News Dune: Part Three

Dune Messiah Is Just Dune: Part Three Now

Maybe “Dun3” wasn’t clear enough.

By Molly Templeton

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Published on July 8, 2025

Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

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Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

Dune director Denis Villeneuve is making Dune Messiah. Even before Dune Part Two came out, the director was talking about the third novel in Frank Herbert’s series, saying it “would be the dream” to make a trilogy. Villeneuve told Empire, “Dune Messiah was written in reaction to the fact that people perceived Paul Atreides as a hero… which is not what he wanted to do. My adaptation [of Dune] is closer to his idea that it’s actually a warning.”

And this is happening. It was confirmed last year. There’s casting news and everything. But don’t look for Dune Messiah on your local multiplex marquee. Nope: This is just Dune: Part Three.

One can only assume that the studios behind this film thought it would be too confusing for audiences to endure a slight change in title structure after two films. Never mind that Dune Messiah is the second book in the series, and that it is not the third part of the first book. We must have simplicity! And numbers! (Yes, Wicked changed its Part Two to For Good but shhh.)

Also, never mind that Villeneuve told Vanity Fair in September that the three movies don’t make a trilogy at all:

In announcing this title, Variety also notes that Dune 3: Arrakis Drift Dune: Part Three will not be entirely shot with Imax cameras, as previously reported, but will have some sequences shot with Imax cameras. Just some very big sandworms. Not all of them.

Dune: Part Three is expected to be in theaters December 16, 2026.[end-mark]

The post <i>Dune Messiah</i> Is Just <i>Dune: Part Three</i> Now appeared first on Reactor.

Lists monsters

8 Horrifying SFF Monsters Who Turned Out To Be Lovable

By Leah Schnelbach

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Published on July 1, 2025

Credit: TriStar Pictures/Touchstone Pictures

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Credit: TriStar Pictures/Touchstone Pictures

One of my favorite things in science fiction is when an author or filmmaker gives us some sort of alien creature that has been designed precisely to make us feel an instinctive revulsion and/or fear, and then spends the rest of the book or movie or episode unpacking why that creature is lovable. I love this trope even more when it’s used to point out human xenophobia.

A recent rewatch of Mickey 17 led to me thinking about a my favorite examples of Horrific Monsters I’d Literally Die For, and that, in turn, led to this list.

Which are your favorites?

Shai Hulud — Dune

Sandworms are not cute. The word “lovable” doesn’t really spring to mind—except in a larger, capital-L kind of sense. For Fremen, the Shai-Hulud are instruments of divine power, and the emotion they inspire tips from “love” into something more like “awe”. Attempting to “empathize” with a Sandworm is probably an insult to the Sandworm. In light of that, I wanted to include them, but felt that any spot other than the bottom of the list was kind of disrespectful?

Alien Squid — Watchmen

That Alien Squid did nothing wrong—it was a pawn in a larger game. For all we know, it may have had children it loved, a vast network of friends, a vital role in an advanced, utopian society. Maybe it hosted sparkling Alien Squid cocktail parties. Maybe it volunteered at an animal shelter! It may have held unfathomable wisdom that would have healed our society had we but asked.

It may have joined the ranks of Squishy Monsters Who Are Actually Lovable.

Instead, it was dropped on Manhattan.

I say: JusticeForSquid

Bugs — Starship Troopers

Here’s an interesting thing: as the credits were rolling on my first Starship Troopers rewatch in years, my eyes happened to drift up to my ceiling, and there, in a corner, bristling with legs, was a huuuuge millipede.

Having just spent over two hours reveling in Paul Verhoeven’s satire on othering, jingoism, and forever war, it amused me to glance up and catch myself still having a moment of “EEEUUCH!!!” when I saw this many-legged creature making itself at home in my home. (Did it come out of hiding to watch the movie? Was it worried that I was one of the people who somehow missed the skull-crushingly obvious satire? Should I have shook my head occasionally so it knew I didn’t agree with Johnny Rico’s fascist worldview?)

The Bugs of Starship Troopers never quite become lovable, but that’s kind of the point—the audience can see pretty early that these creatures are intelligent, that they feel pain and fear. It’s also pretty obvious that the humans are the colonizer baddies here, but because we’re trapped in the airless totalitarian bubble with the characters, we only see the same propagandistic news streams they do. There’s no underground resistance, no punk scene, no secretly leftist teacher to confirm that #BuenosAiresWasAnInsideJob, but come on—given that the film ends with Neil Patrick Harris dressed like an Obergruppenführer tormenting a prisoner of war for its secrets, I think it’s obvious where our empathy should lie. 

Formic Creatures — Ender’s Game

The 2013 film version of Ender’s Game clues us in to its message pretty early. By day, Ender Wiggin trains to go to war against an alien species known as the Formics. He engages in simulated battles, learns their tactics, and develops his own. But by night, his dreams are linked to the creatures he’s meant to hate. He finally tries to suggest that they might be trying to communicate with humanity through his dreams, but naturally no one will listen—they assume he’s just having anxiety attacks from the stress of his training.

But no.

The Formic leaders open the gates to their civilization because they’re hoping the message got through, and that the humans will be willing to speak rather than attack.

NOPE.

Ender unknowingly leads the attack on their planet that destroys their civilization. And after everything is in ruins he goes out into the world he destroyed, and makes himself look at the horror he’s responsible for. Because of that choice, he finds a dying Formic. He finally comes face to face with his “enemy”—and she’s beautiful. He communes with a dying formic, who gives him her egg.

For my money this is the most effective scene in the film—maybe the only really effective scene in the film—where all the sci-fi trappings are dropped and what we get instead is two characters regarding each other in silence, Ender’s big blue human eyes meeting the Formic’s beautiful, ovoid, lidless, black ones. The Formic reaches out with its giant claw and does its species’ equivalent of cupping the boy’s face. He’s terrified, but he’s clearly more remorseful than anything else. When he starts crying it’s not out of fear but regret. She seems to understand this, and when she offers him the egg she’s managed to save, they both recognize this as a chance at redemption.

Gem Monster — Steven Universe Future

For most of Steven Universe’s run, Steven Rose Quartz Universe cajoled everyone around him into acting with compassion, even when it seemed stupid and/or suicidal, and that worked, and either you went with it or you didn’t. (My personal favorite of these was a deeply upsetting hybrid creature called Centipeetle! One gooey eye and like 8 billion legs! No thank you!)

But in the last season of the show, Steven Universe Future, our favorite cheerful alien/human hybrid child soldier finally faced an enemy even he couldn’t empathy into submission—his own traumatized self. Steven became a rampaging pink Gem Kaiju and menaced the town he’d spent years protecting. It was only his erstwhile Fusion partner Connie who recognized what was happening, and while a group hug calmed him enough to turn back into his human self, the show’s writers were smart enough to pack him off to therapy after that. He had a lot of cosmic war and abandonment issues to process.

The Ohmu — Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was an enormous influence on anime, Western animation, and, most recently, Mickey 17, which takes a few of its scenes and turns them inside out for comedic effect.  

The Empire of Tolmekia see the Toxic Jungle as a place to be destroyed; Nausicaä, princess of the Valley of the Wind, thinks people should appreciate it and coexist with the monstrous creatures within—you can see how this might lead to some conflict. But as with all things Miyazaki, this isn’t a simplistic tale of good versus evil. There are multiple human factions trying to survive in a difficult post-apocalyptic landscape, and the insects called Ohmu do seem to ravage and irradiate everything they touch… and they’re fucking huge and travel in vast, terrifying herds.

Nausicaä is the one person willing to explore the Toxic Jungle (finally learning that the plants are gradually purifying the land and water beneath, and if people can just be patient, a new, healthier world will grow up around them) but exploration is one thing. What makes Nausicaä special among her people, and makes her a great leader, is that she’s willing to meet the Ohmu where they are. In one extraordinary scene she even looks through the eyes of an Ohmu’s molted shell, literally seeing the world through the eyes of a creature others see as dangerous vermin. Her ability to show people that they’re sentient, caring creatures sets humanity on a path that might, might, save both species.

Maybe.

And for their part, the Ohmu set their own understandable problems with humans aside to resurrect her from the dead… which goes a pretty long way toward their lovability.

Creepers — Mickey 17

It’s fair to say that Mickey 17’s Creepers owe, ummm, a debt to the Ohmu. They’re similarly potato-bug-looking, tardigrade-esque, many-legged, shuffling round creatures—a design that would be adorable if they were smaller. Indeed, the plushy creeper that director Bong Joon ho wielded on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert reduced the talk show host to a starry-eyed child.

But for me, the Creepers come in just above the Ohmu, because by the end of the film they reveal more personality, and aren’t so freighted with spiritual significance. The Creepers spare Mickey 17, but they don’t heal him, give him visions, or welcome him into their herd—they just dump him out on the ice and leave him to make his way home while he screams that he’s, and I quote, “still good meat!” (Gosh I love this movie.) The leader of the Creepers bluffs the humans to a standstill, threatening them with a power she does not actually have. And finally, and most adorably, one of the baby Creepers stands up on its tiny back legs and shows off its tiny high-pitched scream-squeak for Mickey, looking for all the world like a lion cub practicing its roar. And hardened, stone-hearted movie critic I may be, but I’m enby enough to admit that the cuteness of that was overwhelming, and sent the Creepers hurtling up this list.

Horta — Star Trek “Devil in the Dark”

The Horta are a peaceful race, tunneling through the rock deep within the pergium mines on Janus VI. When miners unknowingly break into into the Mother Horta’s nursery and destroy thousands of eggs, it wreaks acidic vengeance, and the miners want to murder the hell out of it. Fortunately for everyone, Kirk and Spock’s calmer heads prevail over violence. Spock mind-melds with the Mother Horta, explains what’s going on, and Kirk proposes that the miners and Horta children strike up a symbiotic relationship—the babies will tunnel, the humans will collect the precious metals they leave in their wake. Watching people in leadership positions tackle a difficult situation with patience, logic, and empathy feels more like fantasy than science fiction at this point, but it’s a nice break from (gestures at life outside of the television screen). The Horta comes in at number one (a) because it’s the only Star Trek anything to make me tear up, and (b) because it’s the most alien creature on this list. It’s a silicone-based life form, its eggs look like rocks, it has no discernible eyes, mouth or ears, and when Dr. McCoy finally agrees to treat the wound Capt. Kirk gave it, he spackles it over with concrete.

I don’t care if it does feel like a sidewalk, I want to hug it.[end-mark]

The post 8 Horrifying SFF Monsters Who Turned Out To Be Lovable appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays The Wheel of Time

Desert Warriors and White Saviors: The Shared Destinies of Rand al’Thor and Paul Atreides

Examining depictions of the Fremen, the Aiel, and their problematic messiahs…

By Patrick J. D’Silva

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Published on May 20, 2025

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The third season of The Wheel of Time recently came to a close, and while no adaptation from book to screen passes muster with all fans, this third season seems to have won over some former critics. Several episodes such as “The Road to the Spear,” “Goldeneyes,” and the finale, “He Who Comes With the Dawn,” have garnered very strong reviews, and many fans are waiting anxiously to see if/when Amazon greenlights Season 4. (One must admit that the Pattern has seen fit to bestow noticeably more fantastic costumes upon us as the show goes on—like my personal favorite, this jewelry piece worn by Lord Gaebril, royal consort to Queen Morgase Trakand of Andor. With bling like that, who wouldn’t experience a compulsion to wonder if he’s been around for a month, a year, or even a decade?)

And unless you’ve been living under a rock the size of Shai-Hulud, you’ll be aware of the success of Denis Villeneuve’s epic adaptations of Frank Herbert’s Dune, with Dune: Part One and Dune: Part Two grossing well over a billion dollars worldwide. Signs are that Dune: Part Three will begin filming this summer, despite earlier comments that Villeneuve wanted to pursue other projects, as well as letting the actors age up a little bit. I’ve written previously about the cultural appropriation of Islamic history and theology in the Dune series (both books and films), especially in the depiction of the Fremen, a group of fierce warriors who have managed to survive and thrive on the vicious desert world of Arrakis. There is lots of writing on this, including previous pieces here on Reactor that came out closer to the release of Dune: Part One, focusing on the ways that Frank Herbert drew inspiration from Lawrence of Arabia, as well as exploring the “Muslimness” of the series.

One of the things that jumped out at me through watching this season of The Wheel of Time is just how much the TV adaptation uses the same types of visual cues with the Aiel, echoing what we’ve seen in the on-screen portrayal of the Fremen. This in turn made me reflect on how the original novels for each series depict the Fremen and Aiel, respectively. In this article, I’ll be focusing on the recent screen adaptations, rather than the original scenes in the relevant novels simply because these visual adaptations are the main ways that new fans are discovering both of these beloved franchises. The more I thought about these parallels, the more I found myself growing curious about what other types of messages we fans—both new and old—are consuming through these adaptations.

The depiction of the Aiel, especially their homeland, the “Aiel Waste,” is a key plot line this season. They are presented as strange, at times savage and uncivilized, possessing a sense of honor and obligation (ji and toh) that strikes the Wetlanders (non-Aiel, whose perspective is the main one through which we, as viewers, have seen this world up until now) as confusing at best. We got a glimpse of this in Season 2 through Perrin Aybara’s interactions with Aviendha. In “Damane,” he is perplexed by her response to his saving her from the Whitecloaks (a religious extremist faction that rivals the folks who run Gilead in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale in terms of brutal misogyny), and Aviendha explains that she has toh, that “ji-e-toh is the Aiel way. You saved my life. My water is yours.” Two episodes later, in “Daes Dae’mar,” he is horrified when Bain and Chiad, her fellow Maidens of the Spear, almost beat Aviendha to death. When Perrin asks her about it afterwards, she tries to explain that she had toh to a fourth Maiden, Jolien, who died in battle while Aviendha was protecting herself. Can Dune fans think of any other warrior races from desert environments who talk about their water in similar ways? Hmmm.

Season 3 takes us much deeper into the Aiel Waste. Wetlanders Moiraine, Lan, Rand, and Egwene are beyond confused by the Aiel practice of taking gai’shain, enemies who are touched during combat and are put into a form of servitude as a way to work off their shame at failing as warriors. We will eventually learn that this custom connects to millennia old Aiel practices. In Dune, Paul Atreides and Lady Jessica’s experience joining the Fremen on Arrakis has similar dynamics. They don’t understand the rules of the amtal challenge between Paul and Jamis until Stilgar explains they are going to fight to the death. Haris Durani has argued that Herbert’s rendering of the amtal duel represents its own type of Orientalist romantic depiction of “qadi justice,” here meaning a legal system lacking the rule of law, which I would also argue could interpret as a riff on “might makes right”—a concept that seems to be making a comeback in global politics lately as part of our cultural shift back towards authoritarianism.

In thinking about both franchises, I am struck by the fact that both Jordan and Herbert wrote epic sagas in which young white men arrive as messianic figures to save the world. In both cases the young white men in question understand on a visceral level that in order to fulfill their destinies, they must convince these warrior desert races that they are indeed the car’a’carn or mahdi, respectively. In turn, these communities each have prophecies about the coming of an outsider who will lead them into the future—though that future may be the end of the world as they know it. We know that Paul Atreides needs the Fremen as the embodiment of “desert power” in order to defeat his enemies and fulfil his destiny. Season 3 of The Wheel of Time mostly serves to set this up for Rand al’Thor, and future seasons will hopefully make clear what book fans already know: that without the Aiel at his side, there is no way that Rand can defeat the Dark One.

To be clear, even though Jordan published the first book of the series, The Eye of the World, in 1990 (some 25 years after Herbert published the first Dune novel), I’m definitely not arguing that Jordan was directly inspired by Herbert. In fact, Jordan was questioned about this in various interviews, and gave very clear responses, using the Aiel as a specific example in response to a question about how specific historical eras influence his stories:

Beyond the archives of interviews that Jordan gave over the course his life, one great starting point for fans looking to learn more about Jordan’s life—especially his service in Vietnam—and an analysis of the influences on the creation of Randland is Michael Livingston’s Origins of The Wheel of Time. Livingston also goes into great detail regarding Jordan’s debt to the works of Tolkien, the 15^th century Le Morte d’Arthur, and Robert Graves’ 1948 The White Goddess. Livingston’s take is that while “Tolkien is said to have aimed to create a ‘mythology for England,’ Jordan aimed for something even more daring and profound: a ‘mythology for humanity.’”

In Herbert and Jordan’s respective work, as well as Livingston’s summation of The Wheel of Time, I see the seemingly innocuous white colonial gaze. SFF communities have long debated issues of cultural appropriation and the troubling tradition of white, Western authors using elements of other cultures in their fiction in ways that romanticize or exoticize those cultures. No one can doubt the level of research that Herbert and Jordan did for their respective worldbuilding. That said, there is also a cringe factor when authors (and fans) see this borrowing as innocent while it reinforces stereotypes of the “other,” such as the invocation of the noble savage that we see with both the Fremen and the Aiel. 

In light of all this, the last line of Jordan’s response quoted above, that “all of them are constructs,” really jumps out at me. Of course Herbert, Jordan, Tolkien, and other speculative fiction writers are constructing these fictional worlds. But the question has to be asked: constructing them out of what? What are the raw materials that these authors feel emboldened to use in order to tell their stories? Rebecca Roanhorse’s incredible Between Earth and Sky trilogy, for example, draws on Mesoamerican history and cultures to tell a story that is no less epic than anything happening in Middle-earth, Arrakis, or the Aiel Waste (and if you think dragons are cool, you should check out supersized corvids!).

As Elizabeth Gilbert argues in Big Magic, sometimes there are just ideas floating out there in the ether, something traveling across these energetic pathways between creative people. But what does it say about this particular magical ether that we have two white American male authors working in different sub-genres of speculative fiction who build these epic universes that both just happen to have a key plot line where a young white man discovers he has magical powers and just happens to be the messiah and saving the world really depends on our hero’s abilities to take control of a ferocious group of desert warriors? Paul Atreides and Rand al’Thor have so much in common, it can’t just be coincidence, can it? As I noted above, there’s been a fair amount of criticism written about Herbert’s use of Islamic references in Dune. I am not aware of similar critique of Jordan’s use of various non-Western religious and cultural references, I think in part because he drew on a much more eclectic set of influences for his worldbuilding. As a trained Islamicist specializing in Arabic and Persian, it is impossible for me to not see and hear the Arabic and more broadly Islamic references in Dune. By contrast, last I checked there are no native speakers of “the Old Tongue” created by Jordan for the Wheel of Time.

Before we proceed, let’s address one important question: what does the “white savior” trope refer to, and how does it relate to science fiction and fantasy? The term usually refers to situations where a white person or group of people descend from on high (metaphorically or literally) to rescue non-white people through the use of tools (technological but also ideological) to which the non-white people lack knowledge or access. The trope is easily identified in the history of European imperial expansion from the 16^th through the 19^th centuries, where British and French governments in particular adopted the view that they were lifting peoples from all over the world out of ignorance by completely restructuring other societies in terms of politics, religion, and language. But critics have identified it in lots of other contexts from much more recent times. In terms of contemporary films, The Blind Side (directed by John Lee Hancock, 2009) and The Help (directed by Tate Tylor, 2011) are two examples that use the stories of Black characters to valorize white characters in a way that suggests that cultural progress and the hard-won successes of people of color are made possible by the benevolent support of white people. Philip Caputo’s 2005 novel Acts of Faith raises a similar type of critique of Western humanitarian aid efforts in Africa generally, and Sudan specifically.

Things get a bit more slippery when we get into science fiction and fantasy, although perhaps a bit easier in the case of Dune and Wheel of Time because (1) the people involved are all human, and (2) arguably both franchises take place in humanity’s hypothetical far future. Herbert clearly conceived of the Dune-iverse as the outgrowth of our present-day humanity flung thousands of years into the future, while WoT fans debate online what Robert Jordan’s vision really was. Are we in the First Age, just before the Age of Legends? In “The Road to the Spear,” Rand experiences visions of thousands of years into his past, including advanced technology on the level of literal flying ships… that visually resemble some of Villeneuve’s depictions of shuttles for transporting people from interstellar ships to the surface of planets like Arrakis.

The white savior trope itself is a common topic of discussion amongst pop culture critics, now more than ever, but it can also feel hard to pin down, depending on the work in question. Critics debate whether or not Dune falls into this category, with some arguing that the recent Villeneuve films double down on this trope while others disagree. I think the fascinating thing for me in watching these two adaptations is that the Freman and Aiel are coded as foreign in an Orientalist way (the desert, the veiling, the presentation of these cultures with very different conceptions of honor) from the default normative white Eurocentric point of view. So Herbert and Jordan both create these worlds, universes even, that share this fairly important plot point. In many ways, Herbert’s reliance on this plot line makes more sense to me than Jordan’s. After all, Dune is centered on a desert planet and the specific desert culture that develops on that planet, in that environment. Herbert’s engagement with climate change and human efforts to shape the climate is tragically undersold in Villeneuve’s films. The entire name of the franchise is inspired by a government project Herbert studied in Oregon about combating the encroaching dunes along the coast! He could have chosen a different cultural database to draw from when creating the Fremen, but I think global politics around oil exports from the Middle East led him to focus his story on a group of very Muslim-esque warriors and mystics from the desert. What then is Jordan’s explanation?

The argument could be made that key aspects of American culture in the mid- to late-20th century led both of these authors to dig into this trope of desert warrior race being led to their salvation (and ruination) by these young white saviors. There is America’s post-WWII soft-ish colonial expansion, along with the rise of OPEC and the concomitant realization that the US economy relied on the ability to import oil from abroad. The trope of the noble savage who lives in an uncivilized space—such as a desert or jungle—was, of course, well established in Western countries well before Herbert and Jordan were writing. Much of the fiction written by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard in the early 20^th century draw heavily on the trope, from their Tarzan and Conan stories to less well-remembered works. Films such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962) helped to perpetuate the popularity of white savior narratives, and reportedly inspired Herbert while he was working on Dune; he was also influenced by Lawrence’s memoir Seven Pillars of Wisdom. What would mythology scholar Joseph Campbell say about all this—is there a part of the Hero’s Journey that rests on the hero going into a literal/metaphorical desert or otherwise untamed land?

Is it fair to say that Paul is to Rand as the Fremen are to the Aiel? These two main characters have so many similarities, it is helpful to lay them out side by side.

Depiction of Desert Fighting

One shared visual cue in depicting the Fremen and Aiel is the use of blades rather than projectile weapons (although to be fair in The Wheel of Time we don’t see the development of projectile weapons until much later in the novels, and even then it’s more artillery than it is pistols or rifles). We learn in “The Road to the Spear” why it is that the Aiel see spears as the weapon of choice, that swords are forbidden to them because spears have utilitarian uses such as hunting, while swords are only for violence.

Coincidentally, there is an eerily similar depiction from the 2002 version of The Four Feathers (starring Heath Ledger, Kate Hudson, and Djimon Hounsou), based on a 1902 novel by A.E.W. Mason, as well as the 1939 film adaptation directed by Zoltan Korda. There was a 1955 adaptation (also directed by Korda) titled Storm Over the Nile, and even a 1978 TV movie also titled The Four Feathers. Who knew that The Four Feathers would show up so much, with a new version coming out roughly once every twenty years, just like with Dune?!?!? The Four Feathers is set in Sudan during the late 19^th-century war between the British and an army led by a man who claimed to be a messianic figure who had come to lead his people to liberation, also known in Islamic theology as the Mahdi. Sound familiar?

More to the point, the 2002 film features scenes where the British soldiers (who think very highly of themselves because… well, they’re British soldiers in the late 19th century, arguably at the height of the good ol’ imperial days) are ambushed in the desert by Mahdist fighters in a style that would make Stilgar and any other Fremen proud: they are buried in the sand then erupt upwards and outwards to decimate their foes, who are completely unprepared to fight in this desert environment against such tactics. Maybe it’s because I grew up partially in Sudan and heard stories about the ferocity of the Mahdi’s movement and fighters, but when I watched the recent Dune films in the theater I found myself transported back to watching this much earlier film over twenty years ago.

Visual Cues: Face Veiling

The Fremen and Aiel both veil their faces, which in a superficial reading of things is simply a function of living in the desert. That said, one key feature of “The Road to the Spear” is that viewers learn the Aiel’s true history. They weren’t always warriors at all, instead they were the “da’shain Aiel” who were the Aes Sedai’s servants. This group would eventually evolve into the committed pacifist group known as the Tuatha’an who practice “the Way of the Leaf.” The similarities in both name (da’shain/gai’shain) and action (both groups committed to pacifism, although one as a form of punishment) demonstrate that the two are linked within Aiel culture.

