THE MANY WORLD(S) OF DUNE: PART II

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.

I am often sluggish in delivering promises -- or threats -- but slow delivery is not the same as no delivery, so here we are. Some time ago I began a dive into Frank Herbert's DUNE, one of the most influential novels of all time, which spawned not only a slew of sequels but also numerous cinematic adaptations, culminating most recently in Dennis Villaneuve's highly successful film series, which is still ongoing. You may recall that I wrote an incoherent rant in these very pages denouncing DUNE PART ONE as a "dumbed down" version of Herbert's universe. Specifically, I attacked the dialog, which I thought especially weak and insipid.
In the frenzy of my attack I neglected to mention that I actually rather liked the movie itself. It was by no means great, but it showed promise, and there were touches which were quite inspired and even brilliant. DUNE PART TWO was far better in almost every respect, which is a double accomplishment, because the world Herbert built in his novel is so complex, so rich with lore, so dependent upon internal monologue and numerous points of view, that for decades it has been deemed "untranslatable" to the screen.

My first exploration of Herbert's universe was not an analysis of the novel but rather a review of David Lynch's ill-fated but highly spirited 1985 adaptation of the book, which I likened to bad opera: it's a slog, and often ridiculous, but it is unquestionably and seductively lavish, and there is so much craft in the effort one cannot help but appreciate the final result. Actually, one of the factors which makes Lynch's take on DUNE such a mess is the quite admirable decision he made to cram as many of Herbert's complexities and nuances into the movie as humanly possible. Instead of streamlining the massive storyline and slimming the concepts into digestible form, he simply dumps the entire mass onto our heads, which I grant you showed an impressive trust in the intellectual capacity of the audience, but ended up carrying us away on a tide of ideas.

Villanueve's approach to the tangle that is DUNE was much more practical if less idealistic. He did not attempt, as Lynch did, to cook the whole cow on a kitchen stove, but rather to serve as much meat as possible without choking us to death. In the first film he went rather overboard keeping things simple. In the second he corrects course to a degree that left me almost completely satisfied. DUNE PART TWO is not a perfect film, it is not even a "great" film with a capital "G," but it is very good and also very respectful of its source material. As my brother remarked after we watched it, it is ultimately just one man's take on Herbert's dizzying ideas, but it does not follow the odious Hollywood habit of trying to "improve" upon the originator's vision. This begs the question, "What was that vision? And why is it important?"

DUNE is not merely a science fiction novel, any more than LORD OF THE RINGS is merely a fantasy. It is an almost incredibly sophisticated analysis of the forces which move humanity -- politics, economics, and religion chiefly among them. In the world of DUNE, Herbert created a universe which is feudal in nature. The galaxy is ruled by an emperor whose army, the Sardaukar, are considered by all to be invincible, though everyone is more or less intriguing against him anyway. His imperium is made up of individual worlds, each ruled by Great Houses, noble families each with their own military and their own ambitions and bitter rivals. The most valuable commodity in existence is the spice melange, which not only vastly extends life, but allows a form of space travel called "folding" which makes distances immaterial. This spice is found on only one planet in the universe, the desert planet of Arrakis a.k.a. Dune, and cannot be artificially reproduced, making this obscure and hostile world the axis of civilization even though it is regarded as a hostile wasteland. Because the religion of the imperium forbids artificial intelligence, humans have developed "schools of thought" to replace computers, and one of these schools, the Bene Gesserit, has for thousands of years been conducting a breeding experiment designed to produce what amounts to a superhuman being. The story's protagonist, Paul Atreides, is the end result of this millennia-long effort, but he does not know it, and DUNE is to some extent an exploration of Paul's often contradictory attempts to both escape from, to exploit, and to rise above his own destiny.

It is said that J.R.R. Tolkien hated DUNE because it takes the view that all of humanity's regulating systems -- government, economics, politics, religion, philosophy, and even morality -- are essentially secular control mechanisms. That morality is in essence a construct, and that it can be adjusted according to who is in power. When Paul finds himself in the hands of a band of dangerous desert nomads called the Fremen, and begins to grasp that these are the warriors who might be able to defeat the Sardaukar and unseat the emperor who betrayed his family, he and his witch mother embark on a course of using the Fremen to gain revenge and ultimately seize power; but this course involves a tremendous level of conscious manipulation and deceit. Paul exploits his unnatural abillities to assume a messianic role among the Fremen, becoming a combination of Jesus and Joan of Arc, and unleashes a "holy war" which shakes the universe to its foundations, and threatens to turn Paul into a much worse villain than his various nemeses.

