Dune Review: Part 2

Read Part I of the Dune Review here before continuing.

On Arrakis

It’s been a while. I meant to get this out before the New Year, but that obviously didn’t happen. I did, however, re-read Dune, cover to cover, since the 1st part of my Dune review. Things are far fresher in my mind now and I can more accurately compare the book to the movie.

I may have gotten a fact or two wrong in my first review. If so, I apologize. But, here we are now. Let’s begin.

Immediately, the Atreides run into problems as they start Spice production on Dune. Within Arrakeen, the new capital, there’s the spice refinery and the space port. What little the Harkonnens left behind is old and needs maintenance to even work. Duke Leto carries this weight on his shoulders for the rest of the movie and Oscar Isaac made sure you felt it. He’s always tense, always on edge, it’s great acting.

One of the duties Jessica has is getting the house up and running. The book goes into a lot more detail with this section. She’s setting up rooms while contemplating their situation. Book Jessica gets a lot more character development starting now. I get why they had to leave it out but it’s a shame we don’t get more of her.

She’s a Point of View (POV) character in the book, so we read most of her thoughts through all of this. Unfortunately, that can be said about most of the characters. Their movie versions are rather shallow compared to their book counterparts. However, the actors successfully, in my opinion, embody the essence of their characters. I don’t know if that was because the actors fully understood who they were playing or if Villeneuve is just that good a director.

I imagine it’s a mix of both. As disappointing as it might be that some of the development isn’t there, it’s still amazing to see these characters on screen. Everyone does an amazing job. I can’t think of one role, even a minor one, that wasn’t acted well. The casting department knew what they were doing.

During Jessica’s house preparations, she must pick out new staff. Sifting through a line of candidates for housekeeper, Jessica stops in front of one and dismisses the rest. The woman in front of her is carrying a hidden knife. Jessica points it out verbally, alerting a guard of potential danger, while also using Atreides battle language to convey more info to the guard.

I must tangent to talk about the battle language. It’s a very efficient sign language. I imagine each hand sign is an entire word or phrase because Jessica does 2 or 3 positions and she says a whole sentence.

Back to the knife. The woman who calls herself the Shadout Mapes, claims the knife isn’t meant to harm her, it is a gift. This is a very tricky place to be in for Jessica. This knife is about a foot long and very sharp. She has to say the right things.

The book is clearer here. This is a Fremen test. Jessica goes through multiple scenarios during those few heartbeats of tension. If she says nothing, she will most likely die or have to kill Mapes. She doesn’t have time to think. She begins saying it is a “maker of death,” and only manages “It’s a maker,” before the Fremen woman lets out a wail of exultation and anguish. The moment of revelation is a shock for those who have lived with prophecy their whole lives. We see the Bene Gesserit’s Missinaria Protectiva and its false prophesies at work once again within the Fremen culture.

The film is so vague about this scene and only mentions the Missionaria Protectiva in passing to the point where I’ve spoken with a few who’ve only seen the movie without reading the book and they had no idea what was going on. Again, we have a problem with the page versus screen. There’s so much going on that it’s sometimes hard to keep good pacing and properly convey exposition.

I included the whole scene because it’s significant. She was gifted a crysknife! The movie glosses over their importance, which is a real shame. These are sacred objects to the natives of Arrakis. These Fremen worship the sand worms as forces of nature, as gods. They’re the great makers of the deep desert. The tooth of Shaihulud, the tooth of a maker, is the most sacred of all objects. No man or woman who’s seen a crysknife may leave Arrakis without the Fremen’s permission. To be gifted one is a great and terrible honor, for one may not sheath it without first drawing blood.

Book Jessica points this bit out, familiar with basic Fremen customs and lore. Mapes immediately opens her dress, begging Jessica to claim her life with the knife. Jessica draws a scratch along her breast, claiming that is enough for Shaihulud. Mapes is grateful and becomes a loyal servant to the Atreides.

In the movie version, we get the scene and the knife. But none of the significance is translated to the scene. Only an extremely eagle eyed viewer (who hasn’t read the book) will catch half the nuance of what’s going on. I can’t necessarily blame the movie for that. But it is a bit disappointing.

