Everything That Happens in a Dune: Part Two 4DX Screening

If those people who ran away from the train-coming-at-the-screen movie in the early 1900s had 4DX and a sandworm, it simply would have killed them. Photo: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Picture

Experiencing Dune: Part Two in 4DX is like drinking the film’s sacred blue Water of Life: You will die. You may see visions with awakened senses unknown to man or prophet before you. If you haven’t had the pleasure of getting your shit rocked by 4DX, it’s a high-tech rig where the seating moves along with the movie and practical effects like wind and fog are deployed in the theater to coincide with the action. It’s described on Regal’s website as “the biggest innovation in cinematic technology to date.� That means in their copywriter’s estimation, the inventions of synchronized sound and Technicolor have nothing on 4DX.

Much like the Fremen journeying to the South of Arrakis, on Wednesday I too made a holy pilgrimage to a hostile and borderline uninhabitable land (Times Square) to watch Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic in the Regal’s newly opened 4DX auditorium, purportedly the largest on earth, with 296 seats in front of a 60-foot screen. If the first Dune dawdled before it got to the good stuff, then the sequel is all good stuff, wall-to-wall lore, action, world-building, production design, and kissing. And the grander the sequences, the more the 4DX chairs really work to make you feel like you’re riding the movie as much as you’re watching it.

Does 4DX detract from a certain somber weightiness Villeneuve is trying to impart? Maybe. Did the cast and crew intend Dune: Part Two to be greeted with shrieks and laughter? Probably not. But giant blockbusters should be fun, and this is definitely that. Before the show, an executive in attendance boasted of the auditorium’s “more than 20 effects,� including everything from scents, to bubbles, to one of 4DX’s most notorious gimmicks, jets that spray water in your face. I assumed Dune, famously the driest film franchise, would afford no opportunities for spray. I was wrong. I also wanted to know what spice smelled like: more on that in a bit. If you’re intrigued by the prospect of fully immersive sandworm-riding simulation but are wary of paying $28 a ticket and signing a liability waiver, here’s everything that happens in Dune: Part Two in 4DX.

Spoilers ahead. 

Vibrating captions
The movie opens with a caption about how spice is life, underscored by something that sounds like didgeridoo, deep and thrumming. Whenever Hans Zimmer really wails on those bassy tones, expect to feel that thrum in your butt.

Lots of tilting up and over and down the titular dunes
When a character scales a sand dune, the chairs gently tilt up along with them. When they slide their way down some sort of ledge or hill, the chairs pitch downward so it almost feels like falling. When a character does fall, usually from an aircraft but sometimes when thrown to the ground, the chair jolted me with a big thud.

Getting shot
When those early Harkonnen scouts get shot and their bodies hit the floor, know that you will feel it. One pedagogically remarkable thing about 4DX is how it forces audiences to take in the corporeal perspectives of multiple characters and even objects at once, broadening who the viewer identifies with beyond the obvious protagonists or camera eye. In this thesis I will …

Ferguson smash! 
At one point, Rebecca Ferguson’s Lady Jessica hoists a rock above her head and smashes it down on a guy, and the chair hoisted and dropped me in turn. This is just one of many aforementioned feelings of “being� the inanimate object in a scene throughout the film.

Throwing hands
Timothée Chalamet’s first scene of hand-to-hand combat had the whole audience getting jostled and shaken and whipped around by the seats, which don’t just vibrate and tilt in place. They lift, fall, bump up and down, and jiggle back and forth. I’m someone who can’t wear a VR headset without getting sick, but this didn’t induce motion sickness at all. The rhythm and motions of the chairs are really well attuned to how the camera moves and how the shots are cut.

Vomit
Whenever a character vomits, the chairs rumbled. Mercifully, we were not sprayed with water for this, nor were there smell effects.

The thumpers
What makes Dune such a perfect movie for 4DX is just how many vibrations are already built into the movie and score. It’s totally seamless when the Fremen use thumpers — devices that rhythmically beat deep into the ground so the sandworms feel them. The 4DX thumps are stronger in close-up and softer when a thumper is farther in the background.

Soaring vistas
When the camera flies over the spice fields of Arrakis, the chairs lift and gently float side to side for a Soarin’ Over California Epcot effect.

Assaulting the help 
The first time Dave Bautista’s Harkonnen enforcer Rabban smashes an adviser’s head in, the chairs slammed us back and forth in kind. I was almost disappointed when they didn’t deploy the below-seat “ankle tickler� (that’s the official name) when Rabban kisses Feyd-Rautha’s boot, though. A couple hours in 4DX-land makes weirdos and creeps of us all.

The Voice
Whenever a member of the Bene Gesserit or Paul Atreides uses their special commanding “Voice,� the chair emitted a blast of reverberating vibrations. It’s one of the best uses of 4DX effects in the whole experience, totally cohesive with what’s happening in the film and blending perfectly with the sound design. Speaking of sound: The speaker system in the 4DX auditorium is good, and all the mechanical movement there made one distracting noise. It settled down during dialogue-heavy scenes, ensuring that I could actually follow what these beautiful, symmetrically faced space people were talking about. If you’re trying to follow every single move in the larger action and battle sequences, though, the chairs going full Tilt-A-Whirl might distract you.

