I've always had a hard time getting into Dune, so part 2 might be the first time I've actually absorbed what the story is supposed to be about. And, frankly, my reaction to seeing Paul start a holy was was: good. This is the Bene Gesserit plan spinning out of control and completely backfiring. I'm glad they lost control. I'm glad their plans to manipulate civilization are falling apart. It's probably a good thing.
It's one detail I don't quite understand, what the other characters know about how manipulative the Bene Gesserit are. Does the Emperor know? People seem to know they're up to something, but if they do they seem to oddly not care. Or is this Herbert's commentary on how power creates its own justifications in the minds of the subjugated?
The Emperor knows, and he knows that he would fall without them. The movie doesn't go into as much detail on other factions, so the Bene Gesserit get an outsized presence in the film, but in the book universe everyone is scheming.
The Space Guild is scheming, the Great Houses are scheming. The Ixians scheme. The Bene Gesserit are arguably better at it than others, but it's all part of the plans within plans that make up the universe. So everyone knows they are scheming, but everyone also thinks they can use them for their own schemes.
The colour palette for the arena scene on Giedi Prime was worth the price of admission alone. And I agree that it is annoying to have internet people overexplain a book series I have loved since I was a teenager.
This doesn't need me to add anything to it, but I will because I can; isn't it suggested in the first book, or perhaps in the second, that the jihad is also necessary to cause chaos and re-mix the genes of humanity? Like, I kinda thought that Herbert's Dune was a little bit pro-jihad
I think in the big picture the story is clearly pro-Jihad. Paul is explicitly unwilling to start the Jihad until he has his visions and sees that the alternative futures for humanity are even more awful.
Interpreting Paul as just another Genghis Khan, conquering for regular old self-aggrandizement, is kind of weird. His prescience puts him beyond normal human moral evaluation because he can kill a hundred billion people and actually know that the alternative was extinction for the entire human race 10,000 years down the road.
He's ultimately unwilling to go all the way and become the God-Emperor, so he's still a little human, but I don't think there's any real question that the story thinks Paul and his descendents are basically doing something inhuman but necessary.
Agree on Fight Club too - the criticism that Pitt is too alluring, seductive etc and it confuses the message re toxic masculinity like … completely misses the point. Toxic masculinity wouldn’t be so dangerous if it weren’t so seductive to lonely, discontented men!! You’re supposed to fall for him, and then feel uncomfortable because of it! That’s why it’s good!
Not directly related, but I was won over to Team TimCham by his performance in "Bones and All". It's by the director of "Call Me by Your Name" (a film which I still don't understand the hype for), but represents a massive step up in quality. The film is equal parts heartbreaking and revolting, and TimCham gives us a character who is an unrepentant monster who we fall in love with anyway.
i love the point about the need for the character to be cool. paul is cool, he can do cool stuff, he’s really good at stuff which is cool, and we all want to be cool and talented and effective so of course we identify with him. this isn’t my most thoughtful point about dune, but i have loved the book for a long time and even knowing all the outcomes of paul’s choices doesn’t change the fact that it’s enjoyable because it’s fun to root for paul.
I have mixed feelings about Dune 2, but it does a lot of great things, so I'll limit myself to one complaint: it doesn't do a good enough job of conveying Paul's prescience.
Speculative visions are a dime a dozen in movies, usually substituting for the interior monologues that books use to communicate internal doubt and conflict. One of the most interesting things about Dune, though, is that Paul's visions aren't speculative: they are absolutely what's going to happen *. Not "if I fuck this up, billions will die", but "I am choosing to cause the death of billions", which puts a rather fine point on the story. I wish DV has figured out a way to do that, perhaps by featuring visions of things that happen later in the story, then replaying them, frame-for-frame.
* To be more precise, I've always thought that Paul's ability to see the future was really the ability to see exactly how to make a possible future come to pass.