Something they did keep was the palm trees. Out in the courtyard, there’s a row of them. Paul walks over and speaks with a man who’s watering one of the trees. According to him, these trees aren’t indigenous and would die without him. They drink enough water every day for 100 men to die of thirst. They’re sacred, part of an old dream. They’re so small but so important. I feel like a lesser director would have missed their significance and left them out of an already long and complex movie.

See my dilemma? They almost missed the point with the crysknife scene and then get the trees right.

I mentioned a little bit how well the score works in this movie in my last review. Here, I’ll mention it again, because it’s so fantastic what it does here. Paul is studying the Fremen in his room. A small machine which looks like a large mosquito enters through a hole it in his wall.

It’s a Hunter Seeker, a common assassin’s tool. Paul has to freeze in place so it wouldn’t spot him. Then Mapes opens his door to bring in fresh sheets. Paul launches into motion as the Hunter Seeker follows the motion, grabbing it and destroying it in his hand. The entire time, a subtle beat from the Harkonnen theme plays. Then after, the theme kicks into full gear when we discover a Harkonnen agent had been sealed into a wall, weeks before the Atreides arrived.

In the book, it’s explained that the Harkonnens left that bedroom specifically to draw Paul’s eye, making it easy to slip the assassin’s weapon in.

A Tragic Omission

This is when I have to mention the third great omission that I really wish got covered. They cut out a major subplot from this section. In the book, we already know there’s a spy among the Atreides. They know it too because the Shadout Mapes tells Jessica. Here, there’s no such information.

We know the Harkonnens are up to something in the movie, but we’re not quite sure what. We know exactly what’s happening in the book. Part of their plan is to divide and conquer. They plant false information pointing to Jessica as the spy. Thufir Hawat, the Mentat I mentioned last time, believes the evidence. He doesn’t trust Bene Gesserit witches. He never has and he doesn’t plan to start now.

This is also an important element to Jessica and Leto’s relationship. He doesn’t believe it for a second. He trusts her. He knows she wouldn’t endanger her own son.

There’s even a scene where Leto tells Paul of the letter they find (the one incriminating Jessica) and of what it means. He makes Paul promise to tell her, if he doesn’t get the chance himself, that he doesn’t believe it. He trusts her completely. But he can’t say anything at the time, lest she let it slip, by some small action, that she knows about the plot and that her Duke doesn’t believe it. They must pretend to believe. Faints within faints within faints. The movie cuts out a lot of the subtle mind-games that make Dune so special, even though the overall product is still fantastic.

Hawat is skeptical though. He also informs Duncan and Gurney. Duncan gets drunk one night and shouts at Jessica about her supposed betrayal.

That subplot is not included at all in the film. I’m curious about part 2 because that sub plot isn’t over until much later and some pretty important scenes happen around it. I wonder if they’ll just cut all of that out completely or make it work later. This movie has a habit of cutting out subplots. On the one hand, you can’t keep everything and not all of it is important for the main plot. On the other hand, flavor is so important and the movie loses a lot of flavor. This is one of the worst examples, in my opinion.

Not much you can do about it. 2.5 hour running time vs about almost 400 pages, since this only adapted a bit over half of the book.

Plots Within Plots Within Plots

Next we get a meeting between the Baron and Gaius Helen Mohiam on a Guild Navigator ship.

Inside the room is a strange creature original to the movie. It’s like a giant spider but with human hands on each foot. Piter assures Guias Helan Mohiam that it doesn’t speak their language, but she orders it to leave with the voice and it does. It’s so strange but it works for the Dune universe so well. I hope we see more of whatever that thing is supposed to be in the next movie.

I will re-emphasize my stance. The omissions they made are the problem. When they add something or change it, it’s usually good.

If there was any doubt about the forces the Atreides are up against before, it’s gone now. Mohiam tells the Barron that Jessica and Paul are not to be harmed but Leto means nothing to the Bene Gesserit The Baron promises they won’t harm them.

