I watched this Saturday.

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.

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 thoughts behind his sullen face.

The one part I didn’t like was the climactic dagger fight. It could have been better choreographed and coordinated with camera angles, and I’m still not sure how Paul’s knife wound up in Feyd at the end.

Overall I was very happy with the movie.