There’s no way that this story is meant to be only two movies. This is clearly just the first third. If they were intending to have two movies, they would have gone further into the story. The score is a but overdone and repeats itself a little. It could have used more internal variety so the big dreadful moments could arrive with more weight by being different and distinct. Instead it all sounds very heavy. 
    It was a good movie. It strayed outside the original narrative just a little by inserting some modern American anachronisms, but overall did very well at telling the story. The casting was good. Jessica was a little too emotional. She had too many negative emotions too often, so it watered down the moments when her composure breaks down because she breaks down way too often. In the book she is both much softer (in a positive way; kind, inspiring, loving, mourning, hopeful, ambitious) and more imperious and confident. She spends too much time here reacting to all the scary stuff.

    In fact the movie works a little too hard trying to sell you on the scary stuff and all the drama and doesn’t let the positive elements breathe enough. Oscar Issac hits the right notes; he’s right on the nose. And Josh Brolin and whoever played Thufir were pretty good too, if they had only had more time to explore their characters. You need to learn the love the Atreides before you can be properly upset by seeing them come crashing down.

    Oddly enough, I think Jason Momoa was excellent. He helped balance things out and added some tangible warmth and texture to what could have become an overdone drama. He helps keep the tone balanced and helps you see what there is to love about the good guys before it all gets swallowed up in darkness and drama.
   Overall, it was very good. It could have been a bit longer. It could have taken just a little more time on Arakkis before the attack. The turnover happened so quickly it seemed like the Harkonnens left one day and came back two days later, which must have been pretty inconvenient for them. All that packing and unpacking, only to have to pack up and go right back again. The story took its time on Caladan, then got a bit rushed once they were on Arakkis.
     Also, there were way more visions of Zendaya than the plot really needed. It made it seem too much like Paul’s gift and his destiny were all about her, instead of being connected to the entire universe and the whole span of past and future time and infinite possible paths through it. Instead, we got tons of Zendaya, which is basically paid off when he…uh, meets her, which is sort of, not a huge deal in the actual movie because it has no real consequences.
    The design and style of the movie was great, right down the the outfits and the weird rituals with the Sardukar and whatnot. The ineradicable religious nature of humanity, whether that means worshiping God, or strength, or sand worms, or an ideal, or the Emperor, or spice, or a vision, is a big part of the book. And you can communicate it without using so many words through visual storytelling. In fact my only major criticism on that matter is that the movie didn’t get to do it more. Everyone in this story has a vision, a religion of a kind, and is selling it with full pomp and circumstance in the book. Even the Bene Gesserit, who claim only to serve, are really just as manipulative and power hungry and ambitious as everyone else. They think they’re justified in manipulating other people, even whole societies, because it’s all for the greater good, their idea of the greater good. And they’re the ones worthy of controlling it all. 
    Paul is a unique and interesting character because he’s not quite what anyone was expecting or hoping for. He’s not the political leader the Landsraad wanted from the Atreides. He’s not the controllable tool produced at the proper moment that the Bene Gesserit wanted. He’s not what the Fremen were expecting. He’s not what his parents were trying to make of him. He’s not what Thufir or Guerney were trying to make of him, a mentat or a warrior.

    He’s a properly interesting Messiah because all these people had their own mythology and their own plans and had an idea of what they were going to make of Paul and use him for. And even time and the species itself seem to have some role they demand of him. And he’s all of those things and none of them. He’s trying to chart his way through a life of immense possibility while not being swept along by the machinations, schemes, demands, and visions of everyone around him.

    He’s struggling to be an individual and make the right choices. And he’s dreadfully aware that the wrong ones could lead to not only his death, but to his becoming nothing more than a figurehead in someone else’s plans for the universe. He knows that even victory is dangerous, that the Fremen and even the memory of his father are terribly dangerous. And that’s a knowledge that few people ever have to bear, and none with the kind of keenness of vision into the possible futures that Paul has. He can literally see how the victory of each of the competing factions vying for his loyalty all lead to differing disasters. And he has to make his way in the desert, the way that leads to life, when death lies in all directions.
    The book contains all sorts of amazing depths, but the character of Paul and his situation are the deepest. Frank Herbert was really thinking hard about the nature of vision, agency, choice, destiny, demand, and all the deep forces that unite individuals to the sweep of history and the journey of our species.

   As a hero, Paul is an ideal. But it isn’t his power that makes him an ideal. Like all good fairy tales and all good sci-fi, his power is an exaggeration that helps us look at ourselves and who we are and what we can do and what sort of world we inhabit. We have vision, we have agency, we are surrounded by many people, many forces, many plans, many visions that would make use of us, and have us take part in them and navigate them. And we don’t always know what will result.

    We carry the terrible burden of moral awareness. We understand our own power, and we possess the capacity to see the danger lying along many paths, even victorious ones. And we have to navigate that somehow. Paul is a great hero because he is us. His power is our power, blown out of proportion so we can see it playing out more clearly, in a drama of scale we can understand a bit better. And we love it and love watching him go through it because that is what we wish for ourselves, to find a way to walk the path of life in the unforgiving dessert. That’s why Dune is a classic.