In today’s post I’ve compiled every question I’ve seen asked about Dune by those who’ve watched the films and didn’t quite understand everything that was going on, and I’ve done my best to answer those questions. Hopefully this can serve as a companion resource for people that are new to the Dune universe and want it explained in simple terms.
This is set in the far, far future—why are there no robots or computers?
The absence of any kind of computing technology is absolutely the most important thing to understand about the Dune universe, because it serves as the foundation for why things are the way they are. It informs the Imperium’s society, culture, institutions, and why its various factions act the way they do. Thousands of years before the events of Dune, humanity engaged in a crusade against “thinking machines”, known as the Butlerian Jihad. This wasn’t a case of robots gaining sentience and enslaving people or anything like that. What happened was a lot more subtle. The human race had gotten to the point that it relied on AI for almost everything. How does an interstellar society realistically evolve? Advanced computing technology was the key to bridging these logistical challenges—such as space travel, for example—and over the millennia solidified itself as the fabric of human society. The Butlerian Jihad was a revolution based on the premise that reliance on AI led to the evolutionary stagnation of the human race. It wasn’t that the thinking machines were dangerous in and of themselves, but that those in control of them, those who programmed them, wielded immense power over the masses.
Here’s a quote from the book that illustrates this quite well: “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.”
This is obviously very relevant to our own time—just in the first quarter of the 21st century alone we’ve seen increasing incorporation of computing technology into our everyday lives. Automation of industrial processes, for example. Or the need for internet access for basic things. Frank Herbert is warning here against a world in which the very apparatus of society is controlled by a few people. He then imagines what an interstellar society without computing technology might look like. In the aftermath of the Butlerian Jihad, we see that society take shape. Genetic engineering, extreme bodily conditioning, psychedelic drugs, and a limited use of technology fill the void left by computers. But what’s interesting is that, in the absence of thinking machines, humanity becomes totally reliant on something else—the spice mélange found on Arrakis. By the events of Dune, we find a society in the Imperium that is stagnating and on a course toward a slow extinction.
What do the Bene Gesserit want?
If you had to assign blame for everything that happens in Dune, it would be fair to give the Bene Gesserit the lion’s share. Almost everything—particularly the decisions that Paul is forced into making—are the result of their machinations. But can we consider the Bene Gesserit villains? I wouldn’t call them evil. Their methods are cold and brutal for sure, but they believe that what they’re doing is what’s best for humanity. Like everything in the Dune universe, the Bene Gesserit are a product of the Butlerian Jihad. This is a world born out of radical religious fervor—and it’s the principles of this revolution that guide the various institutions of the Imperium. Whereas the Spacing Guild use the spice to practice almost “pure mathematics”, the Bene Gesserit use it to practice politics. Under the guise of a religious order, the Bene Gesserit advise political leaders. They also manipulate bloodlines to maintain their breeding program. The purpose of the breeding program is to produce a Kwisatz Haderach, in the hope that that person will guide humanity using the lessons of the past. The idea is that someone with unlimited access to the ancestral memories of the human race, as well as visions of possible futures, will be able to ensure a peaceful, prosperous, and enlightened future for the species. As harsh as they may seem, the Bene Gesserit genuinely believe in this plan. But like any institution, having political power shapes their behavior, and they spend as much effort trying to grow and maintain their power as they do anything else. Herbert is trying to make a statement here about the nature of institutions; that no matter their stated goals, they will always seek more power. Power for its own sake. And so over time, as the Butlerian Jihad fades into memory, it becomes more important to the Bene Gesserit that the Kwisatz Haderach is someone that advances their own interests first, and humanity’s second. That’s why they don’t celebrate Paul becoming a Kwisatz Haderach—they want a Kwisatz Haderach that they can control. Paul has actually completed the original objective of the breeding program, but by this point the Bene Gesserit are an institution, not political revolutionaries. The idea of a Kwisatz Haderach outside their control terrifies them, and naturally will lead to a decline in their influence.
How are House Atreides and House Harkonnen in open conflict while still being members of the Imperium?
