Dune 2’s two silliest performances bring this very serious film to life

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune films can seem like a rebuke to Hollywood’s mercurial era. They’re as far as you can get from the Marvel rule that no situation is so serious, no stakes so high that they can’t be interrupted by a clever, self-aware joke. These are solemn, serious films, modeled on classic cinematic epics Lawrence of Arabia and with the intention of conveying the bizarre visions of Frank Herbert’s science fiction books in the most honest way possible.

Except for Dune: part twoVilleneuve and his associates seem to have realized that a little levity goes a long way. One of the reasons why this film is a lot more enjoyable than the first – besides its more even and purposeful dramatic structure, and the fact that it wasn’t released in the middle of a pandemic – is that Villeneuve has figured out how to loosen up the film . a little without disturbing the mood. With much of the visionary world-building work already done, he could afford (or perhaps was told by studio bosses) to sprinkle in some more crowd-pleasing stuff.

This is evident in the film’s two most memorable turns: Javier Bardem’s Stilgar and Austin Butler’s Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. It would be unfair to call them camp, but these two actors do bring a vibrant, outsized performance style that can hold its own amid the grandeur of Villeneuve’s visuals or the din and clatter of Hans Zimmer’s score. They do more than just hold their own: they punctuate a windy, monolithic film with a much-needed note of fun and evil.

Bardem is the biggest surprise of all Part twoif only because there is little about his stoic demeanor in it Part One would have led you to suspect he’d be playing the sequel for outright lols. Stilgar is still the cool and courageous leader of the Fremen, but Bardem brightens up the character with a recurring bit about his fanatical belief that Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) is the Lisan al Gaib, a messianic figure prophesied to bring Fremen freedom would deliver.

Like it a character Monty Python’s Life by Brian, Stilgar jumps on any evidence, no matter how contradictory, that Paul is the chosen one—from his choice of Muad’Dib, a small desert mouse, as his Fremen warrior name (“It’s perfect!”) to his insistence that he is not at all the Lisan al Gaib (“Only Lisan al Gaib would be so modest!”). Bardem’s comic timing and wide-eyed credulous conviction invariably brings down the audience; it’s such a well-run joke that it came straight from the movie and became a meme.

But Bardem does not ridicule Stilgar. The character’s passionate need to believe is a sign of fallible but touching human optimism in a film that is more often about political schemes so deep-rooted that they span centuries. We laugh at Stilgar, but it’s a loving laugh of recognition and identification – we’d rather be him than almost anyone else in the film.

Not so for the other notable performer, who is at the opposite end of the spectrum of broad film archetypes from “favorite uncle.” As Feyd-Rautha, Butler is pure, cartoonish evil: the sadistic, spoiled nepo-baby of the evil Harkonnen empire. Butler shot Dune: part two around the same time Elvis was in theaters, but before his breakthrough performance in that film had even earned him an Oscar nomination, his hunger to impress shines through the screen.

To his credit, he doesn’t try to imbue Feyd-Rautha with nuance or psychological complexity. He understands that the brief is iconic, two-dimensional, literally black-and-white movie villains. The performance is more about appearance and physicality than anything else. Butler’s lanky figure takes on a spider-like appearance; he moves and strikes with a gliding ferocity in the fight scenes. His handsome boy appearance is transformed by a smooth skull cap that falls over his eyebrows into something repulsive in his nakedness – without losing their magnetic quality.

Butler’s boldest transformation, however, is vocal: an uncanny imitation of his co-star Stellan Skarsgård’s accent, intonation and phrasing. (Skarsgård plays Feyd-Rautha’s uncle, the big bad Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.) Doing an impression of a legendary actor to their faces is a great choice for a young actor to make in a big, high-stakes film, and it could have backfired, but it pays off both dramatically – showing how Feyd-Rautha’s uncle shaped him in his own image – as a kind of acting special effect. It’s creepy, weird and otherworldly, but also an entertainingly daring gesture in its own right. Like so many great movie villain performances, Butler’s Feyd-Rautha is full of flavor in a way that straddles the line between intentionally and unintentionally funny. (Skarsgård was I’m certainly stimulated by it.)

There are more great performances in it Dune: part two — Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson both perform plausible and disturbing character transformations over the course of the film. Zendaya, meanwhile, quietly but firmly asserts herself as the soul of the film in a true star performance. But Butler and Bardem’s old-fashioned ham just jumps off the screen. They’re exactly what you need from a supporting character in a monumental epic: a kind of actor-type greatness to match the greatness of everything else.