As Rand marches through the psychic hellscape of Rhuidean, he experiences flashbacks to the distant past. In one episode, a group of ancient Aiel young men discover that women from their families have been kidnapped. Despite being told to accept the tragedy and move on, they go to rescue the women. As the young men enter the camp of the kidnappers, one says to another “keep your dust veils up so they don’t see their faces.” Lewin (Rand), commits violence, their friend gets killed, and this is origin of the ban on swords because they can only be used as weapons, while “a spear can put food in pots.”

Lewin’s grandfather banishes Lewin and friend for killing, even if it was in the act of rescuing their sisters. The ancient Aiel commitment to pacifism is brought into sharp focus when Lewin calls out to his mother, who turns to him in response: “Who are you that calls me Mother? Hide your face from me stranger. I had a son once with a face like that. I don’t want to see it on a killer.” Obviously this is an important point in Aiel history—at least, the Aiel as we know them in the present day depicted in the show. It is also where we see them begin a practice—veiling their faces, especially right before they engage in warfare or other violent conduct—that makes them look—especially to a majority Western audience—as if they are Arab/Bedouin/Middle Eastern. One thing that stands out to me in watching this episode is that the actors chosen to depict the Aiel (in any era) don’t seem to reflect the usual range of appearances we might expect from people of Middle Eastern or North African descent in terms of phenotype (skin tone, facial features, other physical characteristics). Instead, since the Aiel appear to be mostly red-haired, it feels a bit like a bunch of Irish folks with spears camped out in the desert. How these gingers are surviving without sunblock is a mystery we can explore in another turning of the Wheel. I should add that in the season finale we see a much more ethnically diverse depiction of the Aiel.

“Savages” Thriving in the Desert

In both franchises, there are scenes where Paul and Rand learn about how Fremen and Aiel are able to live in inhospitable environments, going well beyond mere subsistence to thriving. In “The Shadow in the Night,” Aviendha shows Rand that the Aiel grow food in the desert through a finely tuned understanding of how and when to capture moisture. When Rand looks amazed, she chides him: “We know more than just how to dance the spears.”

On Arrakis a major part of the Fremen’s wielding of “desert power” is that they are able to thrive in an environment that their colonizing overlords (both Harkonnen and Atreides) find completely unbeatable. Not only do they have advanced technology like the stillsuit, but they also have developed tools that allow them to harvest the scant amount of moisture available in the planet’s atmosphere. Paul’s claiming of Muad’Dib as his name is taken from the mouse-like creature with especially large ears (there’s a Red Riding Hood joke there for sure!). The mouse is known as “muad’Dib” because the Fremen see it as a “teacher of the desert.” In Arabic today (and more importantly, in the time period during which Herbert was first writing Dune), it really just means teacher, and even more specifically “one who teaches adab,” with adab referring to knowledge of right conduct, ethics, correct behavior, and so forth.

Core Relationships: Stilgar and Chani, Rhuarc and Aviendha

Both characters lose their fathers only to gain father-like figures who guide them through the next steps in their heroic journeys. In the characters of Rhuarc and Stilgar, Rand al’Thor and Paul Atreides find mentors who serve as surrogate father figures to instruct them in the ways of the desert as these relatively untested young men prepare for the great trials they know await them. In both the novels and more recent film adaptations, Stilgar is Paul’s biggest fan and truly his most ardent supporter, to the point where we got those lovely memes mocking Stilgar’s constant amazed and enraptured state whenever Paul does anything remotely interesting. I’m not sure how much of a role show-Rhuarc will have down the road, but throughout Season 3 he plays a type of “gentle giant who could kill you at any moment” type that reminds me of Javier Bardem’s depiction of Stilgar to some degree. Looking at his counsel to Rand during the show down at Alcair Dal to see whether the Aiel will acknowledge Rand or the Shaido rival Couladin as car’a’carn, however, he diverges from Stilgar in some important ways. Rhuarc implores Rand not to tell the Aiel about their history, that they are in fact descended from the “Oathbreakers” that they detest so strongly. Rhuarc fears that the Aiel won’t be able to handle this revelation, but Rand insists, “this is what I was born to do.”

Paul’s love interest is Chani, a Fremen charged with guiding and protecting Paul when he first arrives among the Fremen. Book-Rand ends up in a type of polyamorous relationship that apparently somewhat mimicked Robert Jordan’s lived experience, but one of his partners is Aviendha, an Aiel Maiden of the Spear who becomes a Wise One (the Aiel term for women who can channel and who play an important role in Aiel society). While the TV series introduced Aviendha in Season 2, so far in Season 3 we only see her romantically involved with Elaine Trakand (who in the books is another of Rand’s partners). The books depict Aviendha and Elaine as so emotionally intimate that many readers have felt that their relationship would naturally develop a physical component. Both Chani and Aviendha are skilled warriors who aren’t rushing to endorse this outworlder/wetlander’s claim to be special. Zendaya’s portrayal of Chani differs from the books in that she is doubtful of Paul’s messianic status. Chani’s character in the books is much more focused on supporting Paul in embracing his role as Mahdi. Aviendha appears to believe early on that Rand is the car’a’carn, but she does not see him as being worthy of the role… yet. There is clear resentment that this wetlander is supposed to save the Aiel when he knows nothing about their history and culture. The Wise Ones don’t appear to need any help or guidance from anyone, let alone Rand who doesn’t even know how the Aiel grow food in the desert.

The throughline connecting these examples is that Rand and Paul have that special messiah-in-training quality, but they both require a lot of help before they can achieve their prophetic destiny. One could argue that this is just part of a generic hero’s journey arc, but the fact that in all these cases—Rhuarc, Stilgar, Aviendha, Chani—the guides in question are from factions coded as non-white means that our white saviors are relying on their respective versions of the “noble savage” or “magical minority character” trope.

The protagonists do diverge in terms of how they process their conflicted sense of belonging vs. alienation from these new cultures. For example, there is a scene where Rand is sparring with Lan, talking about his life growing up with Tam al’Thor, the blademaster turned shepherd. Ran understands that Aiel blood flows through his veins, but he also recognizes that “I will never be one of them.” Rand goads Aviendha about how she can’t make up her mind as to whether or not he is really Aiel. Later on, when Rand finds Aviendha in Rhuidean, he tells her, “I’m sorry I didn’t understand about the sword.” She replies, “and now you do?” His response, “I understand enough to know I’ll never fully understand,” expresses volumes about the challenges in front of Rand. While Rand expresses doubts about his ability to earn the Aiel’s trust, I don’t see the same in Paul Atreides. He may initially doubt that the prophecy of mahdi and lisan al-gaib is real, but over time he feels he is qualified to wield the Fremen (and their deified sandworms) as weapons to further his agenda and ultimate revenge against the Harkonnen.

Prophetic Destinies: Roads to Oblivion?

Both Paul and Rand come to understand that they will lead these people, they will be somewhat adopted by them as insiders even though they will always also be outsiders, and that they are essentially leading their followers to a form of destruction.

The Wise One Melaine tells Rand that “[t]o lead is to know where you come from, to understand the blood in your veins.” This is a key phrase, not just for understanding Rand and his connection to the Aiel, but also in comparing Rand and Paul. Both characters have to learn how to connect with the past. Rand connects with his literal past, and later on in the series we will hopefully see how Rand comes to know Lews Therin’s actual memories, that Lews is actually part of Rand’s mind. Paul comes to understand the pasts of all of humanity, as well as humanity’s future. The visions of the past are equally powerful, and Jordan decided to craft this part of the Pattern with much more specificity than Herbert, who leaves it much vaguer in the main books.

When Paul arrives on Arrakis with his family and the rest of House Atreides, he asks his mother what the Fremen are shouting towards him. She explains they were saying “Lisan al-Gaib, Voice of the Outer World. It’s their word for messiah. It means the Bene Gisserit have been at work here.” Paul responds with a derisive “Planting superstitions,” but Lady Jessica corrects him: “Preparing the way, Paul. These people have waited for centuries for the Lisan al-Gaib. They see you, they see the signs.” Paul doesn’t buy it, responding in kind: “they see what they’ve been told to see.”

Similar to the status that the Reverend Mother plays in Fremen society, the Aiel have Wise Ones. This all-female group of sorcerers are the only Aiel who can “channel” (using the magic system that predominates The Wheel of Time universe). Rand’s relationship with Moiraine is similar to that of Paul to his mother Jessica in that Jessica has been working to prepare Paul throughout his entire life to be far more than the head of House Atreides. Moiraine can be seen as a motherly stand-in (although a few of the visions she has during her trip to Rhuidean might cross the line!).

We learn more about the Aiel prophecy about the Car’a’carn in “A Question of Crimson.” Upon meeting Rand al’Thor, Wise One Bair says: “He will come from the west, beyond the Spine of the world. Of the blood but not raised by the blood. He will tie us together with bonds we cannot break. He will take us back home, and he will destroy us.” This sounds a bit like a messiah, but kind of a scary messiah? Like, you want him to show up, but you’re also kind of worried that he will really show up? Because that’s actually very on brand for the way the books and TV series depict the Dragon Reborn. Another important piece of The Wheel of Time universe is that male channelers all eventually go insane, while female channelers do not. So having a super powerful male channeler isn’t safe for anyone involved, not over the long term. They might kill everyone around them, they might create a mountain range where previously there was a grassy plain, and so forth. Moiraine, and later on, Cadsuane (we really need Cadsuane to show up!), work to mentor the young Dragon Reborn so that he is ready for The Last Battle against the Dark One (I know, it’s all apocalyptic intrigue, all the time), but they are also on the lookout for signs that Rand is succumbing to the madness. In The Wheel of Time it is men who are the weaker sex, no doubt. Herbert wasn’t laboring under any pretense of swapping around gendered hierarchies in his worldbuilding, but for Jordan this is a major theme for The Wheel of Time.

But our heroes learn the hard way that there are limits to their powers. During the climax of “In the Shadow of Night,” after defeating one the Forsaken in battle, Rand discovers he accidentally killed a young child. Distraught, he attempts to revive her, desperately channeling again and again in a vain attempt to undo the tragedy. He sobs “I bring destruction but also creation.”

In the Season 3 finale, Moiraine acknowledges that Rand was right to bring them to the Aiel: “This is a nation of warriors. Even the Forsaken will fall against a hundred thousand spears,” and goes further to tell him that he “…bring the Aiel under your control alone. No Aes Sedai strings at your back.” I see a parallel here between Rand and Paul in that both have to demonstrate their independence from the powerful women who have helped bring them to their respective points in the story.

Rand raises the prophetic stakes in telling the Aiel that he “shall spill out the blood of those who call themselves Aiel as water on sand, and break you as dried twigs. Yet the remnant of the remnant the car’a’carn shall save and they shall live.”

In a scene that will strike a distinct heavy metal power chord with fans of David Lynch’s adaptation of Dune, Rand shows all the Aiel just how powerful he is, drawing on the One Power to literally make it rain in the desert. The signs are clear: this guy can make the clouds dance, he knows the truth about the Aiel’s past as pacifist servants, and the odds are that the “break you as dried twigs” line is more literal than rhetorical. Overawed by this display, and with Rhuarc loudly declaring for Rand, the Aiel (well, most of them) kneel to their messiah. That the audience sitting at home can literally see the darkness enveloping Rand, and his refusal to let go of that power even when Egwene asks him to, serves as all manner of foreshadowing. There’s a reason some of the Aes Sedai are out to box Rand in, to literally contain him—he’s dangerous! Turns out most saviors, once they finally arrive, don’t do their job exactly as you hope.

My goal in this essay is more than simply to draw our attention to these similarities between these two hugely popular franchises that have built up global appeal but whose creators are also deeply rooted here in the U.S. What does it say about our cultural milieu that we draw upon these tropes time and time again to tell these stories? What would it look like if epic fantasy and science fiction were to operate with a different type of source code?

I join with millions of fans from around the world in enjoying these science fiction and fantasy tales. But it would be naive to pretend that they have nothing to do with our own world. There are consequences to perpetuating the ideas and ideology underlying white savior mythology, and it would be good for all of us—especially us fans who identify as white—to think about the impact it has on our understanding of how our own world functions when so many of the heroic narratives we consume seem to work from remarkably similar templates.[end-mark]

The post Desert Warriors and White Saviors: The Shared Destinies of Rand al’Thor and Paul Atreides appeared first on Reactor.

News Dune Messiah

Jason Momoa Is Officially Returning for Dune Messiah

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on March 31, 2025

Screenshot: Warner Bros.

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Screenshot: Warner Bros.

In news that won’t be surprising for those who’ve read Frank Herbert’s novels, Jason Momoa, who played Duncan Idaho in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part One, will be coming back for the filmmaker’s third movie in the franchise, Dune Messiah.

In an interview with Collider to promote his upcoming movie Minecraft, Momoa answered as follows when asked if we’ll see him in Villeneuve’s third Dune film:

[Spoilers below for those who haven’t read the books yet!]

Momoa is likely referencing the plot point from Herbert’s books, where Duncan comes back as a ghola, an artificially created clone that could be manufactured from just one cell of a deceased individual. In the books, Paul Atreides is gifted a Duncan ghola who, initially lacking his memories of being Duncan, is programmed to work against Paul. High-stakes political intrigue ensues.

We don’t know yet if Momoa’s ghola version of Duncan will look markedly different than his portrayal of the OG version in Dune: Part One, including whether this ghola-Duncan will sport a beard or not, a facial garnishment that Momoa’s character inexplicably loses in the first film.  

We’ll be able to assess Momoa’s facial hair ourselves in a year and a half: Dune Messiah is currently slated to premiere in theaters on December 18, 2026. [end-mark]

The post Jason Momoa Is Officially Returning for <i>Dune Messiah</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Column Science Fiction Film Club

Dune: The Enticing Weirdness of a Frustrating, Fascinating Failure 

David Lynch’s “Dune” could have been amazing, given room to breathe…

By Kali Wallace

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Published on February 12, 2025

Image: Universal Pictures

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Image: Universal Pictures

Dune (1984). Directed by David Lynch. Written by David Lynch, based on the novel by Frank Herbert. Starring Kyle MacLachlan, Francesca Annis, and Kenneth McMillan.

Here’s the thing: My father read Frank Herbert’s Dune to me and my siblings as a bedtime story. He read several of his favorite books to us over the years, and Dune was one. Even now, every time we walk on sand dunes or beaches, we remind each other not to walk with a steady rhythm. Then, of course, we stomp with a steady rhythm right next to a sibling, to lure the worms to come eat them first. We still tell each other to stick our hands into open boxes under threat of the Gom Jabbar. In fact, we sometimes use “gom jabbar” the same way people use words like doohickey or thingamabob, as a catch-all for an object: “Pass me that thing there, no, not the screwdriver, the gom jabbar.”

None of this makes me a Dune expert. Compared to the average readership of this site, I barely know anything about Dune.

Sure, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know Dune, but I also haven’t read the novel since I was young enough to have it read to me. I never read any of the other books in Herbert’s series. I’ve never seen any adaptation except David Lynch’s, and prior to this month the last time I watched it was probably about thirty years ago. (Yes, Dad, I will watch Denis Villeneuve’s films at some point, stop pestering me about them. I might also reread the book some day.)

My point is: If you want a write-up about this movie from somebody who knows the ins and outs of Herbert’s novel in great detail, there are many to choose from, including several on this very site. I am not that person. I am just somebody who has been rooting for the giant worms since childhood. I love the giant worms.

So let’s talk about how the movie Dune (1984) came about.

Frank Herbert’s novel Dune was published in 1965, and it has been widely read and beloved ever since. The first producer to acquire rights to adapt Dune into a film was Arthur P. Jacobs, the man behind The Planet of the Apes (1968) and the franchise it spawned. Jacobs bought the rights to the novel in 1971, and that’s where we begin our brief tour of “Directors Who Didn’t Make Dune (But Whose Versions of Dune I Would So Totally Watch If I Had the Chance).”

First on that list is Sir David Lean, director of a few films you might have heard of: Great Expectations (1946), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965). Yes, Lean seems like an odd choice for a sci fi epic about people doing psychedelic drugs to travel through space. But you can appreciate what Jacobs envisioned, because if somebody can adapt Charles Dickens and Boris Pasternak, they can handle a complex story with a cast of thousands. Lean was, alas, not interested, so we’ll never know what his version of Dune might have looked like. Jacobs approached a few other directors, but he didn’t find anybody before his death in 1973.

The film rights were then purchased from Jacobs’ production company by what every article amusingly refers to as a “French consortium.” That’s where Alejandro Jodorowsky comes into the story. His long, involved, ambitious, and ultimately doomed attempt to make the movie has been told in the award-winning documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013). The film was eventually abandoned because it would have been much too long (10-14 hours of film were storyboarded) and much, much too expensive. The production’s imagination was, alas, bigger than its available resources.

The Dune that Jodorowsky never made would have been fascinating and strange. I know we all want to visit a parallel universe where it came to fruition. Even without actually existing as a film it has managed to be impressively influential on sci fi cinema, although in a somewhat indirect way, as several people involved with the project would go to work on Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979)—including artist H.R. Giger and Alien screenwriter Dan O’Bannon.

The owners of the film rights sold them on again, this time to Dino De Laurentiis, the producer behind a vast and eclectic assortment of movies ranging from Federico Fellini’s La Strada (1954) to Roger Vadim’s Barbarella (1968) to Sidney Lumet’s Serpico (1973). De Laurentiis first got Herbert to write the screenplay, but Herbert himself described his effort to compress the book into a film as a failure.

That’s when De Laurentiis brought on the third and final of the “Directors Who Didn’t Make Dune (But Whose Versions of Dune I Would So Totally Watch If I Had the Chance).” Ridley Scott had just finished with Alien, and he spent several months working with yet another Dune screenplay, this one by author Rudy Wurlitzer. Scott soon came to the conclusion that the story would take two movies to tell, and that would require more time than he was willing to put into it.

So we’ll never know what Ridley Scott’s Dune would have looked like, which is unfortunate, because I bet it would have been really cool. But I’m also glad he didn’t do it, because he went on to make Blade Runner (1982) instead, and we know how I feel about Blade Runner.

You have probably noticed the pattern by now: Everybody who looked at Dune knew that it would take more than two hours to tell the story properly.

There are very few universal truths when it comes to Hollywood and adaptation, but this is one of them. Everybody knew this story required more than a single movie. Directors knew it, screenwriters knew it, even the producers knew it, although they probably lied to the money people about it. Everybody knew it.

At this point, it was 1981 and the nine-year film option was about to expire. (Shocked professional aside: Nine years? Good lord.) But letting go of a hugely popular sci fi property right smack in the middle of the “hugely popular sci fi movies are making bank” era was not the plan, so De Laurentiis negotiated a new agreement with Herbert. And at some point De Laurentiis’ daughter, producer Raffaella De Laurentiis, took over the project. With the money coming from Universal Studios, she was the one who brought David Lynch into the fold.

Lynch was still a pretty new director, but his reputation was experiencing a meteoric rise at the time. After Eraserhead (1977) enjoyed its indie success as a midnight movie and arthouse darling, Lynch made The Elephant Man (1980), which is loosely based on the life of Joseph Merrick. The Elephant Man was a tremendous success both commercially and critically. It was nominated for a pile of awards, including several Academy Awards. (The film also led to an organized push in Hollywood to demand the Academy recognize the work of makeup artists, which led to the creation of the Academy Award for Best Makeup.)

As Lynch’s star was rising, so too was Hollywood’s demand for big, flashy sci fi movies, thanks to the wild success of Star Wars (1977). Lynch was also offered a chance to direct Return of the Jedi (1983), because everybody and their brother was offered a chance to direct Return of the Jedi, but he declined. (Aside: I maintain that of all the directors who didn’t direct Return of the Jedi, Lynch was in fact not the strangest possibility. That honor belongs to David Cronenberg. Imagine a Cronenberg Return of the Jedi… Imagine Cronenberg Ewoks.)

Lynch didn’t know Dune before Raffaella De Laurentiis approached him, but he read it, liked it, and set to work writing his own screenplay. At first he was working with his cowriters from The Elephant Man, Eric Bergren and Christopher De Vore, but they left the project after some time. Lynch wrote several drafts of the screenplay. He wanted to tell the story across two movies, just like everybody else who had tried to adapt it, but Universal disagreed. They wanted a standard two-hour movie. They wanted a big, flashy, popular space opera that would launch a new series or trilogy.

To address the obvious question: I don’t know if any of the people in charge at Universal had read Dune. I may not know Dune that well, but even I know that you don’t look at Dune if you want another Star Wars.

That’s not what they got. What they got is… well.

The most frustrating thing about David Lynch’s Dune is that it could have been so fucking good. It’s not a good movie, but the elements are there. There are glimmers of beauty and possibility all over the place. It’s so easy to imagine what it might have been, but the film aggressively compresses a story that needs time to breathe. And, as Jill Krajewski wrote in Vulture last year, “It’s also a shame to watch Lynch’s special-effects budget run out in real time….”

I think that’s even more disappointing than a film that has no potential.

That’s not mere speculation about the time and budget problems; the production of the film was thoroughly documented and reported while it was happening. See, for example, a 1983 New York Times article on the production, or the on-set diary from journalist and filmmaker Paul M. Sammon that was published in Cinefantasique in 1984.

The movie was filmed at Churubusco Studios in Mexico City, largely because Dino De Laurentiis thought it would save money. It’s unclear if the benefits outweighed the problems. From basic issues like not always having reliable electricity to more complex geopolitical issues like not being able to acquire certain equipment due to import embargos and weeks-long delivery delays—or even relying on crew members to bring supplies in their personal luggage when they arrived—one has to wonder if the choice caused more problems than it solved.

In any case, the production was massive and constantly in need of more time and more money. In one interview, model unit supervisor Brian Smithies recalls arriving at the studio to find Raffaella De Laurentiis going through the script page by page and tearing out things she knew they wouldn’t have the money to film. And that wasn’t at the beginning of the production—that was several months in, after one effects crew had already left and others had been brought in to do a huge amount of work in a very short amount of time.

I always watch the movies for this column before I do any reading or research. And when I sat down to watch Dune, not having seen the movie since I was a kid, at first I was thinking, “Why does everybody hate this? It’s not nearly as bad as they make it sound.”

That feeling did not last. But the film really does begin with promise! The first third is quite good! Sure, the voiceovers are annoying and unnecessary, but that’s the kind of thing where you can practically hear the confused memos from studio execs forcing awkwardness onto the film. The cast is strong, with a few standouts, such as Kyle MacLachlan as Paul Atreides and Brad Dourif as Piter De Vries, and while the Baron Harkonnen character has some, uh, problems (to put it mildly), those problems aren’t with Kenneth McMillan’s performance.

One aspect of Lynch’s Dune that remains impressive is the art and production design. For all of the film’s problems, the work overseen by production designer Anthony Masters (who also worked on 2001: A Space Odyssey) and art director Benjamín Fernández is incredible. Especially in the first half of the movie, the combination of wonderfully unique design, extensive use of miniatures and matte paintings, and the construction of elaborate sets do so much work in establishing this film’s different settings. The overall design is maximalist and baroque, and each setting has an immediately identifiable look and feel: the dark wooden rooms on Caladan contrasted with the garish gold around the emperor, or the nauseating industrialism of Giedi Prime versus the cramped underground warrens of Arrakeen.

Even though it’s a scene that some reviews—both contemporary and retrospective—call out as a bit too much, I completely adore the scene where the Spacing Guild comes to call on Emperor Shaddam IV (José Ferrer). I love everything about it: the fuss and anxiety of the emperor and his court in that gilded hall, the unsettling demeanor of the Navigator’s attendants and the jarring language translation, the Navigator arriving in that tank that looks like a combination of an art deco train engine and a steampunk contraption, and the lumpy design of the Navigator themself and the constant focus on that spice-breathing sphincter-like mouth. I even love the small detail that there are attendants mopping the floor as the Navigator arrives and leaves.

I know the scene exists to provide exposition—to explain the film’s entire plot, really—but it also serves to demonstrate just how weird the universe of Dune really is.

Unfortunately, it also emphasizes just how poorly later scenes in the film hold up, particularly those that are supposed to show Paul and Jessica’s (played by Francesa Annis) time with the Fremen. We see and feel places where massive chunks of the story were cut out or abbreviated; Universal insisted on editing Lynch’s first rough cut of three to four hours down to two hours, which is why there are all those time skips and voiceovers. That’s a problem for any film, but it’s especially a problem for a film that is supposed to show a young man’s transformation from feudal heir to messianic cult leader. That’s the kind of story that needs to show its work, because the themes of politics and religion and rebellion and power are really very complicated.

