Shit, guys, my apologies.
I haven’t read the book and I’m fine with what happened in this thread. I can’t speak for everyone though. At first I genuinely thought I ‘missed’ something in the film (there was a lot of dialogue that I missed). But on further discussion, I concluded that one needed to know the ending to see what was happening; so I was like, oops spoiler – but also sort of not a spoiler since the film tried to show it, just not very effectively.
I appreciate your answering my questions. No apology needed to me, at least.
Sometimes I’m guilty of this, as I may not be planning on seeing the movie in the theaters right away, but still want to see what the general buzz/reception is. When I start seeing major plot points in the thread I try to quickly scroll past, hoping that I’ll just forget everything by the time I get around to watching it anyway, unless it’s some level of “OMG, DARTH VADER IS DUMBLEDORE’S REAL FATHER!” spoilers, which I completely realize is my own fault if I get burned.
Anyone want to spoil the future of the franchise for me?
Something that Paul said suggested to me that sometime in the future, they’re going to drill down to the subterranean water and bring it to the surface so the planet is no longer arid. Perhaps it even becomes a paradise at the cost of losing the spice?
So am I correct?
My new conundrum is what to tell my husband. He really liked this film, but I’m pretty sure he (like me) didn’t pick up that Paul is secret hitler. I know him well enough that I don’t think he will take well to this development. He also doesn’t like it when I ruin movies by discussing them with him afterwards. Hmmm, maybe by the time the second movie comes out I can distract him with something else to do instead.
As something we thought was a fun diversion, it’s kind of a shitty rug pull: Haha, that guy you’ve been rooting for? He’s Hitler!
Assuming the next film follows the book(s) closely: Paul finds out, via what happens to the Fremen dude he killed, that the Fremen squeeze ALL the water out of every person who dies and this water, along with anything else they can snag via dew collectors and the like, is sequestered all over the planet in watertight pools and chambers carved from solid rock. The Fremen have worked out just how much water they need to turn the planet into a paradise and are saving up for it, drop by drop. That tension between the religious promise of an earthly paradise at the cost of destroying the proper ecology of Arrakis and the spice as well is very much at the core of the books. Tension between conflicting ideals is a huge driver of the entire story–Paul’s assumption/rejection of the messiah role, the preservation/destruction of the planetary ecology, the tension between the government as it is and what it could/should be, the interface of technology and human potential are all at the very core of Dune. It’s a complicated story, not overly suitable to fighty crashy zoom zoom fuck nuance storytelling.
I can never decide whether sand plankton are supposed to be photosynthetic. If not, what powers the energy flows through this ecology? Are the sandworms chemotrophic somehow?
I believe they generate energy through the AWDI* reaction.
* a wizard did it
A bit of foreshadowing I liked was the appearance of the desert rat.
Oh and the pronunciation of “Padishah Emperor” was annoying. It’s PAH-dee-SHAH — no reduced vowels — not p’DEEshuh
Well…all life gets its energy from the sun if you trace the path back far enough. Plants photosynthesize and animals eat them. Other animals eat those animals. Oil and coal are just plants transformed.
So, somehow, these critters are converting sunlight into energy or eating something else that does. Being plankton and, presumably, the base of the food chain one might suppose they use the sun for energy. But…???
Mostly, it’s just sci-fi…heavy on the “fi” part. Like transporters in Start Trek. Don’t ask, they just “work” (although, they give a nod to the main reason they should not work by saying they use “Heisenberg Compensators” but that is just a magic sci-fi box too).
Any technology in sci-fi can be supported by the installation of a “Reality Compensator”.
But nearly as annoying as the new pronunciation of HARKA-nin vs, the for more awesome sounding traditional pronunciation of Har-KOH-nen.
Dune was the first major SF work to include ecology as a plot point, and I’d like to think there was some mechanism in Herbert’s imagination that could explain this energy flow. Maybe there are phytoplankton at the very top of the sand profile, that are themselves basically indistinguishable from sand or rocks, like these terrestrial Lithops.
https://462954-1452230-1-raikfcquaxqncofqfm.stackpathdns.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/lithopsLesliei1654_4NonFlowering-1.jpg
I’m not an astrobiologist, but the thought of sand plankton on an alien world doesn’t seem entirely implausible to me. There should be enough solar energy hitting the planet to support complex ecosystems. You do need water or some other solvent to support complex chemical reactions. Maybe the plankton are some sort of extremophiles that can retain water very efficiently even in desert environments, or maybe they use some alternative solvent other than water.
So I just watched it.
It was all right, I guess. [[shrug]]
Paul says it in dialogue you may have missed. He says he sees a religious jihad in his father’s name consuming the universe.
(With the spice, Paul can see the future. In the tent they make a big deal of showing the spice in the air, Paul starts coughing, then shortly after that he starts having visions of the future where he sees the jihad in his family’s name.)
Question for the more recent book readers: was that line about the jihad in his father’s name a reference to his son Leto, the God Emperor? Or did they just mean the name Atreides?
I haven’t read the books since the '80s or seen the '80s movie or 2000 cable series since they first broadcast.
Did he say jihad in the movie or “holy war” or something? I was expecting “jihad”, but did not hear it.
I don’t think it was ever “in his father’s name” in the book. Visions show the jihad as under the Atreides flag, but always in the name of “Maud’Dib” (Paul’s public Fremen name). I believe he starts having dreams of the jihad while still on Caradon. When exposed to the spice he starts seeing multiple potential paths into the future and spends much of the book trying to find one which avoids the jihad. His abilities increase when he starts eating the spice-heavy diet of the Fremen, and further when he tastes the Water of Life. By the end of the book he sees no path which does not lead to jihad, regardless of whether he lives or dies. There is some discussion of a “human race” need for something like jihad to churn up a stagnant gene pool, but I’m not sure of that isn’t just Paul’s rationalization in order to accept the inevitable.