‘Dune Part 2 was Better than the Book, Akhtually’: A Discussion on the Addition of the Fundamentalists of the South

This is an essay on the themes and messages of Paul's arc, and a discussion of the writing similarities and workings of the Dune movies and novels. The intention is not to get the book changed or put it down, but for writers to have a better grasp of perspective, prose, and story structure.

 

The content of this blog/article presupposes that the reader has some degree of familiarity with the plot and writing style of the 1965 ‘Dune’ novel by Frank Herbert and both the ‘Dune’ and ‘Dune Part 2’ movies directed by Denis Villeneuve and screenwritten by Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth—and it also requires the reader to have some awareness about the plot and themes of ‘Dune: Messiah’, the sequel novel to the Herbert’s ‘Dune’. However, for those uninitiated with novels adequate context has been provided, and the differences between what is on the page and what is on screen as is relevant to this article have been highlighted.

 

The original Dune Saga is entrenched in themes and messages, from discussions of oppression, ecological collapse and environmental exploitation, to the portrayal of how the advancement of technology (‘thinking machines’, as Herbert puts it) takes away our ability to process and interpret life itself, how it changes us from creators to consumers—and so much more. Villeneuve’s adaptation of the first book focuses solely on the story of Paul which comprises the first two novels, as he has stated in multiple interviews; whatever lies beyond is also beyond his consideration, and most things that do not concern the themes central to Paul have reduced importance and screentime (mentats, the spacing guild, count Fenring, CHOAM, the list goes on).  

So, what are the themes central to Paul and his arc? As I discern, they are:

1. To highlight the dangers of religious fanaticism.
2. To show the harm a charismatic leader can bring to The People; here, Herbert cites Kenedy¹, I cite Hitler², and many more can be made examples of: the core idea of the cancerous charismatic leader is the corruption of the core values of The People they were meant to lead (notice how the saying went from ‘turn Arrakis into a Paradise’ to ‘lead them to Paradise’ in the movie, or how they cared more about their Mahdi winning a skirmish and play for power rather than the entirety of their spice fields being blown away with literal atomics). 
3. To be a deconstruction of the trope of the White Savior, which is the trope where a person from a ‘civilised’ (i.e., western) society, usually of white background and in most cases, a man, saves or becomes the saviour of a ‘savage’ or marginalised community—a very harmful perpetuation of a supremacist ideology that puts down the non-white group as having no agency of their own and needing to be saved by a white man.

Understanding this, we ought to also understand the problem Frank Herbert faced with getting this across to audiences. Hebert states in his When I Was Writing Dune that ‘Parts of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune was written out before Dune was completed. They fleshed out more in the writing, but the essential story remained intact.’ Yet, it is also known that many readers came out of the first Dune book with the notion that Paul’s a great guy and that he was completely justified³ in his actions—and that to clarify this misunderstanding, Frank wrote extensively in Dune Messiah the horrifying consequences of Paul’s jihad to properly paint him as the monster and tyrant he is.⁴

And, while Dune Messiah is one of the most heart-wrenching and poignant pieces of literature I have ever read, for many it is a whiplash and extremely distasteful. This recoiling reaction had been common when the book was released in 1969, and it is common still.

—But I cannot blame the reader for this. Understanding that Dune was a cautionary tale and not a heroic journey requires of the reader a certain degree of media literacy and the ability to analyse the theme beyond what is presented directly in the prose. A task made harder if the reader has not tackled a book with such a high density of ideas as Dune before, where every page needs to be mulled over and digested for the ideas it presents, and where the characters’ thoughts and motivations need to be questioned and cross-examined as we ought to do our leaders. Well, I certainly didn’t get the memo on my first read, having come off of reading only cool and quirky albeit pulpy and depthless sci-fantasy stories. Getting told that you fell into the trap of a persuasive Hitler is not an “oh shit, dope, let’s try and figure that out next time beforehand” moment for everyone. In fact, Dune Messiah uprooting and recontextualising everything you came to understand and believe throughout some 600 pages in the course of 250 pages can—understandably—bring out quite a negative reaction.

Equally so, I also cannot fully blame Frank Herbert and his writing. One may complain that the messaging is put in too subtly, but the author is not responsible for vomiting the themes into the mouths of the readers.

The main reason many cannot derive the themes within Paul’s arc, I believe, is because the original Dune novel is written in the third-person omniscient perspective. 3P Omniscient is the point of view where the narrator knows it all and freely moves between the thoughts of any character(s) and their thoughts, and has infinite knowledge about everything in the world. This is the perspective that a lot of large-scale novels like Dune and LOTR are written in, and is a perspective that is rarely seen in contemporary novels. And for good reason too: 3P Omni. is incredibly difficult to pull off properly without coming across as jarring, disconnected, head-hoppy, and info-dumpy. I have tried and failed multiple times as a writer trying to write in this POV, having succeeded only once and that too for merely a small segment of a larger narrative. As a side note, readers not used to this perspective may feel disoriented while reading Dune, but this does not mean that the 3P Omni. POV has been executed poorly, merely that the reader has not been subjected to that much information density before.

(The convention nowadays is third person limited, aka, third person close, where the narrator knows only what the singular point of view character knows and thinks and sees the world through their eyes.)