To clarify something that is sometimes misreported: Lynch had nothing to do with the longer television version that came out in 1988, nor with any of the other re-edits and versions that have come out since. When he did speak about Dune, which was rarely, he was openly bitter about how it had gone. He once said, “Don’t make a film if it can’t be the film you want to make. It’s a sick joke, and it’ll kill you.” Only after decades had passed did he express interest in a director’s cut but, tragically, it’s too late now.

It’s not that I think all of Dune’s problems would have been solved with more time and more money. More time and more money would not have solved the problem of the almost childishly over-the-top Harkonnen characters. It wasn’t a lack of time or money that had them bringing Toto on to do the soundtrack—which is fine in some places, but laughable in others. And nothing can explain Sting and his winged codpiece. Why is Sting even there? Some things only make sense in the ’80s.

In a larger sense, the adaptation was always going to be complicated by the fact that in Herbert’s novel, Paul Atreides is very much not a Hollywood-style heroic figure. That’s kinda the whole point of the story. And as we have previously discussed, Hollywood in the early 1980s was not terribly favorable toward sci fi films without heroic plotlines. There was always a fundamental disconnect between what the studio wanted and what Dune actually is, and that’s not something that would go away even with all the time and money in the world.

Even so, I would have liked to see it. I wish we had a chance to watch the version of Dune that existed in David Lynch’s screenplay and imagination. I would love to see the full version of Dune that Lynch tried to make, flaws and all. There is enough that is weird and dark and wonderful in the movie to hint at what could have been.

It wouldn’t have been perfect. Maybe it wouldn’t even have been good. But I bet it would have been glorious.

What do you think about Dune? I didn’t even talk about the worms. I have no complaints about the worms. I think they’re cute and very large and they can chomp anything they want. I’m always cheering for the worms.

Next week: It’s hard for me to articulate just how formative Twin Peaks was for me as an impressionable tween who suspected the world was so much more fucked up than adults were telling us. Watch Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me on Max, Criterion, Amazon, Apple, or Fandango.[end-mark]

The post <i>Dune</i>: The Enticing Weirdness of a Frustrating, Fascinating Failure  appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Dune: Prophecy

Dune: Prophecy’s First Season Ends With Operatic Highs in “The High-Handed Enemy”

As usual, the Corrino family are a mess. But who’s going to pick up the pieces this time?

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

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Published on December 23, 2024

Credit: HBO

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Credit: HBO

Hell hath no fury like a… well, you know.

Recap

The opening shows the aftermath of Dorotea’s death from Tula’s perspective. She, Francesca (Charithra Chandan), and Kasha (Yerin Ha) see Valya use the Voice against Dorotea, and they agree to say that she took her own life out of grief. Tula runs away, and Valya learns that she’s pregnant from Orry Atreides and that there was some manner of affection there. Valya asks Tula if she wants to keep and child and Tula says she does, so Valya vows to help her do so, and says they’ll raise the child together. Tula cites the rules against Sisters keeping their children, but Valya says that when she’s Mother Superior, they will be able to do whatever they want. In the present, Sister Nazir talks to Tula about the viral nightmare being caused by this virus Hart is spreading. Nasir is curious why is took so long to kill Kasha, and Tula recalls Kasha’s difficult past and how the sister believed that she was specially adept at handling fear. The bioweapon is more dangerous to those who have difficulty with fear. Nazir is also curious as to who gave the disease to Hart; she presumes he’s the first carrier. She believes they can create a cure similarly to how they transmute the poison during the agony. Tula volunteers to take on this task, but Sister Nazir believes that she’s the best candidate.

Nazir almost manages to fight off the virus and transmute it, but it causes the virus to activate and she sees “the monster of Arrakis watching him” and insists that it’s not human before dying. Hart tells Keiran Atreides that the Sisterhood—and therefore the Harkonnens—have been helping the resistance, and that he wants him to testify against them. Keiran points out that he hates the Hart and the Emperor far more. Ynez tries to break Keiran out of prison, but the Empress stops her, and has her arrested. Javicco tells Francesca that he wants her to stay and that Natalya knows about them anyway. He tells her that he wants to speak to Mother Superior. Francesca brings this to Valya, insisting that this will give her everything she wanted and that she can make sure Javicco releases his daughter from prison, but Valya knows that Natalya would never stand for it and believes that Javicco is beyond help; she plans to bring down his reign and insure Ynez’s ascent to the throne. In flashback, Valya shows Tula, Francesca, and Kasha the thinking machine Raquella was using and they develop their plan to install Javicco on the throne with Natalya as his wife and Francesca as a distraction until it can come to pass. Valya speaks to Tula alone and tells her that the machine has determined her child will have incredible potential.

In the present, Tula is talking to the machine and wants to know how to virus is doing this to them. The machine recommends killing her son, so Tula insists that he wasn’t born a weapon and that she plans to go to him. Lila begs Jen to undo her restraints, and uses the drug meant to be used on her to known Jen out. Javicco comes to Hart and tells him that he’s planning to send the Empress on a goodwill tour; Hart realizes that the Sisterhood is worming their way back in and warns the Emperor against this path. Lila—who is being possessed by Dorotea, and she finds Emeline and her group, and starts trying to find her band of faithful sisters, but they’ve all gone. Valya has plans to go see the Emperor on invitation; she will get out due to Sister Theodosia’s presence at the palace on Francesca’s invitation. Francesca is given poison to administer to the Emperor. Natalya meets with the Emperor to tell him off for trying to send her away. She refuses; Hart is firmly on her side, and she’s running things now. The Emperor is told that Mother Superior is there. She’s sitting in the throne room, on his throne.

Valya tells Javicco the whole truth: That he’s been their puppet this entire time, and his reign is coming to an end. He has her arrested. Dorotea continues to use Lila to tell Jen and Emeline the truth about the order that they serve. In the past we see Valya and her cohort confront Dorotea’s contingent and use the Voice to make them choose: to follow Valya or do follow the same path as Dorotea. The entire group cut their own throats with the exception of Sister Avila (Sarah Oliver-Watts), who vows to follow Valya. Javicco confronts Francesca about moving on to her next assignment, and she admits she has the poison, but insists that these plans were always Valya’s, never hers. Valya uses the Voice on the guards to get herself and Ynez released; Ynez insists on Keiran’s release too, and Sister Theodosia changes into Ynez so that they can get the princess out without suspicion. The Empress and Hart are informed that Mother Superior has been arrested, leading Hart to call for a lockdown of the palace. Theodosia pretends to be a wounded palace guard in order to get Hart close and stab him. He has her put in suspension. 

Javicco is talking to Francesca, trying to figure out what’s been real in his life. He realizes that he’s never known freedom, but there’s one thing he can control; he stabs himself in the chest. As Francesca cries over him, Natalya uses the poison dart meant for the Emperor on her. The Empress takes a moment, then runs out screaming that the Emperor has been killed. Dorotea takes the acolytes to see the grave site of her followers, and insists that the Sisterhood has lost its way. She plans to turn them back to their righteous path, and the acolytes follow her into the tunnels underground. Dorotea takes a crowbar to the Anirul thinking machine. In the past, we see Tula with baby Desmond, deciding that he needs the ability to find his own path, free of Valya’s influence or her own. Francesca helps her in this task, finding a new mother for him who gave birth to a stillborn baby. Tula tells Valya that her own child died. In the present, we see her arrive on Salusa Secundus. Harrow arrives home and takes the recording device Hart gave him from the wall. Valya, Keiran, and Ynez escape the palace and land their craft at a fuel depot. Valya tells them to continue on while she buys them time.

Valya dispatches Hart’s guards using the Voice. She tells Hart to show her end that he spoke of. He begins to use the virus against her. Valya flashes back to Griffin’s near death in the frozen water and the first time she used the Voice. Keiran and Ynez fight their way out of the spaceport. Tula finds Valya at the spaceport and tells her sister that she cannot fight the virus because it is a machine. She says Valya must release her fear, and in her mind, Valya hears Griffin tells her that she killed all of them. Tula tells her that she cannot fight the battle with strength; she has to let go of her fear and pain, and let it pass through her. Valya tells Tula that she sees the worm coming, and Tula tells her to let it come. Valya sees through to the end of the nightmare; it shows her what was done to Hart, the machines that were used to make him a weapon. She doesn’t see who did it to him, but she knows his eye is where the device is stored and goes to kill him. Tula uses the Voice on her to stop her and tells her that Hart is her son. Valya realizes that Tula feared her influence on the child, and is mortified that her sister didn’t truly trust her.

Tula tells Valya that she could have stopped her influence over the Sisterhood, but never tried because they’re the same; two wolves. She wanted better for her son. Valya knows he’s been delivered to their enemies and think killing him is the only way to solve this, but Tula begs Valya to let her save him. Valya tells her that she trusts her, and leaves. She is no longer afraid and wants to know who this hidden player is. Tula and Hart embrace, but afterward, he tells the guards to arrest her. Keiran, Ynez, and Valya land on Arrakis: Valya says the path to their enemy begins here. 

Commentary

Surprise! We ended on Arrakis. Why? Well, how else would you know it was Dune?

I’m sorry, the convenience of this plot is killing me: The other player in Hart’s creation is also using thinking machines! The scary virus makes you think of Shai-hulud because we had to tie the creation of the Litany of Fear directly to Arrakis somehow! (Which is absurd. This all could have happened to Hart literally anywhere else in the universe, but why invent something new when you could make the most obvious, rote connections possible.) Valya and Tula are going to be responsible for every central tenet of the Sisterhood as we know it going forward and no one else will ever matter. 

Also, is Theodosia literally supposed to be the first face dancer? Because they’re talking about her abilities as though they’re unheard of, making it seem like it’s a new concept. Which is another point of convenience that isn’t great. Everything has to be firsts in this story, all things were created exactly 10,000 years ago and nothing has changed since then, it’s fine.

One aspect of the episode I do love are the reveals about where precisely Valya and Tula’s relationship struggles. Learning that Valya didn’t demand Tula get rid of her child, that she wanted her sister to keep him and was excited to raise him together, only for Tula to be the one who wanted her child to grow up away from that influence is great character stuff. Also seeing where alliances originate; it’s not at all surprising that Francesca is the one who helps Tula with this task over any other sister. They have similar emotional makeups.

It adds further layers to the fight Valya has with her uncle before his death; the tragedy of Valya’s character is how desperately she wants her family to love and trust her, and how rarely she receives anyone’s full confidence. Even in light of Tula telling her the truth, there’s no malice waiting on the other side. The deep bond between the Harkonnen sisters can’t be shaken by learning that Tula wasn’t honest with her about what became of her nephew. It must hurt, but Valya that knows she routinely asks too much. Especially of Tula.

The plot with the Empress is also well-handled. They set up the strife between Javicco and Natalya from the start, and make it abundantly clear that the Emperor is insulting and sidelining his wife at his own peril. The endgame of that thread is operatic in a best possible way; a pile of dead bodies and Empress screaming that her husband has been killed, having finally achieved everything she wanted. 

“It’s a strange thing when you realize you’ve never known one true moment of freedom” are close to being Javicco’s last words. It’s a canny thought that I think plenty of people might feel some manner of connection to; we live in a world where so many aspects of our own lives are fully out of our hands and beyond our ability to influence. But it’s real hard to feel for the guy when he’s such a sad sack, ineffectual mealworm of a leader. Watching Valya sit in his chair and tell him exactly how little he’s ever done is pretty great.

We’re getting setup for the coming season (which has been greenlit, fyi) in where everyone ends up. Desmond is going to get to known his mother; the Empress is going to exert power for the first time; Valya, Ynez, and Keiran are going to get to the bottom of Hart’s mystery; Harrow has record of a great deal of Valya’s plans and who knows how he’ll use it; the Sisterhood is going to go through a period of upheaval as Dorotea tries to wrest back control through her descendent. I’m curious as to whether the mystery around Hart is actually going to be surprising? My mind immediately assumed that the Mentats have something to do with it—they’ve been strangely silent this whole time.

Here’s hoping that a second season will allow them to strengthen what’s good about this story and avoid future clichés. They’ve got a great cast and so many avenues of possibility open to them. Let’s not spend much time on Arrakis, if your please. I’d like to see somewhere else in the “known universe.”

Truthsaying and Visions

• Learning about how Sister Avila came into all of this… yeesh.

• Sorry, meta-cyanide? I will be laughing about that for days. You know, the poison becomes meta when you need it for Chekov’s gun purposes.

• Constantine’s sure in a weird position now, huh?

See you next season, perhaps![end-mark]

The post <i>Dune: Prophecy’</i>s First Season Ends With Operatic Highs in “The High-Handed Enemy” appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Dune: Prophecy

Dune: Prophecy (Almost) Reveals All in “In Blood, Truth”

Someone give Chloe Lea all the awards, though.

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

|

Published on December 16, 2024

Credit: Attila Szvacsek/HBO

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Credit: Attila Szvacsek/HBO

“In Blood, DNA Samples” would be more accurate. But sure, let’s go with truth.

Recap

Desmond Hart presents in front of the royal family at the head of a new fighting force that will protect the Imperium, which he will lead as Bashar; the Emperor has decried it. Hart suggests that the Emperor leave the fleet over the planet a while longer as a show of strength. Sister Francesca (Tabu) arrives on Salusa Secundus due to a message she received from Constantine, her son. Ynez is under guard, but Constantine insists on coming into her room to attempt an apology for abandoning her at the Landsraad—he couldn’t stomach disappointing his father after making hi, proud in showing up. On Wallach IX, Sister Jen interrupts their lesson in upset over the lack of transparency from their leaders following the joint dreaming. Tula removes her from class, but not to punish her; she believes Jen is resistant to the dream as she’s never had it, and wants her help with Lila since they were friends. Lila is in a state, screaming and drowning in the voices of her ancestors. Tula asks Jen to keep watch over her.

When Constantine meets with his mother, he tells her that he never sent her a message; he assumed she came because of Kasha, but Francesca didn’t know she’d died. Harrow approaches Hart in attempt to make amends for his accusations at the Landsraad; he blames his aunt’s poor guidance, but Hart insists that not enough—Harrow needs to give something to makes amends. He gets information; Harrow tells him of the underground market, which he claims has been stealing some of his shipments as part of a smuggling operation. Hart says this is only a start, and that Harrow will need to give proof that his aunt is involved in the operation to clear his name. Francesca talks to Valya, wanting to know why she secretly sent for her under the guise of her son. Valya tells her of the reckoning and how the Sisterhood is being sidelined by the Imperium. She asks Francesca to help them in this, promising to occupy Hart while she gets Javicco’s ear, and tells her she may maneuver Constantine into a position as fleet commander. Keiran Atreides tells Constantine off for being late to his sparring lesson and leaves, telling the prince to take responsibility for his life.

Keiran goes to see Mikaela, to warn her of Hart’s impending arrival when he follows up on Harrow’s intel, but she’s unbothered and tells him not to try and become the part he’s playing. She insists that she’s ready for Hart. Jen talks to Lila and realizes that she’s speaking to Mother Raquella. She brings Lila to Tula so that Raquella can help them. Raquella begins analyzing tissue from Kasha’s body and realizes that she’s seen this sort of damage before during the war. Harrow tells Valya that the intel she provided helped with Hart, but that he was asking about the Sisterhood. Valya tells him that the information she gave him will improve House Harkonnen’s standing, and he leaves for Evgeny’s funeral, telling Valya she can stay while he’s gone. Theodosia asks where Francesca fits into this plot, and Valya tells her that she hasn’t yet learned the skill of imprinting on a person so that you can affect the course of their life. Francesca asks Javicco to give Constantine a chance to prove himself. He kisses her, but she stops him, insisting that she didn’t come to drive a wedge between the Emperor and his wife.

Avila tries to take Tula to task for not being present while the school founders in panic. She has a message from Valya and demands to know what is going on in the lab. Though Tula refuses to tell her, Raquella (Lila) emerges and explains that the deaths they’re seeing were caused by an engineered RNA retrovirus. Avila is mortified at what Tula has done, but she tells Avila to stay silent. Hart visits the underground bar and asks Mikaela questions; she feigns ignorance. His men trash the bar, searching everywhere, while Hart tells Mikaela that all he wants is evidence of the Sisterhood’s connection to the rebellion. Keiran is planting chain explosives for Mikaela while this happens, then the two fight their way out of the bar. As they do so, Hart discovers Mikaela’s Sisterhood robes in one of the spice canisters and Keiran sees her use a Sisterhood knife. The explosives go off, taking down the whole complex and Keiran tells Mikaela that he doesn’t want to see her again, feeling betrayed.

Jen demands to know if Lila is just being used for the Sisterhood’s gain, which Tula insists inevitable in this period of crisis. Hart survives the explosion, and Francesca goes to speak to Constantine. He asks her why she had him and then left him with a father who will never be pleased with him. Francesca tells him that his father is driven by fear and the Constantine must seize opportunities when they come. She also tells him that he was born to protect his sister, the future leader to the Imperium. Mikaela is furious with Valya for destroying her years of hard work when she learns that Hart didn’t die in the explosion. Valya gives her passage to a safe house on Arrakis and dismisses her. Constantine goes to the sparring room and finds evidence of Keiran’s rebel activities. He waits for Keiran to come back and pretends to be contrite for his earlier behavior before turning him over to the guards. At dinner that night, the Emperor praises Constantine’s actions and promotes him to fleet commander.

Ynez watches her mother leave the dinner in hurt, and heads to the cells to talk to Keiran. She demands the truth and he admits the he betrayed his principles for her because he cares for her, but he does believe he can bring about a better Imperium. Lila talks to Jen, glad that she hasn’t let the Sisterhood down, while Jen insists she’s the best of them. Tula gets Hart’s DNA sample from Valya and begins analysis with the computer. The Empress visits Hart, saying he has been chosen, and that she was once too. She believes that the Sisterhood has stolen all of this from her; Javicco’s trust, her daughter’s love, her power. She asks what they took from Hart and he tells her that he’s the son of a Sister, who gave him up and allowed him to be raised by scavengers. Hart and the Empress kiss and she bids them to rid the Imperium of these “witches” as, on Wallach IX, Tula learns that Hart is a descendant of Harkonnen and Atriedes bloodlines…

Commentary

Okay. So Hart is Tula and Orry’s kid. Little perplexed by how he got any background on his family if she gave him up to a bunch of dubious characters, but I’m assuming we’ll find out how by the final episode. I’m a little worried that they’re going to use him as an example of how powerful the Atreides and Harkonnen bloodlines can be together, and make it a precursor to the eventual crossing of the bloodlines again in Dune, since that was orchestrated by the Bene Gesserit. But what can you do—it’s gonna go where it goes.

At least we’ve now got confirmation that Hart’s powers aren’t magic, but delivered via a coded virus. How he wields this power is another manner entirely, but I’m much more interested in getting an answer to that. I’m also way more interested in him having an affair with the Empress because she deserves this. Someone get this woman the known universe’s biggest martini. She gets no respect.

This episode finally makes good on a lot of what the show has put forth, and results in the most successful chapter so far. The actors are finally getting a chance to stretch their legs and we get all those good tense moments you’d expect from a drama like this. The prolonged end to dinner where Ynez sees her mother’s heart break in realtime, and she watches the Empress leave the table is such a powerful moment of connection that doesn’t even require two characters interacting. There’s so much clarity and pain between mother and daughter here, even if Ynez is the only one to feel it fully. And it spurs her to go have a conversation with Keiran Atreides that I must assume will lead to his freedom.

Keiran thinks he’s been clear and concise about when and how he’s betrayed his principles and what they mean to him, but Mikaela reads him for filth in this episode and she’s right. As another person who’s operating on two sides of a line that cannot be made compatible, she’s far more aware of the cost, and more honest with herself about what she’s been trying to achieve. Her only mistake is in failing to realize that she’s a much smaller player to Valya than she’d assumed.

In the meantime, Chloe Lea runs way with the entire flipping episode in her embodiment of Raquella, which is so flawless and detailed that I fully believed the woman was possessed by dead ancestors. It’s a little silly that only Raquella’s memory is capable of unearthing this virus, but if it leads to performances like that, I’m down. Whatever, give me an entire episode of that.

While the question of who qualifies as the ‘hero’ of any given Dune story is always a wooly one, the script goes a long way in making it clear who we should be railing against once Javicco makes that speech at the start of the episode. He hits “defend our values with ferocity and pride” with all the fervor you expect from dictators, and it scrapes just a little too close to reality at the moment, thanks.

Little annoyed that Hart survived that explosion. Obviously he had to, and I know that the shield belts are supposed to be able to help with a lot, but it was so much explosive. I felt a lot like Mikaela did over that one. And while I appreciate that Constantine needed a win in order to get in good with the Emperor, the idea that Keiran would just leave his rebellion crap lying around in the sparring room is a tough sell. I know he’s not the most put-together insurgent, but come on now.

Francesca is identified by Valya as an imprinter; a particular skillset that the Sisterhood uses for the coercion and seduction of powerful men. This is a thing that Frank Herbert eventually identified in Heretics of Dune (retroactively suggesting that Lady Fenring was an imprinter), and I kind of wish he hadn’t? Again, it’s just another place where it feels as though Herbert wants to give reasons for the power women can have in their relationships with men. Why? I believe that Francesca is that powerful without extra special man trap sparkles.

Are we supposed to believe that powerful men are harder to manipulate, resulting in the need for special skills? Because, uh… please don’t make me laugh. Look at Javicco. That is not a difficult man to wheedle. You just need the right words and big emphatic eyes. (This applies to Francesca and Hart, by the way.)

But the final question I’ve got is whether or not this show is hoping for more seasons. It seems as though there’s a lot to wrap up, and very little time now to do it.

Truthsaying and Visions

• It seems very likely that the new fighting force we see at the beginning of the episode is meant to be the predecessors of the Sardukar, which, again, we really don’t have to make this little micro-era the point where every little thing gets created.

• Raquella claims that the dream is prescience and all the Sisters are seeing this potential downfall for their order, but I keep wondering if the vision is either doing double duty (i.e. it applies to more than one era, which often happens in these kinds of stories), or this is truly a vision about Paul Atreides—or Leto II the God Emperor. Shai-hulud leading to darkness and two all-seeing eyes would seem to fit the bill. 

• Last week, I was saying the Emperor should kiss Hart, but this week it’s all about Jen tearfully calling Lila “Doe Eyes.” Love Jen, more to the point, but I do worry that she’s got far too much compassion to be a part of the order.

Next week we come to the end of things…[end-mark]

The post <i>Dune: Prophecy</i> (Almost) Reveals All in “In Blood, Truth” appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Dune: Prophecy

Dune: Prophecy Stacks the Deck in “Twice Born”

We’ve got some proper political intrigue this week, and a few mysteries to unlock.

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

|

Published on December 9, 2024

Credit: Attila Szvacsek/HBO

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Credit: Attila Szvacsek/HBO

So many awkward family meals this week.

Recap

Jen wakes, and notices that all of her sisters are having terrible nightmares. She finds Emeline sleepwalking with a knife and stops the acolyte from killing herself. On Salusa Secundus, Valya offers to be Harrow’s Truthsayer to bring House Harkonnen better standing with a seat at the High Council. Uncle Evgeny warns Harrow against trusting Valya after she abandoned her family, knowing she’s only helping them to get something for herself. Ynez comes to breakfast at the palace and finds Hart at the family table. She questions her father about the rumors around a Pruwet’s death and realizes they’re true. Her parents tell her that she can no longer study with the Bene Gesserit as the family needs to maintain a united front, but Ynez insists that they will never be united while Hart remains at the Emperor’s side. On Wallach IX, Jen and Emeline tell Tula about her dream, and Emeline asks about Dorotea’s death. When they’re dismissed, Jen stays back to tell her that all the sisters but her had this nightmare, Emeline was simply the only one to sleepwalked. The High Council of the Landsraad begins.

Hart talks to the Emperor as he burns Kasha’s Sisterhood book. He wants the Emperor to remove the Truthsayers from the Great Houses, to stamp out the rebellion that is clearly blossoming around him. The Emperor knows he is seen as a beneficiary to what his ancestors created rather than a great leader, but he refuses this advice, citing a need for stability. Keiran and Horace meet with a man to buy a very big bomb, planning to set it off when the Emperor speaks at the High Council. Mikaela thinks that Keiran is spooked about the mission, and advises him to better prepare. Valya records a message for Tula, but breaks it when she thinks to ask her sister to come to her aid. Theodosia informs Valya of the rebel plan they’ve seeded and guided, which Valya plans to frustrate at the High Council in order to get back into the Emperor’s good graces. The Truthsayers whisper to their Great House lords to sow discord and provoke a desire to investigate the Emperor in Pruwet’s death. They suggest the person to bring this accusation be a disgraced house with the least to lose. This leads to two members of the Landsraad inviting Harrow to the High Council to deliver this accusation. Harrow is nervous, but Valya convinces him of the plan’s merit.

