At the heart of Dune is the tragic interplay between man and the grand forces of history. As I described in my introduction to the philosophy of Dune:
Man is not moved by the crude, surface-level events which we perceive day-to-day, but by tremendous forces which we dimly perceive: vast interwoven ecologies of time, history, environment, politics, religion, technology. These complex forces are in flux, alive, each bleeding into the next….
Through this storm, man drifts, buffeted by the forces which move around him. But rare men arise who have the vision and will to orient themselves, to cut through the storm, to command the winds to change. Sometimes, man can master the storm.
The genius of Frank Herbert was his ability to survey these forces of history from outside of time; to provide a God’s-eye view of man, environment, and destiny as they evolve across lifetimes.
The book was published half a century ago, and yet the traces of that cultural moment are barely perceptible. No: Herbert grappled with timeless questions and bought them to life with sophistication and historic perspective.
The same cannot be said of Dune: Part Two. In the film, each of the forces upon which the events and philosophy of the book revolve are twisted and stunted by the paranoias of our present moment.
The filmmakers did not have the vision or the conviction to transcend our time in any aspect except the visual and superficial. They succumbed to the pressure to make a work that was crudely relatable, compressing the narrative into our particular sociological arc.
In so doing, they inverted the central value of Dune: rather than allowing us to step outside of our time into eternity, they projected our time onto eternity, announcing that our current political reality and beliefs are now and forever. They were bold enough to show alien visuals but not alien people.
Their limits as storytellers are demonstrated by their naive understanding of the central Dune themes of race, sex, faith, and authority.
I. RACE
This was DIE-Dune.
Instead of of Herbert’s unique and sophisticated imagination, we received the usual tired modern preoccupations with race. Never mind that our current reality is born of economic conditions and transport technologies that are irrelevant to the deep desert, that modern diversity is only possible when races from different biomes have been superimposed within the last few generations, or that calculated diversity representation is born of paranoias completely unique to the modern West.
The Fremen should not be portrayed as diverse. In fact, very much the opposite: they should have a unique and coherent racial identity. To portray them as ethnically diverse is to miss a central theme of Frank Herbert's work: the staggering power of the environment to shape man, and vice versa. Ethnogenesis, an integral part of the Dune universe, was discarded entirely.
Ethnogenesis (from Ancient Greek ἔθνος (éthnos) 'group of people, nation', and γένεσις (génesis) 'beginning, coming into being') is the process of the formation and development of an ethnic group. The question of how this happens is at the heart of Dune.
There are many factors that contribute to the forging of a people, relating to the boundaries of religion, language, identity, and history. But one factor stands out in particular in Dune: environment.
You can’t just stop with the people who are living in this type of environment: you have to go on to how the environment works on the people, and how they work on their environment.
— Frank Herbert, 1965 interview
The searing and unforgiving desert planet Arrakis gives rise to a new, perfected, indigenous desert people, described as sinewy - almost desiccated - with pale olive skin protected by their stillsuits. The Fremen are made for the desert. Their bodies - inside and out - have been radically altered by it.
Every detail of their physiology - just as every detail of their lives - was considered.
Jessica wondered. She tipped up the point, drew a delicate scratch with the blade's edge above Mapes' left breast. There was a thick welling of blood that stopped almost immediately. 'Ultrafast coagulation', Jessica thought. 'A moisture-conserving mutation?'
— Frank Herbert, Dune
Herbert's creation of the Fremen is one of his great achievements, requiring a profound meditation on man, environment, evolution, and identity.
Herbert constructed a painstakingly detailed world, in an exercise of ecological imagination as gradual, as delicate, and as complex as such a planetary transformation itself might be.
— Timothy O’Reilly, Frank Herbert
He created something fully formed, captivating, beautiful, and full of life - not a mere stand-in for political correctness.
Her skin was a pale olive. Dark hair swept back from her high forehead, throwing emphasis on sharp cheekbones and aquiline nose between the dense darkness of her eyes.
— Frank Herbert, Dune
To discard this in order to show a refection of modern American race politics is deeply uninspired and jarring. We should see Fremen who are a vision of how alien our progeny might become if they spent 10,000 years fighting for existence in the deep desert of a burning planet.
The Fremen of the book borrow aesthetics from the Bedouin peoples of North Africa. Ironically - this nonwhite group is the one treated with the greatest disrespect by the filmmakers.
