There was so much good stuff artistically in this movie!
The changes to the story worked really well, IMO, towards updating it for modern cynical sensibilities:
I loved Zendaya’s portrayal of Chani and her girl friend calling out Paul and Jessica’s colonialist bullshit.
Jessica’s “strange” behavior as a pregnant woman. I agree with others that having Jessica speak for Alia worked better than having a child actor like Lynch’s version.
Stilgar’s parody of religious fanaticism was hilarious!
Visually, making the worm riding look like some kind of extreme sport worked well
The Giedi Prime black and white/infrared sequences were brilliant, although seeing the Baron and Feyd in regular flesh tones afterwards felt strange.
The Atreides nuke missiles flying across the sky felt apocalyptic
The Sardukar ranks were notably not as rigidly disciplined as we saw in the first film.
Unlike others, I thought that Christopher Walken’s emperor was good. Age decrepit on the verge of doddering, but with dark intelligent thoughts behind his sullen face. The only problem with casting Walken was that he’s too recognizable.
The one part I didn’t like was the climactic dagger fight. I would have liked to see the action better choreographed and coordinated with camera angles to make the sequence of thrusts and parries clearer. I also would have liked to see contrasting fighting styles between whatever Feyd does, and Paul’s classical Atreides training mixed with Fremen savagery. I’m still not sure how Paul’s knife wound up in Feyd at the end.
I also noticed unlike other adaptations, they didn’t do the weirding modules, the Atreides-developed sonic weapons that give the Fremen some kind of combat advantage. But I didn’t miss them.