The houses of the Imperium are nominally under the authority of the Padishah Emperor, but in practice they operate autonomously. The best real-world comparison would be the Holy Roman Empire (especially after the 1648 Peace of Westphalia) where its member states were essentially sovereign, but had a shared set of cultural values. There was no Germany, but for many centuries there was a sense of “Germanness”. The Imperium of the Dune novels functions similarly, where different houses can make their own laws and pursue their own agendas, but fall under a broad set of cultural principles upheld by Imperial law. Just like the German states of the Holy Roman Empire, the houses of the Imperium have a strong sense of shared heritage—dating back to humankind’s war against the thinking machines. And it’s this conflict, the Butlerian Jihad, that really establishes the Imperium’s institutions and defines its cultural values. The houses of the Imperium can more or less do what they want so long as they don’t violate these agreed principles, many of which were codified in the aftermath of the Jihad in what’s referred to as the Great Convention. The basic idea of the Great Convention is that human life is precious and must be protected as much as possible. It prohibits the use of nuclear weapons, for example, as well as the use of thinking machines. And it defines the limits of power for both the houses and the Padishah Emperor; the Emperor can’t get involved in domestic affairs, but if a house violates the Great Convention, then it’s his responsibility to ensure they’re punished. One of the interesting features of The Great Convention is its provision for official feuds or vendettas between houses, known as a kanly. This is why House Atreides and House Harkonnen are in open conflict despite being members of the same political entity. The kanly allows for violence between houses so long as that violence complies with the Great Convention. This means that, like the Atreides and the Harkonnens, houses can fight violent wars of attrition that lead to one or the other’s destruction—so long as certain rules are followed. Houses are not allowed to use atomic weapons on each other, for example. This is where we come back to the Emperor. According to the Great Convention, the Emperor is meant to serve as a neutral arbiter in disputes between houses. If he were to use his Sardukar to help one over the other, that would present such an existential threat to the others that the Landsraad would immediately unite their armies against him. That’s why Emperor Shaddam IV has to hide his involvement in the destruction of House Atreides—if the other houses found out, then he’d lose his mandate to rule and swiftly be deposed. In the book, the Sardukar dress as Harkonnen soldiers to disguise Imperial involvement in the conspiracy, and it’s only when the Atreides defenders observe their fighting skills that they realize who they’re up against. So the secret alliance between the Harkonnens and the Emperor is absolutely in violation of the Great Convention, and it shows that, just like in real life, people in power will subvert customs and laws to further their own interest.
Why do people fight with blades more often than they do guns?
In Dune they have weapons called lasguns, which fire a straight, concentrated energy beam. However, the use of personal energy shields in the Dune universe fundamentally changes how these weapons are used. Basically, if a lasgun beam makes contact with a shield, then it causes a nuclear explosion that basically kills everyone in a wide radius. That explosion might center on where the beam makes contact with the shield, it might center on the lasgun, or it might center somewhere in the middle. It’s unpredictable. So guns have a very limited use, with most people having personal shields. This has led to the adoption of new fighting techniques. The shields’ protection is based on velocity, meaning that slow blades can penetrate them. I will admit that the films don’t do the best job of making this clear to the audience. At the beginning of Dune: Part Two, we see the Fremen take out a Harkonnen squad with lasguns, so I can imagine some viewers feeling confused about when it’s safe to use them and how the characters know that. It’s also important to note that on Arrakis, shields are never active for very long. The harmonic vibrations in the shields attract sandworms and drive them into a rage—so that’s most likely why the Harkonnens were traveling with their shields down in that scene. Since you can’t use shields in the open desert, lasguns would be more prevalent here than the rest of the galaxy.
What actually is the spice?
