Hurried along to the local Imax to catch one of the last two showings here before it gets shunted onto a standard cinema screen to make way for other froth and boom that needs to be shown BIG!!!

Impressive. Better put together than the last offering. Felt like I'd had fun when the credits rolled.

Looked at more critically, there are some big oddities. The Spice hardly features in either film, which kind of makes the motivation of all these noble houses to war over a sandy planet a bit obscure. The emperor's armies land on Arrakis and combine with the armies of the Harkonnens. The film goes to some length to explore the jaw-dropping strength of this force - which is then wiped out in what feels like 5 minutes by a load of poorly equipped Fremen. The Sardaukar troops (most feared military force in the universe)  which we see being trained in the first film (one of the more striking sections) actually perform like a bunch of cub-scouts. We see very little of Paul's abilities and his Bene Gesserit fighting skills, the "weirding ways" that he taught the Fremen, have been removed altogether. If the film had been a book, and not the other way round, it would have been sent back by the publisher's editors for amendment in dozens of areas: weak characters, an unbalanced feel to some of the events, and so on.

Nevertheless, an enjoyable 2 and 3/4 hours.

It definitely felt like a slight step up from the first film. Not that there was much wrong with the first film, but I watched it again in advance of Part 2, and watching the two together definitely helped with the issues I had with Part 1. I'd felt it was bit workmanlike in places on first viewing, but I didn't feel that when watching the them as a whole.

I agree with your points, but in the grand scheme of things (and hooboy is it a grand scheme), they didn't bother me much. All in all, definitely a film worth seeing on the biggest screen possible.