Piter is scared of this promise. The Emperor’s Truth Sayer is far too powerful to lie to. The Baron says Arrakis is Arrakis and the desert takes the weak.

“My desert,” says the Baron as he stands up, moving his epic mass. “my arrakis,” he says, his voice growing deeper and more mechanical as he floats into the air. “My dune.” And that is the shot from most of the trailers. His long gown hangs all the way to the floor from his floating vantage a good 10 to 15 feet above. It’s such an impractical outfit but my god is it menacing. That’s the one thing Stelan Skarsgard and Denis Villeneuve wanted to focus on. They made the Baron terrifying. They missed a lot of characterization, but they got the threat.

Back on Arrakis

Duncan returns from the desert with news of the Fremen locals. He traveled through desert for days, being part of the forward expedition to secure Arrakis before the Atreides arrived, not seeing even a sign of the Fremen. Then they sent a man to kill him. He almost died, though he’s the best sword master in the Imperium. Since he won, he was accepted into the Sietch. Sietches are caves converted into living space. According to the Harkonnen sensus, there were no more than 50,000 Fremen on the whole planet. With the population of Sietch Tabur, the one Duncan visited, and the fact that there are, according to the Fremen, hundreds of Sietches, there are, in reality, millions of Fremen. An untapped artery of desert power, just what Leto needs.

This is huge for the Atreides.  Leto wants to ally with the people of the desert and make an army so he can withstand the Empire. Duncan brought more than news. He brought the leader of Sietch Tabur with him, Stilgar.

Javier Bardem plays a perfect Stilgar. He’s stoic and cold. His eyes are always thinking. He is an important leader within a brutal culture. Bardem plays it perfectly. As I re-read Dune, I heard his voice and saw him when Stilgar was on the page.

There’s almost a huge misunderstanding when Stilgar first meets with Leto. He spits on the floor. The guards draw their weapons but Duncan calms the situation, also spitting. It turns out that spitting at someone is a huge honor in Fremen culture because it is granting someone else your own body’s moisture. Water is of far more value than gold or even spice to these people. In fact, it’s not even just water. It’s moisture, as we’re told later in the book. There’s a difference. Water implies a decent amount. Moisture is everything down to the due on the leaves in the morning.

Leto returns the honor to Stilgar, spitting on the table. He also promises never to hunt Fremen while he rules Arrakis. Accepting this, and seeing the Duke in an honorable man, Stilgar leaves.

Man they got that scene so right. The culture clash, the tensions, the mistrust with an underlying growth of respect. All of it is beautifully executed.

Next is the planetary ecologist, Dr. Liet Kynes. This was one of the major decisions that pissed a whole lot of people off on the internet. Book Kynes is a man, probably white. Movie Kynes is a black woman. Oh no. I really don’t understand why people got so upset at this decision, without even seeing if she was a good actor or not. The change itself was enough to make people angry.

I’m one of those people who was open to it. Kynes plays an important role but she/he’s very much an action character. If they made Paul a woman, or Leto, or the Barron, I would understand the frustration. That goes against the basis of who those characters are. However, Kynes has a role to play that has nothing to do with his/her gender or race. So having the gender and race swap (It’s not clear if book Kynes is white or not but it’s safe to assume he is) happen with this character is totally fine with me. The character still works, arguably better than the book version in a couple places. But we’ll get to that later.

Leto wants to get a grasp of his new planet so they summon Kynes, who is the judge of the change (the person working directly for the Emperor to ensure that Arrakis is being handled properly and fairly. Making sure that no funny business goes on, though he/she is aware the Attreides will be attacked and has been ordered to do nothing about it. So much for impartiality). She can make notes and speak with the Emperor directly. She’d be a valuable ally, a bad enemy, and is a useful hostage. They bring her along to ensure everyone’s safety as they fly over the deep desert.

They meet Kynes at the ‘thopters before heading out. She examines Leto, Gurney, and Paul’s stillsuits.

