Dune 2 - An Ideological Critique

Exposing Hollywood's addiction to parasitic subversion of well known tales

Dune 2 is Dennis Villeneuve’s attempt to take a complex story and flatten it into a culture war polemic, a monotonous drone consisting of a single beating thumper. The producer/director/cowriter has filled his unfaithful adaptation of Frank Herbert’s beloved novel with undisguised political mantras under the assumption that the mindless masses of moviegoers will swallow the ideological payload whole, much like the brainless sandworms of Arrakis.

I have decided to write this review under the tectonic school banner because the movie perfectly illustrates the same kind of shallow thinking that comes from both sides of those obsessed with culture war, which does nothing to perpetuate or inspire the growth of actual culture.

The ideological messaging of Dune 2, while attempting to subvert common interpretations of the beloved science fiction novel, is hardly subversive in and of itself, as it reflects the status quo political views of Hollywood, Washington D.C., and Villeneuve’s native Canada, especially as reflected under the current regime of Justin Trudeau.

Indeed, the entire 2 hours and 46 minutes could be pitched as a surreptitious advertisement for the Canadian Government's latest (and possibly final) social engineering program, Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAID. Villeneuve’s vision represents an entire galaxy of villains, all of whom are guilty of audacious attempts to impose their will on the lives of other free individuals. 

The only ones worthy of survival are the omniscient director, wise enough to see everyone else groping different parts of the elephant, and his on-screen avatar, the intrepid heroine who boldly walks away from the levers of power.

Because no one would want to read a story that expresses Villeneuve’s worldview directly, he instead uses a rough sketch of Herbert’s narrative as a vehicle for his own ideas. Virtually none of Herbert’s prose makes its way into the film, as it truly represents a reanimated corpse of the narrative that he has sacrificed to tell his own tale. 

The story of a fifteen year old boy struggling to adapt to a new culture for the sake of his survival is replaced with a narrative of a tiny napoleonic narcissist manipulating the customs of simpleminded religious folk to fulfill his toy soldier dreams of planetary conquest. 

The foreshadowing of Villeneuve’s parasitic intent was present in the first Dune, where he changed the sex of a pivotal character in the person of Liet Kynes. While this was seen by many as a rather innocuous nod to the 21st century insistence on more equitable on-screen representation of sex, race, and gender minorities, the evidence of a more nefarious intent has been present since the release of the first film. 

Here are some quotes from Sharon Duncan-Brewster, the actress chosen to portrays Kynes,:

“As far as Denis was concerned, it was all about concentrating on the essence of this person, not the fact that this person was a man, so that’s what we went with first,” she adds.

“I don’t think it matters that Kynes in the book is a man. I think what’s important is what Kynes stands for, and that’s definitely what Denis stayed true to.”

“This human being manages to basically keep the peace amongst many people. Women are very good at that, so why can’t Kynes be a woman? Why shouldn’t Kynes be a woman?”¹

Beyond the framing that this change was one of gender and not of sex, the quotes reveal some insightful beliefs and contradictions from both the actress and the director. 

First, that Dennis insists that the “essence” Kynes is something separate from his nature as a man reveals a belief that sex is non-essential will have further ramifications in the second film.  

Brewster insists that “what Kynes stands for '' is distinct from his role as a man, but Kynes role as a man is also that of a father, the father of Chani, the love interest of Paul. This would be less significant if Kynes were instead portrayed as the mother of Chani, but while there was doubt at the release of the first film, the second film makes it clear that there was no intention to indicate that Chani was the daughter of Kynes in Villeneuve’s version of the story.

Lastly, while the first two quotes were focused on erasing the essential nature of sex from the character of Kynes, the third quote implies that the virtuous elements of Kynes character are in fact distinctly feminine in nature. This reinforces the narrative assault on traditional masculine virtues that will permeate the rest of the movie.

With Chani removed from her connection to Kynes, and the distinctly Fremen goal of purposefully restoring the ecological viability of Arakkis, she is recast as a career warrior, with other young women “from the north” who represent the voice of reason in opposition to the religious fanaticism of the patriarchal Fremen in the south.

