THE WRITER'S TAKE: DUNE PART 2
Have we found the Muad'Dib of Science Fiction?
False Prophets, absurd economic doctrines, fighting political families, fake resource constraints… No, I am not talking about the current state of America, I am talking about Arrakis and the houses of Atreides and Harkonnen in DUNE PART 2. The Muad'Dib, as the Fremen call the prophet Paul Atreides, is a deeply sown lie spun up through decades if not centuries of work by the Bene Gesserit, the witches of DUNE.
But let's take a step back here for a moment, take a deep breath before you bow to the Muad'Dib, before you put on your sweatsuit to retain as much water as possible, and let's chat briefly about DUNE Part 1. DUNE Part 1 infuriates me to no end, let's start there. I don’t say that because I thought it was bad, or that it wasn’t entertaining, I say that because it was very good, and it could have been great. For me, films are judged on 6 critical elements.
Costume
Script
Score
Acting
Visual Effects
Directing
Dune Part 1 nailed a 10 out of 10 on all but 1 category. Script. I thought the script was fine. It serviced the story well and did a decent job of character development. However, there was one major error, something I still cannot get over. This will come into play when we dive into Part 2. It goes without saying that there are major spoilers ahead, and plus if you are reading this and haven’t seen Dune Part 1 yet, I'm confused why you're subscribing.
But nevertheless here we go. In the books, Wellington Yueh, the Atreides doctor, betrayed the house and doomed everyone for love. It was quite clear that he had gone mad in the hopes of being reunited with his beloved Wanna Marcus who had been taken prisoner by the baron Harkonnen. In the books, you feel for this, you connect with this, you mourn for this. In the film, DUNE Part 1, you pretty much feel like Yueh is a fool and it is clear that Marcus is already dead, and he has doomed the family for nothing.
The books make him more of a hopeless romantic and someone you feel for even though he dooms everyone. There is a nuance to the complexity that the film does not explore, instead you're left angry and confused why he would betray Leto like this. This fundamentally changes Yueh’s motivations for the worse and creates an apathetic end to an extremely complex character. Eventually, I will give a more detailed DUNE Part 1 take, but I am less enthused by the film than I am about Part 2. So let's dive in, and see why George Lucas felt so inspired by Frank Herbert's works for Star Wars, and why the Lisan al Gaib is very similar to the chosen one. Oh and worms, big f—ing worms.
First and foremost, wow. This movie is a spectacle of epic proportions. Miles ahead of its predecessor and a film that I implore you to see at Dolby Atmos Theater. The sound is on a whole other level. I personally saw it at the Dolby Atmos theater at the AMC in Century City Mall, and when the Shai-Hulud (Sand worms) were being ridden by the Muad'Dib (I will rarely call him Paul Atreides, you must admit, Muad'Dib, or Lisan al Gaib is just way more fun). I believe it was Steven Spielberg who said this scene, where Paul, (FINE) learns to ride the sand worm, and we get that moment is one of the most visceral moments in cinema history. And I’d have to agree, I think I actually teared up when he finally stood up. The cinematography was superb in DUNE Part 1, it was transcendent in DUNE Part 2. The sets, halls, the sietches (cave halls for the Fremen) and the shots of the royal army, and the Harkonnen homeworld of Giedi Prime where we meet Feyd-Rautha in ruthless battle were nothing short of perfect, and the Academy agreed. But let us not gloss over Austin Butler and his portrayal of Feyd-Rautha.
F–BLEEP.
That’s how good it was. I don’t know if he had enough screen time to be nominated for a best supporting actor role, but if he did, he will. The flawless horror of his actions are smooth and demented. Some people act, others, become their characters and you as the viewer forget the actor / actresses name, as they have become that entity. Austin Butler WAS Feyd-Rautha. Funny enough, Feyd’s character appears in the book, around page four and is a consistent figure throughout all of DUNE, which is the source material for Parts 1 & 2.
This is somewhere that I think Denis did a great job of adapting, and pushing for the story in a direction that felt fluid for cinema, a truth that a lot of people lose sight of with adaptations of classic books. Not only was it advantageous to hold Fayd until the second film, Denis also truncated the time in the film significantly. In the books, the second half of the book, well more like the back 75% of it, DUNE Part 1 is really only the first 25% of the book. But I digress. In the “back half” it takes about 3 years, not 3-6 months, and SPOILER ALERT 🚨Paul and Chani are married in the books AND have a child that dies and then has another child all in this span of time.
What that means too, is that a 3 year old girl, their second child, is who actually kills the Barón. While I think our CGI is good, having a 3 year old who can speak like an adult, and murder, might be too uncanny valley for this day and age still. And yes, you read that right, I am not repeating myself, you can go read DUNE if you please.
