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Dune Part 2 was great (warning: spoilers) and thoughts on Dune universe
HBD nerds can be overly obsessed with SNPs and IQ distributions, blank slatists are blind to primordial truths of material reality, but the Dune universe properly understands Civilization as the volatile interaction between the gene pool and meme pool. I am happy to report that Dune Part II does justice to the book and is the best movie I've seen in theaters for as long as I can remember.
There is not much to complain about in terms of Wokeism. There was some bad casting in the first movie for characters that don't appear in this installment. Right Wing Twitter is complaining about the the love interest, Chani, being unattractive and the transition of her character to being a warrior who is skeptical of the cult percolating around Paul. This is probably the biggest change from the book, arguably necessary because Paul's internal conflict would be difficult to depict so it was written as an external conflict with his love interest.
The other complaint from the Christian nationalist side is that the movie and Dune universe are a critique of religiosity, which is only partially true. But in this case, the antagonists are godless heathens, and it's the victorious protagonist who is associated with religiosity, which is inverted from the traditional Hollywood critique of Christianity.
What Paul, the Fremen, the Empire, the Harkonens, etc. represent in terms of pattern-matching to reality or history is open to interpretation. I saw one right-winger on Twitter complain about the Dune universe as a celebration of the Islamic conquest of Western civilization. It's true the Fremen are aesthetically coded as Arabic, and Herbert actually does use the word "Jihad" in the book to denote the cults and its conquests across the universe, for example Paul "thought then of the Jihad, of the gene mingling across parsecs..."
But Paul is an avatar of all Abrahamic religion: he's the synthesis of Moses who leads his people through the desert to salvation, the dying-and-rising Jesus, and Mohammed the conqueror. And of course Paul Atreides, played by Timothée Chalamet who is half-Jewish, is named after the Jew Paul of Tarsus, "a Pharisee, born of Pharisees", who became the Christian apostle to the Gentiles. Which must bring us to the Bene Gesserit, the order in the Dune universe which manipulates imperial politics by consciously crossing bloodlines and planting the seeds of religious myth.
Of course Christians accept the revelation of Paul of Tarsus on the Road to Damascus. But if we assume that this did not happen, the alternate story of Paul's conversion and ministry is going to be closer to the Bene Gesserit of Dune than the Road to Damascus. The surface-level reading of the Bene Gesserit is that they are just a caricature of the adage that religion is a mechanism for controlling people. But the deeper reading is that the Bene Gesserit are a depiction of the mechanism by which religion creates people and directs the gene people through the use of memes (in the story, their "voice" alone can literally command someone to unconsciously obey their will).
This also leads into my broader interpretation of Religion, which has unfairly become synonymous with Abrahamic religion. In my mind, Religions are memes that direct the gene pool. So something like "Diversity is Our Strength" is a Religion not because "I'm an edgy atheist and I don't like 'Diversity is Our Strength' so I'm going to call it a religion to insult people who agree with it." It's a religion because there are people consciously directing the population to internalize this value, and this value subsequently leads to planned, massive overhauls in the gene pool of civilization.
I am fundamentally sympathetic to the Bene Gersserit. Which memes would direct civilization on a better trajectory? How would we counter memes that are hostile to our mission? You might be able to wander out of the cave, but its neither possible nor desirable to force that onto everyone else. Consciously directing the memes is the solution, not trying to make people impervious to their influence (an impossible task- postmodernism only created its own Religious grand-narrative).
Paul is squarely a representation of Abrahamic religion, but the meaning of House Atreides and House Harkonnen is less clear. I interpret the conflict between those houses as the European or Aryan duality embodied in the Apollonian and Dionysian motif in Greek tragedy with, of course, House Atreides embodying the Apollonian: "...rational thinking and order, and appeals to logic, prudence and purity and stands for reason" and House Harkonnen the Dionysian: "... wine, dance and pleasure, of irrationality and chaos, representing passion, emotions and instincts".
The relation of this conflict to Greek myth is directly alluded to in the Lore, according to which House Atreides is descended from King Agamemnon of House Atreus. Furthermore, the patriarch is named Duke Leto Atreides, and Apollo is the son of Leto, who is consort to Zeus. It is revealed in the story that Paul is related to the Harkonnens, which harkens to this duality in Aryan myth, a duality which was "often entwined by nature" according to the ancient Greeks.
The Roman Empire is likewise the best historical representation of this duality between the Apollonian and Dionysian, with the Imperial throne becoming increasingly symbolic of the Dionysian aspect as the Roman Empire declined until.... the conversion to Christianity.
On the one hand, the Dionysian excess is pruned by an ascetic desert cult. But does that actually make way for the resurgence of the Apollonian? Paul tries to keep a foot in both camps, proclaiming himself both Duke of House Atreides as well as the Fremen Messiah. I won't spoil how that turns out.
The movie was really great, it hit on all the big points which I interpreted from the books. The visual and sound design was stellar, it's a must-see in theaters.
As someone who has not read the books but certainly enjoyed the first film (never seen Lynch's take either, though the memes from that have percolated into my brain), and also enjoy Villineuve's brand of filmmaking (Blade Runner 2049 was a triumph, I don't think Scott himself could have made such a sequel) it hit all the buttons I'd want but also left me somewhat dissatisfied.
