I mentioned going to Dune part 2 in the saloon and promised to make a post about it. Without spoiling the main events of the plot, I'm going to discuss what's so amazing about Dune. I'll focus on the books, since this is ~BooksAndArticles, but I'll also give my impressions of the adaptation.
I'd love to hear other people's thoughts about book and/or movie.
Dune (the book)
First off, Dune is one of my favorite books of all time. I'm an economist with a background in atmospheric science who loves sci-fi, so Dune is very much up my alley. I've read all of the Frank Herbert books, and I recommend all of them, but the first one is really special. It's worth noting that Star Wars was heavily influenced by Dune (to the point where I've heard Star Wars referred to as a knock-off).
Dune is a planet that is the sole producer of an extremely valuable commodity, "spice", that is basically a combination of spices and petroleum in the context of Earth history. So, think about a substantially more extreme version of the spice trade. The planet is incredibly inhospitable: hotter and drier than any desert on Earth, plus there are enormous carnivorous worms in the desert. The native inhabitants of the planet are ferocious desert warriors who are in perpetual conflict with the oligarchs attempting to harvest spice.
@r3drun3 made a post about the economics of Dune. The political setting of this universe is very detailed. There's an empire, but also great houses, trade guilds, and professional societies. Each of those are described in great detail, which makes the world incredibly immersive. There are a ton of dynamics in play all the time, but it's written so well as to not be confusing or hard to keep track of.
There are many themes being explored in Dune (understatement alert), so I'll just discuss a couple of my favorites. The most striking element of the book to me was how intricately detailed the native culture of Dune (the Fremen) is described. The society is fundamentally shaped around water scarcity and there are a wide array of cultural practices, beliefs, and technologies that exist to help them survive this place. There is also a religious belief system that has been externally curated and manipulated to make the Fremen receptive to a messiah that one of the secret societies is trying to create. It's a fascinating exploration of propaganda and myth making.
As a slight aside, I've been reading The Wheel of Time (review here) and there's a lot of overlap with Dune. One is sci-fi and the other is fantasy, but there are a ton of parallels.
Dune Parts 1 and 2 (the movies)
The two recent movies are fairly faithful to the book they are adapting, but they have radically pared down the content. The first book describes many characters in great detail, which would have been very difficult to cover in a movie. As a result, the movies are largely told from Paul Atreides' perspective and many of the things that would have been explained in the book are seen without exposition in the movies.
The director does a phenomenal job of showing many of the complex elements of the books without needing to spend precious screen time on exposition. Dune is also a very alien universe, despite being mostly about humanity. It takes place in the far distant future and the technologies are supposed to be simultaneously understandable in function and unfamiliar in form. This is executed beautifully on screen: everything is grand and distinctive and foreign.
The performances are overwhelmingly excellent, with just a couple of exceptions (Jason Momoa cough, Christopher Walken cough). Timothée Chalamet, in particular, has some incredible scenes in part 2.