Tula brings all the sister who had the nightmare together to get them all to meditate and refocus on the dream and sketch out what they saw. All the dreams start in different places, but they begin to converge as the acolytes grow more terrified in their trances. Avila tries to get Tula to stop, but she refuses. The sisters wake finally and Emeline says that god is watching and judging them—the reckoning is here. The Empress talks to Hart to find out why he’s not seeking out the Emperor’s enemies and destroying them. Hart realizes that she is the one who leaked the rumor about Pruwet’s death; she wants to use this moment to help the Emperor shore up his power and encourages Hart to act as he sees fit to that end. Ynez runs into Keiran at the bar and they argue about what her father has done. She admits that she’s unhappy with Hart’s position and wants to do something about all of this, but she’d hurt her father. He encourages her to make the right choice, but balks at another tryst and leaves. Theodosia asks Valya about the portrait of Griffin, but she won’t talk about it. They discuss the real reason Theodosia was brought along; something to do with an ability of “last resort” that she was promised she’d never have to use again in the Sisterhood.

Tula and Avila discuss the acolytes’ drawings from the dream trance, which all feature Shai-hulud and also a presence of deep fear that woke all of them. Avila thinks they should warn the acolytes of it, but Tula insists that fear feeds this thing, and is the last thing they should spread. Ynez approaches her brother to ask him to stand by her in calling out their father. He doesn’t believe himself strong enough, but Ynez tells him he’s strong and brave and that she needs his support as she had it when they were children. The High Council begins and the Emperor is introduces with the Empress and Hart by his sides. Constantine wishes his father luck and then flees, abandoning Ynez to act on her own. Harrow is called on to address the council, and he asks to file a grievance with regard to the death of Pruwet Richese and asks for a formal inquest. Ynez steps forward to accuse the royal house before he has the chance and Desmond Hart in particular. Suddenly, Horace is brought before the council; Hart dispatched men to find the conspirators against the Emperor and he insists that he was not wrong to execute the boy for his thinking machine, the very same kind that would have been used to kill them all today—he has their bomb. 

With the Emperor’s leave, Hart burns many of the conspirators alive in that room, using his ability. (He doesn’t know of Keiran, so the Atreides makes it out unharmed.) He has rumbled Valya’s plan to expose the same cell, but Valya gets a sample of his blood to send to Tula so that they can find out where he came from. The Emperor comes to see Hart and finds that the man is covered in painful lacerations; using this power comes with a physical cost. The Emperor is moved and promises Hart that he can stay. Emeline knows that truth about Tula now and confronts her about the murder of Dorotea, Orry, and the Atreides, promising to expose her lies. Tula murders her, then wakes—it was a dream. She then notices that Lila’s chamber has been broken. She follows the caverns underground until she comes across Lila, who is awake and well. The two embrace. Valya confronts her uncle over his rudeness to her, and they begin to fight about the past. Valya keeps his medical rescue device from him so that Evgeny suffocates to death in front of her. Griffin appears and says that he understands now what it took for Valya to come back here, and that he will commit himself to this cause. Valya asks if she pushed too far, but he says that everyone makes their own choices. He begins to change and Valya thanks Theodosia—she’s a Face Dancer and took Griffin’s form.

Commentary

I can see the merit to having a Face Dancer in this story, but… what a goofy way to reveal it. Particularly after making the suggestion that Theodosia is uncomfortable with the ability and joined the Sisterhood with the stipulation that she’d never have to use it again—now she’s just pretending to be Valya’s brother for Big Drama purposes?

It’s also a strange way of indicating that Theodosia is now on Valya’s page when we don’t see her witnessing the conversation between Valya and Evgeny and get the chance to see how the context affected her. Like many emotional cues on this show, it springs out of nowhere and asks the audience to do the legwork of explaining how characters got where they are.

It’s unfortunate because this is a great episode for the work Emily Watson is doing with Valya. We finally see some of the fatigue shine through for all these machinations, so much so that she nearly calls for Tula’s aid in her message before cutting herself short. Being outmaneuvered by Hart is a blow, but she maintains her calm and poise. And the fight with her uncle finally puts words to her resentments in a way that provides a much better understanding of her as a character. It’s a shame that we had to get over halfway through this microseries before finding it.

Not sure how I feel about Evgeny’s murder, though; obviously I’m not expecting Valya to do good things to her family, or the Dune universe to back away from depictions of ableism and elder abuse, but there’s a lack of clarity around Evgeny’s disability/illness that makes the death puzzling as it’s rendered. Is the tank she withholds oxygen? (If so, why wouldn’t he have that on his person, built into his chair.) Is it medication? (Same question, really.) Spice? (It’s often used for longevity, so not impossible.) It made an otherwise riveting scene peter out awkwardly.

Presumably, the whole section with the joint acolyte dreaming is designed to get the Bene Gesserit to develop their “Litany of Fear” that we know so well from the original book. Tula’s commentary about the importance of being able to combat this deep fear in the acolytes makes it very unlikely to be anything else. And it’s just… disappointing. Here, viewers, we’ll explain another thing you know about Dune. We did prequel good, go us!

The overall ratcheting tension leading up to the Landsraad meeting is one of the more effective pieces of the episode, with all the good political intrigue you want from these sorts of stories. And the fact that the Empress is, yet again, the person defending the Emperor’s reign despite his distrust of her, while his daughter has finally decided to break from his side—that part is extremely clever. At every layer, this story does center on women and their choices, and the series is right not to make that framework entirely about the Bene Gesserit. It allows this series to avoid the pitfalls of the original Dune books, where nearly all women of any import had to be members of the Sisterhood.

You can line them up and with the exception of Hart, the men are entirely useless in this episode: the Emperor refuses to make any difficult choices and is struggling with the inherent privilege of a position that he didn’t earn; Constatine is bolstered by his sister and still lets cowardice dictate his actions; Harrow can’t achieve any of his goals without precise direction from his aunt; Keiran follows his organization’s plan to the letter and fails utterly; Horace gets captured. It’s a mess all the way down, and one of the sharpest aspects of the episode.

Of course, we now have Lila as another potential “twice born,” as predicted. But her role in this story is far from clear, as is Emeline’s. Tula’s dream could very well be a harbinger, but we can’t be sure how; just because she murders the acolyte in a dream doesn’t mean she’ll have to literally kill the woman. Perhaps she’ll only need to “kill” the ideas Emeline is dredging up.

Truthsaying and Visions

• Avila’s constant protests to how Tula is handling things are starting to get a little tiresome. I get that she’s looking after things on Valya’s behalf, but I don’t believe for one second that Mother Superior wouldn’t be into a joint dream trance sketch session.

• They should spend far more time discussing what “god” is in this context. Obviously, Herbert throws out bits and pieces everywhere in the books (the Orange Catholic Bible and all that), but having Emeline say that God is watching and judging them is another matter entirely, and pertains to the creation of the Sisterhood in terms of how their doctrine functions. We need to know if this is coming from Emeline’s belief system specifically, and if the Sisterhood uses faith in any capacity to control their acolytes. It’s a big subject! Allowing the audience to fill in the blanks there feels sloppy. 

• I cannot get over how weirdly romantic all the moments between Hart and Emperor are? Fine, I initially thought it was just me and my natural inclination to suggest all characters are gay, but this last scene, when Jarvicco sees Hart’s wounds, is not subtle. They should probably kiss.

The penultimate episode next week. Will we get some answers?[end-mark]

The post <i>Dune: Prophecy</i> Stacks the Deck in “Twice Born” appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Dune: Prophecy

Dune: Prophecy Finally Finds Those Flashbacks in “Sisterhood Above All”

There’s so much flashback… and yet not very much history

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

|

Published on December 2, 2024

Image: HBO

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Image: HBO

What do you think fur whale tastes like?

Recap

Valya and Theodosia exit the palace; Vayla tells the acolyte that this is not the first time an enemy sought to remove her and failed. We move into a flashback on Lankiveil where a younger Valya brings back the fur whale meat for a family meal. At dinner, her brother Griffin (Earl Cave) reveals that he’s going to the Landsraad to make a petition for a better trade deal. When Valya learns that Vorian Atreides will be there, she insists that Griffin confront him and get him to rescind the lies he told about their family and led to their exile. Her mother (Polly Walker) is mortified at Valya’s “entitlement and greed” leading Valya to storm off. Griffin follows Vayla and tells her that he doesn’t agree with their mother; Vayla saved his life once as a child when he was about to drown by using the voice on him to get him to swim against the frozen water. He will do as Vayla recommends, believing in his sister’s heart and guidance. But Griffin returns home murdered for following her advice. Vayla is being sent away to Wallach IX to study with the Sisterhood, and is furious that her family won’t avenge her brother’s death. She tells Tula (Emma Canning) to get out of this place.

In the present the sisters on Sesula Secudus meet and ask Mother Superior how to proceed. She tells them to shore up their support among the houses to prevent further mistrust, then gets word from Mikaela about what happened to Lila and what Raquella spoke through her. She is certain that the one “born once in blood, once in spice” is Desmond Hart, and decides it’s time to return “home.” On Wallach IX, Sister Avila confronts Tula about refusing to take Lila off life support. Tula insists that she will do what needs to be done in her own time and dismisses her. In flashback, we find Tula intertwined with an Orry Atreides (Milo Callaghan), who is gathering with the whole family for their yearly traditional hunt of the bull. Tula is afraid that his family will not accept her, but he isn’t worried. Tula shows his younger family member Albert (Archie Barnes) how to create an animal lure for the bull, noting the poisonous innards that must be handled with care. Orry’s horse is fatally injured and Tula rushes to retrieve that poison in order to put down the horse more humanely.

On Wallach IX, Valya and the acolytes are getting Truthsaying lessons from Dorotea, but Valya is questioning everything, insisting truth is a tool to be used. Dorotea insists that Valya is afraid because she belongs to no one and nothing and is totally alone. Valya learns that Dorotea became like this after being sent to the Butlerians to make inroads—she returned as a “true believer” and this change has led to rumors that Raquella no longer wants her to guide the Sisterhood once she’s gone. The acolytes are taken to a cliffside and Dorotea asks them if they are willing to put their loyalty to the Sisterhood above all, even their families. Once they have, they may go inside. Otherwise they must meditate on whether they truly belong there. The acolytes slowly leave one by one and it begins to storm. Soon, Vayla is the only one left, and Dorotea tells her that they both know she’ll always only be a Harkonnnen. She leaves Vayla alone on the cliff in the rain. Mother Raquella lands, finds Valya there and invites her inside.

As the Atreides celebrate their hunt, Tula talks to Orry inside their cabin. Orry asks her to marry him, and the two sleep together. In the morning, Tula finally admits to Orry who she truly is. Orry doesn’t care that she is a Harkonnen; he wants to move beyond their families’ hatred and create a new future for themselves. Tula tells him that some things cannot be changed, and Orry realizes how quiet it is outside. Tula has murdered the entire family with her poison and kills Orry last, in tears. She sees that Albert avoided the poisoning and tells him to go. On Wallach IX, as Dorotea evangelizes to her acolytes, Raquella brings Vayla underground to see the computers and breeding index. Raquella calls Dorotea and Valya together; she wants to end their rivalry to keep the Sisterhood strong. To help them “find a way forward,” she asks them to go through the Agony to become Reverend Mothers. Valya flees the test while Dorotea undergoes it. Raquella calls Valya to her office later with news from Tula, clearly written in code. Raquella knows that Valya has unfinished business with her family and tells her to settle it now; she gives her the poison and tells her to return a Reverend Mother or not at all.

Vayla goes home to Lankiveil to congratulate her sister on avenging Griffin. The rest of the family is mortified by what they believe Valya manipulated her sister into doing. Valya uses the Voice on her mother and nearly gets her to take her own life. Her uncle Evgeny (Mark Addy) calls her a sorceress and Valya walks out into the snow, taking the poison. Tula finds her unconscious and asks her to come back; Valya hears her voice and wakes. Tula tells her that she’s accompanying her to Wallach IX, unwilling to lose her sister after Griffin, but asking for her promise that this will be a fresh start. Valya tells her that they have a new purpose. In the present, Tula gathers the acolytes to say goodbye to Lila. Sisters Emeline and Jen argue over whether this should have happened, but Avila tells them that being part of the Sisterhood means sacrifice. They say goodbye to Lila and leave Tula alone. On Salusa Secundus, Valya takes Theodosia to the Harkonnen family home to meet her nephew Harrow (Edward Davis) and uncle, who are both shocked at her presence. Tula goes underground into the Sisterhood’s computers where she is secretly holding Lila’s body, keeping her alive with spice.

Commentary

So we’ve moved from an entire episode of setup to an entire episode of flashback. Sure. Why not.

We need to go over the bananas choice to have Tula kill… all? …the Atreides? Except for one? In the book she only kills Orry, which makes sense in terms of revenge, but killing an entire family with a blood feud against your family and only keeping one (now traumatized) kid alive seems a very obvious, very bad move. Again, extremely Hollywood choice. And of course it had to take place during the Atreides family bull hunt, because what else could the Atreides family possibly be doing but the thing that killed Leto’s father. Because everything needs to be shown and, again, the family traditions have barely changed at all in ten thousand years.

There’s a lot of that going on, including this weird dramatic choice to have Valya’s brother die because she insists on his confronting Vorian Atreides, and him going along with it because… the first time she ever used the Voice was to rescue him from drowning? And that means he trusts her opinion over everyone else’s implicitly. Uh-huh.

It’s also a wild choice to have Valya talk about the schism between Vorian Atreides and Abulurd Harkonnen—the fact that their family’s exile is due to Vorian inaccurately depicting Abulurd’s actions during the Battle of Corbin as cowardly when he was working to prevent a genocide—but never confirm if it’s true within the show. (It is, by the way.) Refusing to iterate the history in these fights Valya has with her family prevents the viewer from fully comprehending her rage. It’s also difficult to believe her when the only person fully on her side is her brother Griffin… but his loyalty is entirely down to her magically saving his life (again, this is a tacky Hollywood choice) and said loyalty immediately gets him killed.

Valya’s family isn’t just dismissive of her or disappointed in her—they are actively abhorrent of her demeanor, beliefs, and emotions. And there’s nothing in these scenes to indicate that their feelings are unreasonable. We don’t know enough about the Harkonnens at this point in time to know if we should trust their vantage point, particularly when Valya’s desires, out of context, indicate nothing but blind ambition and hatred for anyone who won’t adhere to her dogma. This would be fine as a character construct if the history was rendered clearer; moral ambiguity is great in central characters, but textual and factual ambiguity are not. They are selling both Valya and Tula short in refusing to build this background more carefully.

Tula’s actions further that issue: We have no idea how she came to be with Orry, how long it’s been since Griffin’s death, or why Valya assigned her this task of revenge. We’re just dropped into this scenario with a new boyfriend and big family reunion without preface. And we need that context to help us comprehend the sacrifice Tula is making for her family and her sister in that moment, to connect with her grief. It should be grief that communicates across the episode’s timeline shifts with her grief for Lila, but we’re only getting the emotion from one side.

Which is unfortunate because if those connections had been better served, there would be more to feel at the realization that Tula is refusing to let Lila die. But one can assume that the bit they want us more focused on is the idea that if Lila survives (and she surely must, or they wouldn’t bother with all this), she will have been reborn… in spice. Right. Right?

On the positive end, getting more depth on the fight between Dorotea and Valya is one of the episode’s better written parts. And the reason is because Dorotea is so accurately rendered in her religious fervor and righteousness. What Dorotea wants on paper are good things—a Sisterhood built on humility and service to all humankind. But she’s so grotesquely smug about it. You can feel the superiority radiating off her, and the inherent cruelty that breeds deep within. Morally, Valya is not the better person here, but it’s hard not to root for her when you listen to Dorotea’s evangelism.

And now poor Valya has to do the thing she never believed she would have to do… return home for a Harkonnen reunion. Next week should be interesting for sure.

Truthsaying and Visions

• Absolutely loved the bit where Valya used the Voice on her buddies to have one slap the other, and they were both immediately like “that was so cool when can we learn it,” the most realistic young woman behavior, 5000% accurate.

• I’m really glad we don’t get more details on the bull hunt because Tula’s insistence that they’re shy creatures makes me very concerned over what the actual rite is, and I’m sure I wouldn’t like it. The bull getting spared that year was definitely the best thing to come out of that whole affair.

• The idea that the Sisterhood learns you might bring someone back from the brink of death during the Agony ceremony by letting someone they love speak to them all because Tula and Valya did it first… that’s gorgeous.

Next week: presumably we’ll be back in the present![end-mark]

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Movies & TV Dune: Prophecy

Dune: Prophecy Shuffles Pieces Across the Board in “Two Wolves”

Learning Mother Superior’s greatest fear is not as riveting as one might hope

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

|

Published on November 25, 2024

Image: HBO

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Image: HBO

It’s not Dune if someone isn’t taking poison to access their race memory, right?

Recap

Sister Nasir (Karima McAdams) arrives from the Suk School to examine Kasha and help Tula figure out what happened to her. The Acolytes discuss Kasha’s death, with Sister Theodosia (Jade Anuoka) saying it seems likely to be an assassination. Valya gets word about Pruwet’s death and means to leave for Salusa Secundus to secure their place with the royal family. Valya leaves Tula in charge and wants her to put the acolyte Lila (Chloe Lea) through the agony so they can access Raquella’s knowledge. Tula doesn’t want to do this as she thinks of Lila as her own, but agrees to do what’s right for the Sisterhood. Valya asks Theodosia to accompany her, and she agrees. On Salusa Secundus, the Empress talks to Duke Richese, who thinks of accusing the royal family in his son’s death. The Emperor talks to Desmond Hart about the death and Hart makes it clear that he believed the Emperor wanted the boy dead, so he took care of it. The Emperor has him locked up in a suspension chamber and advises Keiran Atreides to keep quiet about it.

Tula talks to Lila and explains the reckoning they believe is upon them, and Lila’s heritage: She is Rauqella’s great-great-granddaughter, and they want her to undergo the Agony so that she can access her genetic memory. Lila is horrified at the idea, but Tula tells her that the choice must be hers. Lady Sharon Richese (Tessa Bonham Jones), Pruwet’s older sister, is having a fling with Constantine, and they do a lot of drugs while she pumps him for information; he tells her about Hart in the cells. The Emperor tells his wife what Hart did and that the surveillance footage shows he survived an attack by the sandworm on Arrakis. The Empress suggests that they use Hart’s loyalty rather than casting him aside. Sister Avila (Barbara Marten) asks Tula about the poison she’s preparing for the Agony; Tula knows she’s been sent by her sister to keep an eye on things and insists that Lila will still get to make this choice on her own. Duke Richese hears about Hart from his daughter and demands that the Emperor hand him over. While the two fight, Valya enters unannounced to give her condolences and calm things down.

Richese leaves after being assured by the Emperor that there is no suspect in custody for this son’s murder. Valya lets Javicco know that Kasha has died, and asks to speak to Hart. Before doing so, she tells Ynex of Kasha’s death—the princess is heartbroken, but Valya introduces her to Theodosia, her possible future dorm mate as a distraction. Valya meets Hart, who tells her he was born on Balut, and that faith led him to the Emperor. He admits that he killed Pruwet and Kasha too, because she was unfit to stand besides the Emperor. He claims to serve only the Imperium, and tells the Emperor that Vayla and her kind chip away at his power. Kayla is determined to remind the Emperor of their value to the throne. Lila has conversations with Sister Emeline (Aoife Hinds) about martyrdom and its uses, and Sister Jen (Faoileann Cunningham) about not being used as a pawn by the Sisterhood. Keiran Atreides is scanning the palace structure for a meticulous blueprint; it turns out that he is part of a resistance cell, and he meets up with Horace (Sam Spruell) and Mikaela (Shalom Bruce-Franklin) to discuss their next steps to announce the rebellion on a large scale.

Tula and Lila speak again, admitting that they feel bonded to each other like mother and daughter. Tula tells Lila that her mother died in childbirth, giving Lila another reason to go through the Agony. Mikaela meets with Valya at night—she’s a secret member of the sisterhood, working in the shadows. Valya wants to burn the whole resistance cell she’s looking out for in order to regain the Emperor’s trust, and she begins by naming Keiran, which catches Valya’s interest. Ynez has another sparring match with Keiran and tells him about her father facing another rebellion when she was a child, the Broken Chain. She was kidnapped by them, and Constantine insisted that they take him as well so he could look after her. They kiss, but Ynez insists that they stop now that her future is uncertain. The Empress takes a moment to speak to Hart alone, asking why they shouldn’t give him up. He insists that he can show her how much help he would be to their family.

Lila chooses to undergo the Agony, and finds the place within where her ancestors reside; Raquella is there and tells the sisters that the key to the reckoning was born twice, “once in blood, once in spice.” She begins to seize and thinks she sees her mother, but the person speaking to her is her grandmother—Dorotea. She tells Lila that her mother isn’t there, and shows Lila her own murder at Valya’s hand. Tula encourages Lila to get out, but it’s too late: Lila has died. Back on Salusa Secundus, Duke Richese threatens to tell the Great Houses about what happened to his son, but the Emperor introduces Hart, who begins burning the Duke. The Emperor tells him to keep quiet about these events. Valya arrives at the palace to be confronted by Hart, who tells her that her services are no longer needed by the royal family and her privileges to the palace have been revoked. Valya uses the Voice to try and get Hart to kill himself, but he resists. Hart says that he’s finally learned her greatest fear: “It’s not that no one will hear you. It’s that they’ll hear you, and just won’t care.”

Commentary

There’s on the nose and then there’s on the nose. By which, I mean, there’s on the nose, and there’s “let’s make the final line of this episode a description of the thing that most women in the world are afraid of because that’s very deep of us, don’t you know…”

Sorry, that was incredibly hamfisted for my tastes. And it also didn’t feel much like it belonged to this universe in terms of dialogue? I wish it had ended on stronger terms.

But we’ve got to talk about the oliphant in the room: Desmond Hart and his strange murdery abilities, supposedly granted to him by Shai-hulud.

There are two probable options here on where this is going. First one: Desmond Hart is an expert conman who is working hard to convince everyone that he has powers beyond comprehension. We will eventually discover what creates those powers and why he’s really here. Second option: This is all real and Desmond Hart has been chosen by the Great Worm to be some sort of faith-based emissary that is here to try and wipe out the Sisterhood. (And he will, per our knowledge of the future, fail in this task.)

The trouble with option two is massive: The conceit of Hart’s powers and where he received them makes absolutely no sense in terms of storytelling or Dune’s worldbuilding. Yes, there are plenty of “magic”-seeming abilities in this universe, but it’s all explained in jaggedy pseudo-scientific ways. There are reasons for the Voice and extreme control the Bene Gesserit exert over their own bodies; and, very pointedly, the fact that they are still called “witches” by most men denotes the heavily ingrained sexism of their society, not the suggestion that the sisters are using actual magic. What Desmond Hart is doing—if it is truly a power granted by Shai-hulud—doesn’t remotely fit the universe’s mechanics.

Option one is still on the table, and I hope that’s where we’re heading. But we’ll have to wait and see, and at the moment, the success of the story is riding solely on this choice.

There’s a lot of treading water in this episode, a lot of characters getting into place for the rest of the action to work, and little reveals being planted all the way through. Yet again, we’ve experienced no flashback sequences after a promise that we’d been getting a story told in two timelines. So that makes the pacing ungainly, but at least we’re getting to know some of the characters better, particularly the acolytes.

And I do love Vayla’s control freak nature making all of her relationships incredibly harsh. It shines the most with Tula, but she has no patience in reserve for anyone. Eager for that to get some use down the road, as things are clearly not going her way by the end of the episode.

One turn that I’m enjoying more than I expected is the reveal that Keiran Atreides is part of the current rebellion against the Emperor. It serves as an excellent example of how ruling classes keep power by giving smaller amounts to the people who might overthrow them. We’re seeing this in the push and pull with the Richese family, and get a much deeper sense of this struggle watching an Atreides working in a resistance cell to bring down the Imperium… all while knowing that this resistance is nowhere to be found ten millennia down the line. The Atreides will once again be a powerful Great House with everything to prove and to lose, firmly in the Emperor’s pocket.