In his latest film, Villeneuve uses narrative-breaking language to communicate a purely propagandistic message, as at least four times, the “southern” Fremen are referred to as “fundamentalists” 

The insertion of this modernistic word, the history and etymology of which the writers almost certainly did not research, breaks the narrative by stirring up political ideology of our current day. If the goal of this movie was to tell a consistent and compelling story, a better choice would have been to refer to these “fundamentalists” by their tribal names, or to use an invented word. 

However, because Villeneuve was determined to keep anyone from positively identifying with the religious believers in his story, he inserted this politically charged word to cast villainous aspersions on the group, as well as reveal Paul and Jessica’s purposeful manipulation of the desert rubes.

To further drive home this point, he recasts the character of Stilgar into a superstitious fool worthy of the countless memes now circulating around social media.  

In his continued assault against traditional cultures and beliefs, Villeneuve cuts short the developmental timescale of his film. Instead of Paul developing in maturity before the final confrontation with the emperor, he is now motivated solely by a desire for revenge. Here is the explanation from co-writer Jonathan Spaihts:

“To allow such a long time lapse inevitably would sort of cool the passions of Part One,” Spaihts says. “If Duke Leto’s death were years and years ago, then it would lessen the lingering trauma that all the characters were feeling. We wanted the heat of their passion to be fresh and their wounds to be fresh.”²

This also changes Paul’s reasoning for taking the dangerous water of life. Whereas in the novel he is motivated by his failure to foresee a tragic attack that resulted in the death of his and Chani’s infant son, he is now motivated solely by the need to cement his role as a religious leader, and thereby gain control of the backward Fremen of the south.

Chani, whose only relation to Paul is as a sex partner, now stands in opposition to all of Paul’s choices. His failure to notice her contempt for him subtly reveals that he is not in fact a prescient seer of the future, but a deluded narcissist. He deceptively takes on the role of a messiah, while the only god he truly serves is the male ego. 

Ultimately this movie is most revealing of the contempt in which Villeneuve holds the movie going audience from whom he earns a living. The smug arrogance displayed in his hamfisted attempt to correct those who read Herbert’s novel as a type of hero’s journey reveals his deep disdain for the common man. 

Far from being a novelty, Villeneuve’s film follows in a long tradition of artworks straddling the line between narcissistic egoism and ideological propaganda, a pattern set forth in Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae of artistic men who use their intellect and creative talents as compensation for their lack of prowess in the hierarchy of more traditionally masculine virtues.

But rather than a beta shadow of the young Paul Atreides, the director more closely reflects the image of the aging baron and the impotent emperor; someone who rose to prominence as the artist during the cultural jihad of late stage feminism, unwilling to relinquish their position of authority to anyone who does not practice the same rituals of abasement. 

Despite the monumental achievement in capturing something similar to the true aesthetic of Herbert’s quasi-dystopian universe, the film is just the latest in a long line of smear jobs against the rising voices of masculine affirmation that are starting to give hope to the young men who have been saddled with the label “toxic” since a sonogram first revealed the existence of a dreaded penis.

Indeed, when taken in summary, Villeneuve’s two-part story could be streamlined to the single shrieking cry of the Bene Gesserit “Abomination!”, the label which Herbert’s witches placed on Alia, the infant with born with adult consciousness, but which Villeneuve’s Reverend Mothers levy towards Paul, his representation of all the young men who may rise up to take on the mantle of responsibility offered to them by the late Jordan Peterson, err, Duke Leto. 

In response, the universe echoes back a resounding message to the director seeking to become the Lisan-Al-Gaib to the backward people of the world beneath his own southern border; the true abomination is your film.

1. https://www.dazeddigital.com/film-tv/article/50419/1/denis-villeneuve-dune-changes-gender-of-major-character-sharon-duncan-brewster

2. https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/dune-2-changes-timeline-time-jump-alia-jon-spahits-interview