History will call us wives
Love, Faith and Colonialism in 'Dune: Part Two'
I loved Dune: Part 1.
It was the best film I’d seen for at least a decade; it blew me away in the same way that the first viewing of The Matrix1, Jurassic Park or the Fellowship of the Ring. At the time I wrote:
Dune was absolutely fantastic. Brilliant depiction of the story, great characterisation and acting, stunning effects and cinematography and overall a brilliant realisation of the setting and plot.
Also a stand-out rebuttal of the idea that you inevitably have to change things from a book to make them work on screen. Of course, some things are omitted - Dune is a dense book - but all the key scenes were in and they played out incredibly faithfully, almost line by line, as were the characters, setting and overall tone, striking the correct note again and again.
I would also heartily recommend this review which says everything I wish I had written, including an excellent discussion of why I, and many others, think the film is so incredibly faithful to the book, despite changing, in some respects, rather a lot:
But the 2021 film is, I think, the superior adaptation because it has translated the book into the conventions of the screen, taking things explained in dialogue and showing them to us or building them into the structure of scenes. And of course that kind of adaptation, changing the substance but keeping the spirit is extremely hard; the graveyard of bad adaptations is littered with writers and directors who thought they ‘knew better’ than the original and started changing things only to lose what made the original great. Villeneuve keeps his eyes squarely on the core spirit and themes of Dune and as a result, I’d argue, succeeds where many others failed: taking a nearly unfilmable, book-native story to the big screen, making all of the changes that requires, without losing what makes the original great.
This is an adaptation that is faithful, without being dogmatic.
On the other hand, Part Two was…good. Better than good, in fact, it was very good. But it was no Part One. It was the Two Towers to Part One’s Fellowship2 - an excellent film by any standard other than the yardstick of its predecessor. There was much to enjoy, but it never quite achieved the same heights and - as in the Two Towers - there were a couple of places where it committed the cardinal sin of adaptation: the maligning of character or culture3.
The Good
There were some wonderful moments. As in Part One, the setting and soundtrack were unparalleled (and well worth seeing on the big screen). The set pieces, particularly the attack on the smugglers’ harvester, the arena scene and - of course - when Paul first rides the worm - were stupendously atmospheric. And they were not just spectacle or special effects: they felt meaningful, tense and move the plot on in decisive ways.
I loved the characters. Lady Jessica was perfect, as was Paul, in both his courage and his struggles against the path he has seen in his visions. The new characters, particularly the Emperor and Irulan, were also very good4 - as was the overall depiction of the Bene Gesserit, with the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam5 done particularly well, but also the broader depiction of the depth of their manipulations (I appreciated both that they made clear that Irulan was Bene Gesserit trained, and the episode with Lady Margot Fenring).
I actually thought the change in which Halleck revealed where the family atomics had been stored was a positive change: it gave his character more meaning6 and served as a good way of introducing the atomics at that late stage (and why they hadn’t been used before).
Most importantly, the film continued to convey the themes of the book; the moral ambiguities, the bleakness of their being no good path ahead of Paul. The Harkonnen are unambiguously evil, yes, and it is right to oppose them: but there is no path to victory that does carry a price that no sane person would wish to pay. To convey that complexity, in a way that is not preachy, and neither undermines the protagonists nor detracts from the excitement and action, is no mean feat.7
The Nitpicks
I can understand why they left St Alia in the womb, because coaching a toddler to act with freakish adultness would have been an absolute nightmare. In general I found it effective, though it did compress the timescale a lot - which was less ideal8.
I find it baffling the script writers decided to expunge all mention of ‘jihad’, while leaving in the words ‘mahdi’ (explicitly Islamic) and ‘fedaykin’ (clearly related to the Arabic ‘fedayeen’). Is the logic that they don’t want ignorant people to understand that Fremen culture has Arab / Islamic influences9, but if anyone smart enough to know the word ‘mahdi’ it’s OK? Or that if they remove the word ‘jihad’, we won’t notice that the Arabic-looking guys living in the desert, controlling a vital resource and fighting higher-tech invaders are a little bit Muslim-ish?10 Maybe the script writers didn’t know the word mahdi?11
It was probably sensible to drop Hawat. But it ended up making the Feyd-Rautha character under-used and lessening his impact (as did the decision not to introduce Feyd-Rautha in the first film).
