On "Dune" and the language of literature versus the language of film
A review of Dune (1965)
Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 out of 5)
Science Fiction: ★★★☆☆ (3 out of 5)
Literary: ★★★☆☆ (3 out of 5)
Vibe: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5)
I think, aside from a collection of Star Trek short stories1, Dune was my first science fiction book. For me, fantasy (e.g. The Hobbit) was for reading while sci fi was for movies. In rapid succession I saw The Black Hole (1979), Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Battle Beyond the Stars (1980), The Wrath of Khan (1982), Return of the Jedi (1983), Krull (1983), The Search for Spock (1984), The Last Starfighter (1984), Ice Pirates (1984), The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984), and 2010 (1984).
My dad woke me up at 6am to have me watch Star Wars (1977) when it first aired on HBO in 19832. He had also introduced me to The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), War of the Worlds (1953), Forbidden Planet (1956), The Day of the Triffids (1963), 2001 (1968), and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) — either when those films aired on TV or my family rented a VCR and some videos from the grocery store. Of course there were also the re-runs of the original series of Star Trek on TV.
I didn’t see Dune (1984) until sometime later in 1985 when we got our own VCR and my dad recorded it from HBO or Showtime during a free preview weekend. It was a transformative experience. It was my first David Lynch film — and it was so wonderfully weird. There was some weird sci fi in that list above (e.g. Krull, Buckaroo Banzai), but that weirdness always seemed to come with a lighter tone or humor. Dune (1984) was serious weirdness. Naturally, I picked up the book. My vibe rating above (and probably the others) derives from that nostalgia.
I decided to pick it back up to re-read as an adult — inspired by the new Denis Villeneuve take on the story in Dune: Part One (2021) and the forthcoming Part Two (as of today, scheduled for March 2024). In this “review” I’m not going to rehash the book very much. Many people have discussed the book better than I could. Bret Devereaux wrote a great series on “the Fremen mirage”. Though Bret disagrees3, I am among the ones that think it’s a white savior story, and, no, it doesn’t subvert that trope. I’m here to re-visit something that was formative for me, but hope to grow beyond.
Speaking of not being subversion, Frank Herbert supposedly wrote Dune Messiah (1969) because people didn’t get that Dune was a cautionary tale. Let me just say that it’s really is hard to see how Dune (1965) is a cautionary tale from just the first book. There doesn’t seem to be any negative outcomes from the “religious zealotry” and the messianic leader leads the Fremen to freedom. The bloody jihad is only hinted at via premonitions — it’s not realized. It’s not even realized in Dune Messiah — the book opens with it already having happened.
Re-reading it today, Dune (1965) is essentially Robin Hood with an origin story and world-building. It’s also super cheesy — but then it also started some of the tropes. It’s another example illustrating why it’s really hard to write a book where the main character can see the future4. You constantly have to make it not work in story-critical moments. It’s explained in the book that when things hinge on the actions of single individuals or have lots of potential outcomes, it gets fuzzier — probably the best you can do to keep all the tension from seeping out. However, that’s also “when you need it, it fails”.
The one character I really had a different view of after re-reading was the Baron. He doesn’t come across as calculating or shrewd. He has all the hallmarks of a supremely stupid person who is nonetheless ruthlessly effective — mostly because they lucked out and were given the opportunities. For example, the Emperor uses the Baron to get at Leto, providing the Baron with what he needs. I couldn’t help but see this today as an analogy of Putin5 using Trump to get at Hillary (via Trump’s feud with Obama) and Trump’s stupidity and ineptness wasting Putin’s opportunity with all sorts of cruelty along the way.
The two movies have different takes on the Baron that work better in those films (and remove problematic aspects of the character in the book [trigger warning footnote]6). In the 1984 movie, the Baron comes across as just a maniacal supervillain. In the 2021 movie, the Baron comes across as a co-conspirator and even talks to the Reverend Mother Mohiam. In neither films does he come across as stupid7.
Speaking of a difference between the book and the two films8, I found trying to understand the choices in the different mediums to be the most interesting part of re-reading the story.
For example, both movies make “the voice” something more magical (and sensory) than the book where it is basically micromanaging your tone. The former creates something you can literally hear in a film, while the latter is on theme with the other Bene Gesserit micro-management of bodily functions like regulating your body temperature or converting poison. I’m not going to get into the 1984 movie making the weirding way a technology9, except to say that I think it is an interesting take for a visual/auditory medium10. It’s not fully fleshed out, but I think there’s a new interesting sound-based11 theme available there coupled with the movie’s take on the voice.
The book has Jamis fighting Paul because he was humiliated when Paul knocked him over. Jamis calls out Jessica to send Paul in as her champion (facetiously relying on the legend) so he can kill Paul out of ego. However, Dune (2021) has the fight because Jessica bested Stilgar so is technically now the leader per the usual rules of succession12. Jamis thinks he doesn’t need to listen to Stilgar’s leadership — and thinks he could win leadership by fighting Jessica or her champion, a role for which Paul volunteers. The book’s tension and conflict relies (as it often does) on the internal thoughts of the characters. The 2021 movie makes this conflict more physical and direct in dialog while simultaneously increasing the agency of Jessica and Paul. The 1984 movie just leaves this out — which is also a reasonable choice because the 1984 movie relies on essentially a single vision of the future that plays out until it vanishes forcing Paul to take the water of life. The uncertainty of that vision (that helps restore tension to the plot) derives from its symbolic, dream-like aspect. Paul doesn’t know what the visions mean until they come true. The book and the 2021 film need to let us know that Paul’s visions occasionally reach inflection points of uncertainty to restore the tension for a character that can see the future. The fight with Jamis is one of those moments.
