“Dune 2” Made Me Like Dune Less.

And I’m trying to figure out why.

I’ve had a weird relationship with the story of Dune. 

As an epic sci-fi classic, Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965) had been on my “To Be Read” List for about as long as I’d known about it. But my first actual exposure to it was Villeneuve’s 2021 movie. 

I went in blind, only knowing that I’ve loved Villeneuve’s other movies, and that Dune was a long-standing classic. I knew basically nothing about the story, the setting, or the themes …

I was blown away. 

The trademarks of Villeneuve’s style—fly-over establishing shots, the creeping and rising tension, the slow exposure to otherworldly terrors and very-worldly evils—were at their strongest in that film. Add in Hans Zimmer’s expertly-executed abuse of digital and mechanical instruments and you end up with a spectacle on par with the story’s themes of inescapable fate, looming doom, and Machiavellian cruelty.

After seeing the film, I put the book to the top of my TBR list, and I finished it sometime in early 2022. So the first half of the story I first saw on-screen, then read, but the second half I read first, then saw on-screen. I also really enjoyed the book, overall, though I found it much darker than even the first movie.

Now, having just seen Dune: Part Two, I’m wondering if I like the story much at all. 

So let’s talk about Dune: Part 2 and how it made me like Dune less. 

I could be very wrong about my reasoning, and I’m open to hearing the ways that I’m misreading the book or the movie or both… but on we go. 

This will, of course, be full of spoilers for all Dune properties. 

Dune: Part Two Changed the Principal Conflict

First let me say that, overall, both of Villeneuve’s films are expertly made. They were compelling, entertaining, and (almost always) satisfying. Dune: Part Two met my expectations, and my expectations were extremely high. 

On the whole I’d recommend them. 

But I also felt that the ending was anticlimactic—a bold claim given the sheer spectacle of it.

Paul leads the Fremen on a truly epic assault against the Emperor’s Pavillion, taking on the Sardaukar and the Harkonnen legions both, unleashing atom bombs, las-guns, a fleet of sandworms, and centuries of pent-up religious fervor all at once… all done so that Paul could force the Emperor into abdicating and take the throne himself. 

But there were three changes from the Book which together alter the principal conflict of the story in ways that—to me—diminished the story significantly.

First: in the book, they avoid war at the end. The Spacing Guild is cowed by Paul’s threat to destroy the spice, and as a result they transport the other Great Houses away. In the later books—which I have not read—that “jihad” still happens anyway, because Paul chooses it, but I don’t really get why and in any case it’s not in the first book. 

In the movie, that jihad kicks off the minute of Paul’s accession, because the Great Houses reject him. That’s about all the explanation we get, too.

Second: in the books, Chani is completely devoted to Paul, up to and including his engagement/marriage to Princess Irulan. Whereas in the movie, Chani resents that Paul makes himself out to be the Fremen’s Mahdi, and ultimately walks away from him because of it. This is especially relevant because…

Three: in the books, there’s no anti-religious faction of the Fremen. Stilgar is a fanatic, but so are the rest of the Fremen, including Chani. The religion, socially-constructed by the Bene Gesserit, is absolutely based on a lie, made to be of use to Paul, but the movie explains this by having a cast of characters somehow recognize this and reject it. 

Javier Bardem as Stilgar in “Dune: Part Two” (Warner Bros. Pictures). Stilgar goes from being a symbol of Fremen power, culture, and fervor, to being a useful idiot for Jessica and Paul. 

(there are other changes too, by the by, but most make total sense to me, like the removal of Alia. But these three changes actually undermine the story). 

Atheists in Fremen Foxholes?

The religious split within the Fremen is the strangest change, because it removes the context for the Fremen’s way of survival and flattens the nuance of Paul’s choices. 

Consider how Chani becomes Paul’s teacher (along with harsh experience, which is a very effective teacher). Now, with Chani’s insistence that the prophecies are all bunk, his initiation to the ways of the desert is separate from the religious initiation he undergoes. The Fremen have to preserve water with a kind of fanaticism, even draining the bodies of all the dead with ritualized mourning. The Fremen “ways” are at all times unforgivingly practical and zealously devotional. Their religion enforces the practical. It’s not a waste of resources to lose water, but a blasphemy, a shedding of one’s spirit, a renunciation of the Fremen hope of a green Arrakis. 

