Spoilers for Dune: Part 2 ahead!
When Dune: Part 1 came out in 2021, I wrote about the challenges inherent in adapting a book like Dune. Using Liet-Kynes’ death as an example (remember Liet-Kynes?), we saw how Villeneuve chose to offer a simpler satisfaction than the more difficult message the book uses that scene to convey. In adaptations, there are always changes— all we can hope is that those choices offer gain, even as we lose something of the original.
Now that Dune: Part 2 has come out, it’s worth asking, once again, what we’ve gained and what we’ve lost in this adaptation of a book that many have called unadaptable. Some metrics - $240M made at the domestic box office - say we’ve gained plenty, but there’s a legitimate argument that Villeneuve’s films have stripped down the books to create a palatable version that most audiences will enjoy (see Justin Chang’s review “The Sterile Spectacle of Dune: Part Two” or even Richard Brody on Dune: Part 1).
Even if you believe that Villeneuve’s Dune has had all of its weirdness sanded away in favor of big stars and cool-as-a-cucumber spectacle, it was clear from the start that Villeneuve was going to have to make cuts to allow this book to be turned into two three-hour films instead of five four-hour ones. The interesting adaptation question is not whether Villeneuve made changes to make a more commercial product (he did), but whether he was interested in preserving the experience of reading the book in the first place. I couldn’t quite tell in Part 1, but Part 2 has me convinced that watching the film and reading the book are such fundamentally different experiences that it was never Villeneuve’s intention to make them the same.
To me, one of the curiosities of the Villeneuve Dune film discourse was that even when it first started, there was a lot of course-correcting. People were on their guard against another “white savior” film disguised by genre trappings, but Dune fans were quick to point out that the books were one of the great bait-and-switches of literature: what starts as a classic “chosen one” narrative morphs into an odd, cynical, story with anti-messianic and anti-colonialist themes. This discourse has now been calcified by Dune: Part 2. If there is a true antagonist in the film, it’s not Feyd-Rautha or the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV— it’s the presence and weaponization of myth (or propaganda) for political ends. Religion is the opiate of the masses after all.
The film makes no secret of its skepticism of Paul’s ascent. Much of the interpersonal conflict in Paul’s story is driven by his mother’s desire to utilize the Bene Gesserit-planted myth of the Lisan Al-Gaib while Chani fights against Paul’s ever-increasing religious status. Paul’s seizure of power is not a clear-cut triumph, and in fact, the movie doesn’t even end with him as the books do— it ends with Chani, the embodiment of the Fremen, riding away from Paul on a sandworm.
It’s not clear to me, however, that Dune is actually the story that Villeneuve wants it to be. The book embodies much of the progressive political and social change that defined the 60s, but it’s not the straightforward anti-colonialist, anti-propaganda, anti-messiah book that Dune: Part 2 portrays. If I had to choose a word to describe Dune, I would say it’s slippery. It’s a text without any single clear lesson - except perhaps that power, no matter who wields it, burdens and corrupts. There are very few events that take place that are straightforwardly “good” or “bad”, and the book’s own position on all of its characters is often impersonal, distant, and skeptical.
I’m hesitant to label this slippery quality as something that’s “lost” in the adaptation, because it seems like Villeneuve was not interested in preserving it to begin with. In fact, he goes in the opposite direction, sinking his hooks into this narrative to wield it for Dune as he understands it. This is clearest not in what Villeneuve left on the cutting room floor, but in what he chose to add: Chani’s character makeover. With Zendaya in a leading role, it’s understandable Villeneuve wanted to give her more to do than the original text would allow. Although Dune is a feminist novel in many ways, its gender politics aren’t always palatable to our modern tastes (see an infamous scene with Alia in Dune Messiah for a particularly evocative example).
Chani, I hate to say, is not that compelling of a character in the books. She guides Paul through his rise and challenges him, but she’s not the face of the anti-messiah message— that’s a role the film creates to bestow upon her. Indeed, at the end of Dune, Chani agrees to be Paul’s concubine as he enters a sexless marriage with Princess Irulan, mirroring the role Jessica took with Duke Leto. Chani has no empowering moment of escaping into the desert - her people’s desert - on the back of a sandworm, a creature Fremen alone know how to ride.