Stillsuits are explained rather quickly but all the info you need is there. It’s an environment suit built to recycle your body’s fluids so you can survive in the deep desert. You’d die of dehydration in a matter of hours without one. With a properly fitted suit, you’ll lose no more than a thimble full of water a day. In the book, it’s explained that most of that moisture is through the hands, since it’s hard to have much control if you wear the gloves. But the Fremen use a plant with antiperspirant properties to mitigate even that water loss.

Gurney and Leto have a few errors with their suits. This or that strap isn’t fitted properly. The boots aren’t fitted slip fashion. Little things that can make the difference between life or death.

Paul’s suit is perfectly secured before she gets to him. It was his first time wearing one and he put it on perfectly. Kynes quotes a part of the Lisan Al Gaib prophecy, “he will know your ways as though born to them.”

For the movie, quoting it is okay. But they miss some important stuff with Kynes. One, book Kynes was far more subtle than to quote the prophecy aloud. He’d never be that absent minded. Although, he does later say a prayer out-loud, in both book and movie. So maybe it’s not too out of character. But book Kynes only let things slip once he started getting used to the Atreides.

Also, he was never referred to by the Atreides as Liet Kynes, in the book. They’ve done it freely in the movie. They only knew him as Dr. Kynes. Liet is his/her Fremen name. The Fremen have been heard a few times mentioning a Liet, one of their leader. But the Atreides didn’t know him by that name. A tribe name is never spoken of outside the tribe. So the Atreides calling her Liet Kynes is against basic Fremen cultural practices. The Atreides simply wouldn’t have any way of knowing the name Liet unless they already knew Kynes was a Fremen. It’s a plot revelation later in the book when they discover that Liet and Kynes are one and the same. I know that might sound nitpicky, but this stuff is important. In another work, it might not matter so much. But the details matter in Dune. I haven’t, myself, found any plotholes. And neither have the people I’ve read or listened to talking about it. It’s nothing huge and it certainly isn’t movie ruining. But my opinion is that it was a poor oversight.

The Sand Crawler

They fly into the desert. The color of the sand looks hot and pale. It’s light brown. I’d always imagined Arrakis having a deeper yellow, but maybe that’s just other media around the story. All the book covers, artwork, etc. I like the paleness we get here. It just feels dry and hot, like a place one wouldn’t last long in. The sky is also brown from all the sand in the air. It feels like an endless unforgiving desert. You might have guessed, that’s exactly how we’re supposed to view Arrakis.

Quickly, the ‘thopters find a sand crawler. These are how both the Harknonnens and Attreides use(d) them to gather spice. Rich spice fields end up on the planet’s surface, mixed into the sand. A crawler will move over that, sifting and gathering the most valuable substance in the universe.

It’s important to note that those living on Arrakis (at least, those living away from the cliffs) don’t use shields. They send a worm into a killing frenzy. A shield is a death sentence in the desert.

Leto spots wormsign, large swaths of sand flying into the air in a wave. According to Kynes, a worm always comes when there’s a crawler. Since worms hunt using rhythms in the sand, they always come. They call in the sign and the crawler prepares to leave, summoning a carryall.

Here’s a difference in the movie that I both like and dislike. They bring in the carryall. It gets on top of the crawler and sends out its grapples. One of them doesn’t work. The carryall can’t lift off. Duke Leto doesn’t hesitate. He launches into a rescue mission, ordering the men on the crawler to evacuate and get to his ships.

Why isn’t there room in a carryall for the crew? This thing can carry a multi ton machine, but doesn’t have room for 21 people?

The movie creates a plot hole. In the book, the carryall simply never showed up. It disappeared and later on, it’s found out that it was Harkonnen sabotage. Here, we see the carryall fail. We get a visual, so we’re showing and not telling, like all the writing teachers say to do. At the same time, why can’t the carryall help evacuate the men? It adds a layer of tension but removes a layer of logic. Spectacle over reason. It’s small, yes. But still. It ruined my sense of immersion when the carryall simply left, leaving the evacuation to Leto and his men.

The next change they made here is a good one. In fact, it might be my favorite our of all of them and its arguably better than what the book did. Paul gets out of the ‘thopter to rally people to the right ships. He’s shouting and calling, telling the scrambling crew to get to safety- then a massive blast of sand fills the area as a ‘thopter flies overhead, filling the air with spice, getting Paul very high.