The Spice Mélange (colloquially referred to as simply “the spice”) is a narcotic substance produced by baby sandworms, known as sandtrout. It’s created deep beneath the sand by fungal excretions from the sandtrout, which, when mixed with water, form a “pre-spice mass”. After an explosion of pressure, the mass is then launched to the surface, where it dries in the hot air of Arrakis to become mélange. Since the sandworms are only found on Arrakis, Arrakis is the only place where spice can be produced. That makes both Arrakis and its sandworms critical to the Imperium’s way of life. The most important effect of the spice is that it allows the Spacing Guild to conduct interstellar travel. The Guild Navigators consume extremely high quantities of spice, enabling them to do the job that computers once did before the Butlerian Jihad, which is traverse “fold space” to achieve faster-than-light travel. The spice gives the Navigators prescient abilities, allowing them to chart safe routes for their heighliners. Without prescience, the ships would end up lost or crashing into celestial objects. The spice also has other properties, such as heightened sensory awareness and anti-aging health benefits. It’s highly addictive, and you can tell if someone’s addicted because their eyes turn a rich blue color.
Are there any aliens in the Dune universe?
This is an interesting one. It’s never stated in the books that extraterrestrial life exists. There are certainly no intelligent aliens. On Arrakis we have the sandworms—but their origin is shrouded in mystery. Obviously we don’t have sandworms in the real world—and it’s true that Dune absolutely takes place in the same universe as the real world—but for all we know, the sandworms could have been grown in a lab thousands of years ago. Perhaps they are genetically-altered versions of animals that once naturally existed? We simply don’t know if Frank Herbert had an idea in mind about whether the sandworms are of extraterrestrial origin or not.
Why do the Fremen worship Paul?
This all has to do with the Bene Gesserit’s Missionaria Protectiva. Thousands of years ago, the Bene Gesserit established messianic religions on various planets so that they might one day be able to use them to their advantage. The Fremen live a harsh existence on a punishing world, making them susceptible to religious myth. The Lisan al Gaib is simply a Fremen term for an off-world prophet, which comes from those superstitions implanted by the Bene Gesserit thousands of years ago. This messiah figure was prophesized to begin terraforming Arrakis (or Dune, as the Fremen call it) into a green paradise. It’s sometimes translated as “Giver of Water,” but I think the term is intentionally vague, with multiple interpretations. Some Fremen take little convincing that Paul is the Lisan al Gaib, others refuse to believe it, and some are open to the idea but want to see him prove it. Jamis, for example, believed strongly in the prophecy, but wasn’t convinced that Paul was the messiah. As for Paul, he’s initially horrified at the idea of exploiting this prophecy, but comes to see it as a necessary political opportunity.
Why are House Harkonnen given control of Arrakis?
This isn’t actually stated in the book, but we can infer that the Harkonnens probably won the Imperial fief due to their reputation for maximizing industrial output, as well as some clever political maneuvering.
Is Paul the villain?
Dune is a story that simply can’t be understood through a black-and-white lens. There are no absolutes here. The film does a good job of letting us know that Paul isn’t a hero, but we should be careful not to think of him as a villain either. This isn’t a superhero comic. Frank Herbert wasn’t interested in good vs. evil, he was interested in human nature. Specifically, Herbert examines the human condition through societal institutions and political movements. What does the society we create tell us about who we are? With Dune (actually, all the Dune books for that matter), there’s a recurrent emphasis that what’s really happening is so much bigger than the moment we’re in—that the events of the present are part of broad historical processes and trends that have been slowly unfolding for millennia. And perhaps more importantly, that the decisions of individuals are much less important and impactful than those sociological and macroeconomic forces. I’m not saying I think Herbert is a determinist in the absolute sense, because I don’t think that’s true. I’m just saying that in the Dune novels, it would seem that individuals can only shape events insofar as the limits that these historic forces set for them. I think of it a little bit like World War 1—the geopolitical situation in 1914 made the outbreak of war very likely, but ultimately Gavrilo Princip still chose to shoot Archduke Franz Ferdinand. But how does this relate to Paul and whether or not he’s a villain? For me, a big part of Paul’s character arc (especially in the films) is him realizing that he has a very limited set of options available to him, that he can’t just do what he wants through sheer force of will. It’s classic coming-of-age stuff—the abandonment of youthful idealism and the acceptance of pragmatic realpolitik. Paul is part of the Bene Gesserit breeding program, a project that’s been ongoing for thousands of years. With each generation that passes, the genetic potential gets stronger, and the program’s various prospects more exceptional. So from the very moment Paul is born, his life is not wholly his own; he’s a part of this project that he has no control over. What’s the first thing we see at the start of the book and the first film? He comes of age and is immediately tested by the Bene Gesserit for his genetic potential—if he fails the test, he gets a goddam poisoned needle in the jugular. He’s not treated as a person, but a test subject. He has to play a game that he never signed up for. What happens is that he simply wins. That’s not to absolve him of moral responsibility, however. Paul is neither a villain nor a hero. In the film we see him agonize over the ethics of the options available to him. He doesn’t want to exploit the Fremen or take part in anything that leads to the loss of innocent lives. He ultimately does choose to do so, believing that it’s the least-worse option available to him, but I don’t think that makes him a villain. If he had no moral qualms about doing so, or he wasn’t pressured into the decision through fear of worse alternatives, then he would be a villain. I don’t think we should be looking for easy labels like “hero” or “villain” to make sense of Paul—I think we should be thinking of him as a young man in a uniquely difficult situation whose reaction to his circumstances is a result of his life experiences.