I’m not saying this is a bad change— Chani deserves a better arc than the one the books give her, and we all deserve Zendaya getting a real part to sink her teeth into. What the change indicates, however, is that Villeneuve has a lesson in mind. The film sees Dune as an anti-colonialist story meant to inspire skepticism in our idols and our institutions. The changes it has made to the book are meant to further that understanding and that understanding only.
While Jessica in the film is portrayed as an increasingly power-hungry Bene Gesserit looking to leverage Paul’s religious power, in the book, “Jessica was fearful of the religious relationship between himself and the Fremen”. She accuses him: “You deliberately cultivate this air, this bravura… You never cease indoctrinating”
The film’s Stilgar, meanwhile, is a religious fanatic whose intense devotion to the Lisan Al-Gaib myth is played for laughs. In the book, when Paul rides a sandworm for the first time, Stilgar’s reaction is not awe, but criticism:
“‘You did it, eh?’ Stilgar asked… ‘That’s what you think? You did it?... Now I tell you that was a very sloppy job. We have twelve-year-olds who do better… You think it bad of me to say this now. It is my duty’”
We are continuously forced to consider in the book whether the religious fervor surrounding Paul is a tool of oppression by the Bene Gesserit, a rallying force for the Fremen, or both. Whether you believe Paul is the Lisan Al-Gaib or not, you recognize that he is the one who can (and does) deliver the promise Liet-Kynes made so long ago to the Fremen: that Arrakis will not always be a desert. Rest assured that this result neither justifies nor denies Paul’s messiah status— like everything else in Dune, the Fremen getting their greatest wish is a double-edged sword.
Jorge Cotte wrote an excellent essay on Dune: Part 2 that contends the film fails because of its ambivalence:
It wields its ambivalence like a secret weapon ... But the film doesn’t complicate our feelings as much as it performs ambivalence for us. The film warns us against the very thing it gives us. We watch from reclining chairs as Paul starts a holy war—our hands are clean …Our hero is tortured so we don’t have to be. All we need to do is just sit back and put up our feet.
As much as I love this insight, I would argue the opposite: Dune: Part 2 is not an ambivalent movie. The film does not complicate our feelings specifically because Villeneuve has chosen to isolate a clear and simple interpretation of Dune. He uses the films as vehicles to convey that interpretation in the most visually spectacular but thematically straightforward way possible. There’s a passivity inherent to being spoon-fed like this. Reading the books, meanwhile, is a deeply ambivalent experience. You sort through seemingly endless characters, machinations, and perspectives with no skeleton key. If Dune: Part 2 tells you what to think, the book only teaches you how to think.
When I started writing this, I really didn’t want to say something that boils down to “the book is better”. That line of argument replaces interesting questions about what makes an adaptation good with a superiority complex. I believe the adaptation choices Villeneuve has made have been deliberate ones, and they’ve worked very well thus far to create beautiful films. Whether you agree with Villeneuve’s interpretation of Dune though— you’ll have to read the books yourself to find out.
Culture Crumbs
Angelica Jade Bastien’s letterboxd review of Dune: Part Two, which is how I learned about Jorge Cotte’s essay
This article about the fictional languages created for the Dune films (and what they leave out)
The Rewatchables podcast for this insane 90s movie Internal Affairs starring Richard Gere… even if you don’t watch the movie, I promise it’s worth a listen
Kim Kardashian… lying about her tables being authentic Donald Judds??
Dev Patel’s press tour for his directorial debut Monkey Man— hot dev summer #2 is coming up
Amelia Dimoldenberg’s interview of Mark Ruffalo for the Oscars… charming doesn’t even begin to describe it
That’s all for this week! Thanks for reading!
Incredibly thoughtful review….thank u for this!! What did you think of Paul’s drastic switch in the film’s third act after ingesting the worm poison? I felt like this was the weakest point in movie, it feels totally inexplicable and rushed even if you know what the catalyst was