I’m also curious as to whether Lila is entirely dead? Technically you can get subsumed by your ancestral memory in this process, but I don’t think it’s ever been shown without said ancestral memory getting the person to do something that ends their life. Olivia Williams’ drives Tula’s heartbreak into the viewer regardless, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a miraculous recovery. Somewhere down the line.

And props again to Mark Strong for being the universe’s most ineffectual Emperor. His waffly uncertainty manages to project the inverse to swagger, and it’s enjoyable to watch him founder while all the women around him try to make up for his failings.

Truthsaying and Visions

• These openers really are kinda similar, huh. Between this and Wheel of Time and Rings of Power, I’d be hard-pressed to tell them apart.

• I did like the rendering of the place where Lila accesses her ancestors, particularly because Dune: Part Two undersold that experience cinematically. You get a sense of how suffocating it can be, which is dearly important for other characters in this universe (namely Paul’s preborn sister, Alia.) And, of course, the fact that Lila’s mother wasn’t there means that it’s likely Tula lied and her mother is still alive. Who do we think she could be?

• The choice to reveal Dorotea’s relation to Raquella like that was extremely effective. That’s how you do it.

Next week: Same spice time, same spice channel…[end-mark]

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Movies & TV Dune: Prophecy

Dune: Prophecy Premieres With a Heavy Prologue in “The Hidden Hand”

The opening of Dune: Prophecy takes us ten millennia before the birth of Paul Atreides to show us that nothing much has changed

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

|

Published on November 18, 2024

Image: Attila Szvacsek/HBO

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Image: Attila Szvacsek/HBO

We’re back in the film landscape of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune adaptations, this time for a story that takes place ten millennia before Paul Atreides’ rise to power. Welcome to Dune: Prophecy.

Recap

We begin with a massive flashback told from the vantage point of an older Valya Harkonnen (Emily Watson). She talks of the Butlerian Jihad, where humans had to fight against the thinking machines that rose up against them, leading to thinking technology being banished. In the battle, the Harkonnens were said to have fled while the Atreides vanquished the enemy and called the Harkonnens cowards for running. Valya insists that these were lies, and led to her family’s banishment. She eventually joined the Bene Gesserit sisterhood along with her own sister Tula (Emma Canning), and became a favorite of their first Reverend Mother, Raquella Berto-Anirul (Cathy Tyson). Raquella believed that the Imperium needed better leaders, and created the Bene Gesserit breeding program to achieve that end, to the dismay of sisters who Valya calls “zealots.” In her final moments on Wallach IX, home of the sisterhood, the dying Reverend Mother calls for a younger Valya (Jessica Braden). Raquella has a vision of a reckoning and advises Valya to do everything in her power to safeguard the Sisterhood. Valya believes that the Reverend Mother wants her to put one of their sisters on the throne of the Imperium.

When Valya tries to get the rest of the Sisterhood to adhere to this plan, there is a clear faction who do not agree: the zealots who believe that humility is the center of their work, and are led by Mother Dorotea (Camilla Beeput). She means to destroy the breeding index, so Valya stops her using a new technique she has developed: the Voice. When Dorotea refuses to bend to Valya’s plans, she uses the Voice to get Dorotea to kill herself. Thirty years later (116 years after the war against thinking machines and roughly 10,000 years before the events of Dune), the sisterhood is preparing to welcome Princess Ynez (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina) into their ranks following her marriage. Her half-brother Constantine Corrino (Josh Heuston) comes to talk about her accommodations, but Mother Superior Valya is firm about her being treated the same as all the other sisters. Acolytes are working on their ability to spot lies and become Truthsayers under the tutelage of Mother Tula (Olivia Williams).

Constantine arrives home on Salusa Secundus to find Ynez sparring with shield belts against Swordmaster Keiran Atreides (Chris Mason). Emperor Javicco Corrino (Mark Strong) is reviewing the dowry for his daughter with the Duke of House Richese (Brendan Cowell), who is offering him a fleet of warships to help tame Arrakis and protect the spice harvest from Fremen attack. The Emperor takes advice from his own Truthsayer, Reverend Mother Kasha Jinjo (Jihae), and agrees to the Duke’s demands, including their own wing in the palace. The Empress Natalya (Jodhi May) is helping her daughter prepare for the wedding, but is dismayed at her daughter’s choices. Ynez insists that the Sisterhood will allow her to rule with untold skills and that marrying Pruwet Richese (Charlie Hodson-Prior)—who is only nine years old—gives her time to do as she will and learn what she needs. The Empress believes her daughter should rule how she likes and marry whomever she wants, noting Ynez’s affection for their Swordmaster.

The Emperor is informed that Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel) has come to visit him from Arrakis, a soldier believed dead in the latest attack. Hart tells the Emperor that the attack on Arrakis was not the Fremen—it was insurgents from within the Imperium who stole spice from the harvest. Hart wants an appointment in the palace for his loyalty, and the Emperor agrees to find him a place. Kasha later has a vision involving Ynez in danger and goes to check on her before leaving. Natalya and Javicco argue about Ynez’s wedding, with the Empress reminding the Emperor that he used to listen to her more and have a stronger Imperium for it; the Emperor disagrees with this version of events. Valya and Tula discuss who Ynez should be paired with among their acolytes to make her adhere more easily to the Sisterhood’s views. Kasha arrives and tells Valya and Tula about her vision, worried that their plan might be in error. Valya dismisses her concerns and tells her to rest the night before returning to her post.

The engagement goes forward while Tula argues with Valya about her dismissal of Kasha; she asks for her sister to at least check the match and be certain Ynez is the right sister to have on the throne. After the engagement ceremony, Pruwet pulls a small thinking machine from his pocket that runs through the reception; Hart stabs the thing and the Empress makes to punish the child, while Ynez, the Duke, and the Emperor protect him. Hart gives the machine back to the child, and Ynez tells Pruwet that she’ll kill him if he ever does anything like that again. Valya checks the match and finds that Ynez is the right pick and her match will stabilize House Corrino for centuries, thinking she might have Kasha take some leave; Tula points out that she can’t takes pieces off the board any time they disagree with her. Ynez and Constantine go out together to a spot called Division, and take a copious amount of drugs along the way. Hart finds the Emperor and tells him that his troubles on Arrakis are a symptom of a larger issue within the Imperium. The Emperor admits that while Kasha has never led him astray, he doesn’t like this match, but there’s nothing he can do if he means to keep the Great Houses happy. Hart believes that the gods are listening, and the Emperor insists that if the gods freed him from this wedding, he’d be a true believer.

In Division, Ynez runs into Keiran and offers to share spice with him. They head to the back and sleep together. Late at night, the Emperor wakes and find a disc containing video of the approach of a great worm on Arrakis, about to swallow Desmond Hart whole. Pruwet takes his little machine into the halls at night, and Hart finds him. Pruwet admits he had a bad dream and can’t sleep. He wants to know why Hart is here, since he’s a soldier, but Hart believes that there is a war here: a war being waged by people who want to do humanity’s thinking for them, just as the machines once did. He claims to have been gifted a great power and says that war demands sacrifice—suddenly Pruwet begins burning alive and dies. On Wallach IX Valya and Tula hear screaming and find Kasha in the hall; she is also burning alive from an unknown source and dies in front of them.

Commentary

That opening segment set in the past was a bit unfortunate, I’m sorry to say.

There are more flashback segments coming, per the showrunner and actors on the series, so the choice to open the show with a rote historical explainer and then never return to flashback after the basic setup was incredibly odd. It’s also awkward because the segments taking place when Valya is younger are the point that the Sisterhood of Dune novel encompassed—meaning that despite the show being billed as a story inspired by that book… it’s not really. Most of what we’re about to see is brand new.

And what that leads to is a first episode that is very concerned with making sure you know: This is a Dune story. Like the movies you ostensibly saw and liked. Please recognize this universe and want to hang out here with us for six episodes. See, there are Harkonnens and Atreides and the ruling Corrino House! Look, a fight with shield belts! We gave you some visions with sandworms, and mentioned the importance of spice and Arrakis! There’s a Fremen tending bar! It’s DUNE, okay? We promise it’s Dune.

And it’s all a bit ridiculous that things could be so familiar because this is over 10,000 years before the events of Dune. I know that there’s a level of inference here about the lack of “thinking machines” keeping things stunted and a stagnation of society brought about by the current systems humanity is clinging to. But ten millennia of the same ruling house, the same noble families, the same blood feuds, and a sisterhood that is already practically the same to the one we see in the premiere text? That’s not stagnation, that’s absurdity.

Language and power change constantly throughout history, and here we see none; presumably because the folks in charge of the show need to be certain that the audience would recognize enough to keep them watching. And it’s genuinely nonsensical: There are eleven pharaohs with the name Ramses in Egypt’s history, but despite the length of pharaonic rule (over 3000 years), those eleven sovereigns reined in a span of roughly two centuries. Because change happens quickly and constantly, and even stagnation moves around in the muck as it goes.

There are, in fact, a lot of changes already to the story that was laid down by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson in their run of Dune books, and they’re all extremely Hollywood choices thus far. For example, Valya Harkonnen didn’t create the Bene Gesserit “Voice” in those novels—she perfected its use, but the skill itself was discovered by Raquella when she became the first Reverend Mother. And yet, it seems the creative team could not resist the chance to make their central character—and a Harkonnen, at that—the one who contributed this all-important facet of Bene Gesserit power. Like ya do.

I’m never a purist in book-to-screen adaptations, and am adamant that ultra-specific adherence to text is often tedious in the extreme. That said, the world of filmmaking does have a tendency to bring out a lot of deep, silly clichés in storytelling, and we’re getting an abundance of them so far: The princess is romantically interested in the Atreides; the prince is a layabout bad boy of sorts; Valya wants to control everything with an iron fist while her sister wishes she would allow for more trust and flexibility; the mysterious solider, of course, comes from Arrakis and is somehow imbued with special murder power. We’ll see where all this leads, but that’s a heavy list right there. Hopefully we’ll wind up somewhere interesting.

There are plenty of high points in all of this, of course. The design of this universe is intricate as ever, from the grand physical sets down to the textured costuming. The actors are a stunning group, with Emily Watson and Olivia Williams acting as firm anchors to every other tether on the board. Their sisterly rapport is an easy highlight of the show so far. Mark Strong is hilarious as an ineffectual Emperor of the Known Universe, just by virtue of how seriously he’s chosen to play the role. There’s also a very slight echo with the original Dune text, an aspect that I felt was entirely undersold in the film version: Duke Leto Atreides’ mistrust of his wife is ultimately what leads to his downfall, and here we have a similar tension between the Emperor and Empress.

But there’s much more to unfold…

Truthsaying and Visions

• I love this set of acolytes we’ve got and am fascinated to see where their journeys lead. (Probably nowhere good, alas.)

• The heavy cues for the use of Bene Gesserit power are a little much. They have to tap their fingers together as though meditating in order to access their truthsaying abilities? Isn’t that kind of a huge tell?

• Sorry, Richese being the family the Corrinos are about to get into bed with is a pretty great joke. Hi, Mr. Emperor, we’ve got Duke Moneypants here to see you about a dowry for your daughter…

• The Sisterhood having those computers is less of an issue in the books because they get destroyed early on, if memory serves. So that’s a pretty significant change, I’d imagine.

Next week is fast approaching…[end-mark]

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News Dune: Prophecy

Get Ready to Learn More about the Harkonnens in Dune: Prophecy

The series centers on two sisters who are ancestors to the family who brings down Leto Atreides

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on November 15, 2024

Credit: Attila Szvacsek/HBO

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Credit: Attila Szvacsek/HBO

Dune: Prophecy is premiering in days. The prequel series takes place 10,000 years before the events in Frank Herbert’s first Dune novel, and centers on the growing influence of the Bene Gesserit, specifically through the actions of the Reverend Mother, Valya, played by Emily Watson.

Valya, along with her sister Tula (played by Olivia Williams), happen to be Harkonnens, the family that aim to destroy House Atreides in Dune. The Harkonnens are ruthless in Herbert’s novel, and the Harkonnens from 10,000 years ago appear to be the same.

“Everything she does is fueled by rage and a sense of vengeance,” Watson said about Valya at a press conference Reactor attended. “And then she was spotted by a charismatic cult leader who said, ‘I see you. You’re very powerful. You’re very special… come and help me shape the future of mankind.’ And that’s an incredibly dangerous, enabling thing to do to someone who is essentially, probably bears some kind of DNA relation to a shark.”

Watson later added that nothing fazes Valya: “Terrible things are happening. People are dying all around her. And she’ll be just figuring out, ‘What can I get from this situation? How can I advance the cause? How does that serve me?’”

Williams added that Tula, who is Valya’s younger sister, keeps her rage inside. “But watch out for the quiet ones,” she warned at the same press conference, adding that Tula’s “science nerd” background allows her to eliminate her enemies efficiently and effectively. “She’s troubled by her conscience,” said Williams. “But does it make you a better person if you cry while you’re killing people?”

You can see the Harkonnens in action when Dune: Prophecy premieres on HBO and Max on Sunday, November 17, 2024, at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT. New episodes drop subsequent Sundays.[end-mark]

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News Dune: Prophecy

Dune: Prophecy Weaves a Tale of Two Timelines

The series operates on stories of the past and present for one character in particular

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on November 14, 2024

Credit: Attila Szvacsek/HBO

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Credit: Attila Szvacsek/HBO

Dune: Prophecy, the prequel series set in the same universe as Denis Villeneuve’s films, centers on the two Harkonnen sisters who were members of the Bene Gesserit in the organization’s early days, 10,000 years before Timothée Chalamet Paul Atreides landed on Arrakis.

The show is inspired by the novel Sisterhood of Dune, written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, but also goes beyond that source material. In a recent press conference Reactor attended, showrunner Alison Schapker explained why she and her writing team went beyond the events of Sisterhood.

“We’re interested in Valya Harkonnen’s whole lifetime,” she said, referencing the central character played by Emily Watson, “so we’re looking at her upbringing and how she came to the sisterhood in one aspect of our series. But then in the other time period of our series, we’re seeing Valya as a person who has grown the power of the sisterhood, who is in charge, who is then faced with a crisis.”

Schapker went on to explain that viewers will be “toggling between two time periods” throughout the season, with the earlier time period taking place during the events in Sisterhood of Dune. The second time period, which occurs decades later, tells a story not seen in the book, though Schapker emphasized that the later time period was created “in conjunction with the Herbert Estate and very carefully and respectfully of the world building in the novels.”

The two timelines, however, both center on one character: Valya Harkonnen. “The time period that’s set in the past is very much about Valya Harkonnen’s rise to leadership in the Sisterhood and where that came from, and what the Imperium was like, and her consolidation of power in that earlier time period,” explained Schapker. “And in the present, we’re telling a story about her power being under real crisis and duress.”

We can see these two moments in time unfold when the six-episode season of Dune: Prophecy premieres on HBO and Max on Sunday, November 17, 2024, at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT. New episodes drop subsequent Sundays.[end-mark]

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News Dune: Prophecy

No One Seems to Like the Sisterhood in Dune: Prophecy Trailer

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on October 17, 2024

Credit: Attila Szvacsek/HBO

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Credit: Attila Szvacsek/HBO

After several tumultuous years in development, Dune: Prophecy is officially coming out in exactly one month. HBO announced during New York Comic Con today that the show would premiere on November 17, 2024 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and will also be available then to stream on Max.

To further celebrate the occasion, we also got a new trailer for the six-episode prequel series, which takes place roughly 10,000 years before Paul Atreides was born and is based on the novel Sisterhood of Dune, written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.

Unlike the first trailer, which tees up the goals of the sisters, this one gives us more of the forces working against the burgeoning Bene Gesserit, specifically Mark Strong’s Emperor Javicco Corrino and Travis Fimmel’s Desmond Hart. Both want to see the sisterhood destroyed, with Hart in particular appearing to have some special power to do so.

The clip also features many others in the stacked cast, which includes Emily Watson and Olivia Williams as the founding sisters of the Bene Gesserit, as well as Jodhi May, Sarah-Sofie Boussnina, Josh Heuston, Chloe Lea, Jade Anouka, Faoileann Cunningham, Edward Davis, Aoife Hinds, Chris Mason, Shalom Brune-Franklin, Camilla Beeput, Jihae, Tabu, Charithra Chandran, Jessica Barden, Emma Canning, and Yerin Ha. Alison Schapker is the showrunner of the series, with Diane Ademu-John co-developing it.

Dune: Prophecy is set to premiere on HBO and Max on November 17, 2024, with new episodes dropping every Sunday.

Check out the latest trailer below. [end-mark]

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News Dune

Denis Villeneuve Will Only Make One More Dune Film—But That Might Not Be the End for the Series

Which other directors might help the spice flow?

By Molly Templeton

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Published on September 11, 2024

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Denis Villeneuve seems very tired. That’s the first takeaway from his recent interview on Vanity Fair’s Little Gold Men podcast: the man needs a nap. You can hardly blame him for being ready to step away from Arrakis after Dune Messiah, which he has made clear will be his third and final Dune film. But Villeneuve’s eventual departure might not mean the end of moviegoers’ time in the Duniverse. The writer-director is leaving the door open for some other ambitious director to step through:

Villeneuve may be looking ahead to his sand-free future, but he’s still in the depths of Dune Messiah. Asked how he will handle the twelve-year time jump between Dune and Dune Messiah, he says only, “That’s my problem. I know how to do that.”

He also emphasizes that his Dunes are not a trilogy, saying that the first two films, which adapt Frank Herbert’s first Dune book, are “a diptych.”

It’s a bit odd that he says “if” he does a third one; back in April, it was confirmed that Villeneuve and Legendary Pictures are developing Messiah. But Villeneuve has been in movies a long time, and perhaps he’s just hyper-aware that it’s all theoretical until it’s in the can.[end-mark]

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News Dune: Prophecy

Max’s Dune: Prophecy Is Basically an Origin Story for the Bene Gesserit

Sisters dune it for themselves

By Molly Templeton

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Published on May 15, 2024

Screenshot: Max

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Screenshot: Max

First, the confusing bit: Yes, this show was previously called Dune: The Sisterhood. It was called this for years, in fact, and as a title it made sense, not least because the Dune prequel series is based on, or at least inspired by, the novel Sisterhood of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.

But now it is Dune: Prophecy, and it is somewhat hard not to suspect that the Max powers-that-be didn’t want “sisterhood” on their Dune series, even though said series is largely about the women of the Bene Gesserit. At any rate, the show stars an incredible lineup of actors that includes Emily Watson, Olivia Williams, Mark Strong, Jihae, Tabu, Charithra Chandran, Jessica Barden, Emma Canning, and Yerin Ha.

The series’ logline says only:

Dune: Prophecy has had a somewhat tumultuous journey to a screen near you. In 2019, the series’ original showrunner, Jon Spaihts, left the project in order to write Dune: Part Two. In the summer of 2021, Diane Ademu-John came on board as the new showrunner—but later that year she too departed, leaving co-showrunner Alison Schapker flying solo. In March 2023, one of the show’s original stars, Shirley Henderson, also left, along with director Johan Renck. Ademu-John still has credit for developing the series, and is an executive producer. But that is a lot of turmoil for a spinoff show with just six episodes.

That said, any series starring Emily Watson as a scheming Harkonnen and Reverend Mother Superior is worth watching. “Sisterhood above all,” she says, ominously, while looking quite conniving. No premiere date has been announced, but Dune: Prophecy arrives this fall.[end-mark]

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Book Recommendations ecological fiction

10 Works of Eco-Fiction Worth Celebrating

Eco-fiction has been with us for decades—here are ten examples that are as impactful as they are enjoyable.

By Nina Munteanu

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Published on April 19, 2024

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Our world is changing. We currently live in a world in which climate change poses a very real existential threat to life on the planet. The new normal is change. And it is within this changing climate that eco-fiction is realizing itself as a literary pursuit worth engaging in.

Many readers are seeking fiction that addresses environmental issues but explores a successful paradigm shift: fiction that accurately addresses our current issues with intelligence and hope. The power of envisioning a certain future is that the vision enables one to see it as possible.

Eco-fiction has been with us for decades—it just hasn’t been overtly recognized as a literary phenomenon until recently and particularly in light of mainstream concern with climate change (hence the recently adopted terms ‘climate fiction’, ‘cli-fi’, and ‘eco-punk’, all of which are eco-fiction). Strong environmental themes and/or eco-fiction characters populate all genres of fiction. Eco-fiction is a cross-genre phenomenon, and we are all awakening—novelists and readers of novels—to our changing environment. We are finally ready to see and portray environment as an interesting character with agency.

The relationship of humanity to environment also differs greatly among these works as does the role of science. Some are optimistic; others are not, or have ambiguous endings that require interpretation. What the ten examples I list below have in common is that they are impactful, highly enjoyable works of eco-fiction.

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

Climate change and its effect on the monarch butterfly migration is told through the eyes of Dellarobia Turnbow, a rural housewife, who yearns for meaning in her life. It starts with her scrambling up the forested mountain—slated to be clear cut—behind her eastern Tennessee farmhouse; she is desperate to take flight from her dull and pointless marriage to run away with the telephone man. The first line of Kingsolver’s book reads: “A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture.” But the rapture she’s about to experience is not from the thrill of truancy; it will come from the intervention of Nature when she witnesses the hill newly aflame with monarch butterflies who have changed their migration behavior.

Flight Behavior is a multi-layered metaphoric study of “flight” in all its iterations: as movement, flow, change, transition, beauty and transcendence. Flight Behavior isn’t so much about climate change and its effects and its continued denial as it is about our perceptions and the actions that rise from them: the motives that drive denial and belief. When Dellarobia questions Cub, her farmer husband, “Why would we believe Johnny Midgeon about something scientific, and not the scientists?” he responds, “Johnny Midgeon gives the weather report.” Kingsolver writes: “and Dellarobia saw her life pass before her eyes, contained in the small enclosure of this logic.”

The Overstory by Richard Powers

The Overstory is a Pulitzer Prize winning work of literary fiction that follows the life-stories of nine characters and their journey with trees—and ultimately their shared conflict with corporate capitalist America.

Each character draws the archetype of a particular tree: there is Nicholas Hoel’s blighted chestnut that struggles to outlive its destiny; Mimi Ma’s bent mulberry, harbinger of things to come; Patricia Westerford’s marked up marcescent beech trees that sings a unique song; and Olivia Vandergriff’s ‘immortal’ ginko tree that cheats death—to name a few. Like all functional ecosystems, these disparate characters—and their trees—weave into each other’s journey toward a terrible irony. Each their own way battles humanity’s canon of self-serving utility—from shape-shifting Acer saccharum to selfless sacrificing Tachigali versicolor—toward a kind of creative destruction.

At the heart of The Overstory is the pivotal life of botanist Patricia Westerford, who will inspire a movement. Westerford is a shy introvert who discovers that trees communicate, learn, trade goods and services—and have intelligence. When she shares her discovery, she is ridiculed by her peers and loses her position at the university. What follows is a fractal story of trees with spirit, soul, and timeless societies—and their human avatars.

Maddaddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood

This trilogy explores the premise of genetic experimentation and pharmaceutical engineering gone awry. On a larger scale the cautionary trilogy examines where the addiction to vanity, greed, and power may lead. Often sordid and disturbing, the trilogy explores a world where everything from sex to learning translates to power and ownership. Atwood begins the trilogy with Oryx and Crake in which Jimmy, aka Snowman (as in Abominable) lives a somnolent, disconsolate life in a post-apocalyptic world created by a viral pandemic that destroys human civilization. The two remaining books continue the saga with other survivors such as the religious sect God’s Gardeners in The Year of the Flood and the Crakers of Maddaddam.

The entire trilogy is a sharp-edged, dark contemplative essay that plays out like a warped tragedy written by a toked-up Shakespeare. Often sordid and disturbing, the trilogy follows the slow pace of introspection. The dark poetry of Atwood’s smart and edgy slice-of-life commentary is a poignant treatise on our dysfunctional society. Atwood accurately captures a growing zeitgeist that has lost the need for words like honor, integrity, compassion, humility, forgiveness, respect, and love in its vocabulary. And she has projected this trend into an alarmingly probable future. This is subversive eco-fiction at its best.

