Yeah, the movie diluted this unfortunately, by following the book and offering two sets of visions:
The first was largely Chani and set in the near future. These visions began to come true by the end of the film, when he sees her outlined in the sun on their way to Sietch Tabr. They also gave Zendaya a reason to appear throughout the movie.
The second were in the distant future, with burning piles of bodies with him looking approvingly on his Fremen legions as they conquered an unnamed planet (remember, the planet wasn’t Arrakis as it had water). These visions were telling him that if he did go down this path, he will win but the human universe will suffer greatly.
The first set, imho, over-rode the importance and meaning of the second set.
It’s a hard book to translate to film for a reason!
Yeah, that isn’t going to do it. I mean he is at war with a bunch of people who attacked his people and killed his father. Winning against <sorry, I’m going to have to refer to him as Drax’s uncle> seems like a proportionate response. I don’t see how getting even with equates to destroying the universe. I suppose it could be a WWII sort of deal, but that isn’t ones immediate conclusion.
We may be getting into speculation which may be resolved in the 2nd movie, but let’s just say that one of the themes in the book is how leaders of movements lose control of those movements even as they are leading them.
In short: the war doesn’t stop when the Harkonnens are defeated. The Fremen go on a Jihad which effectively attacks, and converts, every planet in the known Universe (and there are a lot of them), and there is nothing Paul can do to stop them.
Thanks.
The last 10 posts or so should probably be spoilered. The article title made me think this was all stuff that was evident in Part One [it totally isn’t]. It seems more of a Part Two thing?
In brighter news, this elevates my opinion of Dune.
To be fair, Frank Herbert struggled with this too. His book is a criticism of Paul within Paul’s hero’s journey but, as is with many authors, the physical journey is easier to write than the internal dialogue, so the heroic side of Paul tended to be presented with more authorial certainty.
Slate makes some points along the lines I was making:
Dune deserves a good movie adaptation, but all good movies need to be aware of the shortcomings of their source material as well as the realities of their own age. A subversive and powerful reading of Dune is possible, even a reading that Herbert would have appreciated, but in its present form, this current movie becomes just the sort of phenomenon that Herbert set out to critique.
Given what I’ve seen so far, there will be things in the 2nd movie which will inform the decisions and actions taken in the first, so that, taken as a whole, the two films should be a richer experience together, more than the sum of their parts. Can definitely see it being edited and released as one long film.
I don’t want to overhype myself for part two, but I think this is as good a 5 hour adaptation of Dune as I will see in my lifetime and I’m definitely looking forward to it.
My God, to make the argument that Dune is a white savior narrative means that you have to ignore everything which happens after the publisher decided to cut off the last third of the novel, making it the sequel Dune Messiah.
In short: Paul’s “white saviorhood” destroyed not only the Fremen, but Paul’s own society. The entire thing is a rant against colonization, but the structure of the story Herbert told, and his very real limitations as an author, meant that the first book had to focus on the success of the colonization effort. And, yeah, this turns Paul into a hero for 2/3rds of the original story (and all of the final published book).
You can also read it for how it was written, as an allegory for the rise of religions. As to why one needs to take the purposeful subtext to add subtext which really isn’t in there, I have no idea, but those Literature 202, Science Fiction in the Modern World papers aren’t going to write themselves, I guess.
Even when the savior fails, destroys everything, and becomes a monster, his agency overrides that of everyone else and reduces them to side stories who are swept away in the terrific power of his myth.
By the end of the story, the Hero has no agency at all–the saved have all the control and power.
I think the argument is that the 2021 film has a white savior narrative, which in my opinion is a valid take. That was my impression upon seeing it. “last third of the novel” is presumably not in the 2021 film.
One thing that was very interesting was how Paul’s father had heavy Ned Stark energy (yes I know that Dune came first; in fact this movie makes clear how much GRRM borrowed consciously or unconsciously from it)) where in a brutal society wanting to do the right and just thing can be a liability unless you have the power to “break the wheel”.
Tragically, placing the hero’s rise first is just the way the story is constructed. And, to be frank, the economics of Dune being made into a profitable movie means that you don’t make books 2-6… and that’s not Dune’s fault, it’s the fault of the economic structure of the film industry.
I reported one post for spoilers but it was pointed out to me that this is an “open spoilers” thread so…
So go nuts.
(I guess there’s also an infinitesimal chance that any spoilers might not even be in the second film; they’ve stuck very close to the book so far but they might not in the next one.)
A point made in the Slate article linked above is that yes, the book is a critique of the white savior myth. But it still centers the white male, while the Fremen are essentially nameless masses who serve only to react to the main character. Paul might not have control, but neither do the Fremen. They cannot help but explode when the match lights the fuse.
I had hoped the “open spoilers” only applied to stuff in the film, as in no one would have to spoiler box film discussion (it was always bizarre to me that some threads weren’t like that - who would come into a thread to discuss a film who hadn’t seen it?). So I had to put “open spoilers” to prevent the ridiculous situation where essentially every post talking about the film had a spoiler box.
I had hoped that we could keep from openly discussing what inevitably will happen in the second film (that’s why I tried to specific open spoilers “from film” and explain in the OP), but I think the cat is already out of the bag on that one and half the discussion in the thread involves that so I didn’t make a fuss. It is probably unavoidable to discuss the themes underlying the movie without strongly hinting at what the second movie will contain.
If people want to spoiler box things that they’re pretty sure will be in the second film, by all means, go ahead and do that. I’m sure there are people in the thread that would appreciate it.