The worm is coming. The ‘thopters are ready for takeoff. Paul is kneeling in the sand, having a waking vision. Gurney has to go back for him and drag him to his feet. Then the sand beneath them begins to vibrate. One cool thing about real life sand is that if you send vibrations and air through it, it acts like a liquid. The sand is collapsing under them and the worm is right there.

Paul barely manages to get onto the ‘thopter in time as the sand crawler is utterly consumed by a gaping maw in the sand.

One, the addition of vibration being how the worms travel through sand is absolutely brilliant. It wasn’t in the books. I imagine that’s because we didn’t know sand did that at the time Frank Herbert wrote it. But it makes total sense and adds even more realism to an already grounded universe.

The second thing is that Paul wasn’t on the ground in the book. He never got dosed with spice in this scene, nor was his life in danger. Well, they’d landed their ‘thopters on the sand. But he never left, he was in as much danger as everyone else. It adds so much more tension to an already awesome sequence. Minus the carryall showing up, I prefer this version of events to the book’s. I never thought I’d say that. But here I am saying it. It feels in-character for Paul at this point in the story. It also makes later events more significant with how he both changes and doesn’t change as a person.

It’s so peculiar. I both like and dislike what they did with the sequence. On the one hand, they introduced a plot hole that wasn’t there before. On the other, they made the entire thing far tenser and made it more important for Paul’s arc.

After chastising Paul for his recklessness, Leto confronts Kynes about the situation the Atreides find themselves in. He hopes that, since she’s the judge of the change, she can do something about it. They were set up to fail. What little equipment they have doesn’t even work. He’s angry. He’s scared. They have to get spice production back on track or the Emperor will abandon the Atreides.

Kynes can’t make an argument to the Emperor. The desert is hard on equipment. But she does tell Leto to keep his family safe. The desert isn’t kind to equipment or humans.

The look on Leto’s face when she warns him to keep his family safe… I don’t know, I feel like there are a few interpretations you could make. Oscar Isaac kills this performance. I feel the stress Leto’s under. But in that moment, there’s a seeming relaxation between him and her. I think he sees her differently. No, she can’t help, but she wants him to do well. It’s all in the subtext and body language, but it’s there. They’re both great. Again, not one person in the cast was bad.

Paul gets examined by Dr. Yueh, the family physician. It would seem that Paul is sensitive to the Spice’s psychoactive effects.

I haven’t mentioned Yueh yet because he hasn’t been that important. He only showed up once before, when Jessica had him examine Paul before he underwent the Gom Jabbar. Yueh is yet another character who was limited substantially by the run time. He’s got a backstory, motives, and is even part of a sect of Empire trained doctors who are psychologically conditioned to be incapable of harming people.

None of that gets mentioned at all. Nor do some of his more personal scenes happen. We’ll get to why he’s so important in a little bit, but it’s a shame we couldn’t have gotten at least a couple more scenes with him doing more than performing his role as a doctor.

I do like the addition that he can sense what’s happening in someone’s body simply by touching them. It feels very rakie and energy healy to me. It’s not in the book but adding something like that makes a lot of sense for the Dune setting. In another setting, I would find it weird. But it works here.

Once Yueh is gone, Paul tells Jessica that he had a waking dream. Some things were blurred and uncertain, others were clear. Someone will hand him a knife, but he doesn’t know when. Jessica is pregnant. She’s shocked. She’s only just found out herself, since it’s only been a few weeks. Yet he knew, somehow.

This scene is taken from a later part in the book. Paul doesn’t get Spice dosed until they’re out in the desert, later. Giving Paul his first taste of spice here makes sense for the film. It gives him and the audience more time to get used to his prescience. It wasn’t necessary to do that in the book, but here, it works.

I like the reordering because it gives us more time to sit with Paul’s powers as they develop and grow. In the book, we had hundreds of pages to become accustomed to how his visions work. In the movie, they gave us more time by making his first Spice trance happen way sooner. It makes sense from a storytelling perspective and it gave us a more intense worm attacking the crawler sequence. As I’ve said before, a lot of the changes are good ideas. The omissions are where things get iffy.