It’s demeaning for the filmmakers to notice that a group are framed as a nonwhite and consider them replaceable with random collections of unrelated nonwhite people. Are all nonwhites the same? The Fremen featured actors from Spain to Somalia, which are 4000 miles apart and completely ethnically unrelated, and yet in the film apparently comprise a single tribe.
It is not just the massive distances between the ethnic origins of these actors that breaks immersion, it is the discarding of the entire set of structures and relationships of the tribe - all of which are central to the Fremen identity. You cannot seamlessly slot strangers into the tribe.
The ‘otherness’ of the Fremen should be accentuated by their internal ethnic coherence. When Liet Kynes is entirely the same race as the Fremen - as shown in the films but not the case in the book, in which he is the son of a white visiting anthropologist - one is left wondering what is special and different about the Fremen at all.
Everyone knows that these are not the aesthetics and social dynamics of the tribe, even viewers who have no particular interest in cultural anthropology. Forcing DEI aesthetics on the audience breaks immersion and reminds the viewer that this is ‘just another Hollywood production’.
If that’s one’s philosophy, why not follow it to its natural conclusion and cram in Mongolians (Gobi Desert), Rajasthanis (Thar Desert), and Native Americans (Mojave Desert)? Or would that look too ridiculous?
II. MASCULINE & FEMININE
“Then sing me one of your songs,” Chani pleaded. Such feminine allure in that girl-child’s voice, Jessica thought. I must caution Paul about their women … and soon.
I will keep my commentary on the portrayal of Chani short, as others have already identified much that was deeply wrong and ugly about how she was portrayed.
As with the other great themes of the Dune universe, Herbert meditates on the masculine and feminine duality to powerful effect. In keeping with the other accentuated polarities of the book - human/animal, desert/water, present/future, faith/power - the contrast between the sexes is heightened and sharpened.
The all-female Bene Gesserit manipulate that most female power - fertility - while the all-male Dukes manipulate that most male power - violence. By drawing these stark divisions, Herbert is then able to define the exact point at which these divisions meet - in the person of Paul Atreides - and the author is thus able to exact tremendous and multi-dimensional pressure on his protagonist.
This point of tension, to be used to full effect, must be treated with sophistication. The film succeeds, in this regard, with Rebecca Ferguson’s fantastic portrayal of Jessica, who has a captivating arc in which the pressures of the narrative gradually transform her from one archetype to another: from a loving and concerned mother into a calculating and devouring mother, whose love is still deeply present but must be subjugated to political concerns.
Her unborn daughter - made real by incredible visuals in the film - must be exposed to a terrible substance in order to save her firstborn son; the human desires of her son must be eliminated in forcing him to take up his destiny to preserve the family. She schemes; she threatens; she frightens; she loves. This is a raw and perennial portrayal of the conflicting forces operative on the female psyche. Her actions both save and corrupt her children, and the tragedy is felt exquisitely.
Chani is portrayed with none of this subtlety. Her femininity, rather than being exploited for tragic effect, is simply eliminated. The few aspects of her femininity that are preserved are entirely negative (mocking, sulking, resentful). Unlike in the books, she is shown as sterile, bearing her man no children (an unforgivable omission, given that tragic commentary on bloodlines and fertility are perhaps the central theme of Dune).
There’s no indication that she’s dependent on Paul at all: she’s as tall as him, as assertive as him, and seems to be as successful in combat as him. It’s not clear if there are any substantive character differences between Paul and Chani at all. The only obvious difference is that Chani is disrespectful to authority, and openly makes fun of Stilgar (her ‘commanding officer’ - which makes the portrayal of her as a perfect soldier schizophrenic, because she doesn’t act with the discipline of a soldier at all).
The elimination of Chani’s noble femininity removes the possibility of the tragic masculine-feminine interplay with Paul which is supposed to be the emotional heart of the story. She is supposed to fall ever deeper in love and dependence to a man who is being pulled further and further from the humanity which is necessary to return that love.
Dependence is key here: if she does not depend upon Paul then his increasing distance lacks emotional weight. Yes: Chani is a competent fighter able to hold her own against some men, but this is not the essence of her character. Her capacity for violence is an absurdity of the pressures of the Fremen existence. That this girl who is described as ‘elven’, small, feminine, and childlike is a capable killer is deeply unnatural, even in the Dune universe, and the unsatisfied yearning of her feminine subconscious for a return to a natural existence with Paul is essential to the tragedy.
Chani’s devotion, which can never be entirely returned, is a tension that must be maintained for the viewer to remain interested. Instead, when Paul leaves her to pursue his destiny, she just gets angry. She goes back to her natural state in the film, which is barren and sulking violence. She has no arc.