Is Paul all-powerful?
No. It’s true that he has some incredible abilities, but there are limits to what he can do. It should also be noted that he’s not a “Chosen One”. He’s someone that’s had the benefit of very high-quality training. As a product of the Bene Gesserit breeding program, he’s already got a genetic advantage. There are other people in the universe, like Feyd-Rautha for example, that have just as much genetic potential as Paul. But what just gives Paul that edge is the quality of his teachers. In terms of his fighting skills, he trained under Duncan Idaho and Gurney Halleck—two of the best fighters in the Imperium and the two people most responsible for turning the Atreides legions into a fighting force powerful enough to make the Emperor conspire against them. In terms of his Bene Gesserit abilities, he trained under Lady Jessica—one of the best in her order. He also trained as a Mentat under Thufir Hawat and likely learned a lot about leadership and politics from his father, Duke Leto. Even with all these incredible teachers, he still finds it a tough fight against Feyd-Rautha. It’s not as tough in the books—in fact, Feyd-Rautha has to use underhanded tactics just to keep up with Paul. But nonetheless, Paul isn’t someone that’s uniquely gifted. There’s a good chance Feyd-Rautha could have become a Kwisatz Haderach, were he afforded the same training and opportunities as Paul. It’s important to attribute Paul’s success to the impact of multiple factors. His Mentat training, for example, comes in clutch when he takes the Water of Life—helping him rationalize everything and calm himself down. Nothing that happens to him is destiny—there is no such thing in the Dune universe. Once he becomes the Kwisatz Haderach, Paul can access ancestral memories with clarity, and he’s afforded visions of possible futures as well. This obviously makes him very powerful, but he shouldn’t be thought of as a god or anything. Even though he can see into the future, he can’t control it. He does the best he can to ensure the future he thinks will be best for humanity. He can’t change the past, and whatever he does will be subject to the limits that the past has placed on him.
What happens if Feyd-Rautha wins the duel and kills Paul?