Now, the next chapter in the book was cut from the film. Book fans will know what I’m talking about. The Atreides throw a grand dinner, celebrating the Duke’s new fief, summoning all the big lords and ladies to table. This chapter in particular highlights the Bene Gesserit training both in Jessica and Paul.

The Harkonnens planted a young girl at the table, near Paul’s age. She presents herself as stupid. But in reality, it was another assassination attempt. This time using sex as the driving force. Of course, Paul was the first to see through the plot. Jessica sees it a bit later.

There’s a lot of back and forth between a water Barron (later deduced to be a Harkonnen agent) and a few others. Kynes is there, even the Harkonnen agents are afraid of him, leading Paul and Jessica to wonder why. What power does he hold? I understand why they had to cut it. It’s very internal-monologue heavy, lots of analysis into subtle body language and vocal queues. It would have been hard to pull off while translating just a quarter of the subtlety and analysis.

It did, however, show off Paul’s “man in a child’s body” stuff that we didn’t get as much of in the film. He proves to the entire assembly how quick whited and observant he is. It’s a great chapter, one of my favorites, but it would have taken a good chunk of the run time and doing it well would have been extremely hard, maybe impossible. I don’t even know where to start without the use of internal monologue.

It’s fine that it’s not here because it would have been very difficult. At the same time, it’s another example of the film removing the subtlety and mind-games that were prevalent through the entire book.

Selusa Secundus

Wow did they do a great job communicating who the Sardukar are. They are the Emperor’s legions. Salusa Secundus is a brutal prison planet, taking the most harsh and violent of humanity, training them to become killing machines with one purpose, serve and obey. Every noble house fears the Sardukar. They are the reason no-one dares go up against the Emperor. None of this gets mentioned in the movie, but we still get the Sardukar.

We get some unnerving and strange throat singing as well. The singer makes what almost sound like mistakes, breathing in the middle of a transition from one word to the next. It’s a fascinating addition to their preparations. It’s inspired me to learn how to throat sing. We also see legions readying for battle, being marked by the blood of those who weren’t strong enough. There are mass sacrefices with blood pouring down with the rain.

They did so well communicating the absolute devotion to the Emperor, their brutality and otherness. Yet again, we have almost no expositionary dialogue and yet we understand perfectly what the Sardukar are. Piter De Vries is meeting with one of the leaders and establishes that 3 betalions are coming to Arrakis.

I’ve got to talk about a short scene where Jessica is walking back to her room. She’s openly weeping. The whole situation is simply too much and she takes this time alone to let down her Bene Gesserit walls and just feel.

I talked about this last time, but I like this addition. Yes, she’s Bene Gesserit. Yes, they have control over their emotions. But they’re still human, that’s a fundamental doctrine of their breeding program. These people, as intelligent and self-controlled as they may be, are still human. It makes sense that even a Bene Gesserit needs a moment to cry while her life is falling apart. In fact, it’s mentioned that Jessica cries several times, later in the book. I say this here because some have complained about her being emotional.

Both she and Paul have more scenes like this than in the book. They felt more in control than they do here. There’s more emotional vulnerability and it’s a good way to make the audience care when there isn’t enough time to really develop them and there’s no way of getting to their internal monologues.

The only remnant of subplot where the Atreides think Jessica is the spy is when Leto conofronts her about saving Paul. Not the mother, but the Bene Gesserit.

The Harkonnen Attack

Almost right at the half way mark, it all goes down. Someone paralyzes several guards with a trank gun. The coms are offline. The shield around Arrakeen drops. Ships come down from the sky, brought by a Guild high-liner.

Leto finds the Shadout Mapes on the floor, stabbed, dying. He’s struck by a trank dart, falling paralyzed. Yueh steps in, explaining that the Harkonnens have his wife, Wana (another Bene Gesserit, but we don’t learn that in the movie). They forced Yueh to betray the Atreides.