Dune by Frank Herbert

Dune chronicles the journey of young Paul Atreides, who according to the indigenous Fremen prophesy will eventually bring them freedom from their enslavement by the colonialists—The Harkonens—and allow them to live unfettered on the planet Arrakis, known as Dune. As the title of the book clearly reveals, this story is about place—a harsh desert planet whose 800 kph sandblasting winds could flay your flesh—and the power struggle between those who covet its arcane treasures and those who wish only to live free from slavery.

Dune is just as much about what it lacks (water) as it is about what it contains (desert and spice). The subtle connections of the desert planet with the drama of Dune is most apparent in the actions, language and thoughts of the Imperial ecologist-planetologist, Kynes—who rejects his Imperial duties to “go native.” He is the voice of the desert and, by extension, the voice of its native people, the Fremen. “The highest function of ecology is understanding consequences,” he later thinks to himself as he is dying in the desert, abandoned there without water or protection.

Place—and its powerful symbols of desert, water and spice—lies at the heart of this epic story about taking, giving and sharing. This is nowhere more apparent than in the fate of the immense sandworms, strong archetypes of Nature—large and graceful creatures whose movements in the vast desert sands resemble the elegant whales of our oceans.

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

This is an eco-thriller that explores humanity’s impulse to self-destruct within a natural world of living ‘alien’ profusion. The first of the Southern Reach Trilogy, Annihilation follows four women scientists who journey across a strange barrier into Area X—a region that mysteriously appeared on a marshy coastline, and is associated with inexplicable anomalies and disappearances. The area was closed to the public for decades by a shadowy government that studies it. Previous expeditions resulted in traumas, suicides or aggressive cancers of those who managed to return.

What follows is a bizarre exploration of how our own mutating mental states and self-destructive tendencies reflect a larger paradigm of creative-destruction—a hallmark of ecological succession, change, and overall resilience. VanderMeer masters the technique of weaving the bizarre intricacies of ecological relationship, into a meaningful tapestry of powerful interconnection. Bizarre but real biological mechanisms such as epigenetically-fluid DNA drive aspects of the story’s transcendent qualities of destruction and reconstruction.

The book reads like a psychological thriller. The main protagonist desperately seeks answers. When faced with a greater force or intent, she struggles against self-destruction to join and become something more. On one level Annihilation acts as parable to humanity’s cancerous destruction of what is ‘normal’ (through climate change and habitat destruction); on another, it explores how destruction and creation are two sides of a coin.

Barkskins by Annie Proulx

Barkskins chronicles two wood cutters who arrive from the slums of Paris to Canada in 1693 and their descendants over 300 years of deforestation in North America.

The foreshadowing of doom for the magnificent forests is cast by the shadow of how settlers treat the Mi’kmaq people. The fate of the forests and the Mi’kmaq are inextricably linked through settler disrespect for anything indigenous and a fierce hunger for “more” of the forests and lands. Ensnared by settler greed, the Mi’kmaq lose their own culture and their links to the natural world erode with grave consequence.

Proulx weaves generational stories of two settler families into a crucible of terrible greed and tragic irony. The bleak impressions by the immigrants of a harsh environment crawling with pests underlies the combative mindset of the settlers who wish only to conquer and seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource. From the arrival of the Europeans in pristine forest to their destruction under the veil of global warming, Proulx lays out a saga of human-environment interaction and consequence that lingers with the aftertaste of a bitter wine.

Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta

Memory of Water is about a post-climate change world of sea level rise. In this envisioned world, China rules Europe, which includes the Scandinavian Union, occupied by the power state of New Qian. Water is a powerful archetype, whose secret tea masters guard with their lives. One of them is 17-year old Noria Kaitio who is learning to become a tea master from her father. Tea masters alone know the location of hidden water sources, coveted by the new government.

Faced with moral choices that draw their conflict from the tension between love and self-preservation, young Noria must do or do not before the soldiers scrutinizing her make their move. The story unfolds incrementally through place. As with every stroke of an emerging watercolour painting, Itäranta layers in tension with each story-defining description. We sense the tension and unease viscerally, as we immerse ourselves in a dark place of oppression and intrigue. Itäranta’s lyrical narrative follows a deceptively quiet yet tense pace that builds like a slow tide into compelling crisis. Told with emotional nuance, Itäranta’s Memory of Water flows with mystery and suspense toward a poignant end.

The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin

This trilogy is set on an Earth devastated by periodic cataclysmic storms known as ‘seasons.’ These apocalyptic events last over generations, remaking the world and its inhabitants each time. Giant floating crystals called Obelisks suggest an advanced prior civilization.

In The Fifth Season, the first book of the trilogy, we are introduced to Essun, an Orogene—a person gifted with the ability to draw magical power from the Earth such as quelling earthquakes. Jemisin used the term orogene from the geological term orogeny, which describes the process of mountain-building. Essun was taken from her home as a child and trained brutally at the facility called the Fulcrum. Jemisin uses perspective and POV shifts to interweave Essun’s story with that of Damaya, just sent to the Fulcrum, and Syenite, who is about to leave on her first mission.

The second and third books, The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky, carry through Jemisin’s treatment of the dangers of marginalization, oppression, and misuse of power. Jemisin’s cautionary dystopia explores the consequence of the inhumane profiteering of those who are marginalized and commodified.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

This is a work of mundane science fiction that occurs in 23rd century post-food crash Thailand after global warming has raised sea levels and carbon fuel sources are depleted. Thailand struggles under the tyrannical boot of predatory ag-biotech multinational giants that have fomented corruption and political strife through their plague-inducing genetic manipulations.

The book opens in Bangkok as ag-biotech farangs (foreigners) seek to exploit the secret Thai seedbank with its wealth of genetic material. Emiko is an illegal Japanese “windup” (genetically modified human), owned by a Thai sex club owner, and treated as a sub-human slave. Emiko embarks on a quest to escape her bonds and find her own people in the north. But like Bangkok—protected and trapped by the wall against a sea poised to claim it—Emiko cannot escape who and what she is: a gifted modified human, vilified and feared for the future she brings.

The rivalry between Thailand’s Minister of Trade and Minister of the Environment represents the central conflict of the novel, reflecting the current conflict of neo-liberal promotion of globalization and unaccountable exploitation with the forces of sustainability and environmental protection. Given the setting, both are extreme and there appears no middle ground for a balanced existence using responsible and sustainable means. Emiko, who represents that future, is precariously poised.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

The classic dystopian novel set in 21st century America where civilization has collapsed due to climate change, wealth inequality and greed. Parable of the Sower is both a coming-of-age story and cautionary allegorical tale of race, gender and power. Told through journal entries, the novel follows the life of young Lauren Oya Olamina—cursed with hyperempathy—and her perilous journey to find and create a new home.

When her old home outside L.A. is destroyed and her family murdered, she joins an endless stream of refugees through the chaos of resource and water scarcity. Her survival skills are tested as she navigates a highly politicized battleground between various extremist groups and religious fanatics through a harsh environment of walled enclaves, pyro-addicts, thieves and murderers. What starts as a fight to survive inspires in Lauren a new vision of the world and gives birth to a new faith based on science: Earthseed.

[end-mark]

Originally published in November 2020.

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News Dune Messiah

Denis Villeneuve Is Doing Dune Messiah

Please ready your best “dune it again” jokes

By Molly Templeton

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Published on April 5, 2024

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There could’ve been an infallible prophecy about this. That’s how inevitable it was. Last year, Denis Villeneuve said he only wanted to do one more Dune movie, making Dune Messiah to close out a trilogy. A wise man, he told Empire, “After that, the books become more… esoteric.”

A third Dune movie wasn’t official until now, in the wake of Dune 2 doing exceedingly well at the box office. And yet the announcement that he and Legendary are developing Dune Messiah was still so much of a foregone conclusion that it is tucked into a Deadline piece about an entirely different movie.

But it’s nice to have a level of certainty!

Dune Messiah takes place some years into Paul Atreides’ rule. As the book synopsis says:

There are political machinations, clones, children, deaths, and more politics. And philosophical musings, too.

It takes a while to make a sandworm saga, so Dune Messiah won’t be on screens any time soon. [end-mark]

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Featured Essays Dune

How Dune Solves the Problem of AI

Maybe the Bene Gesserit have a point about the dangers of technology…

By Tenacity Plys

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Published on April 15, 2024

Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

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Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

In one of the first scenes of Dune, Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac) signs a contract with his ducal seal ring, imprinting his family crest onto the paper in wax. This ring is used in-world as a marker of authenticity—like a medieval duke, Leto is verifying his identity with information that only he has access to. But why does the Dune universe’s space dictator (played by Christopher Walken, for some reason) run his government on Dark Age tech? Couldn’t he just use DocuSign?

AI, and most complex digital technology in general, is outlawed in the Duniverse because it manipulated and dumbed down humans. It didn’t just seize control of human governments, it made humans so dependent on its assistance they were unable—and even unwilling—to rebel. The Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit tells Jessica, “once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” In the age of addictive technology, we can probably all relate to that.

Humankind finally rose up against AI and their tech overlords to destroy all thinking machines, leaving only the bare minimum of technology behind. In the new era, instead of allowing human potential to stagnate with digital assistance, there was a revolution in human augmentation—the Bene Gesserit’s psychic powers, the creation of mentats to replace computers, and of course, the use of spice for interstellar navigation. This would allow humanity to drive its own development, rather than being manipulated by technology.

As of the beginning of Dune, paper documents and other analog records are a way to verify that a contract or record is free of digital influence. That contract Leto signs is brought to him all the way from the imperial planet Kaitain—Thufir Hawat notes that the journey costs “a total of 1,460,062 Solaris round trip.” For those unfamiliar with the exchange rate of Solaris to the US dollar, that is a lot of money.

The emperor later makes an in-person visit to the war zone of Arrakis just to meet Muad’Dib in person—surely they could have done that over Zoom, or via holographic video calls as in Star Wars? Instead, communication happens either by courier or in person, to ensure everyone is who they say they are. The emperor also keeps a hand-written journal, and the Bene Gesserit even utilize genetic memory as a very inventive form of non-digital documentation. As you probably know, Frank Herbert couldn’t have had generative AI in mind specifically in the early 1960s when he wrote about thinking machines taking over human civilization. Even Denis Villeneuve wouldn’t have known about Dall-E or ChatGPT when he adapted and filmed the Dune movies back in 2019 and 2022 (respectively). But that doesn’t change the fact that Dune 2 arrives at a pivotal time in this technology’s development, and the source material’s opinion on AI in general leaves little doubt what Herbert would think of genAI in particular.

It’s becoming clear that within the next few years, AI in our world might drive banks and government agencies back to paper—or at least to much more stringent security measures to verify authenticity. But could similarly Dune-like developments come to pass in realms where we can’t even imagine a return from the digital?

Imagine scrolling social media a year or two from now and being entirely unsure which posts are real and which are AI-generated. This isn’t so far from where we are now; the only difference is scale. The effect would be especially pronounced on platforms like Tiktok, where the whole point is to discover creators you don’t follow via a “For You” algorithm. If nothing the algorithm served to you was real and you knew this, what would you gain from watching Tiktok?

People today get an alarming amount of their opinions from the Internet, and they’re often deceived by what they see online. As of the 2016 election, this was already an existential issue for culture—and one we’ve done little about, unfortunately. People don’t put that much effort into screening the accounts they interact with for ill intent, except for calling anyone who disagrees with them a Russian asset, of course. And even leaving election tampering aside, influencer marketing is enough of a psyop already!

A sufficiently advanced AI might not just act as an agent of misinformation, it could wield manipulative powers akin to that of the Bene Gesserit. If a pre-GPT chatbot could trick its developer into thinking it’s sentient, we shouldn’t take chances with human psychological frailty.

The Bene Gesserit administer the Gom Jabbar test to see if a being is human. They screen for robots disguised as humans, and also for compromised humans who have been manipulated by machines too successfully to control their own instincts. It’s kind of like the marshmallow test for kids; if they haven’t developed self-control yet, they can’t delay the gratification of eating the first marshmallow to get the second one later. (Too bad Paul couldn’t take that test instead.)

If we don’t want to turn our thinking, feeling, buying, voting, etc. over to machines completely, protection from AI-assisted psyops should be a priority. In a darker timeline, we would eventually accept our new AI hyperreality, the same way we’ve accepted social media advertising.

That timeline would be closer to our current world than we might be comfortable acknowledging. What the Bene Gesserit call “machine thought,” the algorithms and optimized flows of computer systems, already define our era of history. When Instagram introduced reels, for instance, creators quickly noticed that if they didn’t create reels, their posts would be algorithmically punished. This advanced Meta’s goal of competing with Tiktok, because it ensured its platform would immediately have tons of video content available to make reels successful. Humans have to adapt to fit technology, rather than the other way around.

I’ve been bored of algorithms for a long time, and considering all generative AI does is the same algorithmic trick of spitting out similar content to what it’s seen before, we should expect social media to get Worse in this way. I know a lot of many amazing artists who have stopped posting entirely, just because they’re tired of jumping through algorithmic hoops! Going viral on Tiktok requires a totally different skill set from the actual making of art, after all.

In the universe of Dune, the Butlerian Jihad began when an AI called Omnius aborted a Bene Gesserit’s baby without her permission because she was so powerful the AI didn’t want her to reproduce. The Bene Gesserit had been using AI to plan out their breeding programs, but this revealed their technology was selecting for the most docile humans to weaken potential resistance. Just as Instagram limits the reach of less compliant creators, Omnius wanted to limit psionic ability in humans. According to Bene Gesserit records, AI breeding and conditioning made humans become like animals—that is, humans couldn’t remain human in a world controlled by AI.

During the ensuing crusade, the Bene Gesserit developed not just the gom jabbar but also their rad psychic powers as a way to counter AI. As of the book’s beginning their domain is emotion and communion with the collective unconscious, sidestepping manipulation by machines with supernatural self control. To advance humanity’s potential, they breed more powerful humans, which they hope will culminate in the coming of the Kwisatz Haderach (Paul Atreides). They maintain control of human government partially because they love power, but also partially as a way to ensure humanity doesn’t become vulnerable to AI again.

In other words, the Bene Gesserit developed their ideology of humanity in response to the realm of the human being threatened by tech. They aren’t just responding to a specific political and economic danger that AI poses to humanity; they go one step further to protect human concerns for humanity’s sake. As in, even though genAI might be very profitable for a few, the Bene Gesserit stance would be that it still shouldn’t take over human art or culture, because that wouldn’t be best for humans. I, for one, am amenable to becoming a sexy Jedi to save my job from the robot apocalypse.

There are stronger religious overtones in the Duniverse than in our world, probably because of this focus on the human: when society stops worshipping machines and automation, we turn to ourselves and other people. As I read into questions like “what is art?” and “what does it mean to be human?” I am inevitably led by my sources into the realm of the spiritual. I’m talking Joseph Campbell, obviously, but also Heidegger, who believed art was a revelation of truth—truth that he juxtaposes with the extractive logic of tech and capital. In his essay “The Question Concerning Technology,” he treats art and industry as opposites, positing art as the only way to revive the soul from the alienation of technological exploitation. The Reverend Mother would probably agree.

What would happen if we turned to art to revive our souls and found only content generated by technological exploitation? To replace artistic truth with high-fructose corn syrup would pollute human culture and undermine our relationship to very possibility of truth, nevermind truth itself. Could you produce artistic truth if you’d never seen it before?

Jean Baudrillard argued in Simulacra and Simulation that an effective copy of a thing devalues the original by rendering it irrelevant, eventually supplanting the original by sowing doubt that there’s anything authoritative or special about it compared to the copy. If you can generate an essay without having any ideas first, how important can thinking really be?

Art is one way humans understand and know ourselves. If we replace even the most corporatized art with AI, culture will no longer be humans understanding humans. It’ll be AI generating an understanding for humanity to have of itself, endangering humanity’s capacity to understand itself independently. It would make us less human.

On all fronts—political, economic, and spiritual—over the next 5-10 years the proponents of AI will clash with those who want to preserve the human for its own sake. The Duniverse demonstrates the stakes of this new culture war perfectly: if humans want to continue being a thing, they should act against technology that could seize control of government and/or culture. And as I’ve shown, this culture war has already been here for decades—the coming conflict will only continue the battle against deepfakes, psyops, and algorithms.

In the end, the AIs that had taken over civilization were destroyed with nuclear weapons in a climactic final battle between humans and machines. In a 2023 article, AI thought leader Eliezer Yudkowsky urged the international community to ban AI beyond a certain threshold of complexity, to “be willing to destroy a rogue datacenter by airstrike.” His article is Butlerian enough that it deserves to be quoted at length:

In lieu of a Harkonnen invasion, this might be the defining Holy War of our time.[end-mark]

The post How <i>Dune</i> Solves the Problem of AI appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Dune

Dune: Part Two Asks Questions That the Original Never Dared

Denis Villeneuve’s new Dune film alters the arcs of key characters, but not everyone gets such careful treatment

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

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Published on March 4, 2024

Image: Warner Bros. Pictures

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Image: Warner Bros. Pictures

If you had the ability to reconsider one of the cornerstones of the science fiction genre, what would you do with that chance?

It is perhaps enough to say that I cannot stop thinking about Dune: Part Two since leaving the theater. That is more than a satisfactory reason to recommend it, to my mind. Films don’t need to be perfect in order to provoke us, and Dune: Part Two certainly isn’t perfect. What’s exciting to me as a viewer and a critic is knowing that no one is likely to agree on the ways in which it falters or triumphs. What is also exciting to me is knowing that a particular stripe of fan is going to be very displeased about what was altered, after an initial salvo that seemed to indicate a careful adherence to the basic narrative.

While Dune: Part One looked and felt like its source material perhaps more than any other screen adaptation, it drew a number of pointed criticisms, particularly where its depiction and casting of the Fremen were concerned. For my part, a lack of focus given to Lady Jessica’s narrative was also drew ire. Given the ways in which Part One was successful—namely in the look, feel, and scope of the film—what would director Denis Villeneuve create to complete this journey?

Building on the framework that Part One painstakingly put in place, Part Two is more stunning, more grotesque, and somehow far grander than the first. We are given the diaries of Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh) as scaffolding in place of her written histories in the book, but the device offers the same anchoring, the same helpful exposition by way of a new figure who is learning precisely how dangerous her father’s machinations have become. The design choices of these films continue to be immaculate in every sense of the word, from the sand of Arrakis slipping into every crevice to the monochrome oil and iron stylings of the Harkonnen homeworld Geidi Prime.

There are moments designed to make you gasp. Paul’s (Timothée Chalamet) first worm ride to become Fremen is perhaps the key point among these, a feat that Villeneuve is determined to make the audience feel with every muscle as the prophisized chosen one clings to the hide of a sandworm as big as a skyscraper with two metal hooks his only hope for survival. The introduction of Austin Butler’s Feyd Rautha is similarly arresting, Butler’s casting easily being one of the more impressive choices for Part Two—Butler plays the role simultaneously calculating, feral, and deeply horny, and the choice pays out dividends every time he steps on screen.

The primary changes that Dune: Part Two enacts come from choices made about the Fremen people and their willingness to believe the legends seeded on Arrakis by the Bene Gesserit generations ago, all about the outer world prophet sent to deliver them. Rather than making Paul’s ascent a simple question of when he is ready to follow the path, a much-needed dose of realism is injected into the story—not every Fremen believes in their religious dogma. There are divisions among their people when questioning who can save Arrakis and its people, and who should fight to free them. Importantly, Chani is one of the key dissenters against the path that Paul will eventually take.

It makes sense of the casting of Zendaya in the role because up until this reveal, it had been something of a mystery as to why this would be a part she would want to play. (As an actor, she has always been very exacting about the roles she has taken on as an adult, and the book’s Chani decidedly does not fit that mold.) In reconsideration of Chani’s story, Zendaya is perhaps the brightest piece of this puzzle, intent on convincing her people that they are the arbiters of their own destiny, that only Fremen can liberate themselves.

The awkwardness then comes from the fact that following this arc seems to be in service of taking the sting out of Paul Atreides’ role as a brutal colonizing force, to reposition his choices as an evil he is actively aware of and trying to overcome. Paul is willing to openly critique Fremen prophecies as the Bene Gesserit trick that they are, to insist that he’s not a savior and merely wants to become Fremen and fight alongside them. His desire to defy that path set down by his mother and the Bene Gesserit is a large part of why Chani falls in love with him. This creates a better story, certainly, and it further humanizes many characters that don’t feel fleshed out enough within the pages of the novel (Paul, Chani, Stilgar). The question then becomes how does this change the overall story?

Because there are many pieces left barely on the board in Dune: Part Two and it makes for confusing viewing. After having her own arc utterly decimated in Part One, Rebecca Ferguson’s Jessica Atreides becomes more perplexing than ever. While it’s initially suggested that she’s following the path laid down by the Bene Gesserit in order to keep them alive, Jessica is also doing so against her directives from the order to ends that are never clarified. Furthermore, the purpose of creating the kwisatz haderach is completely lost in this story, making matters more puzzling. Paul winds up drinking the water of life to… get better visions? Which is important for him, sure, but makes the Bene Gesserit schemes suddenly nonsensical—why bother working to create the kwisatz haderach if he’s not really that important in helping you achieve your aims?

The result makes it seem that Paul’s true difficulty is being caught between his mother (and his unborn but fully conscious sister) and the woman he loves, respectively representations of a shadowy order of eugenics-wielding politicking women and the indigenous people he wishes to join and liberate. Without any attention paid to the Mentats or other various power players that Frank Herbert’s tome showcased, this genuinely damages the core of the story. It was the right choice to pay more attention to Chani and the Fremen people, but an equal amount of attention needed to be paid to other female characters in order for it to plumb make sense… which the film neglects to do.

And tellingly, it has no problem spending an outrageous amount of time on the stories of men instead. The centering of Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin) in this film is a strange mistake that seems to be making a meal out of an overarching revenge theme for several of the film’s central characters. Paul, Jessica, and Gurney are all driven out of a desire for revenge on specific people—Paul against the Emperor (Christopher Walken) and Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard), Jessica against her own Reverend Mother (Charlotte Rampling), and Gurney against Rabban (Dave Bautista). While revenge is certainly an underlying motivation throughout Dune, the choice to zero in on it does nothing for the story, and actually serves to take time away from figures who need and deserve more development. It also reassigns defining narrative moments for characters who will become incredibly important down the line, if Villeneuve gets the money to make more movies in this series. (Yes, for those wondering, I am talking about Alia.)

The timeline of the film is greatly compressed as well, a choice that is frequently made in film—rules around screenwriting often tout that immediacy is king, and it’s just not true—that I will never understand. Rather than taking place over years, Dune: Part Two takes place over months, robbing the characters of their chances to truly root and grow as groups, and turning up momentum on the story like a boulder gaining speed as it rolls down a mountainside. It takes time to become a legend, but here you just need one big speech, and you’re good to go, apparently.

And then there are a the bits that manage to be good and bad at once. The last hour of the film is overwhelming, undoubtedly an intentional choice meant to heighten tension and saddle the audience with the same increasing dread that the characters are feeling. While the sound design for Dune is incredible fullstop, it might prove too much for some viewers by the end, not just in terms of auditory stimulation but bodily punishment—the whole room heavily vibrates for a solid 45 minutes. (I am saying this as a person who loves the immersive sound quality of a movie theater more than anything on this earth. If I think you’ve maybe overdone it, that’s… probably not the best sign.)

Having said all of this, I still enjoyed the hell out of Dune: Part Two. As a film experience, a spectacle, a sideways look at a familiar story, it is top tier. As a movie you’ll leave the theater talking about, there are none better. I’m content to let it have its moment. But I’ll meet you at the bar later to tease out all the things we can’t stop prodding at, our very own misshapen bruise that somehow resembles a desert mouse.[end-mark]

The post <i>Dune: Part Two</i> Asks Questions That the Original Never Dared appeared first on Reactor.

Book Recommendations fantasy

Crashing Dunes and Wandering Winds: 5 of the Best Fantasy Deserts

By Moses Ose Utomi

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Published on March 5, 2024

Photo by Martino Pietropoli [via Unsplash]

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Photo by Martino Pietropoli [via Unsplash]

I’m a child of the desert. That sounds dramatic, and dare I say alluring, but it really just means that I grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, which is located in the Mojave Desert. As a city known more for gambling than its biome, Las Vegas may not be the sexiest of deserts, especially when it comes to the crashing dunes and silk-clad nomads that populate the deserts of our collective imagination. But growing up there imparts many of the same experiences of those who grew up in other deserts. I know well the sound of wandering winds across untamed sand, and the relentless gaze of the summer sun. I learned young that nights are dark concerts for the howls of coyotes, and that water is akin to a grad student’s bank balance—an ever-decreasing quantity.