The main use-case of this POV is when the author needs to get a lot of information and moving parts across to the reader and/or needs the reader to be aware of things that the characters are not aware of—both of which are the case with Dune. Dune is framed like a Greek tragedy. For example, the knowledge that Doctor Yueh betrays the House Atreides is not a shock to the readers. The reader is told much in advance by the narrator what exactly the doctor is going to do. This replaces the feeling of surprise with tragedy and forces the reader to engage in a much more meaningful manner with the implication of the doctor’s actions and motivations.

Dune would simply not be Dune if it were not written from this perspective

Unfortunately, a problem that oft arises with 3P Omni. is that the connection of the reader with the characters is reduced. The less the psychic distance between the reader and the character is, the more the author can get away with directly stating the theme. Direct parts of the theme that a character narrates in a first-person narrative come across more naturally there than in a traditional third-person close POV. Similarly, while a third-person limited story can still get away with the narrator talking about the dangers of a charismatic leader as it will come across as the character’s own musings, this absolutely cannot be done with a 3P Omni. perspective. There, it will end up seeming like a tasteless action done on the part of the author who considers the reader to be too stupid to understand the themes and meanings otherwise.

Hence why I believe that Frank Herbert never stated a single one of his themes (outside of the epigraphs, which allow him to be a bit more direct) out loud through the narration.

And here comes the clever solution posed by the Dune Part 2 movie!

In contrast to the book where all the fremen believe in the Lisan-al Gaib and worship Paul as their Mahdi, the movie has two factions: the (slightly) more habitable North where they don’t believe in the prophecies planted by the bene gesserit, and the more inhospitable and harsher South where exist the fundamentalists⁵.

The existence of these contrasting groups allows for there to be conversations about the aforementioned three themes without the need for a narrator to tell everything. The content isn’t dumbed down and told to you which would have been the case if one of the characters had a realisation about this and said it into the void before dying or something—a very tasteless thing, but not wholly uncommon in book to movie adaptations.

Juxtaposition when played off through opposing characters and their dialogue/discussions with each other is so inherently tied up with the plot and its conflict that it comes across as believable. That is the key takeaway I wish for the reader to have from this.⁶ The fraction of the viewers going “go Paul!” is lower for the movie than it is for people who have only read the first book. This is also due to Denis Villeneuve’s expert directing and the wonderful acting, because of which the characters were believable—but without this writing detail, I do not believe that that would have been the case.

Therefore, circling back to the titular topic: I strongly think if Frank Herbert had done the same thing for his novel, he wouldn’t have faced the problem of getting the point across through solely Messiah for the many. A God-like narrator telling you that Paul is a bad guy outright in the first novel itself would have been distasteful, but the same cannot be said for characters from the Northern Hemisphere arguing with Fundamentalists of the South.

Doing this would not have circumvented the need for a Dune Messiah, of course (by God I do not wish to live in a timeline where Dune Messiah was never written), but it would certainly reduce the whiplash for the unsuspecting and Paul-supporting reader. In fact, I’d argue that if this were the case then Messiah would have accentuated the points of religious zealously, and counteracted the notion of a white saviour even more poignantly.

 

 

P.S.: I wrote this entire essay thingy in the Orthodox Herbartian font on my Word file. I did it ’cause I thought I’d make a funny point about people “who believe in the sanctity of the original words in the novel as dearly, blindly, and zealously as the fremen do about their prophy of the Mahdi” or some shit like that, but honestly I’ve lost the point and idk how to string together the proper phrasing for that joke without it coming across as tactless and defensive. Now my eyes just hurt ’cause of the bloody font, and I have nothing to show for it.  

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FOOTNOTES

[1] ‘I wrote the Dune series because I had this idea that charismatic leaders ought to come with a warning label on their forehead: “May be dangerous to your health.” One of the most dangerous presidents we had in this century was John Kennedy’ –Frank Herbert

[2] ‘The more helpless they seemed to be, the greater the demand became for a “strong man,” a political messiah who would lead Germany out of economic misery and point the way towards renewed national greatness. More than any other German politician, Hitler presented himself as the answer to these hopes for salvation. The hour was at hand for the man who already enjoyed the quasi-religious worship of his supporters and who had long identified with the role of the charismatic Führer.’ – Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939

[3] One may ask the question “Well, what else was Paul supposed to do? This was his only choice.” And like, no, absolutely it was not. He was fully aware that taking revenge would lead to all this death, and he still chose it. I have my own ideas as to what he should have done instead, but this is something I won’t delve into in this post because it’s a nuanced discussion too long for a brief tangent. There are many posts online discussing it which I’m sure the interested parties can look up.

[4] 'Gumbel: What is the message [of Dune]? What is the statement that you are attempting to make here?

Herbert: Well, don’t trust leaders to always be right. I worked to create a leader in this book who would be really an attractive, charismatic person—for all the good reasons, not for any bad reasons. Then, power comes to him. He makes decisions. Some of his decisions made for millions of people. Millions of people! Millions upon millions of people! Don’t work out too well.'

– NBC's Bryant Gumbel interviews Frank Herbert in 198

[5] It is often the case that people in more extreme environments revert to more rigid and religious beliefs. Things that are true and have worked have kept them alive up until that point, so they see no reason to question and change their ways for that would only add risk. Desperate conditions also breed the desire for salvation and dogmatic belief much deeper than places where one has the luxury to ponder about larger, more abstract ideas.

[6] Yes, I am being blatant in an article where I’m pointing out how not to be blatant in writing … ironic, I’m aware.