The part that stuck false for me in the film was that the trigger for the full holy war wasn't pulled until the other great houses refused to recognize Paul on the throne. That's when he declared jihad ("We will show them paradise"). He had control of the planet, a lock on spice production, a huge army, and a complete destruction of the Sardukar. Was holy war against the entire galaxy really the only other option? Not subterfuge, biding time, splitting the enemy, negotiations?
My recollection is that there's even less of an explanation in the books. Dune 1 ends with Paul's ascension to the throne; Dune Messiah starts years into the jihad (a term the movie made a point of avoiding) with no explanation of why it was really necessary except some question-begging stuff about Paul's visions saying it was inevitable. The jihad has to happen, and Villeneuve did a better job than Herbert of giving it some kind of rationale.
I found this particular plot insertion non-sensical.
The film largely avoided showing or exploring prescience, which is what made teh story rich and interesting in the first place. The key was that Paul saw no way to avoid jihad, and that's enough - the details are not the point.
Meanwhile, Villeneuve pits the Landsraad against Paul, which makes no sense given their interests, at least initially.
Paul reveals to the Landsraad that the Emperor actually had controlled Arrakis indirectly anyway, and was fine with picking the Houses off one by one. The assumptions that underpinned the reign of House Corrino had been false and invalid. Mohiam was correct to observe at the start of Dune that political tripods are unstable (which was great foreshadowing).
Meanwhile, at the end of Dune, the contours of what Paul was creating was not yet entirely in place, making a move by Houses for pre-emptive total war entirely unwise. The Landsraad members would be better off to act circumspect until they had more time to judge. I'll allow that the film doesn't have time for this, and could arguably be just taking a short-cut.
For the Houses, they would want to determine where their individual interests lay in any realignment, and who they thought might win among the factions. They were schemers, every last one! The Spacing Guild had made its choice because of fear, but some Houses had means of still manipulating actors in the new regime and enhancing their position. As we would see in Dune Messiah and Children of Dune.
Between Dune and Dune Messiah, they would all find Paul's creeping encroachment on their prerogatives to be unacceptable. I find it hard to believe that they would all predict this outcome and instantly decide to come together to restore House Corrino.
I don't really disagree that it doesn't make sense when you think about it, but I do think the ending was a better bridge to the next movie. And idk, I think Herbert, particularly in the second book, leaned a whole lot on "prescient visions say this is inevitable" without explaining WHY it's inevitable, which amounts to a lot of telling rather than showing.
I agree that the movie ending had a better bridge to the next story, absolutely. It also left some things open more, because Herbert didn't know if Messiah would get published.
If anything, the ending is less triumphant than it should have been (it is the peak moment before the fall, after all), and the Emperor is portrayed as largely pathetic (surprisingly, for Walken).
Yeah, after my (not worth getting into here) mixed-to-low feelings about d2ne I went to reread Messiah…there’s virtually nothing…and then figured that at least a Dune Wiki would help me. But no, it’s very very vague, and seems like it’s just about the same actual trigger (refusal of houses to recognize Paul’s ascension); as much as it felt tacked on here Herbert avoids that only by leaving it in prescience and memory only.
Doesn’t make it not a little silly that it looks like Stil and an army just charge the nearest ships and take off, but I guess that’s moviemaking or something
It makes even less sense in the books where it's made more clear that the Guild controls all space travel. Herbert wants to insist that Paul couldn't have prevented the jihad, but all he needed to do was tell the Guild not to transport the Fremen.
The jihad didn't happen in order to obtain or secure Paul's throne. He had the throne the moment (in the book) that he knew how to destroy the spice and could credibly threaten the Guild with that destruction. The Jihad happened because it was what the Fremen wanted and what they were always going to do with their newfound freedom.
The book even refers to the Jihad as a kind of instinctive reaction on the part of humanity's collective unconscious to the stagnation and isolation of the race's genome by living planet-bound lives.
I totally agree. Dune has long been regarded as "unfilmable" and Villeneuve got around that problem by just... skipping the unfilmable parts. But those parts--the interior parts of the story--are really essential to the whole. I was deeply disappointed that neither Jessica's nor Paul's spice visions explained at all the significance of what was happening, what the "Kwisatz Haderach" is, or why it's so important.