So inspired I am by the dust bowl of my youth that I made my SFF debut with The Lies of the Ajungo, a fable about a boy who must wander an endless desert in search of water, lest he and his city continue to suffer at the merciless hands of the oppressive Ajungo Empire. It’s the first book of The Forever Desert trilogy (the second one—The Truth of the Aleke—comes out March 5^th), and the series represents my love letter to not just the desert of my own youth, but the deserts I’ve since traveled to and the deserts I grew up hearing and reading stories about.

In that vein, I’m listing below 5 of my favorite fantasy deserts, and I’ll be rating them based on how well they meet a metric I am call Desertudity. Desertudity is the collection of traits that I consider to be essential characteristics of a desert: vastness, mysteriousness, and hotness. Vastness refers to the size—deserts only get better the bigger they are, or the more successfully they can induce the illusion of largeness. Mysteriousness refers to the sense of mystery it evokes—deserts thrive on the unknown and the sense that if you wander its body long enough you can run into things you never imagined possible. Lastly, Hotness refers to heat—no tundras on this list.

Let’s get to it!

Dune by Frank Herbert

Making this list without mentioning the desert planet of Arrakis would immediately eviscerate my credibility in the eyes of many SFF fans, so let’s just get it out of the way early. Frank Herbert’s magnum opus contains perhaps the quintessential SFF desert. Inspired by his local Oregon Dunes and drawing on the imagery and cultures of various desert peoples around the world (though perhaps most notably Bedouin tribes of the Arabian Peninsula), Herbert’s desert fulfills all three of the measures of Desertudity. There’s really not much to say here that hasn’t been said, so go read (or watch, or play) Dune.

Desertudity
Vastness: 5
Mysteriousness: 4
Hotness: 4
Bonus: Sand worms

Holes by Louis Sachar

As a Millennial, Dune predates my formative years. Instead, it was Louis Sachar’s Holes that first showed me what a desert can look like in book form. Camp Green Lake keeps up the desert tradition of being a place of oppression, home to a band of juvenile inmates who are forced to dig—you guessed it—holes into the hard-packed sand. Though not as large as the other deserts on this list, its memorable history lends it an air of mystery. However, the heat of Camp Green Lake is perhaps the story’s cruelest villain, bearing down on the cast in nearly every scene and being the direct cause of some of the story’s most compelling moments.

Desertudity Scores
Vastness: 3
Mysteriousness: 4
Hotness: 5
Bonus: Onions

The Unbroken by C. L. Clark

When I refer to the “Hotness” of a desert, I’m typically referring to climate—the sun, the dry heat, that sort of stuff. When it comes to C. L.  Clark’s vaunted debut The Unbroken, though, most fans like it for a different kind of—ahem—Hotness. The romance between hotheaded soldier Touraine (whose arms alone bump up the hotness score by a point) and calculating Princess Luca forms the heart of Clark’s story of empire and love and the relationship between them, but equally important is the brutal, relentlessly cruel world, an ambiance enhanced by the North African-inspired desert setting. The desert is a raw and open place, one in which all things will eventually be laid bare beneath the sun—even secrets of the heart. Clark’s desert understands and demands that fact.

Desertudity Scores
Vastness: 5
Mysteriousness: 4
Hotness: 4
Bonus: Well-sculpted arms

The Binti Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor

In Binti, we don’t spend much time in Binti’s desert home among the Himba people, but luckily we get to see more of the desert in its sequels Binti: Home and Binti: The Night Masquerade. Here, we see a desert full of life and the complications that accompany it. The Himba are both the victims and perpetrators of discrimination, which is just part of the complex tapestry that is the desert’s history. Part of the magic of deserts lies in their mystery—in the sense that shoveling up any bit of it could unearth life-changing secrets, and Nnedi Okorafor’s is a masterclass in that.

Desertudity Scores
Vastness: 4
Mysteriousness: 5
Hotness: 4
Bonus: Rites of passages

Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed

Way back in the year 2012, when Throne of the Crescent Moon came out, diversity in fantasy fiction wasn’t where it is now. As such, a desert fantasy based on Arab culture and mythology that was written by a writer of Arab ancestry was beyond a breath of fresh air. Not only does Throne of the Crescent Moon present an intimate yet swashbuckling adventure story, it takes you on a journey across a vast desert world, told through the eyes of an aged ghul-hunter who feels every degree of the desert’s heat. Throw in a politically convoluted desert city and a tribeswoman who can take the form of a lioness and you’ve got one of the best fantastical deserts in recent memory.

Desertudity Scores
Vastness: 5
Mysteriousness: 4
Hotness: 4
Bonus: Shapeshifting

[end-mark]

Buy the Book

The Truth of the Aleke

Moses Ose Utomi

Book 2 of The Forever Desert

Buy Book

The Truth of the Aleke

Moses Ose Utomi

Book 2 of The Forever Desert

Book 2 of The Forever Desert

Buy this book from:

• Amazon
• Barnes and Noble
• iBooks
• IndieBound
• Target

The post Crashing Dunes and Wandering Winds: 5 of the Best Fantasy Deserts appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Dune

Arrakis, Tatooine, and the Science of Desert Planets

A geologist looks at the most iconic desert worlds of science fiction.

By Alex Acks

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Published on March 1, 2024

Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

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Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

I’ve been reading science fiction and fantasy almost as long as I’ve been able to read, and I’m normally very good at suspending my disbelief. Unfortunately, seven years of university schooling and two degrees have now placed some suspension limits on certain areas—namely geology, landforms, and maps. I tend to notice little things like mountain ranges having ninety degree corners or rivers that flow uphill or maps that don’t have a scale bar.

So I want to talk about some things, which on-a-geological-scale are very small details that make me tilt my head like a dog hearing a high-pitched noise. Not because I hate, but because there is no more honorable nerd past-time than dismantling something we love into its finest details, ruminating endlessly on the bark of a single tree while there’s an entire forest planet surrounding us.

Which is what I’d like to talk about today, incidentally. Single-environment planets. The other stuff, including scale bars, will come later.

I like desert planets, and it’s the combined fault of Dune and a semester of examining lithified sand dunes that are now absolutely gorgeous rock formations.

Arrakis wasn’t the first desert planet of science fiction—at the very least, Altair IV as seen in Forbidden Planet has it beat, and I’m sure there’s some pulpy goodness even earlier that involves desert planet adventures. But Arrakis and its direct descendant Tatooine are definitely the most iconic desert worlds of our genre.

As a geologist, I have a particular love of the desert and its landforms, ones that are normally more shaped by wind than water. (The descriptor for those is eolian, which is a particularly lovely word to say.) I did a lot of undergraduate field study out in Moab, and I grew up in Colorado, which has a lot of near-desert and desert environments. The dry hot-and-cold of the desert shapes you, in ways beyond an appreciation for chapstick and a healthy respect for static electricity.

There’s an inherent magic to the desert, whether you’ve ever been in one or not, a grown-in mysticism that comes with the unfamiliar. It’s a landscape that’s entirely alien to most of us, unimaginable for its lack of water, its alternating burning and freezing temperatures, its weird or absent plant life. The horizon in a desert extends on forever, because there’s no humidity to get in the way of your vision. The only real limit is the curvature of the planet, elevated land features, or particulates in the air. Even the sunsets look different, if you haven’t lived your entire life where it’s incredibly dry. (Let me tell you, the first sunset I saw in a place with humidity actually scared me because it looked so different, with the Sun hovering massive on the horizon like a blood-filled Eye of Sauron.)

There’s a quiet to the desert that sinks in through your skin, a hush that’s only the sound of the wind. Rodents or insects moving around sand grains or pebbles sounds shockingly loud. Birds startle you. And the sky at night? You’ve never seen so many stars in your life, if you’ve never been to the desert. Being out in the middle of nowhere cuts out all the urban light pollution, but beyond that, there’s few clouds, no humidity to blur and hide the sky.

Of course, there’s this common conception that deserts are like very specific portions of the Sahara, with undulating dune seas that go to the horizon. Arrakis and Tatooine both have a lot to answer for on that front, but I will admit that barchanoid (crescent) and transverse (linear, if wavy) dunes are particularly photogenic. And while those are what capture the imagination, both Dune and Star Wars admit there’s more to their desert worlds than just endless draas. Arrakis has extensive salt flats (sometimes called “saltpan” colloquially in America) that are the skeletons of extinct oceans and lakes. There are rocks and mesas that poke their heads above the sand. In Star Wars: Episode IV, we get a brief look at Sluuce Canyon—which might also mean there was once a fast-moving river there, or it could be a tectonic artifact. But either way, it’s a change from the dunes.

And let me tell you, there are a lot more landforms in the desert beyond those. There’s hardpan (basically rock-hard clay surfacing) and desert pavements of packed stone, with or without desert varnish. There are deflation hollows (where sand has been blown away from rock outcrops, leaving a hollow), dry steppes, and an assortment of strange rock forms shaped by wind and blown sand (yardangs). For all its many faults, Star Wars: Episode I got one thing right—we get to see a scene during the pod races with a hardpan plain riddled with mud cracks and darted with wind-shaped yardangs.

Deserts can be as hot as you imagine or impossibly cold. This is because the factor that determines if something is a desert is precipitation. That’s it—everything comes down to how much water falls from the sky. Latitude doesn’t matter, sand or lack thereof doesn’t matter, just that it’s really, really, really dry.

This is why as a geologist, I don’t have to suspend my disbelief very far to journey to a world that’s all desert. I’d like to see more than just sand dunes, but I can tell myself that for some reason, all the people want to just hang out in the sand and ignore the other areas. They’re believable—they even exist in our very own solar system. Just look at Mars! (Mars is a desert whether it has water hiding under its surface or not; what matters in this case is that it certainly hasn’t rained there in recent geological time.) If you look through many pictures of the red planet, you see all that variation in local land forms I mentioned, from classic sandy dune seas, to dry mountains, to empty canyons, to rocky landscapes of what might be equivalent to pavements. All you need to get an entire planet that’s a desert is reverse that ubiquitous direction for ready-made products—just remove the water. Voilà, instant desert!

Then, of course, you have to address how the hell anyone actually survives on that world, but that’s your problem. I just deal in rocks.

Mono-environment invented planets don’t work for much else, though, with the possible exception of the ice ball world. (Even then, depending on your land masses, there might be more than just glaciers out there. But I’ll give the benefit of the doubt on that one.) The real issue is that worlds are spherical-ish (“oblate spheroids,” if you’re nasty), and they tend to get their input of light and heat via orbiting a star. The unforgiving realities of geometry—sphere versus what is effectively a uni-directional point source—dictate that the distribution of heat is never going to be even, which means you’re going to get atmospheric currents, and those mean that the distribution of precipitation is never going to be even, and as soon as you add that plus your unevenly distributed landscape and unevenly distributed bodies of water, you have environmental trouble. If your entire world is so hot that there are tropical rain forests at the poles, what the heck is happening at the equators? How is your rainfall and temperature being so regulated that there’s jungle everywhere? Have you never heard of mountain rain shadow effects?

This is why, once we leave Tatooine, the world-building in the Star Wars universe generally loses me. Having an entire planet that’s made up of rainforest-covered archipelagos as far as the eye can see looks very pretty on the screen with a starship zooming in, but it awakens a lot of deep and worrying questions in me, including (but not limited to) just what is happening with the plate tectonics?

Please don’t think I want a deep, loving, exhaustive description of how the plate tectonics on your planet work. I don’t, and I say this as a geologist—I’m sure no one else does, either. But there needs to be a reason, a level of believability, and if it ain’t a desert, it ain’t going to work. And remember even then, you’re still not going to have an Arrakis that is one massive dune sea that’s all the same temperature. The landscape varies, and that variation provides a certain amount of character and realism—it’s a similar principle to when directors in movies want sets to look “lived in.” The variation in landscape makes the planet alive, even in a world that seems as sterile and dead as one giant desert—because trust me, deserts are neither sterile, nor dead.

They never stop moving, as long as the wind blows.[end-mark]

An earlier version of this article was originally published in May 2017.

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Featured Essays Dune

Adapting Dune to the Screen: Three Different Interpretations of Herbert’s Vision

Which of these adaptations is the most faithful to the book—and does that make it the best?

By Kara Kennedy

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Published on February 26, 2024

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Against all odds, Frank Herbert’s 1965 science fiction novel Dune has been adapted to the screen three times, though with varying degrees of faithfulness. David Lynch’s penchant for the grotesque shines through in his 1984 film Dune. John Harrison takes a Shakespearean approach in his 2000 television miniseries Frank Herbert’s Dune. Most recently, Denis Villeneuve showcases the visual beauty of the desert in his 2021 film Dune: Part One.

Although many things have changed in the political, social, and cultural landscape since the 1960s, Herbert’s book remains the same. So, directors, producers, and other cast and crew have had to make numerous decisions about how to adapt this story to their time period and audience. What they choose to keep, remove, or change impacts how true their adaptation is to the original novel. Even though all of these directors said publicly that they wanted to stay faithful to the source material, ultimately each had to make a choice about how strongly to hold to this conviction.

Here are a few of the features in each adaptation that either succeed in staying faithful or miss the mark.

Dune (1984)

The script for Dune (1984) includes many lines taken directly from the book, especially in the first half of the film. In an early scene where Paul Atreides’ trusted teachers Thufir Hawat, Gurney Halleck, and Dr. Yueh enter a room with Paul sitting at a desk, the conversation is almost identical:

There are many other examples of lines recognizable from the book in Lynch’s Dune. Herbert himself noted that he could hear his dialogue all the way through the movie and thought fans would enjoy tracking down the lines after watching it. Interestingly, one iconic line that isn’t in the book is “the spice must flow,” though this phrase from the film still accurately captures the strong desire for spice that drives the various factions in the Imperium.

Lynch’s Dune remains the only adaptation that attempts to stay faithful to the book’s inner monologues by including voice-overs. Throughout the film, the camera will hold steady on an actor’s face as they pause silently and a voice-over reveals what they are thinking in that moment. For example, after the conversation between Thufir and Paul mentioned above, the camera lingers on Thufir’s face as his voice-over says, “Yes, perhaps he would at that.” This line reflects Thufir’s inner thought from the book and clues the audience in to the idea that Paul has special perceptive abilities and little reason to worry about his personal safety. Later, after Jessica shows a hint of concern for Paul before he is left alone with the Reverend Mother Mohiam, Paul’s voice-over asks, “What does she fear?” Not only does this build suspense for the following scene with the gom jabbar test, it helps the audience understand Paul’s thought patterns. The voice-overs align with the book by letting viewers get inside the characters’ heads and experience events alongside them.

However, Lynch also took liberties with the source material that move his film further from the themes and concepts important to Herbert’s story. The weirding modules are one of the biggest changes. In the book, the Atreides’ advantage in combat lies with their strong training by fighters such as Duncan Idaho and Gurney Halleck. Paul has an additional advantage because he was trained in the supreme control of mind and body by his mother, a member of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. But in the film, weirding modules are introduced as the Atreides’ secret advantage. They take the name of the Bene Gesserit’s ‘weirding way’ and appear to work by harnessing the power of sound, but these point-and-shoot weapons require no skill to use. In his book A Masterpiece in Disarray: David Lynch’s Dune. An Oral History (2023), Max Evry suggests that they reflect Lynch’s interest in Transcendental Meditation and the power that one word or mantra can access. This may be true, but ironically the modules undercut the mental and physical strength and skill of both the Fremen warriors and the Bene Gesserit from the book. They unnecessarily add technological gadgets to a story that originally uplifted humans’ abilities over technology.

Frank Herbert’s Dune (2000)

Harrison’s miniseries Frank Herbert’s Dune takes special pains to explore the political and religious themes from the book and depict the Fremen as a multi-faceted desert people. The miniseries focuses on the political intrigue between the various factions of House Atreides, House Harkonnen, the Imperial household, and the Guild and Bene Gesserit. In a Shakespearean-influenced style, characters frequently reveal their political motives and schemes, including at the banquet on Arrakis. The Emperor and Princess Irulan also take on bigger roles, though largely in keeping with their descriptions from the book.

Religious influence plays a significant role in the story, as Paul and Jessica use myths and propaganda to their advantage in order to secure their place among the Fremen. Yet the Fremen are shown to be a strong and culturally vibrant desert people with their own traditions and rituals, even though they remain susceptible to Paul’s charisma. Harrison went so far as to hire a choreographer to design the hand gestures and body movements of the Fremen to bring their culture to life on screen. For example, Stilgar shows his respect for his crysknife by bringing it up to his forehead in a ritualistic motion before lowering it. Other Fremen bow their heads and make particular hand motions in the presence of Reverend Mother Ramallo and later Paul, which indicate their deference to religious figures. Such features provide depth to the Fremen culture, while staying firmly grounded in some of their characteristics from the book.

One notable deviation in the miniseries is when Paul appears to summon forth a waterfall in the Fremen sietch after proclaiming his right to reclaim his dukedom and cleanse the planet of their enemies. This scene, similar to the one at the end of Lynch’s film when Paul makes it rain, risks making Paul look like a god who can control the elements. Its purpose was likely to reinforce the religious nature of Paul’s leadership and the Fremen’s view of him as a messiah figure who can perform miracles. Water is certainly an important symbol, but it does not appear in this way in the original story.

Dune: Part One (2021)

Villeneuve’s Dune: Part One brings to life the hostile but stunning desert environment in the book through the use of on-location filming in the Middle East (specifically near Abu Dhabi and Wadi Rum in southern Jordan). This gives it the advantage of being able to show off the austere beauty of the desert and its rocks and sand dunes, as is appropriate for a story set on a desert planet. The wide vistas of rolling dunes and intense sunlight highlight the moisture-starved environment described in the book. Spice appears as a glittering substance in the air and on the ground, much prized and fought over by multiple groups.

The film also stays true to a smaller detail relating to the desert setting: how to walk in a non-rhythmic way to avoid attracting the attention of a giant sandworm. A choreographer created a special desert sandwalk that Jessica and Paul use when forced out on into the desert after the Harkonnen attack. In the film, as they venture out into the open sand in their stillsuits, Paul tells Jessica they must walk like the Fremen do—a practice he learned about in his filmbooks. He shows her how to do the sandwalk, taking a wide step with his right leg, a wide step with his left leg, and then a small step forward before making a sweeping circular motion with his left leg dragging through the sand. The depiction of this movement keeps the film true to the book’s descriptions of how people have learned to survive in the deserts of Arrakis.

On the other hand, perhaps in an attempt to avoid the excesses of the depiction of the Baron Harkonnen in Lynch’s film, Dune: Part One changes this character into a bald monster with few lines. Such a drastic shift neutralizes the Baron’s crafty, Machiavellian nature from the book and leans into a more stereotypical views of villains as barely human and animalistic. It makes it impossible to view the Harkonnen and Atreides as mirror images of one another, each manipulating those around them to obtain power and wealth. The loss of this interesting, articulate character from the book reduces the story’s political depth and the audience’s ability to enjoy watching his plots unfold and ultimately unravel.

Comparing Adaptations

In terms of how the adaptations compare with each other, all three have a few things in common in their approach to translating Herbert’s story to the screen.

First, all of them feature a female narrator providing a prologue to the story, whether Princess Irulan in Dune (1984) and Frank Herbert’s Dune, or Chani in Dune: Part One. For the first two adaptations, this aligns with Irulan introducing Paul through the excerpt from her writing that begins the book. Yet all of the adaptations then change the start of the main storyline where Reverend Mother Mohiam and Jessica look in on Paul the night before the test of the gom jabbar. After a second short prologue titled “A Secret Report Within The Guild,” Dune (1984) begins with the Emperor meeting the Guild and planning to kill Paul. The miniseries opens with a sequence of Paul’s visions and Paul waking up in his room with a hologram of Dr. Yueh lecturing about the political structures of the Imperium, though this scene is then immediately followed by the gom jabbar test. In Dune: Part One, after Chani’s prologue featuring scenes of spice in the air, spice harvesting operations, and the Fremen and Harkonnen conflict, Paul awakes on Caladan after having had visions of Chani and proceeds to have breakfast with his mother.  

The adaptations often take quite different approaches to characters, sets, and costumes, giving them a unique look and feel that may be only loosely tied to the book. However, they all decided to go with an adult actor for Paul. In the book, Paul is 15 years old at the start and described as small for his age. Of the three lead actors, Timothée Chalamet is really the only one youthful-looking enough to pull this off—Kyle MacLachlan and Alec Newman look older than a young teenager. All the adaptations also include some effort to capture the blue color in the eyes of the Fremen through different special effects through the years, from rotoscoping to UV contact lenses to CGI-enabled blue tinting.

In addition, the later adaptations pay homage to their predecessor, Lynch’s Dune, even though they largely try to avoid replicating its specific look and feel. In the miniseries, Paul speaks the line “the sleeper has awakened” while discussing his terrible purpose with his mother. This is identical to the line that Paul utters after taking the Water of Life in Lynch’s version. Both the miniseries and Dune: Part One include a large Guild ship with a long, tubular structure reminiscent of the ship in Dune (1984). Herbert’s book doesn’t include details about these ships, other than the fact that they are very big but that sandworms could be larger, so the consistency of the ships’ appearances on screen indicates that the later adaptations are riffing off of the Lynch version’s ship design.

Villeneuve’s film also contains several other similarities to Lynch’s film. There is a Soviet influence in the Harkonnen ships and architecture and marks on the Mentats’ lips. The Baron Harkonnen bathes in a dark, industrial-looking substance (also recalling a scene from the film Apocalypse Now). There is also a hint of Lynch’s strange preoccupation with animals, which popped up in Dune (1984) numerous times through the Harkonnens’ mutilated cow, cat/rat antidote set-up, and squood device. In Dune: Part One, a weird spider-like creature appears eating out of a bowl on the floor in the Harkonnen chambers and is dismissed in disgust by Reverend Mother Mohiam. With no explanation or backstory, it appears to be another way of demonstrating the Harkonnens’ animalistic nature and monstrosity, similar to how the creatures function in Lynch’s film.

Conclusion

Herbert’s long, multi-layered book has posed many challenges to those who have attempted to adapt it to the screen. Herbert himself couldn’t write a workable screenplay and concluded that he was probably too close to the material to see it as a film. But three directors and their teams have navigated some of the complexities of Herbert’s story successfully enough to bring a screen adaptation to life. Each expressed a desire to be faithful to the source material but also had to try to align their vision with the realities of their time period and the constraints of cinematic production. Some aspects of the resulting films are more faithful than others, leaving plenty of room for discussion and debate about how the adaptations stand up against the original, unchanging novel.

So, let’s discuss: Which adaptation do you think was most faithful to the spirit of the book? Are there features you found that aligned closely to Herbert’s vision, or perhaps other features that exist only in the cinematic versions that have remained in your mind? And do you think the new film, Dune: Part Two, will stay more or less faithful to the novel than Part One?[end-mark]

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The event, which will take place at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, January 24 at select IMAX theaters, is, of course, part of the promotional lead-up to the release of Dune: Part Two, which is set to premiere in theaters on March 15, 2024. What will be part of the “exclusive sneak peek” at this screening is unclear, though it’s likely to be scenes from the upcoming film, which chronicles the second part of Frank Hebert’s iconic sci-fi novel, Dune.

Dune: Part One takes place through the first part of Hebert’s book, up to the moment when Paul (Timothée Chalamet) and his mother (Rebecca Ferguson) have joined the Fremen after the Harkonnens have murdered Paul’s father (Oscar Isaac) and reclaimed rule of the desert planet, Arrakis (aka Dune).

The second film, according to Villenueve, will be more emotional than the first. “Part One was like the promise of something, but Part Two delivers on that,” the director said in an interview this summer with Empire, later adding that, “the first movie was more contemplative—a young man discovering a world. Here, it’s a war movie.”

Part Two will also bring some of the book’s major characters to the big screen, including Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler),  Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh), and Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken).

Whatever we have in store for us in Part Two, the opportunity to see the first film on an IMAX screen (again) before the second movie comes out is a good thing. You can see if there are tickets available for a screening near you by clicking here.

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This trailer, though, is mostly war, with a sweeping score to intensify the feelings. On the one hand, there’s violent conflict; on the other, there’s the relationship between Paul (Timothée Chalamet) and Chani (Zendaya), who come from very different backgrounds. Here’s the synopsis:

Dune: Part Two will explore the mythic journey of Paul Atreides as he unites with Chani and the Fremen while on a path of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family. Facing a choice between the love of his life and the fate of the known universe, he endeavors to prevent a terrible future only he can foresee.