Mainly:
A) Minimal additional worldbuilding. The tiny bits and hints of 'how things work', some of which were directly stated and some which were merely hinted made the first film engaging and rewards a second watch. Second one seemed to throw certain concepts at us without giving out the information needed to understand what it means. Lack of mentats and guild navigators has me wondering WHY a shortage of spice was such a critical issue for anyone but the Harkonnens who had to make a lot of money fast.
B) Christopher Walken can monologue with the best of them and always delivers. Even when the movie is shit. Feels like a huge waste to not give him his minute or so to shine, EVEN IF the minute was used to purposefully show the emperor's desperation and decline.
C) Similarly, the motivation and stakes of the emperor arriving on Arrakis seemed unclear. Might have been helpful to know just how much his attempted show of power on Arrakis 'cost' him to pull off, given how we're informed that the earlier anti-Atreides battalions mostly bankrupt the Harkonnens, bringing the full army to bear must have been prohibitive. How much did it deplete the emperor's wealth to show up? Was there anything particularly special about his ship?
D) This is going to sound 'heretical' (heh) but SO MUCH of the movie was set in the desert environment that it made the universe really feel smallish. Yes, I get that Arrakis is literally the most important planet there is, and the entire universe hinges on who controls it. It's the damn title of the series. But it's worth noting that the scenes on Gaedi-Prime this time around were the most memorable overall for me, so I kind of wanted to see the 'diversity' of environments present in the imperium. Being honest, though, this was probably compensated for by peeling back the layers on Fremen culture (which also counts as worldbuilding, so partially obviating my first complaint up there).
That said, hard to be truly critical of such a well-crafted experience. Feyd-Rautha. I have no notes, honestly. The brilliant move of having him sound like Baron Harkonnen immediately makes you disdain him by association, while explaining said Baron's affection for the guy and why he's the preferred heir. He's established as clear danger/threat but also very much NOT invincible, which is to say actually tactical and intelligent and not just handed everything he needs to threaten the protagonist by plot fiat.
All-in-all, the one who honestly carried the films for me was Lady Jessica. As an effective personification of the Bene Gesserit's influence, virtually every scene she's in you can see her nudging outcomes but you're never certain where. There was no point when she seemed irrelevant and even the slightly more ridiculous concept of her chatting it up with her unborn child was done with gravitas. Hats off.
You comment on the lack of reference to the Butleran Jihad, but I think part of the brilliance of the two films is managing to DEFY straitforward analogy to 'present day' political, economic, or cultural issues. The movie manages to be meaty and yet escapist at the same time, I was more than happy to immerse myself in the world (despite craving more detail) that they had crafted and forget real world issues for 3 hours. Reminded me of when movies were consistently able to present epic, mindblowing entertainment that carried you out of your own world for the duration.
I agree on all these points. My main concern with the first film was how bland things tended to be in terms of aesthetics, acting, and culture. This film improved:
(1) Somewhat on aesthetics. I liked the Harkonnen stuff. I liked the biomorphic technology: a recurring theme in Herbert's work is the idea of making a plausible future by implementing or magnifying tropes inspired by recurring patterns in human history (aristocracy, verbal manipulation, women attaining power through manipulation and intrigue rather than brute force etc.) and biomorphic technology is all around us without us noticing, e.g. velcro.
(2) Acting. The actor playing Feyd was weird in a good way, Paul's mother was suitably insane and menacing, Javier Berdem is a god of acting, and even Zendaya was less flat (acting-wise).
(3) Culture. Lots of time with the Fremen and the Harkonnens. I wanted more Islamo-futurism and I got it. My main complaint would be that the Harkonnens should have had more Spartan themes. While that doesn't fit the books, I think it (a) helps audiences to understand how the Harkonnens represent a dehumanized future with an alien culture, where humanity is ceasing to be recognisable to us, and (b) gives more explanation of the Harkonnen appeal, given that the wild sex, drugs, and rock n roll weren't going to be represented on screen. Dune One showed how the Harkonnens rule by fear, but no empire survives on fear alone; Dune Two gave more hints of what Harkonnen culture and legitimation might be like, but I wanted more, especially if it satirises modern Spartan cults. Ideally, I would have liked more discipline, more survival of the fittest, more homeroticism, to extents that offend gymbros and wokists alike.
Any Dune film is going to be full of missed opportunities. This film missed somewhat fewer than the first.
Yep. Granting that the director is going to pick and choose what gets emphasized and also what makes it in at all so one should really only judge how well he used what he included and not on HOW MUCH they managed to squeeze in, this was an amazing job.
Have to agree on making the Harkonnens a Sparta analogue. While I loved how it was used, I think making the Harkonnen uniforms be basically black space leather with minimal adornment was a... tame choice? Made it easy to pick them out on screen, but I had also understood that Harkonnens prefer a certain amount of ostentatious gaudiness.
The visual cue "WE ARE THE BAD GUYS" every time one of them is on screen was mostly unneeded.
I agree on the black space leather. In the Dune video games (Dune II and IIRC Emperor of Dune) the Harkonnens are mostly in red, which is cool because it's a colour associated both with allure (red fruit, roses, red lips etc.) and violence (blood). The Sci-Fi miniseries goes with similar aesthetics and generally portrays the Harkonnens as cool/sexy, which helps explain how e.g. Feyd could plausibly have sufficient popularity among the Great Houses to become Emperor. I thought Dune Part Two did a good damage mitigation job on this point, by making Feyd more honourable than he is in the books; I don't know if that was deliberate, but it helped.
Incorporating red into their color themes would have undoubtedly improved the design in my eyes.
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