The fact that Paul is an *engineered* Chosen One is actually super interesting, but gets left off the table entirely.
Oh...its been decades since I read it. Is Dune 2 the sequel to Dune 1? I originally thought it was a remake of the first book. I need to re-read/listen to them. I mostly listen because I can do other things at the same time, wash dishes, cook, pile wood...etc.
What we're calling "Dune 2" is the film adaptation of the second part of the first novel. It was split into two movies and the second part, covering the material from Paul's escape into the desert through the end of the novel, was just released.
Paul's wrestling with the power of prescience and the doom it brought to humanity were largely skipped over, because that's (one of) the most challenging aspect of bringing the story to the screen. Also, there are some holes in the plot created by not spending a minute or two fleshing out some of the unseen parties, like the Spacing Guild.
These were my favourite books when I read them in the 1970s. I was very disappointed by Dune: Part One for (1) being so loud in the cinema that I found it hard to enjoy and (2) not attempting to adapt the most difficult aspects, which was what Villeneuve repeatedly indicated he was up for. The politics and the metaphysical wrangling with prescience were what provided the depth of the story.
But I really enjoyed Dune: Part Two. It embodies the best of many of film-making's technical and artistic crafts, and is markedly better than what is available today. The worm riding scene is one of the most thrilling, bone-rattling cinematic experiences I can ever recall. When the mainstream cinema industry fails sometime in the next decade, these kinds of films won't be made any more, and I will miss them.
I thought the movies left a lot of the "interlocking systems limit choices" themes out, and prescience is the ultimate expression of those themes. Paul was raised in a culture that required him to take revenge. The Fremen's difficult environment drove the belief in a Messiah. The Bene Gesserits' desire for control created the shape of the Messiah in belief and by breeding him. Paul could see the shape of all that better than anyone and still was unable to choose otherwise. Indeed he went south in the book because he wanted more ability to predict the future. In the film, it's not really clear why he makes that decision because those themes are missing.
"I thought the movies left a lot of the "interlocking systems limit choices" themes out, and prescience is the ultimate expression of those themes."
Coming from a place of having read the book a million years ago (and absorbing very little of it), I did pick up on the idea that Paul could never not make the choices he did. Villeneuve seems to be interested in the idea that foreknowledge removes choice, as seen both here and in Arrival. And knowing Ted Chaing's (author of the story Arrival was based on) work, he also seems to hold that free will might be an illusion. Once you know the outcome, all paths must lead there. You no longer have the ability to make a choice.
All of which to say is: in the movie, it seemed clear that Paul could never not choose revenge. He was going to seek revenge on the Emperor and on House Harkonan regardless. He had no choice in the matter because that's who he is.
Meant to ask, has MENA gone wild on Twitter yet? It did for Dune 1, but that was released on streaming so all the shut-in social media addicts could watch it. MENA, if you're unfamiliar, is an acronym from the BIPOC school that I heard only ever on social media for the week preceding Dune's release and the fortnight following. Then forgotten.
This is a fun post! I guess I only would say that the idea of the "seductive" quality of Paul and his movement is really an intrinsic property of theater going back to...well, Aristotle, who was adamant that drama can neither be about straightforwardly good or normal people. To choose a concrete example: Hamlet (another hero son of great privilege who has to fight an usurper and an usurper's younger buddy) isn't a good guy by any normal standards. He randomly kills Polonius through a curtain without knowing who's actually there. He terrorizes his poor mom. He sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths for no particular reason; he could have just escaped and let them live. But he's Hamlet and we root for him because that's how theater works! (Even though Claudius would probably be a better king than him, if we're being honest.) It would be mighty boring otherwise.
I do also think that the second half of Dune 2 was almost absurdly rapid and overstuffed with plotting, to a degree that was distracting and just kind of bad. Dune 2 should have ended when Paul decides to go south and Dune 3 should have picked up with the Water of Life episode there...