It was disappointing the way Paul’s plan was shown to fail at the end - with the negotiations breaking down and the jihad beginning immediately. Of course, canonically, ultimately his plan doesn’t work; at the beginning of the second book, a fifteen-year war has left him master of millions of planets, at the cost of 61 billion dead. And I see why they wanted to show that starting on screen12. But in the book it is seen to work, temporarily, at least, and implied that if it hadn’t - if he hadn’t forced Shaddam IV to surrender the throne - the death toll would have been even higher. It would have been nice if they could have showed it partially working - maybe some of the Great Houses breaking off, with the jihad starting against the remainder.
The Bad
The Fremen
The positive ways in which the Fremen were depicted from Part One were continued - they are shown as a realistic, vibrant culture despite the hardships in which they live.
An aspect I particularly liked in Part Two was the way they successfully conveyed the number of people who lived in Sietch Tabr (and other sietchs). It can be very easy to think of each sietch containing essentially a raiding party, or small tribe - and visual media are notoriously bad for shrinking population numbers (probably due to the challenges of actually having to show the people). But canonically Sietch Tabr has around 10,000 people living in it - the size of a small town - and the film effectively conveyed this.
There were two significant changes that were clearly for the worst, in that they cheapened and denigrated the Fremen as a culture13.
The first was the invented split between the northern Fremen and the ‘fundamentalists’ to the south. I get that they wanted to show that different Fremen reacted differently to Paul as Lisan al Gaib - but surely that could be done with different characters, without necessitating a cultural split. There are things which don’t make much sense - why is Stilgar, in this rendering a southerner, the leader of a northern sietch? - and we lose character development, such as where Paul laments that he has seen ‘a friend [Stilgar] become a worshipper’. Most seriously, by using the derogatory term ‘fundamentalist’ of the southern Fremen, they reduce Fremen culture as a whole. In the books, though highly influenced by the Missionaria Protectiva, their religion is an integral and largely positive part of Fremen society as a whole, albeit one that is a double-edged sword; in Dune: Part 2, it is almost entirely negative. The young characters, such as Chani and her friends - and in Hollywood, the young rebelling against convention are always right - are scornful of their faith, demonstrating that we should be too.
The second, and most disappointing, was the way the Fremen plan to store water and transform the planet was portrayed as a false promise of the Missionaria Protectiva used to manipulate them. The awe at seeing the pool of water is cheapened and twisted as a result - and one of the most fundamental elements of Fremen agency removed. In the book, the Fremen are not simply underestimated by the Harkonnen (and, to a lesser extent, the Atreides), even the Bene Gesserit, for all their influence, ultimately do not dominate them. The Fremen plan to transform Dune to a paradise is theirs14 and one that, the book makes absolutely clear, they are succeeding at - though it is a scheme that will take centuries. In the book this plan is awe-inspiring: both to Lady Jessica, when it is revealed to her, and to the reader. They are not simply awesome fighters, they don’t only have unmatched technology (in certain highly specialised domain), but, unsuspected by anyone, they have dedicated their society not to war, but to a terraforming plan of unmatched ambition15. This is the heart and soul of the Fremen - and it is theirs.
I’ve tried to understand why they changed this. It was clearly intended to be present in Part 1: there are references to Stilgar wanting the Atreides to stay out of the deep desert, and to Dune having no weather satellites - both core to the preservation of the secret16. My best guess is that because the scheme was intimately connected to Kynes, and because Kynes (correctly) was killed at the end of the first film - and the large gap between the two - they felt that this was too complex to include.