This is, of course, only the most superficial and cursory explanation of Herbert's creation. To fully analyse DUNE would take a book nearly as long as DUNE itself, so we will content ourselves with saying that the story is a study of power, which makes it rather similar at a glance to GAME OF THRONES, but unlike GoT it is also a fully conscious examination of humanity itself, and the various means by which we humans regulate our existence. Dennis Villenueve succeeds with his films in very large part because he sticks closely to this idea -- the way the Emperor motivates his soldiers through a carefully crafted warrior religion which is deeply cultic in nature, and the way Paul motivates his warriors in an eerily similar way. And by "motivates," I mean, and Villenueve means, "exploit." Because at its core, DUNE is also about the way our regulatory systems, be they called government (patriotism, nationalism), religion (fanaticism, jihad), or even psychology and anthropology (manipulation of the masses through dear or dark empathy), are simply devices engineered to get people to do whatever the hell those in power desire. The Atreides are the "good guys" of the story, but their leader, Duke Leto (Paul's father), is in his own way just as ruthless, cunning and manipulative as any of his enemies, if only by sheer necessity. He too can only stay in power if he "keeps his knife hand ready and his shield at full charge."

In DUNE, the House of Atriedes' greatest rival is House Harkonnen, who are unquestionably evil, though driven by the same basic motives as everyone else. The Harkonnens ultimately join forces with the Emperor to destroy the Atreides, who the Emperor see as a long-term threat to his power. The Emperor uses the Harkonnens as a tool, but the Harkonnes are also using the Emperor to position themselves to become greater threats to his position. And Villenueve rightly explores how the Harkonnens manipulate their own people with a combination of terror, gladiatorial games, and appeals to nationalism and greed, in their war against the Atreides. Likewise, the Bene Gesserit witches are master manipulators, using their knowledge of genetic engineering as well as their command of "the voice" (a way of overriding human will) and other tricks to shape events in a way that conforms to their own ambitions. This is true all down the line. Indeed, every one of the power blocks Herbert creates in DUNE and its sequels -- the Emperor, the Great Houses, the Bene Gesserit, the Spacing Guild, the Bene Tleilax, etc. -- are united in their desire to use force, fraud, intrigue, and any other methods which may come to hand to protect their own position and to improve it. This conforms precisely to Realpolitik right here on Earth, and it can be bewildering and depressing, because none of us truly wants to believe that our national identity, race-ethnicity, sexuality, religious and philosophical beliefs, etc. are simply tools by which we are controlled by others. Nor do we wish, in our hearts, to reduce life itself to a mere struggle for power. Writers like Tolkien approach the problem of good versus evil in a more literal and clear-cut manner, in which the good are unquestionably good (though prone to temptation) while the evil are questionably evil, an exception like Gollum more or less proving the rule, since Gollum, who was redeemable, ultimately chose not to redeem himself. In DUNE, the Atreides are "good" because they cling to a code of honor which distinguishes them from their opponents, but on a larger scale they also play by the cruel and cynical rules of the universe they inhabit. Paul, however, tilts increasingly away from the Atreides code as the book progresses into the "cruel and cynical" vein. Through his powers of prescience, sees that by manipulating the Fremen to serve his own goals -- first survival, then revenge, then finally power -- he may very well unleash a force upon the universe far more evil than the Emperor or the Harkonnens; yet he is content to take the risk to satisfy his ambitions. In the end, Paul is himself manipulated by the historical forces that circumstances, including his own existence, have unleashed. Unlike LORD OF THE RINGS, where the good characters are occasionally pushed along in their quest by divine intervention, or GAME OF THRONES, which it could be argued is a contest between different gods using human tribal groupings as proxies, the world of DUNE recognizes no controlling master intelligence behind events. Rather -- and here it has some resemblance to the universe of Azimov's FOUNDATION series -- humanity is half-governed by the conscious manipulation of human agencies, and half by historical necessities which occur because the general trend of events presses that way whether the agencies in question want them to or not. The Bene Gesserit are by far the most farseeing, capable, and manipulative of all the various agencies in DUNE, but they too are ultimately helpless in the face of these historical earthquakes or floods. They created Paul, but in the end they find they cannot control him, just as Paul eventually discovers he cannot control the religious fervor of the Fremen or what it will do to the universe.

To bring this back to Villaneueve, I do believe that with DUNE PART II, he hit upon the essential elements of the DUNE story. In PART I we get an unforgettable and terrifying glimpse of the way in which the Sarduakar are conditioned to do the Emperor's dirty work. In PART II, we see Paul systematically condition the Fremen to do his work which is just as dirty, using a mirror-image of the Emperor's methods. If these DUNE films are simplified versions of Herbert's novel, they have the saving grace -- minus the weak dialog of the first movie especially -- of not conflating simplicity and stupidity. What Herbert had to say about humanity and the way it regulates itself may not be pretty and may not be completely accurate, but it was necessary, it was brilliant, and so long as anyone can read or think for themselves it will continue to evoke the sort of passionate debate which science fiction and fantasy seem to be capable of sparking perhaps more than any other genre.