I've read the books, seen the old movie (which I despised for some reason), seen the TV series and I loved Dune 2, for all of the reasons Freddie just enumerated. And I have always rooted for Paul and House Atreides. The scenes with the sand worms were terrific. Shai-Halud forever.
There's a C. S. Lewis quote about Jesus that is really important when reading Dune:
“Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened"
The simple fact is that Paul IS the Lisan al-Gaib. It doesn't matter that it was a Bene Gesserit lie to start with, it's a lie that happened to be true. Once he drank the water of life and looked to the place where no Bene Gesserit can see, the lies became true. The only real quibble is that it was Leto II who lead humanity to the Golden Path.
So all the stuff about false prophets is great, and the doubt is a great lesson, but at the end of the story it actually doesn't matter because he IS space Jesus and he does lead the Fremen to Paradise.
The Lisan al-Gaib and the Kwisatz Haderach are two different things, although Paul happens to be both. But the fact that he's the only man able to consume the spice essence and access his ancestral memories does not, in itself, also make him the Fremen Messiah.
But sure, I guess by definition if he fulfills the messiah prophecy he is in fact the messiah, even if the prophecy was a bit of propaganda that became self-fulfilling.
Reminds me of the Luc Moullet take that “On fascism, only the point of view of someone who has been tempted is of any interest”
Something missing from lots of contemporary popular criticism is recognition that the purpose of depicting odious behaviour isn’t always to endorse or condemn, but often to investigate why such behaviour could ever be attractive.
I think this is why the John Smith character in Amazon's "Man in the High Castle" ended up stealing the show. Along with Rufus Sewell's excellent portrayal of him.
BASED
and FIRST!!!!
I've always had a hard time getting into Dune, so part 2 might be the first time I've actually absorbed what the story is supposed to be about. And, frankly, my reaction to seeing Paul start a holy was was: good. This is the Bene Gesserit plan spinning out of control and completely backfiring. I'm glad they lost control. I'm glad their plans to manipulate civilization are falling apart. It's probably a good thing.
It's one detail I don't quite understand, what the other characters know about how manipulative the Bene Gesserit are. Does the Emperor know? People seem to know they're up to something, but if they do they seem to oddly not care. Or is this Herbert's commentary on how power creates its own justifications in the minds of the subjugated?
The Emperor knows, and he knows that he would fall without them. The movie doesn't go into as much detail on other factions, so the Bene Gesserit get an outsized presence in the film, but in the book universe everyone is scheming.
The Space Guild is scheming, the Great Houses are scheming. The Ixians scheme. The Bene Gesserit are arguably better at it than others, but it's all part of the plans within plans that make up the universe. So everyone knows they are scheming, but everyone also thinks they can use them for their own schemes.
The colour palette for the arena scene on Giedi Prime was worth the price of admission alone. And I agree that it is annoying to have internet people overexplain a book series I have loved since I was a teenager.
This doesn't need me to add anything to it, but I will because I can; isn't it suggested in the first book, or perhaps in the second, that the jihad is also necessary to cause chaos and re-mix the genes of humanity? Like, I kinda thought that Herbert's Dune was a little bit pro-jihad
Yep. Herbert pushes the death of billions as a good thing.... it is almost as bad as Thanos....
I think in the big picture the story is clearly pro-Jihad. Paul is explicitly unwilling to start the Jihad until he has his visions and sees that the alternative futures for humanity are even more awful.
Interpreting Paul as just another Genghis Khan, conquering for regular old self-aggrandizement, is kind of weird. His prescience puts him beyond normal human moral evaluation because he can kill a hundred billion people and actually know that the alternative was extinction for the entire human race 10,000 years down the road.
He's ultimately unwilling to go all the way and become the God-Emperor, so he's still a little human, but I don't think there's any real question that the story thinks Paul and his descendents are basically doing something inhuman but necessary.
Hell yeah brother.