Honestly, the situation doesn’t change that much in my opinion. The real turning point has already happened—Paul has already ingested the Water of Life and convinced the Fremen that he is the Lisan al Gaib. Both the book and the film make it clear that even if Paul were to die after this point, then the jihad would continue without him. And the likelihood is that, with Paul as a martyr, the jihad would be even more bloody and destructive. That’s why his decision to go south weighs on Paul’s conscience so much—he’s aware that he’s playing with forces much bigger than himself, forces that he can’t fully control. The Fremen have been waiting for a messiah for thousands of years, and with the brutality of the Harkonnen fief in recent times, Arrakis has become a powder keg ready to explode. That’s why I liken it to Europe in 1914—the situation is more volatile and dangerous than anyone realizes. That’s the true failing of the Emperor and the Bene Gesserit; in neglecting to take the Fremen seriously for thousands of years, they’ve sown the seeds of their undoing. Paul realizes the delicacy of the situation though—and that’s why he’s so afraid to exploit the Lisan al Gaib prophecy. Unlike the Emperor, he doesn’t underestimate the power of faith. And so if Feyd-Rautha were to kill Paul in the duel at the end, the Fremen would probably just kill everyone. At this point they’ve already defeated the Emperor’s forces. The Emperor, his entourage, and Feyd-Rautha are their prisoners. There’s no way they’d just be like “Fair enough,” and let them go. House Corrino and House Harkonnen have oppressed and exploited the Fremen for a very long time. The likelihood is that they would be executed pretty quickly, Paul would become posthumously deified as the one that set the Fremen free, and leadership would perhaps fall to Jessica. You’d still have the other Great Houses of the Landsraad waiting in orbit, but they can’t really do anything at this stage. That’s why their decision to reject Paul’s ascendency in the film didn’t make sense to me—in the book they begrudgingly accept it because they need the spice to flow. This would be the same if Feyd-Rautha killed Paul—the Fremen would still be in control of spice production and they’d still have the leverage of the Atreides nuclear stockpile. Maybe Jessica would try and negotiate with the Landsraad, appealing to her late husband’s popularity among the other houses, but to be honest, I don’t see much changing. The Fremen would absolutely reject any attempt on their part to gain control of the spice, and in all likelihood they’d still wage their jihad against them.
Is Dune a “white savior” narrative?
No. Race isn’t a theme in the Dune novels. I don’t think race, the way we think of it in our world, even exists in the Dune universe. You have to remember that Dune is set tens of thousands of years in the future, so humankind would have mixed a lot—to the point that silly social constructs like “race” (which, in our own world, is largely a contextual product of European colonialism) wouldn’t make sense. There’s very little description, in the books, of what anyone looks like. Paul’s physical appearance isn’t relevant to the character—if they had cast a black or Asian actor as Paul, that would have made just as much sense as casting a white one. Obviously there would have been the usual predictable uproar from the alt-right, but who cares about the opinions of lunatics? So long as the characters in the story look similar to their close relatives, you can’t really go wrong casting whoever you like in Dune, regardless of their skin color. I do understand that films are different to books, and that the optics have an effect on how the story is received. There’s definitely the possibility that one could handle the optics clumsily and create something that exploits real-world stereotypes. We’ve seen this happen quite a few times down the years—and it’s right to call it out when it does happen, because of the way it affects viewers who’ve experienced racial prejudice. But this isn’t the case with Dune, because as the films (especially Part: Two) make abundantly clear, Paul ain’t saving anyone. While race isn’t a theme in the book, colonialism absolutely is—and Dune is absolutely an anti-colonialist narrative. If the story was about a sophisticated, benevolent settler whose domination of a passive, “savage” indigenous population led them to prosperity, then the criticism would hold water. That’s where the white savior trope comes from—it’s a racist justification for European colonialism based on implications that the white settler knows best, that colonialism uplifts native peoples, that it’s a noble enterprise. Dune categorically refutes that—and was consciously written as a warning against “charismatic leaders”. I think that with Dune: Part Two, Denis Villeneuve went to great lengths to ensure that this story was as sensitive as possible to our modern discussions about race.
This seems similar to Star Wars. Did Star Wars copy Dune?
Only George Lucas knows the answer to that, so I’m not gonna say whether he did or didn’t. I will say, however, that there are a suspicious amount of parallels. Dune was published in 1965 and was a major critical and commercial success. The first Star Wars movie released 12 years later. But while there’s a lot of superficial resemblance between the two, tonally they’re completely different. Star Wars seems to have borrowed individual surface elements from Dune (like the Voice, for example), but fundamentally it’s trying to be something very different, which is a swashbuckling, family-friendly adventure in the style of Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and A Princess of Mars, which are its most important influences. Whereas Dune is trying to be a high-concept literary sci-fi novel, where both the plot and the characters are less important than the ideas. As such, the tone in Dune is a lot darker, a lot more unsentimental. It’s not trying to be funny, to thrill, to provide a spectacle. So I think that even if Lucas did pinch a few things here and there from Dune, then it’s nothing to worry about, as the tone and intent behind the two franchises is so wildly different.
