The first words to grace the screen in “Dune: Part Two” set the stakes for what is to come: “Power over Spice is power over all.” The stage is set for an exploration of power and control, and one of the best films to parse those topics in a hot minute.

Director Denis Villeneuve’s follow-up to “Dune” (2021) keeps everything that made the original film good, cuts the fat and amps up what remains to an 11. Rather than a political thriller that transitions into a disaster film, “Dune: Part Two” tells a corruption story with massive setpieces, intense action, a powerful love story and a dash of humor. 

Shedding the slower pace of the first film serves the successor well. Villeneuve’s sequel pushes through exposition much quicker, pulling viewers’ attention directly to the film’s tensest moments.

Picking up soon after part one ends, the film throws viewers directly into the action. Right away, the film’s scale is set through sprawling shots of the desert landscape and an imposing soundtrack. It immediately sets itself apart from the first film by showcasing the expansiveness of the environment, in contrast to the previous entry’s consistently close-quarters setting. 

Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) are presumed dead fugitives of the Harkonnen regime and outsiders to the Fremen they have met. Returners alongside them include Chani (Zendaya) and Fremen leader Stilgar (Javier Bardem).

Zendaya plays a much bigger role in the film as compared to part one, thankfully. Chani is no longer a mysterious, far-off figure from Paul’s dreams; it’s made clear that she has a deeper history with the Fremen and will no longer be a complacent observer of the story.

Ferguson gives another standout performance, gradually becoming more unsettling — visually and behaviorally — as the film progresses. In an unexpected turn of events, Bardem’s Stilgar serves as comic relief at times, expertly managing to complement the graveness of the plot rather than clash with it. 

Bardem’s twist on Stilgar is part of a larger trend of repurposing plot points from Frank Herbert’s book in a new way to stabilize the flow of the film.

Florence Pugh’s Princess Irulan exemplifies this in between most major sequences of the film. While absent from the first movie, Irulan — in the book — conveyed heaps of exposition using diary entries in between chapters. “Dune: Part Two” makes use of the convention, using these more laid-back scenes to prepare for a greater struggle about to happen. While these sequence breaks can occasionally get a bit too busy to keep up with, they allow the main sequences of the film the privilege to tell their stories without being bogged down by extraneous details.

Further, fans of the book may notice a few missing scenes and plotlines in the film. Though, in comparison to part one — which elected to cut one of the best scenes from the book, the dinner scene — this film’s changes streamline the most important parts of the plot and cut out uninteresting drama that didn’t benefit the book.

One such change is a difference in Paul’s demeanor amid his rise to power. While the book often portrays Paul as a woe-is-me sad boy, the film paints him in a much more commanding light — which works very well thanks to Chalamet’s bold and dominating conduct. It’s a striking departure from Chalamet’s typical, more soft-spoken roles, but you wouldn’t know it based on his performance; he is as convincing and charismatic as ever.

Alas, no protagonist is anything without their antagonists, and the Harkonnens are some of the worst of the worst. Carrying over from the first film, Beast Rabban Harkonnen, played by Dave Bautista, shows a completely different side of the character, played just as well — if not better — than in part one. Stretching outside of the war-general-tough-guy persona, Bautista plays a genuinely terrified and desperate dredge.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen (Austin Butler), an overconfident psychopath that audiences can love to despise. While Butler altogether isn’t on screen for that long, his few scenes leave a lasting impression.

Ironically, given the chaotic nature of his character, Butler’s scenes contain some of the most overt political thriller elements of the film. The decision to limit these elements to a handful of scenes — despite “Dune” being a political thriller story — keeps the pacing of the film much more consistent than its previous counterpart.

In other words, the audience never loses sight of the approaching evil. Whether that evil is Harkonnens or a threat closer to home, the muddled politics of the “Duneiverse” don’t pull viewers’ attention away from the wickedness.

This tenet is even reflected in the film’s visuals, which leave nothing to the imagination. Despite the dusty setting and dark plot, all of the film’s largest setpieces appear in clear, explicit detail in almost every scene. In contrast to the first film, the sequel is more confident in the quality of its visual effects and, thus, does not pull any punches.

Neither does the sheer amount of badassery that occupies each and every sequence of the film. Every relatively memorable scene in the first film would be a casual Sunday compared to what “Dune: Part Two” has to offer. 

The sandworms that were little more than environmental obstacles in the first film become supporting characters in their own right. The sequel’s action scenes take on a liveliness not at all present in its predecessor. 

Thanks to this added energy, along with the other changes made in the film’s story and fantastic performances by a star-studded cast, “Dune: Part Two” transcends “Dune” — both the film and the novel.