Agree on Fight Club too - the criticism that Pitt is too alluring, seductive etc and it confuses the message re toxic masculinity like … completely misses the point. Toxic masculinity wouldn’t be so dangerous if it weren’t so seductive to lonely, discontented men!! You’re supposed to fall for him, and then feel uncomfortable because of it! That’s why it’s good!
Not directly related, but I was won over to Team TimCham by his performance in "Bones and All". It's by the director of "Call Me by Your Name" (a film which I still don't understand the hype for), but represents a massive step up in quality. The film is equal parts heartbreaking and revolting, and TimCham gives us a character who is an unrepentant monster who we fall in love with anyway.
i love the point about the need for the character to be cool. paul is cool, he can do cool stuff, he’s really good at stuff which is cool, and we all want to be cool and talented and effective so of course we identify with him. this isn’t my most thoughtful point about dune, but i have loved the book for a long time and even knowing all the outcomes of paul’s choices doesn’t change the fact that it’s enjoyable because it’s fun to root for paul.
I'm on the sixth book. It turns out I like Dune.
I have mixed feelings about Dune 2, but it does a lot of great things, so I'll limit myself to one complaint: it doesn't do a good enough job of conveying Paul's prescience.
Speculative visions are a dime a dozen in movies, usually substituting for the interior monologues that books use to communicate internal doubt and conflict. One of the most interesting things about Dune, though, is that Paul's visions aren't speculative: they are absolutely what's going to happen *. Not "if I fuck this up, billions will die", but "I am choosing to cause the death of billions", which puts a rather fine point on the story. I wish DV has figured out a way to do that, perhaps by featuring visions of things that happen later in the story, then replaying them, frame-for-frame.
* To be more precise, I've always thought that Paul's ability to see the future was really the ability to see exactly how to make a possible future come to pass.
The part that stuck false for me in the film was that the trigger for the full holy war wasn't pulled until the other great houses refused to recognize Paul on the throne. That's when he declared jihad ("We will show them paradise"). He had control of the planet, a lock on spice production, a huge army, and a complete destruction of the Sardukar. Was holy war against the entire galaxy really the only other option? Not subterfuge, biding time, splitting the enemy, negotiations?
My recollection is that there's even less of an explanation in the books. Dune 1 ends with Paul's ascension to the throne; Dune Messiah starts years into the jihad (a term the movie made a point of avoiding) with no explanation of why it was really necessary except some question-begging stuff about Paul's visions saying it was inevitable. The jihad has to happen, and Villeneuve did a better job than Herbert of giving it some kind of rationale.
I found this particular plot insertion non-sensical.
The film largely avoided showing or exploring prescience, which is what made teh story rich and interesting in the first place. The key was that Paul saw no way to avoid jihad, and that's enough - the details are not the point.
Meanwhile, Villeneuve pits the Landsraad against Paul, which makes no sense given their interests, at least initially.
Paul reveals to the Landsraad that the Emperor actually had controlled Arrakis indirectly anyway, and was fine with picking the Houses off one by one. The assumptions that underpinned the reign of House Corrino had been false and invalid. Mohiam was correct to observe at the start of Dune that political tripods are unstable (which was great foreshadowing).
Meanwhile, at the end of Dune, the contours of what Paul was creating was not yet entirely in place, making a move by Houses for pre-emptive total war entirely unwise. The Landsraad members would be better off to act circumspect until they had more time to judge. I'll allow that the film doesn't have time for this, and could arguably be just taking a short-cut.
For the Houses, they would want to determine where their individual interests lay in any realignment, and who they thought might win among the factions. They were schemers, every last one! The Spacing Guild had made its choice because of fear, but some Houses had means of still manipulating actors in the new regime and enhancing their position. As we would see in Dune Messiah and Children of Dune.
Between Dune and Dune Messiah, they would all find Paul's creeping encroachment on their prerogatives to be unacceptable. I find it hard to believe that they would all predict this outcome and instantly decide to come together to restore House Corrino.
