The year has only just begun, but we have already found the best science fiction film of 2024. You can rush to the cinemas to discover this awesome blockbuster.
There are few in a year, films that manage to glue you to your seat for 2 hours 45 minutes and leave you speechless at the end of the session. It’s only the end of February, but we have already found the best film (science fiction at least) of the year 2024: sumptuous and monumental, it will amaze spectators.
In 2021, the first part of Dune had already taken everyone by surprise: the Canadian director Denis Villeneuve succeeded in the feat of setting coherent milestones for the literary masterpiece written by Frank Herbert, yet judged as unadaptable since Jodorowsky’s failed attempt then that of David Lynch in 1984. Building on this success, Dune, part two is released in French cinemas this Wednesday February 28 and achieves the feat of transforming a major work of literature into a cinematic monument.
Remember, the first part of Dune recounted the fall of House Atreides, sent to the planet Arrakis to exploit the “Spice”, a highly coveted substance, before being massacred by the Harkonnen. The heir to House Atreides, Paul, and his mother miraculously survive the attack. In part two, Paul is determined to take revenge for his father’s death and regain control of the desert planet. To do this, he forges an alliance with the indigenous people of the planet, the Fremen.
Where the first part of Dune served as an introduction to the dense universe of Frank Herbert, the second part finally gains momentum and fully assumes its challenges, both narrative and visual. After the successful but distant exhibition of its first part, Dune becomes, in its second part, an epic and colossal blockbuster which fully embraces the complexity of its political issues. To carry the weight of such a juggernaut, Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya and, to a more secondary extent, Austin Butler, are truly establishing themselves as true stars of Hollywood today and tomorrow.
Thanks to its realistic but overwhelming aesthetic, this blockbuster fully allows us to question the necessity of violence, the risks of fanaticism, religious colonization and the figure of the messianic leader. Denis Villeneuve gives birth to a SF monster that we will not soon forget and which can without blushing claim the title of best science fiction film of 2024, or even, perhaps, appear in the still short list of best films of the year in short. Dune, part two can be seen in cinemas from this Wednesday February 28, 2024.