Excellent movie. Highly recommend. Slow but beautiful. Great performances, music, cinematography. Gonna go read the book now. I had no problem following the movie but someone I went with got lost so ymmv.
Excellent movie. Highly recommend. Slow but beautiful. Great performances, music, cinematography. Gonna go read the book now. I had no problem following the movie but someone I went with got lost so ymmv.
House Atreides represents the kinder, liberal wing of imperialism, e.g. the Democrats. Paul's father expressed concern for the safety of his workers and was polite to the face of the indigenous Fremen, but ultimately unwilling to heed their demands that they leave. They don't question the extractivist model, but at least they feel bad about it.
House Harkonnen represents MAGA Trump imperialism. They simply ordered the Fremen to be exterminated. "You have to kill their families".
I haven't read the books so I don't know if this analogy continues to hold.
This is basically the thrust of the book, yeah. I've seen the "white savior" take a lot since Dune is back in the news, and it's just such a trite reading with zero analysis attached. The themes of colonialism, prophecy (and invention/co-optation thereof), imperialism, eugenics, etc. (and how all those things interweave) are way more interesting than the Wikipedia plot summary everyone appears to be basing their hot takes on. It doesn't help that Frank Herbert can build a world like no other but can't write prose to save his fucking life.
They don't even consider that Paul is Greek-coded and therefore not white
I thought the point was the Atreides basically appropriated Greek Culture wholesale to shore up their power base, much as western European countries do today. They're implied to be the descendants of Agamemnon, a literal Bronze age monarch...which is uh...highly unlikely to be true.
To be fair, that could have been any Agamemnon
Naming my son Atreus and only giving him an inheritance if he names his own son Agamemnon so my family can climb the ranks of space nobility and claim direct descendency from the Myceneans at Troy as a bit.
Which as I recall the founder of the Great house actually did while also claiming to be a direct descendent from history's most famous asshole rapist maurauder.
No it totally does. Ultimately House Atreides "wins" but are revealed to be fascists as well on a potentially worse scale than House Harkonnen ever could be.
deleted by creator
Yeah you're totally right, the contradictions became too much and it all had to explode sometime.
Oh no the Fremen Jihad is explicitly the worst thing that has happened to the universe to date, they're pretty clear about that.
You're on the money. I wish they had been more explicit about the duke wanting to basically exploit the Fremen for his own gain. In the book he plans to use them as an army believing that they could match the sardukar in battle. It's why he walks into the obvious trap. He's not trying to wipe them out, but like you said he's not going to leave them alone like they want.
Pretty much exactly. Leto is the noble reasonable ruler and gets his shit kicked in because the hegemon feels threatened by him. All his courtesy and decorum amounts to exactly dick, the Harkonnens win a complete victory and go back to brutalizing the population. The term "Slave pens of geidi prime" gets used a lot. Then Paul spends some time in the desert with Ibn Wahhab and things get real Jihadi.