I don't really disagree that it doesn't make sense when you think about it, but I do think the ending was a better bridge to the next movie. And idk, I think Herbert, particularly in the second book, leaned a whole lot on "prescient visions say this is inevitable" without explaining WHY it's inevitable, which amounts to a lot of telling rather than showing.
I agree that the movie ending had a better bridge to the next story, absolutely. It also left some things open more, because Herbert didn't know if Messiah would get published.
If anything, the ending is less triumphant than it should have been (it is the peak moment before the fall, after all), and the Emperor is portrayed as largely pathetic (surprisingly, for Walken).
Yeah, after my (not worth getting into here) mixed-to-low feelings about d2ne I went to reread Messiah…there’s virtually nothing…and then figured that at least a Dune Wiki would help me. But no, it’s very very vague, and seems like it’s just about the same actual trigger (refusal of houses to recognize Paul’s ascension); as much as it felt tacked on here Herbert avoids that only by leaving it in prescience and memory only.
Doesn’t make it not a little silly that it looks like Stil and an army just charge the nearest ships and take off, but I guess that’s moviemaking or something
It makes even less sense in the books where it's made more clear that the Guild controls all space travel. Herbert wants to insist that Paul couldn't have prevented the jihad, but all he needed to do was tell the Guild not to transport the Fremen.
The jihad didn't happen in order to obtain or secure Paul's throne. He had the throne the moment (in the book) that he knew how to destroy the spice and could credibly threaten the Guild with that destruction. The Jihad happened because it was what the Fremen wanted and what they were always going to do with their newfound freedom.
The book even refers to the Jihad as a kind of instinctive reaction on the part of humanity's collective unconscious to the stagnation and isolation of the race's genome by living planet-bound lives.
I totally agree. Dune has long been regarded as "unfilmable" and Villeneuve got around that problem by just... skipping the unfilmable parts. But those parts--the interior parts of the story--are really essential to the whole. I was deeply disappointed that neither Jessica's nor Paul's spice visions explained at all the significance of what was happening, what the "Kwisatz Haderach" is, or why it's so important.
The fact that Paul is an *engineered* Chosen One is actually super interesting, but gets left off the table entirely.
Wasn't the engineered Chosen One thing revealed in a later book, not the first one? Sorry, it's been decades since I read it.
No, all the Bene Gesserit engineering stuff is revealed in the first book.
Oh...its been decades since I read it. Is Dune 2 the sequel to Dune 1? I originally thought it was a remake of the first book. I need to re-read/listen to them. I mostly listen because I can do other things at the same time, wash dishes, cook, pile wood...etc.
What we're calling "Dune 2" is the film adaptation of the second part of the first novel. It was split into two movies and the second part, covering the material from Paul's escape into the desert through the end of the novel, was just released.
Yes, a dozen times, yes.
Paul's wrestling with the power of prescience and the doom it brought to humanity were largely skipped over, because that's (one of) the most challenging aspect of bringing the story to the screen. Also, there are some holes in the plot created by not spending a minute or two fleshing out some of the unseen parties, like the Spacing Guild.
These were my favourite books when I read them in the 1970s. I was very disappointed by Dune: Part One for (1) being so loud in the cinema that I found it hard to enjoy and (2) not attempting to adapt the most difficult aspects, which was what Villeneuve repeatedly indicated he was up for. The politics and the metaphysical wrangling with prescience were what provided the depth of the story.
But I really enjoyed Dune: Part Two. It embodies the best of many of film-making's technical and artistic crafts, and is markedly better than what is available today. The worm riding scene is one of the most thrilling, bone-rattling cinematic experiences I can ever recall. When the mainstream cinema industry fails sometime in the next decade, these kinds of films won't be made any more, and I will miss them.
I thought the movies left a lot of the "interlocking systems limit choices" themes out, and prescience is the ultimate expression of those themes. Paul was raised in a culture that required him to take revenge. The Fremen's difficult environment drove the belief in a Messiah. The Bene Gesserits' desire for control created the shape of the Messiah in belief and by breeding him. Paul could see the shape of all that better than anyone and still was unable to choose otherwise. Indeed he went south in the book because he wanted more ability to predict the future. In the film, it's not really clear why he makes that decision because those themes are missing.
