they needed to bridge Part One and Part Two into one cohesive story. In the novel, Paul and Jessica find their way to the Fremen, secure a place among them, and then there’s a time jump a few years into the future. Villeneuve did not want to do the same.
“It’s important—it’s not a sequel, it’s a second part. There’s a difference,” said Villeneuve. “I wanted the movie to really open just where we left the characters. There’s no time jump. I wanted dramatic continuity with part one.”
To Spaihts, the solution was to “tease apart the passage between them being ejected into the desert and the time jump into the future and figure out what parts naturally belonged in Part One and what parts naturally belonged in Part Two.”
“That meant that the knife fight with Jamis, where he has to take a life in hot combat for the first time ever needed to become a crowning piece of that action,” said Spaihts. “And Paul taking the reins of his relationship with Jessica and of his own destiny, and making a decision about how he would proceed into the future, no longer to be guided by his mother's advice or go where he was told, but to decide what he thought his destiny was. Those pieces became the end of Part One.”
Adding the material of meeting the Fremen people, Jessica’s crisis of finding a place for herself, and Paul’s visions to the end of the first installment would have derailed its momentum. “All of that, if it were at the end of Part One, would feel like a fourth act,” said Spaihts. “The beginning of a new story that belongs to the journey in Part Two.”
Wanting to be faithful to Frank Herbert’s overarching vision about the world of Dune, Villeneuve kept Dune: Messiah in mind at all times when making the two-part film. Spaihts noted that Villeneuve often spoke about Herbert’s regrets about the way his novel had been received and framed in some circles of fans— and critics— as a white male savior story “in a world filled with important women and brown native people”. Herbert actually wrote an entire book, Dune: Messiah to rebuke these misperceptions, casting a more critical light on Paul and his actions to reflect the massive galactic casualties and atrocities committed in his name due to his choices1. Armed with this knowledge, Villeneuve and Spaihts decided to inject this nuance into the adaptations; in Part One, Paul feels a sense of dread that he is being pulled into terrible events and might become a vessel for dark purposes. The stronger his visions of the future grow in Part Two, the more he begins to choose paths that will take him into darker places because he can see that it will achieve a greater good in the end, even though it means he will hurt or wrong the ones around him.
“It’s very tragic,” Villeneuve said, “[that Paul will] lose everything and betray the people he loved.”
As a result, Paul Atreides comes out in the end looking less like a messiah and more as a man just as power-hungry as his enemies. Forewarned with the knowledge of the repercussions that Paul’s play for the throne would bring, Villeneuve expanded the role of Chani in the sequel in order to drive home Paul’s fall; for it is through her eyes that we see Paul as he truly is. Throughout the script, she is the only one who doesn’t believe in Paul as a messiah. “This prophecy is how they enslave us,” she argues. In Chani’s eyes, Paul’s choice to embrace his status and send the Fremen— his army of believers, her people— to attack the Great Houses is the ultimate betrayal.
“Chani, in the second part of the book, kind of disappeared in Paul’s shadows. The character becomes less interesting,” Villeneuve said. “But I thought there was a strong opportunity there to create a character there who would give us a new perspective on Paul, in order to get closer to Frank Herbert’s intentions.”
That’s why the script doesn’t conclude with Paul’s ascendancy but with Chani staying on Arrakis and calling a sandworm to depart. The first half of the story belongs to Paul, the second half to Chani. In the end, Paul is no longer the hero; it is Chani. And the betrayal hurts only deeper.
Notes:
https://www.avclub.com/denis-villeneuve-dune-part-two-zendaya-chani-herbert-1851297779
https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/dune-2-denis-villeneuve-interview-white-savior
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/04/dune-part-two-exclusive-first-look
At this time of writing, Denis Villeneuve is currently adapting Dune: Messiah as Dune: Part Three, the third installment in his trilogy