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I am hopelessly behind in my movie watching, and have just recently finished Dune 2. I'm 5 months late to the party, but the movie's deep flaws spurred me to write this post, and hopefully provide some change of pace to the constant Biden drama.
Villanueva often uses strange settings (Arrival, Blade Runner) to tell a compelling and intimate story. I had high expectations for Dune in his hands: the narrative of Paul, Chani, and Jessica has an uncanny setting yet is a story with nuance and personality. Unfortunately, Villanueva has not delivered on either the setting or the interpersonal relationships.
As in the first Dune installment, the planet is not the omnipresent danger that it is in the books. Dune should be the harshest, most inhospitable environment imaginable, with even the prison planet paling in comparison. Those that survive are forced into extreme military discipline. There is no questioning authority unless the questioner was willing to fight to the death. The planet made the Fremen who they are: the galaxies most feared killers. Yet the movie never shows the planet as anything even a tenth as scary as the Sahara in Laurence of Arabia. None of the Fremen practice water discipline, with mouths wide open to the desert and several incidents of tears (only in extreme cases would water be given to the dead!).
The Fremen themselves are petulant and cliquish rather than clannish. Modern sensibilities are ludicrously transplanted, without modification, into a setting in which every minute brings a chance of death. Chani, inexplicably, is drawn to Paul as he internally embraces a sniveling beta-male persona. She talks of perfect gender equality among the Fremen, while any society that actually evolved in such extremities would be intensely patriarchal (as they are in the book). She says she will never leave him, as long as he remains who he is. A true Fremen (and a true woman!) would have never caveated or conditioned such a statement.
Paul, backed into a corner by the Harkonnen, finally transforms into the leader he is destined to be. Chani disapproves: she wanted a tame, domesticated partner. His transformation into a conqueror precipitates an extended hissy fit that ends with her abandoning Paul, the Fremen, and her duty. She takes on the persona of a girl-boss, and is as unhappy (and, seemingly, as barren) as any modern-day girl-boss.
In the book, Chani is loyal. She is a consistent mainstay for Paul, sharing in his miseries and exulting in his triumphs. She is no flake, and takes her duty and responsibility with great seriousness. She is perfectly at home in the society, with none of the bizarre anachronism of the movie.
Perhaps the best way to show the disconnect between the book and the movie, and in the character of Chani, is quoting a passage from each:
And the movie:
Which version of Chani seems more real? More responsible? More happy? Villanueva (unintentionally) provides meta-commentary on modern feminism, and it isn't pretty.
Here’s my gripe with the way Chani is portrayed in the movie. In the movie, she just seems to straightforwardly hate Paul. She starts out as scornful and dismissive, is immediately suspicious of his political motives, which then curdles into hatred. She refuses to cry for him when she thinks he’s dead (Jessica has to force her to) and is even about to try and kill him just before he declares himself the Lisan al-Gaib. It’s so consistent and intense that the exactly two short scenes where they’re friendly and in-love seem totally out of place, like they’re deleted scenes made from an earlier draft of the script that the editor forgot to remove. It also totally deflates any of the drama and Pathos we’re supposed to feel about the film’s ending. Why the hell would Paul even consider picking Chani over Irulian? And why would Chani be so upset that she’s not going to spend the rest of her life with the guy she basically thinks is the Antichrist?
Yes, it's very strange. The idea of her being a sort of Fremen nationalist along with her younger friends never really lands, and since that and being into Paul are essentially her only personality traits, it's unconvincing; she only gets to show off the first in one scene where it's little more than complaining Stilgar is old and religious. But I think this was fixable if you added just one scene and slightly changed another: Stilgar should be explaining to Jessica that the traditionalists are waiting for the Mahdi to start the terraforming project, while Chani in a separate scene with Paul can be advocating for starting the program on their own, especially as Paul starts to roll back Harkonnen control.
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