Thanks to the Spice, if Paul Atredies goes south, he knows billions of people will die. His dilemma opens the doors for some interesting discussion, though. Was Karl Marx right? What is Dune’s “Water of Life?” Do the pre-born have a voice? Eve and I get sand between our toes again as we return to Arakkis for Dune, Part 2 this month.
Denis Villeneuve once again directs Dune, Part 2, which features Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, and Javier Bardem. This follow-up to the 2021 Dune also brings back Josh Brolin and adds Florence Pugh and Christopher Walken. With music by the incomparable Hans Zimmer, Dune, Part 2 is every bit the sprawling epic that whisks viewers away to Frank Herbert’s Dune universe.
Please accept our apologies for the trouble with the feel during February and March. The entire back-end infrastructure for Are You Just Watching changed recently, and we didn’t realize that some of our automation failed. We’ve got it back under control and better than ever, though!
Initial Impressions
Dune, Part 2 is undoubtedly a worthy successor to the initial offering, and once the trilogy is complete, it will be a “boxed set” for the ages. (Yes, yes. I know that boxed sets aren’t a thing anymore. I’m old, so cut me a break, would ya?)
Villeneuve is producing one of the most “true to source material” trilogies we’ve encountered. Every change is intentional, serving the underlying story best and helping the audience grasp Dune’s complex themes.
Even the opening voiceover sets the proverbial gun on the mantle with Florence Pugh’s Princess Irulan narrating the recap of events, hinting at her more significant role in the movie’s emotional climax. But even with the recap, you may be lost if you try to consume Dune, Part 2, without first watching 2021’s Dune.
We aren’t pleased with some of the casting choices made for Dune. In episode 122, we mentioned that neither Eve nor I were fans of Dave Bautista. It’s not that we dislike him; it’s just that our limited exposure to his roles has been one-dimensional. That may change someday. Dune, Part 2, though, adds another questionable choice to the cast: Christopher Walken as the Emperor. Walken is a masterful actor cursed by his own popularity, so it is difficult to see him in a “minor” role like this and not think of cowbells or Superbowl commercials. He needs a chance to make the character his own. The casting is doubly questionable. Even though he is 700 years old, the Emperor has been using Spice to stay young in the source material. He and Irulan should appear roughly the same age. We find this choice interesting because it is essential to the overarching story. It helps to demonstrate how much the empire depends on the Spice. It’s not just space travel, but decadence and well. We’re confused about why Villeneuve downplays Spice’s role in Dune and Dune, Part 2.
In this version of Herbert’s Dune, Villeneuve dropped the true-to-book two-year time skip that the 1984 movie included so he could reasonably keep Paul’s fury burning. I also appreciate how everything is so much MORE than anything we’ve seen so far. The worms are bigger and faster. The storms are deadlier. The planet is more vast. Dune used to be an unfilmable story, but Villeneuve and the team are proving that wrong.
Finally, I’m not an anthropologist, but I like the authenticity of the Fremen culture. It feels complete in and of itself and accurate to historical cultures that Herbert used for inspiration, like the Bedouin.
Voice of the Unborn
We mentioned how Villeneuve decided not to include the two-year time skip that is included in the book so he could avoid the distraction of a two-year-old who walked and talked like an adult. The way he decided to get around that was to have Alia communicate through her mother from within the womb. While it may not have been intentional, the decision to have Alia communicate with her mother from the womb is significant. As Christians, we believe that abortion is wrong. Further, Eve and I specifically think that the child in the womb is every bit the image of God as the rest of us. The movie powerfully humanizes the unborn by giving Alia a voice in Dune, Part 2.
I chose you before I formed you in the womb; I set you apart before you were born. I appointed you a prophet to the nations. (Jeremiah 1:5)
God willing, this inclusion will lead those who consider the unborn less than human to reconsider their preconceptions.
In the book, though, Alia’s role is not minor. Because she possesses the memories of all the preceding Fremen reverend mothers, she manipulates events and people from when she was born. If Villeneuve stays true to the story moving forward as he has thus far, Alia’s role will only become more significant and more tragic. The memories she received from the Water of Life while in Jessica’s womb are a curse throughout her character arc. In the books, Alia goes on to become a paranoid, insane despot after Paul’s “death.” For me, this highlights the importance of experience in growing in wisdom. Where normal children learn everything by experience, Alia’s inherited life experiences eventually overcome her. Her story points to the wonder of God’s creation, even in its fallen state. He intends that humans learn gradually through experience, guided by loving parents.
But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peace-loving, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without pretense. (James 3:17)
Following Duty Instead of Heart
Herbert’s Dune books tell the story of monarchical dynastic early medieval politics in a space setting. Men and women never married for love but for position. Every family would either live or die by these arranged marriages. Dune takes that concept writ large. Royalty married those who had to secure their families’ lineage and power. Jessica was not Duke Leto’s wife but his concubine. In the books, Chani falls into this role with Paul, but in Dune, Part 2, they set Paul and Chani’s relationship up as a love triangle with Irulan. The strange part is that it may have been necessary just because the exposition needed to prepare modern audiences for the cultural differences would have ruined more than just the pacing. It’s a shame, though, because it sacrifices the nuances intrinsic to the politics of the books.