Oh, how they did a disservice to Yueh. Book Yueh has more depth and basic Bene Gesserit training thanks to his wife. He’s also a Suk doctor, imperially conditioned to obey and never do harm. Yueh was even considered a suspect as the spy at a couple of points, but he was immediately dismissed because of his conditioning. It was considered impossible to break it. The Harkonnen threat to his wife managed to do the impossible. It was a huge deal the Harkonnens managed to do that. It was a stroke of genius which everyone who found out (who was on his side) praised the Baron for. Yet, we get no word of it at all here. He’s just the doctor who betrayed them. I felt no sympathy or pity for movie Yueh. Book Yueh is a truly tragic figure, in my eyes at least.

Harkonnen ships fly down to the surface, Imperial Sardukar in their ranks. In the book, the Sardukar wore Harkonnen uniforms to help conical their involvement. Shadam IV couldn’t afford to be found out. He couldn’t be involved. If he was, the other houses would panic. The great houses fear nothing more than the Sardukar coming for them and eliminating them. The movie Sardukar have their own uniforms. I get it, it lets the audience know what’s going on. But it takes away a layer of the subterfuge. There’s quite a bit of subterfuge they cut out.

I know I’m being a bit harsh on some points, but it’s because this section is where a lot of things get dropped or simplified.

Frank Herbert wasn’t one to describe action scenes. Maybe he just didn’t like writing them or maybe it was for another reason. But we don’t actually see the invasion happen on the page. The movie, however, goes all out.

Ships flying down, explosives that can make their way past shields, sword fighting on the starport, Gurney Hallek running into the storm at the head of an Atreides battle line.

Harkonen troops work their way up the stairs into the palace. Atreides guards prevent their coming. Sardukar glide in behind the defensive line, slaughtering all in their way. The scene is cool, really cool. But it makes no fucking sense!

Why would the foot soldiers leave their pinch point to go outside where the Sardukar can get dropped in behind them? The movie made logistics problems with the battle that weren’t there in the book. It does that a few times, making problems that weren’t originally there.

The Harkonnens/Sardukar have rockets that can get past shields by slowing down. Why? The shield wall was taken down. In the book, they used old-school rockets. It seemed insane to use such ancient technology but it worked because of the absence of shields. Yes, the spinny rockets are cool, but they make shields less than useless, breaking part of the world for no good reason. They’re clearly spinning really fast horizontally, along the line of the shield. Wouldn’t that be stopped by a shield that works based on speed?

We also get an epic scene where Duncan steals a ‘thopter and escapes Arrakeen. It’s so cool. The cinematography is fantastic. The CGI is so realistic. Yet again, they do something that ruins it for the Dune nerd within me. It clearly shows that his ‘thopter has an shield. The ship high in the sky starts shooting a las gun at him.

A major reason the setting has so much hand-to-hand combat is because you can’t shoot a shield with a las gun! It causes a chain reaction that’s similar to a nuclear blast, killing both the shooter and the person wearing the shield. Mutually assured destruction. Yet the massive warship doesn’t care and tries to take down Duncan’s shielded ‘thopter. That either means las guns don’t cause a reaction in this version of the setting, meaning everyone should just be using las guns. Or the gunner was a fucking idiot and will probably get cooked over a slow fire once his boss finds out what he was doing.

Either way, why the change? All they had to do was show Duncan’s ship NOT shimmering with a shield. But no. We get a massive lore-breaking problem that most people probably didn’t even notice because without knowing that bit, it’s a fantastic sequence.

The Harkonnens are taking Arrakeen. But where are Jessica and Paul in all of this? Doctor Yueh gave them sedatives before bed. They’re both unconscious, at the mercy of the Baron. What of Leto? What will happen to the Atreides in their darkest hour? Come back for the third and final installment of my Dune review to find out.

I hate to do it, but this review has taken way too long to get out and I need to get my readers some content. I hope to have the next segment out soon. Until then, don’t let fear take hold, for it is the mind killer, the little death that brings total obliteration. Don’t go falling into any Harkonnen traps while I’m gone.