Dune: Part One was very beautiful, but one might also argue that it was more technically fascinating than emotionally or narratively compelling. (Personally I remember the thing about cereal being used in the sound design more than anything else). But it looked really, really cool. And so does Part Two. What else it has to offer remains to be seen.

Returning stars include Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling, Dave Bautista, and Javier Bardem; new cast members include Butler, Pugh, Christopher Walken, and Léa Seydoux. Villeneuve co-wrote the screenplay with Jon Spaihts; cinematographer Greig Fraser, production designer Patrice Vermette, editor Joe Walker, visual effects supervisor Paul Lambert, costume designer Jacqueline West, and composer Hans Zimmer all return for this second adventure in the desert.

Dune: Part Two is in theaters March 1, 2024.

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In addition to Tenet, Warner Bros. has moved some of its other high-profile releases: Wonder Woman 1984 (again), Godzilla vs. Kong, and Matrix 4.

The shifts in release dates come as uncertainly around the reopening of the world economy in light of the continuing Coronavirus pandemic. While numerous states across the US have begun to slowly reopen their economies, resurgences of the disease highlight the fact that the disease remains a key threat, and that businesses that see people in close proximity with one another — such as movie theaters — might still be unsafe.

Nolan’s Tenet, a time-bending spy thriller, was seen as the film to signal the reopening of the film industry, and it was set to debut in theaters on July 17th. It’s now been bumped back two weeks to July 31st. However, Warner Bros. is sticking another Nolan film back in theaters: Inception will be rereleased to celebrate its tenth anniversary. Deadline notes that the delay will give the studio more time to finalize Tenet‘s IMAX print, and that those theatergoers who venture out will get a special look at the upcoming film.

Other Warner Bros. films are getting shuffled around as well. Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman sequel was supposed to hit theaters on August 14th (already delayed from its original November 2019, December 2019, and June 2020 release dates), but has now been rescheduled for October 2nd.

Godzilla vs. Kong, which was supposed to debut on November 19th, has been shifted to May 21st, 2021, and the upcoming Matrix 4 will now debut on April 1st, 2022 (originally May 21st, 2021.) Notably, Warner Bros. hasn’t moved its release date for its upcoming adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune. It’s been scheduled to hit theaters on December 18th, 2020.

It remains to be seen if some other high-profile films, like Mulan (July 24th, 2020), or The New Mutants (August 28th, 2020) will retain their release dates.

The moves are par for the course at this point in 2020. At the height of the pandemic, a number of movies saw their theatrical releases delayed (Fast & Furious 9, and A Quiet Place Part 2, Mulan, and Black Widow), or sent straight to video on demand or streaming (like Bloodshot, Onward, Birds of Prey, The Invisible Man, and others.)

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And he could have been science fiction’s best known non-binary protagonist.

According to the plot of Dune, the Kwisatz Haderach had to be created via millennia of special breeding directives from the Bene Gesserit sisterhood. The all-female organization was working toward what all great shadowy organizations work toward—absolute power, namely their own puppet on the throne as emperor. Wrapped up in this desire was also a long-standing problem; spice offered the sisterhood some prescience and race memory, with the Reverend Mothers capable of looking back in time through the line of other sisters… but they could not access the male knowledge and experience in their past. It was believed that the Kwisatz Haderach would be able to look into their full history, both sides of their race memory, and also to see far into the future.

This figure was meant to arrive a generation after Paul—his mother was supposed to have a daughter who would wed the Harkonnen male heir, producing the Kwisatz Haderach. But Jessica went against the sisterhood, giving her partner Duke Leto the son he wanted, and somehow, this resulted in the fated figure appearing ahead of schedule. Paul took the water of life, a poison from the sandworms that the Reverend Mother is capable of changing, and learned of his destiny, saying:

“There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place within himself where the taking force dwells, but it’s almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For a woman, the situation is reversed.”

According to Paul, he is the fulcrum between those two points, able to give without taking and take without giving. That is what makes him the Kwisatz Haderach.

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Here’s the thing: The world of Dune is bound by an essentialist gender binary that doesn’t do the story many favors, despite its careful and often inspired worldbuilding. Aside from the fact that gender isn’t a binary, the insistence upon it isn’t a clever story juxtaposition that makes for great themes and plot. It’s an antiquated perspective that reads as out of place, especially in such a far-flung future. This is especially true when you couch maleness as a “taking” force and femaleness as a “giving” force. Men and women are not naturally those things because people overall are not that easily categorized—they are expected to be those things by society. Stating it as some form of spiritual truth, as Dune does, is an awkward declaration that only gets more awkward as time passes.

In addition, Dune is a story that spends much of its narrative currency on battles between binaries. They crop up everywhere in the book: the tension between the Bene Gesserit and the Mentats; the age-old feud between Houses Harkonnen and Atreides; the conditioning of Arrakis’ fremen forces against the conditioning of the Emperor’s sardaukar; the struggle between the ruling houses and the spacing guild. While there are countless groups vying for power, and the political complexities of that do not go unnoticed, Dune still dwells on that ‘A vs B’ dynamic in all the places where it really counts. Without these binary antagonisms, the tale wouldn’t function.

For a story so taken with binaries, there is something arresting about Paul balancing male and female aspects as an implicit factor to being the Kwisatz Haderach. The real confusion lies in the idea that the Kwisatz Haderach always had to be male, as though counterbalancing generations of Bene Gesserit sisters; if the figure is meant to be a fulcrum between those two specific genders, then their own gender should be insignificant. More importantly, if that is the nature of being the Kwisatz Haderach, then coming into that power should ultimately change one’s perception and person entirely. If you’re going to be the balancing point between dual genders, then why would you be solely either of those genders? Paul literally says that being able to do what he does changes him into “something other than man.” It doesn’t make him a woman, clearly, so what’s the alternative here?

It would have been a sharper assertion for Paul to have awoken into a different gender entirely, perhaps genderfluidity or even a lack of gender altogether. This wouldn’t have altered his key actions within the narrative, but it would have added another dimension to his journey. A non-binary protagonist for a story that obsesses over binary thinking would have been a stunning wrench to throw into the works. In many ways, it would have made more thematic sense than what Dune currently offers its readers.

While the upcoming film is unlikely to go that route, it’s tantalizing to think of the story that might have been, of all the possibilities contained therein. A story set in the future that accounted for the complexities of gender identity and how it might pertain to an awakening of consciousness and purpose. Even if Paul was the first person in their time period to consider non-binary gender, that would be a powerful statement that would shape their reality for centuries to come. Perhaps others would embrace non-binary identities to honor Muad’Dib, or it would become a sacred way of being, looked upon with religious fervor due to Paul’s importance. And there are further questions as to how that would have affected the sequels as well—would Leto II also have gone that route? He turns into a sandworm, you can’t tell me they’ve got clear and separated binary genders. They’re worms. In the sand. Try again.

In a story that turns on binaries, particularly as they pertain to gender, it would have changed the whole scheme to consider Paul as a non-binary protagonist. Moreover, it would have been fascinating to see how his perspective changed as a result of being that fulcrum, not just as it related to time, but as it related to people. While the story is quick to zero in on what Paul sees in the flow of time, his “terrible purpose” in putting humanity on the Golden Path, there is no consideration for how this shift in state might effect how he sees other humans. It’s a missed opportunity to really explore what absolute power would look like in a being who can project himself into the experiences of men and women equally. Would he understand his mother better than before? His sister?

It’s not the story that we have, but there will always be a part of my mind preoccupied with these possibilities. Because it’s fun, and because it’s intriguing, and because I will always wonder about what the world would look like if more people didn’t take the concept of binaries for granted.

Emmet Asher-Perrin will be stuck on this point for forever. You can bug them on Twitter, and read more of their work here and elsewhere.

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This week, Vanity Fair released a pair of articles that give us our first look at what to expect from the film.

The movie appears to still be slated for a December release

This summer has been a trial for studios and theaters alike, as many have closed for to prevent the spread of COVID-19. As a result, numerous films have had their theatrical releases delayed to later this year, or skipped the theatrical window altogether. Dune appears to be on track, according to Vanity Fair, although it’ll face competition from some other big films, like Black Widow, Godzilla vs. Kong, No Time to Die,  and Top Gun: Maverick.

There are indeed two films planned

Since the inception of the project, Villeneuve has talked about producing two films. Writer Anthony Breznican points out that Dune is an enormously complicated book, and Villeneuve notes “I would not agree to make this adaptation of the book with one single movie. The world is too complex. It’s a world that takes its power in details.”

He notes that that complexity is probably why the prior adaptations haven’t lived up to the books. “It’s a book that tackles politics, religion, ecology, spirituality—and with a lot of characters. I think that’s why it’s so difficult.”

The result will be something like It and It: Chapter Two: two big blockbusters that will allow Villeneuve to explore the complexity of the novel without making shortcuts.

The film retains its environmental message

One of the reasons for why Frank Herbert’s novel caught on with audiences in the 1970s was the environmentalist message embedded in the text, a holdover from the origins of the projects: a feature article about dune migration in the Pacific Northwest.

Villeneuve notes that “No matter what you believe, Earth is changing, and we will have to adapt.”

“That’s why I think that Dune, this book, was written in the 20th century. It was a distant portrait of the reality of the oil and the capitalism and the exploitation—the overexploitation—of Earth. Today, things are just worse. It’s a coming-of-age story, but also a call for action for the youth.”

pic.twitter.com/lkDe2awnGX

— Dune News Net (@DuneNewsNet) April 14, 2020

The Stillsuits look pretty cool

One of the biggest challenges for a novel’s adaptation is the look and feel of the world—particularly the costume design. Filmmakers have to balance what looks good and natural for the film, against what’s practical to wear for the actors. With Dune, there’s been three (ish) prior adaptations, and in all three instances, I’ve never felt that any of them quite nailed the look and feel of the Stillsuits that the Fremen wear to protect themselves from the desert environment.

Villeneuve’s adaptation looks like they’ve nailed the look: Vanity Fair’s piece shows off several pictures of the costume, which look rugged and like they could exist in the real-world.

Moreover, the costumes helped with the actors’ performance: Timothée Chalamet noted that they were performing in extremely hot conditions, and that the costumes were pretty oppressive to wear. “In a really grounded way, it was helpful to be in the stillsuits and to be at that level of exhaustion.”

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It looks as though Villeneuve is updating the story a bit

Dune might be a classic novel, but it’s attracted some criticism over the years for some of his portrayals: women don’t play as big a role, and some of the characters, like House Harkonnen’s Baron Vladimir (played by Stellan Skarsgård) are portrayed as grotesque.

Villeneuve notes that the character is still a “mammoth,” but “As much as I deeply love the book, I felt that the baron was flirting very often with caricature. And I tried to bring him a bit more dimension.” The director notes that Skarsgård portrays the character most like a predator, and less a power-crazed ruler.

Vanity Fair reports that some of the roles will change a bit: Lady Jessica’s (played by Rebecca Ferguson) role has been expanded, and is described more as a “warrior princess,” than a “space nun.” Ferguson notes that the character is “respectful” of the novel, but “the quality of the arcs for much of the women have been brought up to a new level. There were some shifts he did, and they are beautifully portrayed now.”

Another character, Liet Kynes, an ecologist on Arrakis, is a male character in the book, but for the film, will be played by Sharon Duncan-Brewster (Rogue One), a woman of color.

Atreides Anti-hero

Actor Timothée Chalamet will portray Paul Atreides, “a child of privilege raised by a powerful family, but not one strong enough to protect him from the dangers ahead.” Chalamet provided some insight into his take on the character yesterday, noting that he’s “on an anti-hero’s-journey of sorts.”

“He thinks he’s going to be sort of a young general studying his father and his leadership of a fighting force before he comes of age, hopefully a decade later, or something like that.”

Readers of the novel will know that that’s not what’s in store for the young Atreides: his family will be overthrown by rival House Harkonnen, which seeks to take control of the planet Arrakis. It looks as though Villeneuve and Chalamet’s take on the character is nuanced and complicated, and that it’ll take into consideration some of the character’s privilege in becoming the leader of the indigenous Fremen tribesmen.

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Before the 1990s, the idea of planets around other stars was science fiction, but today, astronomers are discovering thousands of ‘exoplanets’, and inevitable comparisons with the worlds of science fiction have been drawn. For instance, the phrase ‘Tatooine planet’, to describe a world with two suns, is practically part of the scientific lexicon now.

So here are four fictional, yet scientifically plausible, planets – and four real planets that show that, sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction.

Blueheart

Water-worlds may be among the most common types of planet out there, so it’s no surprise that they’ve featured in science fiction. One of the most well thought-out is Blueheart, from Alison Sinclair’s 1996 novel of the same name. Ninety-seven percent of Blueheart’s surface is covered by a deep ocean, and is inhabited by genetically-engineered humans called adaptives. However, there’s conflict with a group of un-modified humans who want to terraform Blueheart to better suit themselves.

What’s really intriguing about Blueheart’s ocean is its false bottom, formed from floating forests that have dense, entangled roots that can catch nutrient-rich organic material sinking from the surface waters, maintaining the stock of nutrients necessary for ocean life. On Earth, the wind blowing off continents moves surface water away, allowing deeper water to well up to the surface, and this mixing keeps nutrients in circulation. Blueheart doesn’t have any continents, so the floating forests are the only way to prevent the nutrients from sinking to the sea floor, but here’s the rub: the floating forests can only form thanks to tides and breakers produced by the terraformers who threaten the adaptives’ way of life, hence the conflict at the heart of the story.

Real-life planet: Although Earth is the only planet we know that definitely has oceans of water, several strong candidates for ‘water worlds’ have been discovered, not least a planet 48 light years away called Gliese 1214b. The density of this planet suggests that three-quarters of it is composed of water, wrapped around a small rocky core. The water wouldn’t remain liquid all the way down to the core. Instead, the increasing pressure with depth would gradually transform the water into various exotic states. These might include ‘superfluid’ water with zero viscosity (friction between fluids) allowing whirlpool vortices to spiral forever, as well as exotic ‘ice VII’ that forms under incredible, crushing pressures of over 21,000 atmospheres.

Gethen

From Ursula K. Le Guin’s famous, award-winning novel The Left Hand of Darkness comes this planet of Winter (‘Gethen’ means winter in its inhabitants’ language). Gethen is in the grip of an ice age, with polar caps extending as far as 45 degrees north and south, and the entirety of the planet is cold. Scientists refer to this as a Snowball Earth state, triggered in part by Gethen’s highly eccentric orbit around its star (meaning that its orbit is not circular, but elongated), which can lead to long periods of runaway cooling.

Real-life planet: All planets, including Earth, have eccentric orbits, but most are only slightly eccentric. Gethen’s orbital eccentricity is a more extreme, but it’s got nothing on the gas giant planet HD 80606b, which is 190 light years away from Earth, and which has a 111-day orbit so extremely elliptical that it makes a closest approach of its star at a distance of just 4.5 million kilometers, whipping past it in a matter of hours. (For comparison, Earth is 149 million kilometers from our Sun). During this fast summer, its temperature rises from about 500 degrees C to 1,200 degrees C, triggering huge summer storms with winds blowing at 15 times the speed of sound. Then the planet moves quickly away from its star and back out into deep space to begin another orbit.

Trisolaris

This deadly world from Liu Cixin’s The Three Body Problem is gravitationally thrown around a system of three stars like a hot potato, leading to catastrophic Chaotic Eras where the planet bakes or freezes, interspersed by short-lived Stable Eras where civilization can arise once more. It’s purported to be the Alpha Centauri system, which is the closest star system to Earth, just 4.3 light years away. However, the Trisolaran system doesn’t quite match reality: Alpha Centauri is a double-star system with Proxima Centauri a possible third member (astronomers aren’t sure if Proxima is gravitationally connected, or just passing by) and the orbital dynamics are much more stable. Astronomers have even found a planet orbiting Proxima, but this rocky world has probably been irradiated by its star.

Real-life planet: While the interchanging gravitational fields of Trisolaris’ three stars causes its chaotic motions, in real life no known ‘Tatooine planets’ are as unstable. However, a star’s gravity can affect a planet in other ways.

WASP-12b, which is 800 light years away, is a gas giant planet orbiting just 3.4 million kilometers from its star. This is close enough for gravitational tides from the star to stretch WASP-12b into an egg-shape, far broader around the equator than around the poles. The planet swelters at 2,200 degrees C and is evaporating under the intense stellar heat and radiation, losing 189 quadrillion tonnes of gas from its atmosphere every year, the gas bleeding away like the tail of a comet.

Arrakis

Better known as ‘Dune’ from Frank Herbert’s novel, Arrakis is a desert world and the only source of the spice melange, which the Spacing Guild uses to fold space and travel interstellar distances. The only water on Arrakis is found in tiny ice caps at the poles and in underground reservoirs.

Planetary scientists have actually theorized the existence of such worlds, describing Arrakis as “a bigger, warmer Mars … [with] signs that water flowed in the prehistoric past”. The scientists suggest that these Dune-like worlds could remain marginally habitable over a wider range of distances from their star than wet Earth-like planets can.

Real-life planet: On Arrakis, spice is more common than water. On the planet 55 Cancri e, which is the fifth planet in orbit around the star 55 Cancri, located 41 light years away, carbon is more common than water (and, hence, oxygen), a characteristic that could lead to a seriously weird world. Its landscape could be made of chiseled graphite, while the high-pressure carbon in its core could be transformed into an enormous chunk of diamond the size of a small planet.

For more information on how astronomers discover new planets, visit NASA.

Keith Cooper is a science journalist, Editor of Astronomy Now magazine, and author of The Contact Paradox: Challenging Our Assumptions in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Bloomsbury Sigma). Follow Keith on Twitter.

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You can find out a lot about the story you’re in by how they tackle this conversation. Here are some of the most memorable ones of my life.

The Animorphs and the Glowing Box

I devoured these books growing up, and they were one of the first exposures to science fiction I had. Even if you didn’t read them, you might remember their original covers—each one depicting a kid turning into an animal, and all the horrific steps in between.

The Animorphs “chosen one” conversation involves an alien telling our five heroes that Earth has been invaded by a race of slug creatures that crawl into your brain via your ear canal and take over your mind. The alien then offers them a choice: he can give them the ability to fight these slug creatures (Yeerks) by transforming into animals. Yes, the characters find that as weird as you might expect. But it’s a middle grade book, and the alien is in the middle of dying, so there’s not a lot of time to dwell on it. The alien tells each of them to touch one side of this glowing cube, which will transfer the abilities to them, and they do. The fate of the human race depends on it, after all.

What I like about this conversation is that it was entirely coincidental. The alien happened to land in this place where these five people just so happened to be. They don’t have any special skills—their unique abilities are a gift in a desperate moment. There was possibility here that doesn’t exist in every chosen one story—the potential for heroism in any random kid who happens upon a flying saucer with four of his friends, and has the heart for it.

The Matrix and the Oracle Fakeout

I saw The Matrix in sixth grade. I remember, in the conversation between Morpheus and Neo where Morpheus explains “The One”, getting that spark of excitement in my stomach: we were about to see Neo’s specialness on full display, his “set apart” status. And then, when Neo finally goes to see the Oracle, to confirm that he is indeed the hero of our tale…I can’t explain to you how deflated I felt.

ORACLE: But you already know what I’m going to tell you.

NEO: I’m not the One.

ORACLE: Sorry, kid.

At that point, I realized, I had no idea what was going to happen next. I had no road map in my mind for how this story could go. (Remember: I was eleven, I hadn’t been around long.) If you’ve seen the movie, you know the oracle tells Neo what he needs to hear in order to embrace his destiny, and he is actually the One, a fact he realizes largely because Trinity, certified hottie, confesses that she’s in love with him while their ship is coming apart around them and he’s still stuck in the Matrix, and it’s all very intense and dramatic and I still desperately want a trench coat.

But it all goes back to that conversation with the Oracle, that moment when fate and choice tangle together. That conversation introduces us to a simple idea: sometimes, in order to fulfill a destiny, you have to feel free to make your own choices. You have to believe that you are not special, that your life is not singularly important, in order to become someone who is.

Harry Potter and the Broken Prophecy

It took five books for us to find out Harry’s “chosen one” status via a prophecy contained in a glass orb, but that’s not even the “chosen one” conversation I want to talk about. That honor belongs to Book 6, The Half-Blood Prince.

Dumbledore has been, up to that point, taking Harry on a journey through other people’s memories, introducing the method by which Voldemort will, at last, be defeated—but this conversation is also about how Voldemort himself determined the prophecy would be fulfilled, creating the instrument of his own downfall (Harry) by trying to destroy it. The focus here is not on destiny, but on choice.

“He understood at last what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high.”

Harry already knows he’s the chosen one—he’s known that for a year at this point. The revelation here, then, is that choice exists. Harry’s destiny tells him only what he already knew, an inevitability from the moment Voldemort murdered his parents. It’s the feeling that matters here, more than the fact—the feeling of agency, restored, which is what our hero needs to complete his journey. Harry Potter presents the idea that choice informs destiny, and destiny informs choice. The two are locked together, often indistinguishable from each other.

Dune and the Gom Jabbar

Chosen One stuff is all over Dune by Frank Herbert, a book I read when I was probably too young to understand half of it, twelve or thirteen. But the most memorable of the assorted chosen one conversations in this book is the one at the very beginning: Paul is summoned to a test wherein a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother puts his hand in a box that causes horrible pain, and then puts a needle called the Gom Jabbar to his throat. If he removes his hand from the box, he’ll die by the Gom Jabbar. If he can outthink his animal instincts and keep his hand where it is, he’ll live. Paul passes, obviously—but he also learns of his new potential. You see, there’s a prophecy. (Duh.) One man will be the Kwisatz Haderach, with special abilities beyond those of the women who have come before him. Paul’s mother, Jessica, chose to give birth to a son rather than a daughter in the hope that he might be that man of prophecy. He exists because she believed he could have an important destiny.

I have…a lot to say about the gender politics part of the Kwisatz Haderach, but this isn’t really the place for that. For now, let me just say that Dune is unique for the way that Paul both buys into prophecy and uses it to manipulate the people who believe in it. He sees an array of paths and steers himself and others accordingly. And this moment is just the first example of that—Paul himself is a result of his mother’s pride, her taking the reins of destiny and trying to yank them in a particular direction. This bold maneuvering of destiny is part of what makes Dune a special chosen one story—fate, here, is a powerful weapon you can halfway wield, rather than something to surrender to.

Community and the True Repairman

Community, uneven though it was, was singularly capable of taking an extremely low stakes situation (a study group at a community college) and creating high stakes, weird drama out of it. Never was this more apparent than with Troy in season 3, embracing his destiny as the Truest Repairman. Basically, Troy wants to go to regular college, but he has a special gift of…air conditioner repair. The Dean of the air conditioner repair school finally maneuvers Troy into his grasp, and then reveals to him his destiny: he is the Truest Repairman, who will fix “not only air conditioners, but the men who fix them.” Troy then faces off with the evil air conditioner repair guy in a thunderdome style air conditioner repairing arena known as The Sun Chamber, defeats him, saves his life, and tells them all to stop being an absurd cult and become a regular school instead. He can do that, he says, because he’s their Messiah.

I don’t think this subplot was received positively by all fans of the show, but it was received positively by me, Chosen One Enthusiast. Few times in my life have I laughed harder than when Troy hears this prophecy about the Truest Repairman and replies, “It’s a trade school! It’s a two-year degree in boxes that make rooms cold!” Community loves tropes, and it loves playing with them while simultaneously indulging in them, something I very much enjoyed about it—and later decided to try my own hand at.

My book, Chosen Ones, takes place over ten years after my main character Sloane hears about her destiny. But I couldn’t resist including the chosen one conversation, in the form of a declassified government document. In it, she asks what will happen if she says no, and she is the only one of five chosen ones to do so. Sloane is not eager to save the world, but she does it anyway, and ten years later, haunted by the trauma of that experience, she wonders if what set the five of them apart, really, is that their parents were willing to surrender them to destiny, and other chosen one candidates’ parents were not. Sloane is primarily concerned with the cruelty of shaping a child to save the world. She is living in its aftermath.

As with any trope, though, you can’t mess with it unless you have a good foundation in it—and these five stories, among others, paved the way.

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Veronica Roth is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Divergent series and Carve the Mark. She was born in a Chicago suburb, and studied creative writing at Northwestern University. She and her husband and dog currently live in Chicago. You can find Veronica on Instagram (@vrothbooks), Facebook, or at her website (veronicarothbooks.com). Chosen Ones is available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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