But now with some non-religious Fremen, that isn’t always true. Fremen culture is no longer one thing, the prophesied and rituals are just there to fool stupid people who are otherwise extremely canny. It’s an odd thing, given that Chani and all the other “non-fundamentalists” still do things like preserve Jamis’s body for its reduction into the sacred water, revere their kris-knives, and honor the holy rites of taming Shai-Hulud. 

I totally get why Villenueve made the change he did: if some Fremen reject the Bene Gesserit teachings, then it provides a convenient way for the film to exposit the Bene Gesserit’s “use” of Fremen culture, coldly and cruelly twisting it and manipulating people’s despair for their own gain. This religious construct is frankly barbaric in both book and movie. And it’s not a bad thing that Villeneuve shows how barbaric it can be. 

It also provides him a way to shove a divide between Paul and his mother Jessica, since he sees how the Bene Gesserit are abusing the Fremen and he chastises her for it. 

The divide between mother and son helps to underscore what I think is the MAIN conflict in Dune’s story: Paul’s resistance to the “fate” laid out for him by the Bene Gesserit, embodied within his mother. 

So much of Paul’s “ascendance” as the all-prescient Kwisatz Haderach is characterized by his own reluctance to accept that role, and even when he does “ascend” by drinking the Water of Life, his entire motivation is meant to avoid the control of the Bene Gesserit and the subsequent destruction that such control would bring about. 

It’s all about Paul finding a way to stop himself from becoming the horrific monster that others want him to be, while simultaneously trying to bring about the survival of his House, along with peace and stability for everyone else. 

We see this conflict brewing in the first movie, when Paul has his first major visions after being exposed to spice in the tent after the Harkonnen attack. 

We see it again in the fight with Jamis, where Paul knows that Jessica wants him to kill and start “becoming” the man Jessica wants him to be, but Paul resists this, only killing Jamis when he begins to understand the rules of Fremen honor. 

We see it in the second movie all over the place: with Paul’s verbal renunciation of the title of Lisan al-Gaib, his yelling at his mother, his reluctance to go ‘south’ where the fundamentalists¹ live and pray, and most of all in his relationship with Chani. 

“I see a Narrow Way”

If Jessica is the embodiment of the “fated” path that others have laid down ahead of Paul, then Chani is the embodiment of the alternative: an independent path, where he harnesses the evil parts of himself, embraces the tools of greatness that have been thrust upon him, and nonetheless chooses a different and better path than the one the Bene Gesserit forced upon him. 

This is his way of being both Harkonnen and Atreides, both Fremen and an out-worlder.

Paul’s relationship with Movie-Chani (so speaking here now only of Villeneuve’s second movie) actually undermines that conflict between ‘fate’ and ‘choice.’ 

Chani wants him to just reject the prophecies entirely, reject his prescience, ignore his visions, get rid of his mother, but then also still fight the Harkonnens and free Arrakis and establish it as a paradise, but also only in ways that are… not religious, I guess?²

Rather than a nuanced transcendence above the manufactured fate, the conflict is tug-of-war between two choices: accept or refuse the role of messiah. 

Zendaya and Rebecca Ferguson playing Chani and Lady Jessica Atreides, respectively, in "Dune: Part Two" (Warner Bros. Pictures). Both gave very excellent performances, by the way.

Even still, this conflict can work if Paul finds a way to transcend that tug-of-war. In that regard I think it’s actually pretty good the Villeneuve added more conflict between these two women and what they represent for Paul’s journey. The women’s conflict gives Paul the chance to explain his decisions to both parties (and thus to the audience), in pursuit of his own vision. 

It’s a factor of narrative distance: in the book, we have his internal monologue; in the movie, he has to speak! 

It worked really well in the scene after Paul drinks the Water of life. Chani comes in to confront him about how he’s walking down the path towards becoming the monster, even after all his previous assurances. 

Paul responds by saying that he sees more clearly now, but its more than just “I’ve changed my mind, I’m right, and you’re wrong.” Instead, he says he can see a “narrow way” through, where he won’t become the monster and events won’t end with the destruction of those he loves. That’s how I understood it at least, since he’s not trying to convince Chani that he’s the Lisan Al-Gaib, he’s trying to convince her this is the way for her to get what she wants from him. This is what his prescience has given him: an ability to harness the worst of the “fate” option in favor of a better option. A narrow way that is neither refusal of the call nor acceptance to his monstrous future. 