The division of Fermen in the South and the radicals is another interesting change from the source material. In the book this doesn’t exist at all, but is a well placed adjustment to create tension, movement and drama for our young messiah. Speaking of the South, the scene where Paul drinks the water of Life is one of the most, if not the most visceral moment of love in the movie. When Chani runs in screaming at Jessica, and demanding answers, believing for moments on end that they had killed her beloved Paul Atreides, you can feel the moment, well, maybe that was because of the Dolby Atmos sound, so go see it in that theater!!! Jeez, you would think Dolby is paying me for this type of review, but unfortunately I am just a sicko-fan of their technology and cannot stress enough how much different the experience is in one of those theaters.
Quick aside, Javier Bardem, stole the show, this film is nothing without him, and he transcended from acting to being Stilgar on Arrakis. It was one of the most fun, invigorating performances I have seen in some time. Note- I haven’t seen Poor Things yet… I know, I’m slacking.
But then we get to it, it's time for the aspect of this film that really irks me. And it doesn’t irk me because I think Denis did it wrong. It hurts me, because I am unsure if there was any other way to really do it. But to be clear I did think Denis did it wrong the moment I saw it, I thought to myself “really, you're going to change THAT!?” and it irked me. But now, I understand, he had to, and while having to, it also destroys our Muad'Dib’s moral compass. What may that be you ask? Well, you didn’t ask, but you're now curious because I’ve dragged this out for over a paragraph. It’s Paul’s love story with Chani.
See in the books, as you already know, Paul and Chani had a child. The sped up timeline in the films made that impossible. But what also happened in the books, that is not in the film, is that Paul asks Chani’s permission to marry the Empress, to rule the galaxy, to be a king, but with the understanding that Chani would always be by his side, to be the concubine and the real power of the house of Atreides. The last lines of the original DUNE film by David Lynch were:
SCENE: Paul stared down into her eyes, remembering her suddenly as she had stood once with little Leto in her arms, their child now dead in this violence.
“I swear to you now,” he whispered, “that you’ll need no title. That woman over there will be my wife and you but a concubine because this is a political thing and we must weld peace out of this moment, enlist the Great Houses of the Landsraad. We must obey the forms. Yet that princess shall have no more of me than my name. No child of mine nor touch nor softness of glance, nor instant of desire.”
“So you say now,” Chani said. She glanced across the room at the tall princess.
“Do you know so little of my son?” Jessica whispered. “See that princess standing there, so haughty and confident: They say she has pretensions of a literary nature. Let us hope she finds solace in such things; she’ll have little else.” A bitter laugh escaped Jessica. “Think on it, Chani: that princess will have the name, yet she’ll live as less than a concubine—never to know a moment of tenderness from the man to whom she’s bound. While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine—history will call us wives.”
Powerful is an understatement. So why am I so hell bent on not hating this edit? Because, Chani needs to hate Paul for there to be a third film. There won’t be a fourth. Denis already made that clear, so with one film left, the tenison had to be there at the end of this one. However I will say, if they are going to make Messiah true to the source material, then the amount of goodwill Paul will need to show EARLY in this forthcoming film will need to be stark. Closing on Zendaya walking alone through the dunes of Dune though is not lost on me for its iconicism. I would have liked to see more love between the two throughout the film rather than so much distrust. Even when they were in love, she was distrustful and that was not the way I would have written it. I would have wanted to make her trust, completely, which she did, but with always an air of mistrust, I would have removed that, to make the fall even harder.
Nevertheless this aberration from the original source material didn’t rub me the wrong way as much as the shift in tone with the good doctor in DUNE Part 1. As I reflect further though on this film, I will say that I feel though I'm being told it is a great film, rather than feeling it is a great film. The story, as great as it is, feels a bit hollow, lacking in some areas that are hard to articulate. Visually it's stunning, some of the best film making of the past decade, sound, costume, makeup and directing is on a level few enter, let alone achieve. Rarefied air without a doubt. And sometimes, for a film to achieve greatness it does not need to be a masterpiece. While I had some of the most fun I've had at the theater in quite some time, the story just didn’t pull at me as I had hoped.
It was one of the first films that I wanted with all my existence to love, and I wanted to feel something that only a film can make you feel, or as Nicole Kidman puts it: "We come to this place… for magic,” but no amount of exhilarating worm riding could fill the void of a lacking story.
Paul may be the Muad'Dib of Arrakis, but Dune is, unfortunately, not the Lisan al Gaib of Science Fiction that we all hoped it would be. Which doesn't mean it isn’t a commercial success, but there is something that happens with characters like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, characters that live in worlds that transcend time and space, and characters whose deaths do not mean the death of that universe.
But here, without Paul, without the Muad’Dib, DUNE won’t just crash a sand worm into a mountain side, it will lose all its followers, lost, searching for the Lisan al Gaib of science fiction once more.
Herø Projects, GUNGNIR, ICONIC ARTS and other musings…
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