DUNE (2021) DIR. DENIS VILLENEUVE

FLORENCE PUGH as PRINCESS IRULAN Dune: Part Two (2023) dir. Denis Villeneuve

“Your habits always come hunting after you. The self you construct will haunt you. A ghost wandering around in search of your body, eager to possess you. We are addicted to the self we construct. Slaves to what we have done.”

— Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

anya taylor joy as alia atreides

alia atreides & marie fenring.

"in the blood" by john mayer / portrait of elisabetta gonzaga by raffaello sanzio / adeleide by hiroshi furuyoshi / fatima aamer bilal / fair rosamund and eleanor by frank cadogan cowper

page 184 of dune messiah by frank herbert

Doctor Yueh

Doctor Wellington Yueh is a name as tragic as it is treacherous. A companion and servant to the Atreides, he would betray them for the promise of a liar and the spectre of vengence, though only death and ruin came from his efforts. Efforts he made for love.

Even Amundsen

The real tragedy of Dune (which the movies did an excellent job of portraying) is that almost none of the characters we see have any real choice in what they do. The only choices they have are in how they do them.

Duke Leto must take House Atreides to Arrakis, or be declared a traitor to the Imperium and hunted down. He knows it's a trap and that the Emperor is, in the very best case scenario, setting him and his family up for a serious reversal of their fortunes (far more likely, he's outright scheming to get them killed). But he doesn't have a choice. He must go to Arrakis. He does go to Arrakis. He dies.

Paul and Jessica must flee into the desert or the Harkonnen soldiers will kill them both brutally. They must go to the Fremen for refuge or the desert will kill them. They go. They find that the Fremen have already begun to mythologise Paul. He's the Mahdi, the Lisan al-Gaib. There is no option for Paul to be a normal person here. He is either the messiah or he is a false prophet, and false prophets in a nation of true believers don't live for long.

So Paul fits himself into the mold of the myth. He becomes Muad'dib and leads the Fremen in war because they believe too much in him to let him be anything less. Is it manipulation? Yes. But because the Bene Gesserit have been manipulating the Fremen for centuries, Paul has no choice but to continue it if he wants to live.

He sees the holy war at the end of every timeline by glimpses and he fights to avoid it. To avoid it, he becomes the Kwizatz Haderach and gains the ability to fully see timelines, and thereby he makes himself that much more of the Fremen messiah and brings himself one step closer to the holy war. Every choice he makes is a choice for survival and an attempt to avoid that war, the war he cannot escape because every step he makes along the path to survival is one more step towards the war. He has no more choice in what he becomes than his father had in whether or not he went to Arrakis.

The only people who ever had a choice were the Emperor and Gaius Helen Mohiam. They made their choice, to exterminate House Atreides, and thereby they took everyone's choices away, including their own. Once they sent House Atreides to Arrakis, the entire plot was inevitable.

Behind the scenes of “Dune”

baby acquired 

We’re Harkonnens. So this is how we’ll survive, by being Harkonnens.

Dune: Part Two (2024) dir. Denis Villeneuve