So, okay… That tracks…  I’m with you, Denis, I’m following… 

Did I Say Narrow Way? What Narrow Way?

… but then, from that point on, Paul does nothing to hold back the force of fate and the tides of bloodshed. 

In the end Paul becomes precisely what the Bene Gesserit (at least, his mother) want him to be. And the movie ends not with the temporary peace between Paul (now-Emperor) and the Great Houses—something so unlikely that only the Kwisatz Haderach could accomplish—but instead ends with the universe having a case of sudden-onset jihad. 

As a result, Chani walks away, abandoning him and going back to the desert to re-embrace the Fremen Ways—but not, like, in a religious way, I guess, or maybe in a dissenting religious way? Does she consider Stilgar a heretic, or just a fool? Whatever. 

Jessica, meanwhile, gets exactly what she wants. 

In the tug-of-war between fate and choice, fate wins. Completely. 

Now this is where I’m really struggling to figure out why I didn’t like Dune 2: is this supposed to be a victory? 

Is this whole thing supposed to be about how Paul becomes corrupted? Is this all just a giant villain origin story? Is this just grimdark? Is soylent green spice people? 

The movie seems to play it up as a heroic achievement, but then again, all the music in Dune is ominous and foreboding, so maybe this has always been a tragedy and I just didn’t realize it? 

When I read the book, I felt as though Paul managed to carve out a better future than anyone thought he could; he bucked the controlling hooks of his mother, blunted the Fremen jihad, and took control of all events. I remember it felt heroic.

Why I Like Dune Less Now

Basically the movie’s ending differed so greatly from my own understanding of Herbert’s novel—without actually *changing* that much in terms of events— that I began to wonder if I was just wrong about the novel in the first place.

Which then forced me to re-evaluate the story in a way I hadn’t since I first read it. 

I didn’t like Dune’s overarching Machiavellian setting, but I did like how the most Machiavellian characters, the Harkonnens and the Emperor, ultimately lose to the “rule of the heart” Atreides. 

Morally, I didn’t like Dune’s grim features, but I felt they were redeemed by a message about harnessing one’s darker side in subordination to a reasoned pursuit of the good. 

And so on. 

But now, especially considering that Herbert’s later novels DO have the cataclysmic wars that Paul supposedly is trying to avoid—and because apparently those wars are cast as being Paul’s doing—I’ve now come to the conclusion that actually I was just wrong about Dune, and Villeneuve is probably right about it. 

Nothing to see here, just two dudes on their way to bring peace, justice, freedom, and security to their new empires.

I’ve always described Dune as a dark story, but maybe it’s darker than I realized, darker than I wanted it to be. I think I read a better, happier ending into it because I enjoyed so much of its telling.

It is just about becoming the monster. 

It is just about Machiavellianism prevailing.

It is just about the illusion of choice.

It is just about how apocalyptic war is maybe sometimes best? So let’s try it, guys, all the cool kids are doing it! 

And if it is all those things… then I don’t like it. 

I’m not saying the book is better than the movie, or that you can’t like (or love) one or the other. I’m just saying that the differences between the two made me rethink them both and helped me realize I don’t actually like this story.

What do you think? 

If you have a minute, hop into the comment sections in this post (substack-dot com if you’re just reading this in email), and tell me what you think. 

Was I wrong about Dune? Am I wrong about being wrong about Dune? 

Was it actually just so patently obvious that this is the story of a fall that I was naive to think otherwise? Am I misreading the book? Misrepresenting the sequels? Is there authorial intent I don’t know about? Am I just totally misunderstanding Villeneuve’s movies? 

Help me out.

Tell me what y’all think. 

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1. Another movie invention

2. In a universe where everything is feudal and very theocratic, does Chani want…like a secular democracy or something? Like yeah sure let’s use all the Fremen power to eliminate the evil Harkonnen so we Fremen can live alone and in peace but also let’s stop short of implementing Fremen beliefs? She’s very much invested in Paul’s character and wants him to be free of the doom that awaits him, but at the same time she’s “Feydakeen” all the way. So, yes to war but no to victory? Is that it? Sorry, I just don’t get this character in the movie.