"I thought the movies left a lot of the "interlocking systems limit choices" themes out, and prescience is the ultimate expression of those themes."
Coming from a place of having read the book a million years ago (and absorbing very little of it), I did pick up on the idea that Paul could never not make the choices he did. Villeneuve seems to be interested in the idea that foreknowledge removes choice, as seen both here and in Arrival. And knowing Ted Chaing's (author of the story Arrival was based on) work, he also seems to hold that free will might be an illusion. Once you know the outcome, all paths must lead there. You no longer have the ability to make a choice.
All of which to say is: in the movie, it seemed clear that Paul could never not choose revenge. He was going to seek revenge on the Emperor and on House Harkonan regardless. He had no choice in the matter because that's who he is.
What made you think that Paul couldn't choose to avoid revenge in the film?
Because it was what he wanted to do.
Yeah, baby!
Meant to ask, has MENA gone wild on Twitter yet? It did for Dune 1, but that was released on streaming so all the shut-in social media addicts could watch it. MENA, if you're unfamiliar, is an acronym from the BIPOC school that I heard only ever on social media for the week preceding Dune's release and the fortnight following. Then forgotten.
This is a fun post! I guess I only would say that the idea of the "seductive" quality of Paul and his movement is really an intrinsic property of theater going back to...well, Aristotle, who was adamant that drama can neither be about straightforwardly good or normal people. To choose a concrete example: Hamlet (another hero son of great privilege who has to fight an usurper and an usurper's younger buddy) isn't a good guy by any normal standards. He randomly kills Polonius through a curtain without knowing who's actually there. He terrorizes his poor mom. He sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths for no particular reason; he could have just escaped and let them live. But he's Hamlet and we root for him because that's how theater works! (Even though Claudius would probably be a better king than him, if we're being honest.) It would be mighty boring otherwise.
I do also think that the second half of Dune 2 was almost absurdly rapid and overstuffed with plotting, to a degree that was distracting and just kind of bad. Dune 2 should have ended when Paul decides to go south and Dune 3 should have picked up with the Water of Life episode there...
I've read the books, seen the old movie (which I despised for some reason), seen the TV series and I loved Dune 2, for all of the reasons Freddie just enumerated. And I have always rooted for Paul and House Atreides. The scenes with the sand worms were terrific. Shai-Halud forever.
There's a C. S. Lewis quote about Jesus that is really important when reading Dune:
“Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened"
The simple fact is that Paul IS the Lisan al-Gaib. It doesn't matter that it was a Bene Gesserit lie to start with, it's a lie that happened to be true. Once he drank the water of life and looked to the place where no Bene Gesserit can see, the lies became true. The only real quibble is that it was Leto II who lead humanity to the Golden Path.
So all the stuff about false prophets is great, and the doubt is a great lesson, but at the end of the story it actually doesn't matter because he IS space Jesus and he does lead the Fremen to Paradise.
For he IS the Kwisatz Haderach!
The Lisan al-Gaib and the Kwisatz Haderach are two different things, although Paul happens to be both. But the fact that he's the only man able to consume the spice essence and access his ancestral memories does not, in itself, also make him the Fremen Messiah.
But sure, I guess by definition if he fulfills the messiah prophecy he is in fact the messiah, even if the prophecy was a bit of propaganda that became self-fulfilling.
Its a little like Neil Gaiman and American Gods, gods may be gods, but they are created by the collective belief of people.
Reminds me of the Luc Moullet take that “On fascism, only the point of view of someone who has been tempted is of any interest”
Something missing from lots of contemporary popular criticism is recognition that the purpose of depicting odious behaviour isn’t always to endorse or condemn, but often to investigate why such behaviour could ever be attractive.
I think this is why the John Smith character in Amazon's "Man in the High Castle" ended up stealing the show. Along with Rufus Sewell's excellent portrayal of him.
Fuck yeah! Let's go!