I do find it genuinely strange though how, in today’s sensitive climate, and in a film both highly aware of colonialism and desperate to avoid any hint of a ‘white saviour’ narrative17, they could take two major decisions which significantly diminish Fremen agency and culture compared to the book. With these changes, the Fremen become to a far greater extent the pawns of the off-worlders, and far less of a culture to actively admire. The tragedy of Paul’s assumption of command and subsequent jihad - which the film otherwise portrays well is also weakened, for lost is the aspect in which it means the loss of the Fremen dream. As Pardot Kynes said, “No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero."
Chani
Unlike the baffling changes to the Fremen, the alterations to Chani’s characters are more understandable. Rather than steadfastly supporting Paul, in the film she is seen as far more sceptical and rebellious, ultimately riding a worm off into the desert in the final scene18.
Now, taken on its own merits, this works. Chani is still a very strong character, superbly acted, who plays an important role in the film. In particular, her outward scepticism allows her to audibly voice many of the doubts that, in the book, are shown inside Paul’s head. This undoubtedly makes a lot of sense in a film. She is also shown as a visible voice of anticolonialism, and opposing the ‘offworld/white saviour’ trope, which I’m sure the film-makers were conscious of19.
As I say, it’s understandable. But overall, it’s a change from which we lose more than we gain.
The biggest alteration is that the friction between Paul and Chani means that they do not have a son - Leto. Why does this matter? Because just before Paul launches the final attack on the Emperor and Harkonnens in Arakeen - in the very moment the Shieldwall is breached and he is about to order the assault - he learns that the Emperor has raided Sietch Tabr, captured his sister Alia - and killed his son.
This utterly changes the context of the final assault. Why does Paul, who has spent most of the book (or films) grappling with his destiny and seeking to avoid his fate, suddenly act with such ruthlessness? Because the enemy has just killed his only son, who he thought was safely away from the conflict zone. Grief and revenge is an entirely understandable - if not commendable - reason why a character should unleash on their enemy a merciless fury that they have been henceforth trying to control.
In the film, it suggests he is pushed over the edge by learning he is truly a Harkonnen. In the book, that’s certainly a factor - but it is not enough, and nor should it be for someone as rational and controlled as Paul. Indeed, this points to a greater problem with Dune Part Two: unlike in Part One, where we grieved for the deaths of Leto, Idaho and Kynes, in Part Two - despite the Harkonnen bombardments - no-one we care about dies20. In the book, the death of Leto II heightens and deepens the emotional crescendo of the ending. It is a bitter and poignant triumph - one that foreshadows the tragedy of the jihad it will unleash.
The change also transforms - and weakens - the relationship between Paul and Chani, which is one of respect, mutual support and love. At the heart of the problem here is that in modern Hollywood (and wider) there is one overwhelmingly dominant trope for the strong female heroine: that of the rebel. Whether that is rebelling against her family, the patriarchy, the conventions of society, it is ubiquitous, whether in Disney (Else, Moana, Rapunzel), romantic comedies (Anyone but You) or adventure (Elizabeth in Pirates of the Caribbean; Jin and Rey in the new Star Wars). Now there’s nothing wrong with that trope - but it is limiting when almost every strong heroine has to be forced into it21.
In the book, Chani is no less strong - but she is no rebel22. The closest the film comes to showing her relationship with Paul was in the scene where she helped him in his challenge to cross the sands: strong, in no way inferior, but supportive rather than rebellious. The book, Dune - perhaps surprisingly for a science-fiction book published by a man in 1965 - has multiple, different, positive conceptions of strong women: most notably Lady Jessica and Chani, but also Harah and even Irulan. None are the plucky and defiant rebels of modern Hollywood - but collectively it is a deeper and more meaningful depiction of strength.
Should we care that we lose the depth of the love between Paul and Chani? The relationship that develops between Chani and Lady Jessica? I believe we should. Dune is a book about many things: war, faith, ecology, power - and, of course, gigantic, stupendously enormous sandworms. But as much as any of those, it is a book about love, faithfulness and devotion.