Is Dune fantasy or science fiction?
This is one of those ones that you can argue about until the cows come home, if you want to get pedantic about it. In my view, it’s science fiction. My reasoning here is that within the world of Dune itself, things have a natural or scientific basis, rather than a supernatural or magical one. It’s just my opinion, but I’ve always felt that if Story A features time travel on the basis of a time machine, and Story B features time travel on the basis of a mystical object (let’s say, a lamp), then the former is science fiction, and the latter is fantasy. Functionally, they’re both time machines, but the difference is in Story A, the time machine is a man-made contraption, whereas the mystical object in Story B was probably imbued with a spell or something. It doesn’t matter that the time machine in Story A doesn’t make sense to us—what matters is that it makes sense to the characters in the story. For me, one of the things that characterizes fantasy is the presence of the supernatural. Magic exists outside of nature and the realm of scientific explanation. In Dune, there is no magic. It’s soft science fiction for sure, but everything you see in Dune comes under the laws of nature. When the Bene Gesserit use the Voice, for example, they’re not casting a spell—even though it looks that way to both us and the people in the Dune universe themselves (who refer to the Bene Gesserit as “witches”). It’s meant to be an extreme form of hypnotic suggestion, whereby the Bene Gesserit modulate their vocal tones to coerce others. Think of it as an exaggerated form of the way we can use subtle techniques to coerce people in real life. So while there are no supernatural elements to the Dune universe, there is a recurring theme of people interpreting phenomena as having a supernatural origin. For example, after Paul consumes the Water of Life, he’s able to see the past a lot more clearly than before (as well as possible futures). When he’s trying to convince the southern Fremen that he’s the Lisan al Gaib, he picks out that warrior he senses is thinking of challenging him, and recounts the warrior’s past. To the Fremen, this is more or less seen as a magical power, but to Paul it’s not something that’s supernatural. He’s predisposed to visions because he’s a product of the Bene Gesserit breeding program, and those visions have now become clearer on account of the high concentration of spice he’s just ingested. You can definitely argue that the spice makes Dune a fantasy, but personally I just see it as a psychedelic experience—an exaggerated version of taking ayahuasca, LSD, peyote, or mushrooms in our own world. The spice is a natural substance in the Dune universe, so it functions just like natural products in our world that distort reality once ingested. Given that mushrooms were an influence on Herbert when writing the books, I tend toward the view that Dune is science fiction; everything that happens has a scientific or natural explanation to the characters in that universe.
Why did they cut Alia from the film?
I think there are two obvious reasons for this. The first is that they had to streamline the plot, condensing the narrative so that events took us to the same conclusion while still remaining true to the spirit of the source material. A book moves at a very different pace to a movie. Dune: Part Two is already quite long at 165 minutes. There are a lot of characters, scenes, and subplots in the novel that would require time to do justice. Without the proper context, they would come across as confusing to newcomers and rushed to fans of the novel. Villeneuve has already stated that he’s not a fan of dialogue in movies and prefers to tell his stories as much as possible through visuals and sound. He doesn’t want to dump exposition on viewers and bloat the film, which is potentially what could happen with the inclusion of Alia. Alia is a character that’s difficult to get your head around. Other than killing the Baron, she’s not really an active shaper of the plot’s events in the novel. She’s more important from a world-building perspective. Villeneuve probably thought that we could get to the film’s conclusion just as well without her, and then have Paul kill the Baron instead. If people who haven’t read the books felt that the film made sense, then I say her omission is no big deal. The second reason, in my opinion, is that Villeneuve probably thought that Alia would be too challenging to bring to the screen. She’s a toddler with the intellect of an adult—which is difficult both to film, and for audiences to take seriously. It’s understandable that he might have thought that a faithful depiction of Alia would simply be too weird; this is a film that’s catering to a wide audience after all.
Why does the Emperor accept Paul’s challenge and go to Arrakis?
