‘Dune Part 2’: How to Gesture Vaguely at Everything
How do you tell a story like Dune in a mere (checks notes) five hours? You reduce most of it to hints.
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The whole concept of unfilmable or unadaptable books (or other media) is bullshit, of course—what people mean when they say that a book is unadaptable or unfilmmable is that it’s impossible to make a marketable, general audience film from the source for what Hollywood regards as a reasonable budget1. If you allow yourself an infinite budget, green light a ten-hour run time, and assume you’ll lose every single penny, sure, you can adapt anything into a film2.
Dune is one of those book people often think of as impossible to adapt. Dune superfans used to breathlessly tell you that it’s too complex and deep to be a film3, which was half-true, and the 1984 brain tumor that is David Lynch’s stab at the adaptation just seemed to prove it: Dune is freaky, and getting that freakiness onto a screen without looking utterly ridiculous ain’t easy.
Then came Denis Villeneuve and his co-writers (Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth credited), along with Timothée Chalamet’s youthful hair and Zendaya’s intimidating sex appeal4. Dune and Dune: Part Two really do put Frank Herbert’s legendary book up on the screen effectively. It looks great, that’s for sure. It’s comprehensible, moves well, and is really very entertaining. And he did all this in just 321 minutes, which is five and a third hours to you and me, and also remarkably efficient considering the heft of the book5.
Overall, Villeneuve’s Dune is a success6. All it took to make this book into a pair of hit films is to reduce most of the deeper concepts and plot points to vague gestures that fans of the book will get and appreciate and everyone else can safely ignore. And it kind of works.
When a Rando Tells You to Stick an Appendage in a Box, You Say Hell No
There’s a lot going on in Dune, the novel. It’s set in a distant future, long after a war with artificial intelligence led to a ban against thinking machines of any kind—which is a thrilling idea for a space opera that is settled in about sixty seconds in the film. There’s an exploration of free will and the impact of prescience, a millennia-long conspiracy to propagate a messiah prophecy and breed that actual messiah, a complex feudal empire in which entire planets are fiefdoms, space travel via hallucinogens, giant sandworms—and all that is just a shallow dive7. There are also a lot of characters to keep track of (including one named, improbably enough, Duncan Idaho), political schemes, a love story, several personal transformations into what are essentially cult leaders, and the whole concept of melange, aka spice, which is found on exactly one planet and is absolutely necessary to space travel8.
Each of these elements would require a bit of time to explore and establish in any depth, and the end result would be a film almost twice as long. The other traditional option would be to cut much of that material out of the film version, leaving a sleeker, tighter narrative accessible to a wider audience that would feel hollow. So much of a novel’s success is in the details, what the kids today call the lore. Cutting out the centuries-long plots of the Bene Gessirit would cause so many other aspects of the book—including its protagonist—to become a lot dumber. Easier, yes. Dumber, absolutely9.
So Villeneuve doesn’t cut anything, really—he just doesn’t pause to explain anything or linger over anything. If you know what the Kwisatz Haderach is from the books, bully for you! You understand fleeting references in the film. If you don’t, you might pick up a whiff of it from context, or you might just ignore it the three or four times it’s mentioned. It’s shimmery, barely-there presence allows folks who know the story on a deeper level to see the threads being pulled together in the film while allowing those who have never read the books10 to not skip a beat.
It’s-a-Me, the Kwisatz Haderach!
Of course, this does make Dune and the originally-titled Dune: Part Two11 a little hollow, reducing Paul Atreides’ journey from thoughtful aristocrat to freshly-minted and very miserable emperor to a rapid-fire journey through the dry sands of Arrakis. It’s a good story in its bones, so there’s nothing wrong with watching Dune just to see Tim Chalamet learn to love the Fremen and seek revenge for his father’s assassination as he rather effortlessly maneuvers all the levers of galactic power in his favor12. But it is simplified, and as a result it loses a lot of its unique flavor.
To be sure, some of that is also the result of decades of other writers stealing from Dune. Star Wars alone has made many of the concepts found in Dune (slimmed-down to Lucas levels) so universal that watching Dune almost feels like it’s the other way around and Dune is a pale imitation of Star Wars. As a result, without the detail and richness Herbert soaked into his prose the story of Paul Atreides feels a bit more generic than it really should.
I know that if I were the product of a lengthy conspiracy to produce a messiah of sorts it would all fall apart once I got to Arrakis: As The Duchess will attest, I take my moisturizing regimen very seriously, and would not be able to abide being that hot and dry all the time13.
NEXT WEEK: The Gentlemen engages in some just-in-time plot logistics.
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A ‘reasonable budget’ is apparently several hundred million dollars. The budget for my entire existence is much, much less than that <stares into middle distance>.
Except my experimental novel Jeff Pants. No amount of special effects budget could adapt this 900-page novel about a man struggling to put on a pair of pants in the morning.
Were these people almost always really super high when they said this? Yes.
Seriously, she always looks like she’s as likely to kick you in the balls as hug you, and it’s somehow powerfully attractive.
You can straight up commit murder with a single copy of Dune to the head.
Especially Chalamet’s hair. It’s compelling.
I swear if you found someone who had never heard of the novel and gave them the plot synopsis they wouldn’t believe you.
I tried to suggest Dune: It’s a Whole Mood as the marketing copy but got laughed out of the room. WHO’S LAUGHING NOW, HUH? It’s them. They are still laughing.
Is Dumber, Absolutely the title of my memoir? No, and you are very mean.
Or who haven’t read them since they were 17 years old and simultaneously drinking liquor siphoned from their father’s supply resulting in some very weird dreams.
The “electric boogaloo” part is, of course, implied.
Like, seriously, I can barely get a customer service representative to refund me when my Hummel Figurines arrive shattered, and I’m supposed to believe this kid just seizes the levers of interplanetary power?
You all really have no idea how lucky you are that my dislike of personal discomfort prevents me from doing … well, almost everything. I’d be dangerous if I didn’t need to know where a bathroom was at all times.