Dune: Part Two & Recency Bias

To say that 2024’s Dune: Part Two was universally acclaimed would be, as high praise at it is, a severe understatement. Because, while a universally acclaimed film may just have been found great by most people, Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi sequel has received praise far beyond just being great – it sits as the 15th greatest film of all time on both Letterboxd and IMDB.

And I understand what much of the kneejerk reaction to this response to Dune 2 has been and will continue to be; it’ll be a ton of people who hate on all modern cinema (you know the type) claiming that the film’s hype is merely a product of ‘recency bias.’ They did it with Everything Everywhere All At Once, they did it with Spider-Man ATSV, and they’re doing it with Dune 2.

I know what the title of my article comes off as. It comes off as me being anti-recency bias. It comes off as me believing that Dune 2 is overhyped. Unfortunately, if that’s the sentiment you hold, however, my view could not be farther from the truth. For the rest of this article, rather than going too far into depth about Dune 2, I’ll be attempting to deconstruct the notion of recency bias – a term that has merely become a set of buzzwords.

Films from the 2020s make up 10 films on IMDB’s prestigious top 250 list. When compared to other decades and adjusting for the fact that the 2020s are not yet halfway through, this is a reasonable, perhaps even underrepresented figure. There are 49 00’s films on the list, 43 ‘90s films, and 26 ‘80s films. At the pace 2020s movies are going, they’re going to be well less represented than all three of these decades, as well as the 2010s.

So, does recency bias exist? Yes, it does. But it exists in the exact opposite way than is suggested by modern cinema haters. It exists as an overcorrection for perceived recency bias that isn’t actually there. What I mean by this is that people will review-bomb modern acclaimed films because they think the hype is unjust or simply due to recency bias. This isn’t the case! I promise you that Godzilla Minus One is worth all the praise that got it to the top 200 on this list.

Ultimately, this phenomenon just goes to show that we live in an increasingly contrarian society. In the 1970s, common sentiment about The Godfather being overrated wasn’t spread because it wouldn’t get attention. In the age of social media, however, people are rewarded for having mind-numbingly stupid film takes and negative media literacy.

If you make a Reddit post saying that Dune 2 had a bad score or ugly visual effects, you will rightly get demolished for that take. But in the process, because of the interactions, a few hundred other dimwits might find themselves agreeing with your sentiment so that they can feel as though they’re “better than everyone else who enjoyed this crap!”

Do I think Dune 2 is a top 15 film of all time? No. But do I absolutely see the feat of cinema that it is and embrace the justified praise it’s getting? Yes, of course.

Dune 2 is a revolutionary film in the genre of science fiction and is deserving of the acclaim it has received. Please support good modern blockbusters rather than MCU trash and go see it ASAP.

For more ramblings about movies you can follow me at Letterboxd.com/omgmateo

Thanks for reading!

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