Throughout the first and much of Dune, Part 2, Paul does everything he can to resist the need to travel south. He knows that his doing so will trigger a galactic jihad, killing billions. By the movie’s end, Paul must embrace the destiny his visions have been showing him. He also knows that he must marry Irulan to have any control over the upcoming events. For the culture in the books, this is not quite as significant or disrespectful to Chani, but Villeneuve plays up her emotional state to set the stage for some later conflict. For the first time in a very long time, we have a film from Hollywood that does not try to tell us that “following your heart” is the solution to every problem.
The dynastic marriage paradigm featured in the books is far closer to the version of marriage we see in the Bible and, ironically, in opposition to God’s desire for it. From literally the very beginning, God intended that marriage be between one man and one woman:
This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24)
But God’s people didn’t trust God to see to their needs. David lusted after Bathsheba. Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines—all intended to ensure political position for himself, his family, and his people. But it didn’t work out that way. All of these women led Solomon further from God, not closer.
God’s design for marriage has always been that the man and the woman become one flesh, complimenting each other in ways that make them more extraordinary together than they can be apart. We are to see this in the church as well. Without Christ, the church is nothing more than a Rotary Club with special bread and juice. It is Christ that makes His church so much more:
In the same way, husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hates his own flesh but provides and cares for it, just as Christ does for the church (Ephesians 5:28-29)
In Dune, Part 2, Paul longs for God’s design for marriage. He wants to be a “normal” Fremen with Chani, living a “normal” Fremen life and raising a family in the Fremen way. But in Villeneuve’s version, Paul’s desire is thwarted by his role as the Kwisatz Haderach, regardless of whether the Bene Gesserit engineers it.
The Water of Life
Herbert and the movies use the mechanic of the Water of Life to explain much of the miraculous from the story. Dune, Part 2 doesn’t drive the point home, but all reverend mothers across the galaxy depend on the Water of Life to pass their memories from one to another, but that Water can only come from Arrakis because it is a byproduct of worm death. Further, the Water of Life is lethal to the unprepared, so the Bene Gesserit developed an ultra-secret process for detoxifying it internally, a process they have kept from men.
Herbert may have intended the phrase “The Water of Life” to poke fun at Christianity, but followers of “the Way” know the real water of life. The living water is not toxic but life-giving and Spirit-filled:
Now God has revealed these things to us by the Spirit, since the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except his spirit within him? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who comes from God, so that we may understand what has been freely given to us by God. (1 Corinthians 2:10-12)
In a way, though, the Living Water is fatal, but since Christ defeated death, it does not have the last word:
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him, because we know that Christ, having been raised from the dead, will not die again. Death no longer rules over him. For the death he died, he died to sin once for all time; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So, you too consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:8–11)
The Opium of the Masses
Throughout the Dune books, Herbert uses religion as Karl Marx viewed it to placate and control the population. In the world that both Marx and Herbert lived in, that was much more common. The Information Age was still decades away, and the powerful could use the limited information available to the working class to manipulate them. One of the most potent ways to do that was through their faith. Let’s face it—theology is complex. And most people of that day and age barely had time to sleep, let alone study the Word.
In Dune, Part 2, Chani is not a believer, and part of her relationship with Paul is based on the idea that he does not believe in the prophecy either.
The corruption of the fall even corrupts God’s design for His church. While the powerful may have used religion to control the lower classes in the past, God has always intended that His followers be faithful, humble, and just:
Mankind, he has told each of you what is good and what it is the LORD requires of you: to act justly, to love faithfulness, and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)
John Adams, the second president of the United States, said, “[The United States government] will not insure freedom and prosperity unless it is supported by a moral, virtuous population.” Adams also said, “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” In the same way that the elite misused the church, we are seeing the slow (but reversible) collapse of the United States. As soon as the golden rule becomes “Do unto others before they do unto you,” the moral foundation breaks down.
We do, however, speak a wisdom among the mature, but not a wisdom of this age, or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. On the contrary, we speak God’s hidden wisdom in a mystery, a wisdom God predestined before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age knew this wisdom, because if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. (1 Corinthians 2:6-8)
The faith of Christ through the Holy Spirit is more than a mindless opiate—it is a living, growing relationship with the Creator of the Universe! If we live out our faith, we demonstrate Christ’s love to the benefit of others.
If anyone has this world’s goods and sees a fellow believer in need but withholds compassion from him—how does God’s love reside in him? Little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in action and in truth. (1 John 3:17-18)
That is why the church must proceed from the Word and not from a personality. Only in the Word will we find the truth in faith and life.
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