The difference between the Atreides and the Harkonnens is not simply that the Atreides do not slaughter captives in an arena or torture slaves. It is about their character: the character that enables Duke Leto to win the fealty of men such as Hawat, Halleck and Idaho; that inspires Lady Jessica - alone of all Bene Gesserit that we are aware of - to defy her order out of love for him; that causes Kynes, against his better judgement, to say, ‘I like this Duke’. Dune Part One wisely chose to show the scene that most visibly exemplifies this - when Leto chooses, at some risk to his own life, to save the lives of spice workers over the (highly valuable) cargo - in full.
Paul, to a large extent, inherits this. Without his ability to win loyalty from the Fremen, his prescience would have been for naught. And compared to the scheming and backstabbing of the Harkonnen court, the Atreides and Fremen are bound together with bonds of loyalty and devotion. It is this, above all, that distinguish them - and Paul, Chani and Jessica are at the heart of it.
There are many ways Frank Herbert could have ended Dune. He chosen to end it with a focus not upon battle, or upon politics, or upon sandworms, but upon love and grief:
Paul stared down into her eyes, remembering her suddenly as she had stood once with little Leto in her arms, their child now dead in this violence. “I swear to you now,” he whispered, “that you’ll need no title. That woman over there will be my wife and you but a concubine because this is a political thing and we must weld peace out of this moment, enlist the Great Houses of the Landsraad. We must obey the forms. Yet that princess shall have no more of me than my name. No child of mine nor touch nor softness of glance, nor instant of desire.”
“So you say now,” Chani said. She glanced across the room at the tall princess.
“Do you know so little of my son?” Jessica whispered. “See that princess standing there, so haughty and confident: They say she has pretensions of a literary nature. Let us hope she finds solace in such things; she’ll have little else.” A bitter laugh escaped Jessica. “Think on it, Chani: that princess will have the name, yet she’ll live as less than a concubine—never to know a moment of tenderness from the man to whom she’s bound. While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine—history will call us wives.”
Thinking of the film versions.
Though nothing remotely as bad as the traducing of Faramir.
Though my wife, who’d not read the books, felt they were introduced too suddenly and without enough explanation.
Why does she have a male first name? Is it a subtle reference to Caesar? It doesn’t feel the most obvious parallel.
In the book, on his return, his presence is more to act as a voice of Paul’s conscience, a bit like the whisperer who rode behind a Roman general in a Triumph, rather than contributing much strategically or militarily - by the time he returns, Paul has surpassed him.
It is, notably, a feat that Herbert utterly fails to pull off in Dune Messiah.
Films seem to have a real issue in showing ‘a couple of years passed’, despite there being well-established cinematographic ways of doing this. I’m looking at you, Troy.
In universe this is entirely correct: they are not Muslims - most current religions are extinct at the time of Dune - but they have been influenced by it. They are descendants of the Zensunni wanderers, followers of a schismatic sect that broke away from the teachings of Maometh (the so-called ‘third Mohammed’) about 1381 BG / 11,780 AD.
Dune was clearly inspired to some extent by the Arab revolt. But after the oil-shock in 1973, people could see that in it - and now people can see elements of the Israel/Palestine conflict in it. I think those multiple interpretations speak to its strength - as long as one remembers that it is different, in various important ways, from all of these.
Always have to set up the sequel!
And not in ways that improved the narrative.
Under the leadership of Kynes and his father.
There is a wonderful scene where sietch children are being taught ecology in the way our children learn times tables.
The Fremen bribe the Guild to not allow satellites and not tell anyone why they won’t - another example of their unsuspected sophistication.
The book also is highly aware of these - and Paul is no saviour.
I am not bothered by the decision to make her a warrior.
Though which they could have achieved better by, you know, not undermining and obliterating the most important area of Fremen agency and calling them ‘fundamentalists.’
Sorry, friend of Chani, you don’t count for this purpose.
Hollywood does accept another trope for strong women, that of the witch - in Dune exemplified by Lady Jessica - but it is not a trope for a heroine.
I guess the Harkonnens would consider her a rebel, but the reader never does.