Poison-induced seizure 
Jittery.

Javier Bardem being a silly goose 
At one point, Stilgar goes “ah!� to scare Paul, and the chair shook to really drive it home.

Ornithopters
The beating dragonfly-style wings of these Dune aircraft are ubiquitous throughout much of the film, and the chairs buzzed whenever they showed up.

Getting bazooka-ed by Zendaya
During the incredible Fremen sneak attack on a Harkonnen spice-harvester ship, Chani aims a bazooka at the craft. When a Harkonnen sneaks up behind her, she turns around and bazookas him right into a wall of the ship. It felt like the chairs were shot back too.

Explosions!
Not only did these totally thrash me about, but flash-bang lights went off in the corner of the theater to really sell it. They also flashed for Harkonnen fireworks, which was especially effective in the scene where Lea Seydoux seduces Feyd-Rautha in a shadowy hallway illuminated by flashes of light.

Fog!
Small puffs of cloudy vapor rose in front of the screen whenever anyone or anything kicked up dust, sand, or smoke — which was often. This effect was usually pretty distracting; it reminded me of the fog machines at, say, a laser-tag maze or a concert.

Dave Bautista opening a door
Whoosh!

Dangling off an aircraft
There’s a fight sequence in which characters dangle off the edge of an airborne vehicle, and the chairs had us tilted so far forward I could have slipped out.

Sandworm riding
The pinnacle of the Dune: Part Two cinematic experience was every sandworm-riding sequence. The theater blew wind in our faces and violently bounced and threw us around, and oddly, it wasn’t too distracting. It sort of enhanced the visceral excitement of those scenes, which is the whole point of them anyway.

Water!
One of the only gushes of water I felt was when Austin Butler stabbed an opponent in his Harkonnen arena birthday extravaganza. This was one of many stabbings in the film, but we were spared the jets the rest of the time, except for when Harkonnens desecrated the Fremens’ sacred well. This is meant to be a devastating moment, but it’s also a splishy-splashy good time.

Entering a planet’s atmosphere
A spacecraft burning up while entering a planetary atmosphere felt like getting bounced up and down on a giant grandpa’s knee … if that makes any sense.

Missile trajectory
At one point, my chair glided from left to right following the arc of a missile. This felt almost lyrical.

AFTER SHOCK 
During the huge climactic battle of the film, the seats were simply too in motion for me to pick up a pen and take notes, but at one point I managed to write “AFTER SHOCK� in capital letters and I don’t know what this means.

Smells? 
There were a couple of moments when I definitely noticed an unplaceable sweet smell in the theater; one was when an Arrakeen spice reserve was blown up.

Sandworm coming at the screen
If those people who ran away from the train-coming-at-the-screen movie in the early 1900s had 4DX and a sandworm, it simply would have killed them.

Punched in the back 
I didn’t notice too much of the leg tickler under the seats or the specific jabbing motions from the back of the chair until the final Twink Fight™ between Paul and Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler). One blow to Paul corresponded with a sharp jab in the back. The seat also thrust me forward when Paul pulled a knife out of his shoulder.

So. Is 4DX the right Dune: Part Two viewing experience for you? If you enjoy theme parks, thrill rides, or novelty in general, completely. This isn’t the most serious way to watch Dune. And while I personally didn’t feel motion sick afterward, if you’re prone to that, or you’re pregnant, or you don’t want to spill your $30 worth of popcorn and soda all over the ground, stay away. (When the lights came on after the movie, the theater floors were carnage.). If you take the Frank Herbert novels extremely seriously, meanwhile, or if you like to author extensive posts on r/TrueFilm, or if you’re incensed that Dune’s release date was pushed from November to this weekend, potentially dashing its Oscar chances … maybe you want to take it in on IMAX instead. I personally think that’s the coward’s way. I think it keeps the film at arm’s length. At the same time, I’m someone who thinks Muppet-Vision 3-D at Disney World is the greatest theatrical experience in America, so I might not be the best judge.

In a twisted or maybe just naïve way, I found this to be a truly pure moviegoing experience — not despite the gimmickry but because of it. Movies began life in the late 19th century as diversions and spectacles meant to play with and trick the senses, show off new technologies, and transport audiences to something beyond the realm of the everyday. George Méliès was a magician before he was a filmmaker. Movies were nickel-a-pop fairground attractions before they were high art. I had thought that 4DX was just a way to make bad action movies more fun; turns out they make good movies more fun, too. You can watch Dune on an iPad or a flatscreen TV, but a Roku cannot throw you around like pizza dough while Paul leads the Fremen in a Butlerian jihad ambush.

RIP, Duncan Idaho. You would have loved Dune: Part Two in 4DX.