You’d think this is a bad idea, but it all has to do with the balance of power in the Imperium. The Emperor has nominal authority over the Imperium, but in practice he shares it with several important institutions. You have the Landsraad, the Bene Gesserit, the Spacing Guild, and CHOAM. Each faction is aware of the limits of the other’s de facto power, and each advances their own interests carefully. All of these factions rely on the spice. The Bene Gesserit need it to access ancestral memories, CHOAM need to trade it for profit, and the public consume it for its geriatric properties. And most of all, the Spacing Guild need it to “fold space”. Without spice, space travel is impossible. And without space travel, trade ceases to exist. Interstellar society collapses and humanity falls into a dark age of disconnected planets. Everyone is aware of how dependent the Imperium is on spice to function. During the events of the film, we see Paul leading the Fremen against Harkonnen spicing operations. This really hurts the Imperium economically. The Harkonnens can’t meet their quotas, and they feel the pressure from the Emperor, who in turn feels the pressure from the various aforementioned institutions that control the Imperium. If the Emperor can’t guarantee the flow of spice, then he doesn’t really have a mandate to rule. So he’s under a lot of pressure here. This isn’t something he can run away from. In the film we see him contemplate deploying his Sardukar to Arrakis, but Irulan tells him that when up against a religious movement, he can’t simply brute-force his way to victory. Making martyrs of the Fremen will only strengthen their resolve. Irulan shrewdly suggests trying to position himself as a mediator between the Fremen and the Harkonnens, to present himself as the bringer of peace. However, the Fremen’s disruption of the spice harvesting reveals the fragility of his rule—without control of the spice, he doesn’t have any leverage. We see this realization slowly dawn on the Emperor throughout the film—he represents a society that’s become complacent, a society in stagnation. That complacency, that slow stagnation, makes the Imperium ill-prepared to deal with the situation. When Paul sends the Emperor a challenge, the Emperor realizes that he has no choice. If he doesn’t go to Arrakis, then the Fremen will eventually bring all spice production to a complete standstill, and the Emperor will face political revolt by the Landsraad. He’s forced into a battle of Paul’s choosing, and can only hope that his Sardukar can win.
Why do the Fremen defeat the Sardukar-Harkonnen forces so decisively?
Put simply, they had a good plan. Arrakeen and its surrounding plains are protected from the planet’s coriolis storms and sandworms by a mountainous range of sheer rock called the Shield Wall, up to 4500 meters in places. Paul uses the Atreides atomic warheads to blast a hole in the Shield Wall, through which the Fremen ride their sandworms under the cover of the rushing sandstorms. This completely catches the Sardukar off-guard and causes a panic among their ranks. It should also be noted that for the Fremen, this is very much a religious event—they genuinely believe they are taking part in the most important endeavor in the history of their people. And so we can say there are 3 factors behind Paul’s victory: geographical advantage (the use of “desert power”), the element of surprise, and religious fervor.
Will there be a third Dune film?
At this point it’s highly likely. A third film was recently greenlit by Legendary Pictures and Denis Villeneuve confirmed a while ago that he’s started writing the script, which will be based on Dune Messiah. In February 2024, Villeneuve said that the script was “almost finished”, but reiterated that he won’t rush things. It’s also been confirmed that Hans Zimmer has begun writing music for this film. The next film won’t really be “Part Three”, however, as Dune Messiah is its own story. It’s possible they might call it Part Three for continuity’s sake, but the story of the Dune novel ends where Dune: Part Two ends. I’d say the two deciding factors on whether we get a third film will be Villeneuve’s confidence in its ability to measure up to the quality of the first two films, and the willingness/availability of the cast to reprise their roles.
Should I read the books?
If you enjoyed the films then I recommend reading the books, because it goes into a lot more detail. I found that after watching the first film in 2021, picking up the books again helped me get that Dune-fix I was craving. So maybe you are feeling the same, where you can’t stop thinking about the characters and the universe, and maybe you’re curious about what happens next. If so then I recommend reading the books—you might even enjoy them more than if you’d started reading them without watching the films first. The films will give you a better understanding of what’s going on and might motivate you to keep reading. I wouldn’t say the language of the books is difficult, it’s more the ideas that can be hard to get your head around. Herbert may or may not have been off his nut on magic mushrooms when he was writing them.
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