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Notes -
Lynch, I suppose. It's pretty campy but I agree that its commitment to the foreignness of the Duniverse is appreciated.
I don't think it's fair to call him a villain, and I don't think Herbert ever did so (though I could be wrong about that!). I seem to remember Herbert suggesting that Paul is an anti-hero, and that Dune Messiah was intended to bring that out a bit more clearly. Paul is solving some very big problems, but he's doing it by throwing a lot of bodies into the meat grinder of war. Far, far better to be ruled by Paul than by the Harkonnens! And yet. The brutality of nature is one of the biggest themes of the texts, along with the threat of predation. It's a deeply Darwinian story, and these days people are nervous about thinking too hard about Darwinism as it continues to apply to human evolution.
You know, I mentioned it before here, but to me the entire Dune franchise was about the human condition being stretched to a breaking point. About human shaped pegs being hammered into horrifyingly shaped holes not meant for them. But then again, it's been probably 15 years since I last read them. I should probably take them for a spin again.
That's my take too; it's in a random OCB quote: Thou shalt not mutilate the human soul.
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