I finally got around to watching this picture last night (at home, rather than at the cinema) and couldn't find any previous discussion on it.
My impression: A decent enough picture, but not quite as good as the first one as a stand-alone piece. The plot dragged at times without a firm sense of what was going on, and Timothee Chalamet didn't quite have the chops to carry off Muad'Dib as well as he did young Paul Atreides.
The music mainly dwelt in the background and didn't quite rise to the occasion in certain set pieces; this was in striking contrast to 1984's Dune soundtrack by Toto and Brian Eno, which complemented the cheesy science fiction with gloriously cheesy music very well indeed. This was a well shot picture, and the small screen probably didn't do full justice to the scope of the desert vistas, so this was an area where Villeneuve carried on successfully from 2021's Part 1.
In terms of acting and characters, this one was noticeably diminished from Part 1. This was partly a function of so many characters being killed off in the first picture, but also of the choices of who would get screen time and to what extent. Austin Butler was praised as Fey Ratha, but when the chief character motivation and development has to be spelled out by someone else, with no other hints, it shows bad writing; ultimately, Sting's role in 1984 probably pips him on account of more meaningful screen time. As said above, Chalamet didn't quite convince in the main role, nor was he given the opportunity to actually show some of the character's prescience; instead, we merely got the Fremen talk about it, which made for a poor substitute. This played into a larger problem of significant action or decisions taking place off screen; what we got instead was protracted PG cuddling scenes between Chalamet and Zendaya Coleman. Dune 2 never quite made its mind up what type of film it was.
Hollywood loves their little one on one Flynning sword and knife fights, and got plenty of scope for it here. There was also the awful cliche of two armies running at each other and degenerating into a confused series of 'cool' one on one battles. This honestly shows up too often to be coincidental and reduced the scope of any clash here to Part #3642 of Silly Melee Cliches.
This does come across as a bit more critical than I intended at the start, but Dune 2 is ultimately a satisfactory picture. I'd grade it somewhere around the low B range, which is a drop from the 2021 flick, which was a solid A. I'd recommend it in a general sense and as a visual spectacle, but Villeneuve's Dune adaption for me is rather asymptotic and I still lean towards Lynch's 1984 effort (albeit the Spicediver Cut).