Remove ads

Denis Villeneuve's Dune

One question I have about the Harkonnens in the movie: the only Harkonnen women we see are either slave girls or Feyd-Rautha's "pets", and they seem to have different eyes from the men. I'm not aware of this being a thing in the novels. Do you think it involves surgical alterations, or is it a case of sexual dimorphism?

(Also, we never find out what the deal is with the weird spider-being in the first movie).
 
Hendryk said:
One question I have about the Harkonnens in the movie: the only Harkonnen women we see are either slave girls or Feyd-Rautha's "pets", and they seem to have different eyes from the men. I'm not aware of this being a thing in the novels. Do you think it involves surgical alterations, or is it a case of sexual dimorphism?

(Also, we never find out what the deal is with the weird spider-being in the first movie).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think it's just the darrrlin's when it comes to the black-in-black eyes.
 
First trailer for the Bene Gesserit Origins show, Dune: Prophecy (formerly "Dune: Sisterhood") just dropped:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEoQAoEGLhw&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fgizmodo.com%2F&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo
Looks... cool? Not sure if the timeline matches what Herbert laid out (don't remember if the Sisterhood and the Guild were established at the same time), but the PD looks like an interesting variation on the films and the cast looks stacked (Mark Strong as Daddy Atreides? Emily Watson as a Harkkonen Reverend Mother? Yes please) so it probably won't be boring.
 
Arthur Frayn said:
Looks... cool? Not sure if the timeline matches what Herbert laid out (don't remember if the Sisterhood and the Guild were established at the same time)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Not sure if Herbet ever set one, but his son's position is Yes, along with the Suk Doctors, the Mentats (the first of whom and founder thereof was secretly the adopted son and intellectual disciple of the robot the universe sees as Basically Satan. The Butlerian Jihad Prequel series is carried entirely by Basically Satan as a character, and I recommend reading it for him alone) and the Corrinos.
 
To be fair, Brian Herbert's books aren't bad. They are just somewhat differently in style to Frank Herbert's books (in my case, the first Dune book I read was Frank Herbert's Hunters of Dune). And how much they match with the canon initially thought up by Frank Herbert ... no idea
 
Martin Bajar said:
To be fair, Brian Herbert's books aren't bad. They are just somewhat differently in style to Frank Herbert's books (in my case, the first Dune book I read was Frank Herbert's Hunters of Dune). And how much they match with the canon initially thought up by Frank Herbert ... no idea
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
In the original books the Butlerian Jihad is implied to be a rejection of the alienating effect of computers on human life (enforced by the sword) rather than a more traditional robot war. I think the former better suits the philosophical themes of the core books and their focus of the Imperium on maximizing human potential through training, discipline, eugenics and drugs.
 
Born in the USSA said:
In the original books the Butlerian Jihad is implied to be a rejection of the alienating effect of computers on human life (enforced by the sword) rather than a more traditional robot war. I think the former better suits the philosophical themes of the core books and their focus of the Imperium on maximizing human potential through training, discipline, eugenics and drugs.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Talking of which, at one point in the Harkonnen HQ on Arrakis we see a bunch of guys around a holographic display, apparently with wires plugged in their heads and chanting something. Are they engaged in some mentat-like activity?

 
Born in the USSA said:
In the original books the Butlerian Jihad is implied to be a rejection of the alienating effect of computers on human life (enforced by the sword) rather than a more traditional robot war. I think the former better suits the philosophical themes of the core books and their focus of the Imperium on maximizing human potential through training, discipline, eugenics and drugs.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Actually that conflict still exists.
The whole thing about the robots is that the overmind went rogue after a bunch of people rejecting that alienating Golden Age used the robots to conquer humanity. Then removed their brains and stuck them in giant mecha armour. One of them is the father of the first Atreides. They fell to decadence too after enslaving everyone and forcing them to build giant monuments and shit, then one didn't keep an eye on the overmind and it flipped the board.

The Butlerian Jihad itself had two phases; first the rebellion against slavery inspired by Serena Butler's defiance of Erasmus (Basically Satan) after he murdered her son that hated sapient robots, but still used technology that wasn't sapient, then a fevered insanity of zealotry mirroring Paul's Jihad lead by Serena's... great grand niece? I'm not sure exactly the relation, but that girl's eldest uncle was the first Corrino and her youngest uncle was (unjustly) labelled as a coward and formed the Harkonnen Great House (despite the Harkonnens being much older than that). The girl is the one who preached absolutely no technology not even mechanical calculators. It's explicitly stated that galactic civilisation would have been doomed if not for the first Mentat raised and tutored by Erasmus.

There is in fact a really good message in how it ends, in that Abulurd Harkonnen was no coward, he was a compassionate human, while Vorian Atreides (and the Corrinos/rest of the military) were hard-up on 'doing the hard thing' and by the end showed less humanity than Erasmus. It also has robots that straight up develop a kind of humanity that at times surpasses the humans.

Brian was very much going for 'fuck fascism and justifying doing the hard thing' and doubling down on 'zealotry is bad' while undermining his father's nonsense of 'hard living breeds strength, soft living breeds weakness'. He also hits the whole 'eugenics' thing by having the greatest success of the precursor-Bene Gesserit be a deformed child they shunned as a failure who invents FTL, becomes the first Navigator and eventually transcends mortality to become something else. Like, the first Fremen (as we'd know them) become Fremen living in the desert out of spite after losing the 'leadership fight' to the people who became the folks living in the pans.
 
Last edited:
Like generally from what I hear Herbert senior was not a great dad, and I support his son "ruining" Dune.

Kids destroying the poisonous legacy of their parent(s) is fine.
 
Let us once again give thanks that "the Baron is gay and therefore is a slavering predator of boys" was not faithfully adapted by Villeneuve
 
Thinking again about the scene where Paul goes full Lisan and I really like the work that the first dude he "reads" puts in. The way you see the fear stealing up on him, and then how, when Paul drops the title on him, his eyes go really wide and there's the panicked blurt of LisanalGhaib!
 
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top