Dune has a theme of prophesy in all of its manifestations — but while Herbert made it literal precognition and so has to fight against it (i.e. making it not work) to maintain tension in the story, David Lynch made it ambiguous through the language of film which not only returns agency to Paul (who can interpret the dreams), but allows tension to stay in the story because the future is not as spelled out. I personally like this take much better, but the overall execution of the 1984 film has its issues.
One thing I noticed on re-reading was that the book shows Paul’s gambit regarding the Emperor as more opportunistic compared to the 1984 movie13 which is more deliberate. In the book, the Baron instructs Rabban to take out the Fremen. Harkonnen effectiveness is low and there are lots of losses. Thufir (captured by the Baron after the attack on House Atreides and made to work for him) uses this information to convince Baron to cut off Rabban in order to make him look bad and install Feyd. Paul then sees Rabban is cut off and plots his attack. While Fremen do raid both smugglers and the Harkonnen spice production, and Paul notes they could destroy the spice if they wanted to, spice production not deliberately attacked to reduce it. Rabban being cut off by the Baron’s (Thufir’s) scheme is what makes spice production fall and brings the situation to the attention of the Emperor.
That complex plot is likely because one of the book’s themes is “palace intrigue”, something focused on more in the book than either of the films14. In contrast, in the 1984 movie Paul deliberately tries to stop spice production to bring the Emperor to Arrakis. This is simpler to convey in a two-hour film as it involves the agency of fewer characters.
And finally, we have to talk about “the chosen one” trope. When I was a kid in the 80s, this was new to me — and likely fed into an adolescent power fantasy. However this is a case where the 1984 film falls down while the book and the 2021 film have better luck. Lynch’s film doesn’t even try to subvert the trope. It is front and center. Both the book and the 2021 film have the moment where Paul calls himself a “freak” and sees the future jihad. In the book, nothing comes of it — Paul’s reticence15 is retconned in Dune Messiah to be more than it ever was described to be in the first book. The 2021 film benefits from being able to literally show us that future war, and Paul’s place in it. Instead of us, the audience, being told what he sees ‘second hand’ by Paul telling us about his visions in the book, we see it first hand alongside Paul in the 2021 film. That’s a far more powerful story element that’s harder to pull off in a book — but could have been done by essentially adding the first chapters of Dune Messiah16 to the 1965 book.
As it stands, Dune (1965) is a flawed book that maintains its place in the science fiction canon because it was out there earlier than other, better, works. I have a lot of nostalgia for it. The world building is excellent. But objectively, it’s a YA adventure following a young swashbuckling prince who can see the future — except when it’s inconvenient for the story.
The cover was printed with the Enterprise “upside-down” but that entertained me because a) the Regula I station was just an upside-down version of the orbital office complex from The Motion Picture, and b) upside-down doesn’t mean much in space.
It was preceded by Hardware Wars (1978), so I remember being a bit confused. And yes — I saw Empire in the theater (and had an Empire-themed birthday party) before I ever saw the original Star Wars (1977).
Bret Devereaux disagrees, as he puts it, because Paul doesn’t actually “save” anyone. But the white savior story is just a label — the Fremen appear to need the leadership of Paul to put an end to what would otherwise be a cycle of great houses oppressing them in the pursuit of spice mining. The 2021 film opens with making this more explicit — “Who will our next oppressors be?”
q.v. psychohistory and Foundation (1951).
I am not using this as the real story of the 2016 election, but only as a narrative that has a strange similarity to the world of Dune (1965).
Re-reading the book I didn’t notice so much that the Baron was portrayed as an evil homosexual, but rather the focus was he was an evil pedophile and psychopathic murderer of the powerless. It’s the power relationship, and the gender aspect comes from misogyny. The 1984 movie just emphasizes the psycho-sexual murder and the “young boys” were made into a young adult. I’m sure Herbert did intend it to be the homophobic evil gay character, but since he was writing at a time where you just had to mention homosexuality for the evil to be assumed. Saying “Steve is gay” in a book today is just noting the sexual orientation of a character; however, in 1965 that same sentence would have carried the connotation that “Steve is a deviant pervert” without it being explicitly said. I am not intending this as exoneration of Herbert, but rather just pointing out the focus of the narrative is on the power differential, the misogyny, and the murder.
Herbert’s Baron is purportedly intended to be an intelligent, but animalistic human.
I never saw the miniseries and really don’t want to.
Incompletely — in Dune (1984) when Jessica subdues Stilgar, he says she has the “weirding way”. This was confusing to me as a child watching the movie for the first time and only ever became clear what was happening when I read the book. Prior to that point in the movie, the weirding way only ever was used in conjunction with the weirding modules. Stilgar’s reference is the only one in the movie that still references it as a kind of martial art as it is in the book — it should have been removed.
I also liked the 2021 movie’s use of the hand signal communication (barely mentioned in the book) and bringing back the “cone of silence” — though for a scene that does not appear in the book which may hint at a better, more complex conspiracy to be revealed in Dune: Part Two.
That David Lynch is very much in to — especially electric sounds — in his movies.
Which in fact are the Fremen rules in the book, just not used at this point or in this context. Or available to women!
The 2021 movie ends before this point, so analysis of Villneuve’s take will have to wait until 2024.
Both films leave out the dinner scene!
I think if Dune (1965) closed with the jihad (and Paul’s reaction to it) as described in the first chapters of Dune Messiah (1969) instead of effectively ending with the Emperor ceding power, it might have given Herbert a better case for his “beware charismatic leaders” retcon.
Dune Messiah goes on to squander this powerful reveal by reverting back to “palace intrigue”.