This completely precludes the tragic conclusion which Herbert carefully architects, in which all characters live but none get what they truly want: Paul is unable to prevent the jihad he fears and unable to marry the woman he loves; Chani must watch as another woman marries the man she depends upon - having lost the child she bore him; Irulian is forced into a political marriage with a man who will never love her. Yet the three remain together - bound by this unresolvable tension as their empire spreads violence across the universe, all captives to their fate.
III. FAITH & AUTHORITY
God created Arrakis to train the faithful.
I will conclude with a brief reflection on the mishandling of religion in Dune: Part II.
No reductive approach to religion in Herbert’s Dune is possible: the line between the true and untrue is always obscured. Which aspects of prophesy and religion are mere manipulation? Which aspects are so true that no human can control or stop them?
Instead, what is portrayed in the film is an entirely modern, skeptical, and reductive understanding of faith. It is completely unintegrated with the story and philosophy of the universe.
The filmmakers fail to understand that the atheistic separation of ‘religion’ into a discrete sphere which is apart from all the other ways of being which a people unquestioningly adopts is only possible in a post-Enlightenment mode which the Fremen absolutely should not inhabit.
There are no ‘atheists’ in a tribe. In a tribal existence, every significant action has a religious understanding attached to it: every ritual, every name, every role. Religion is natural and unselfconscious. It is simply their frame of reference for understanding the world, fully extensive with their techniques and values.
Without this understanding, nothing makes sense. How can the great water reserves in the sietches be so ‘sacred’ that no Fremen would drink from them even if dying of thirst, while all the young and northern Fremen express open skepticism of religion? What are the metaphysics of these Fremen? Where are the arbitrary lines around their faith drawn? What does it mean to be anti-‘fundamentalist’? What stands in contrast to the fundamental beliefs? They seem to attach religious significance to certain events but not others.
This leads to bizarre absurdities like the interjection of the words ‘worm piss’ right before one of the most sacred rites of the tribe. This rite clearly has actual power: the Reverend Mother emerges from it with demonstrably heightened abilities, able to access the past and knowing things that she would have no ability to know without a ‘divine’ transformation. What does it mean to ‘not believe in this’?
Likewise the central narrative makes no sense unless the Fremen are universally captured by a religious rapture. It is the exploitation of this rapture that inexorably elevates Paul to his leadership role despite his youth and alien identity. If religion is undermined, so is Paul’s arc. It is not enough that ‘Stilgar believes’ when Stilgar is openly disrespected and mocked (and seems to answer to a council of women who also don’t believe).
Could I be known among you as Paul-Muad’Dib?”
“You are Paul-Muad’Dib,” Stilgar said.
And Paul thought: That was in no vision of mine. I did a different thing. But he felt that the abyss remained all around him.
Again a murmuring response went through the troop as man turned to man: “Wisdom with strength … Couldn’t ask more … It’s the legend for sure … Lisan al-Gaib … Lisan al-Gaib. …”
All of this is to say: I didn’t enjoy the film much, but always appreciate the opportunity to meditate on Herbert’s work. Mr. Villeneuve - if you’re reading this - get in touch, and I’ll help you make the next one.
I’d like to thank my readership for indulging me in this review. Hopefully it was interesting. I do not enjoy negativity, and my wider project is intended as one of practical and productive analysis and instruction. This will resume next week.
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Sic transit imperium,
Johann
Excellent review. Chani's character got completely ruined, and the final scene is the complete opposite of what Herbert wrote in the book. In the book Chani is loyal to Paul, and actually flaunts her love for him and his love for her, to the ridicule of Irulan. Yet, in the movie, she's your typical girlboss "voice of reason" and ends up abandoning Paul altogether. An absurd ending, totally unfaithful to the book.
Overall, while the movie had some wonderful sounds, visuals, and moments, I think it falls way short and its deviations from the book are to its detriment.
I did not bother with DIEDoon for all the reasons you mentioned above. This is just another example of a thought-provoking work of great value and deep genius being shit-up by the Wokester Commie Mob in Hollyweird. The WCMs are the orcs of modern culture; they smash the heads from the statues of Kings and replace them with rusted iron parodies of the Eye at the End of Time they both love and fear.
Dune deserves a proper film treatment. It ought to have the grandeur and impact of LOTR but until Hollyweird is purged of the WCMs, no such undertaking is possible.