Movies Like
Movies Like Dune Part Two: Sci-Fi Sequels
By Jordan A. · · 5 min read
Dune: Part Two came out in 2024 and did the thing sequels are supposed to do and almost never manage. Denis Villeneuve and co-writer Jon Spaihts took a first film that was mostly setup and turned the back half of Frank Herbert's novel into something with actual stakes, where the hero's victory is also the disaster. Hans Zimmer scored it again. It won Oscars for sound and visual effects.
The cast is the other reason it works. Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya carry it, but Rebecca Ferguson gets the darkest arc, Austin Butler shows up as Feyd-Rautha in a stark black and white arena sequence, and Javier Bardem plays a true believer as comedy that stops being funny. Dune: Part Three, adapting Dune Messiah, is in post-production and scheduled for 18 December 2026, so the story isn't finished.
If what you want next is more sequels that expand a world rather than repeat it, that's a narrower category than it sounds. Most franchise entries get smaller. Here are eight that got bigger, and one honest outlier.
The other Villeneuve epic
Blade Runner 2049 (2017) is the closest match on this list and it isn't close. Villeneuve again, with Roger Deakins on camera taking the Oscar for cinematography, and Ryan Gosling opposite Harrison Ford. It runs 163 minutes and is in no hurry whatsoever. It also lost a great deal of money, grossing $267.5 million against a budget of $150 to $185 million when it needed roughly $400 million to break even. Slowness is the whole texture, so if Part Two's quiet stretches were the parts you checked your phone through, skip it. It's on Paramount Plus as of August 2026.
Sequels that outgrew the original
The Empire Strikes Back (1980) was directed by Irvin Kershner, written by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan, and scored by John Williams. Reviews at the time were mixed, with critics unsure about the darker tone, and it is now routinely called the best film in the series. That reversal is worth knowing when people complain that Part Two is too grim. The Vader revelation still ranks among the most cited twists in film. It entered the National Film Registry in 2010 and is on Disney Plus as of August 2026.
Aliens (1986) is James Cameron following a horror film with a war film and getting away with it. Sigourney Weaver returns, joined by Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen and Bill Paxton. It won Oscars for visual effects and sound effects editing, and Weaver's Best Actress nomination was the first ever given for a science fiction performance. Cameron described the shift as going from a haunted house to a roller coaster. If you loved Part Two for turning setup into momentum, this is the same move done in 1986.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) rescued a franchise by spending less money. Nicholas Meyer directed it for about $12 million after the first film's bloated budget, and it's the one every subsequent Star Trek film has tried to copy. Ricardo Montalban plays Khan as a man ruined by a grudge, which gives it a real antagonist instead of a phenomenon. The effects have aged; the writing has not. It's short, roughly two hours, and it earns its ending honestly.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) cost between $94 and $102 million with marketing, making it the most expensive film ever made at that point. It won four Oscars, all technical, and the T-1000 was the first computer generated main character in a blockbuster, with ILM sometimes taking ten days to render fifteen seconds. Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor is the reason it holds up. Like Part Two, it inverts its first film's premise rather than restaging it.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) is the middle chapter problem solved. Peter Jackson spent roughly three months and five hundred extras on Helm's Deep, and Andy Serkis's Gollum, animated by Weta from his own performance, made the case for motion capture as acting. It won Oscars for visual effects and sound editing. The Frodo and Sam sections drag for a lot of people, which is the standard complaint about middle films and one Part Two mostly avoids.
Two more, with caveats
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) is George Miller's fourth Mad Max film and functions as a sequel in name only, which is part of why it works. Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron lead it, roughly ninety percent of the effects were done practically with more than 150 stunt performers, and it won six Oscars. It has almost no dialogue and no exposition at all, so it is the anti-Dune in structure while matching it exactly in scale. As of August 2026 it isn't on a US subscription service.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) is the prequel Miller made nine years later, with Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth. It grossed $174.4 million against a $168 million budget and lost money badly. It is also a genuinely strange, sprawling, chapter-headed film that spends its runtime building the world Fury Road blows through in two hours. Recommended with a caveat: it is slower and stranger than the film it precedes, and plenty of people preferred the simpler one.
How to pick tonight
If you want Villeneuve's exact wavelength, Blade Runner 2049. If you want the feeling of a sequel that raises the stakes and then refuses to make them comfortable, Empire or Terminator 2. Aliens and Wrath of Khan are the two that move fastest, which matters on a weeknight. Save Fury Road for a night with a good sound system and no interruptions.
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Topics covered: dune, sci-fi, epic, sequel, villeneuve, blade-runner-2049, aliens, worldbuilding
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and writes every guide on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu, and he still tests every pick the hard way: by watching it.