Weirdhouse Cinema: Dune (1984), Part 2

In this special two-part episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe return to the planet of Arrakis in their discussion of David Lynch’s wild 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s legendary novel “Dune.” The sleeper must awaken. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
today we are back with our first ever part two
of a Weird House Cinema episode. We do not think
we're going to make this a regular occurrence. But there
is a reason we had to split last Friday's episode
in two, and it's that we were talking about the
nineteen eighty four David Lynch adaptation of the novel Dune,

(00:39):
a movie that I don't think it would be possible
for us to talk about for less than three hours.
In fact, if we got maximally self indulgent Robert, I
think we could talk about David Lynch's doing for six hours,
maybe seven. How many movie runtime lengths could we go?

Speaker 2 (00:55):
I mean it depends on which which version, which cut
you're going, right, But yeah, we just we had to
split this one in two because there's just too much weirdness,
because it is a David Lynch film, and it is
based on the already weird book Dune by Frank Herbert,
published in nineteen sixty five. And then we just have
such a rich cast that we have to at least

(01:16):
acknowledge these various performers who really give it their all.
And then, on top of all of this, Dune Part
two just came out in cinemas. It is already a
huge hit. Everyone's loving this film. Dune is in the
air again. The spice is in the air again. And
so we figured, well, if we're gonna cut a weird
house cinema episode into two like this, this is the

(01:38):
movie and this is the time to do it.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
So I actually have rather big news with respect to
Denieville news Dune Part two. We managed to see it
in theaters. This is actually the first movie that Rachel
and I have managed to go out to the movie
theater to see since our daughter was born. And oh man,
it was worth it. We had such a great time.

(02:02):
We were just like pumping our fists during the worm
riding scenes. It was great. And I think I guess
we should say at the beginning of this episode here
there will be significant spoilers in this episode for the
plot of Doune both. I guess I'll three the novel,
the Lynch adaptation and the new adaptation. And I thought

(02:24):
some of the differences in the choices where it diverged
from the book and from the eighty four movie were
quite interesting, and I think, in some ways really smart
and in other ways really taking on a challenge of
portraying some of the darker and less heroic aspects that

(02:44):
emerge toward the end of the novel that you are
definitely part of Herbert's idea of what the story meant,
but I think are sort of left out of David
Lynch's version, which embraces a more full spirit of adventure.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah yeah, and ultimately lands on a very heroic note.
We see Paul as a savior at the end of
this film, and we'll get into all this, but Venus
film is a different beast. While being very true to
the book, I believe that the spirit of his betrayal
of Paul is very much in keeping with the book

(03:22):
and certainly in keeping with the trajectory to come.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I guess we'll
probably talk some more about this as we go on,
But obviously, if you have not heard part one of
this Weird House series, you should go back listen to
part one of our talk on Dune from last Friday.
First brief recap let's see, we talked about the novel
Dune and Frank Herbert. We talked about David Lynch and

(03:47):
his sort of film career and some of the common
themes and characteristics of his filmmaking, some of the story
behind the making of nineteen eighty four's Dune where David Lynch.
This movie is largely regarded as sort of an outlier
in David Lynch's filmography, and he has to some extent
disowned it. He was very dissatisfied with the final product

(04:12):
that was released, and he'd even said that working on
this version of Doune, produced by Dino de Laurentis, sort
of taught him that he would rather not make a
movie at all than make a movie that he didn't
have full creative control over. And he would go on
to make many more movies in the wake of this
where he did have creative control and are celebrated by

(04:34):
many as a very strange, interesting, excellent artistic achievements. Dune
was not beloved by critics at the time it came out.
I think in the years since critical opinion has softened somewhat.
It kind of has people look back on it now
and remember it fondly. But a lot of people did
not like this movie at all when it came out,

(04:55):
and I think that you can make an argument that
it is in many ways a failure to adapt the
novel appropriately. I think you can argue in ways also
that it is highly artistically compromised. You know, it's not
what the director wanted it to be. But at the
same time, I think David Lynch is done is great.

(05:17):
I love this movie and I have a great time
watching it.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah, I think, especially as time has gone by, I
think more and more people, I think people who have
attempted to adapt it can recognize this and know more
about the history of adaptation regarding this novel. But I
think the more the time, the more time has passed,
the more a lot of people have realized that this
was still a commendable effort. It's still it's still a
pretty great telling of a Dune story, even if there

(05:44):
are some very important thematic notes and ultimately happenings that
the we'll discuss that are that I don't love, But
still a lot of it. Is there a lot of
the look of Doune. Is there a lot of the
feel of Dune? Is there lots of great performances, so,
you know, and even throwing on the fact that he
had to cut it down so much given all of

(06:06):
these limitations, the finished product is a lot of fun.
It has a lot of greatness in it. You know.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
I noticed something when watching the new movie Dune Part
two that made me think differently on some stuff I
said in part one of the series. So last time,
we talked about how difficult doing is to adapt for
multiple reasons. On one hand, it's difficult because so much
of the story is contextual at stuff about the setting

(06:34):
rather than action that happens directly within the story. So
it's a lot of world building that's very interesting and
sort of gives the direct plot meaning. But the other
half being that a lot of the drama is internal.
It's like characters internal thoughts and stuff. And we were
joking about how in David Lynch's adaptation, there is often
like a close up on somebody's face and they're making

(06:54):
a thinking face while you hear their internal monologue, you know,
say saying, oh, Dune racket, you know, thinking through something, uh,
And it's often funny in David Lynch's adaptation. But I
realized the new movie does the same thing, and for
some reason, it just it just doesn't look as funny.
I don't know if the actors were instructed to make
different kinds of faces, but there is zooming on people's

(07:15):
faces and hearing their internal thoughts. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
So yeah, So we're going to continue to talk about
these these differences, some of these choices as we roll
on through here. Let's see, we got into the plot
a bit in the last episode, and one key thing
in case you've forgotten, or if you have, you're you're
gonna ignore us and you're just gonna roll into part
two without listening to part one, is that the one
thing we're doing different with this differently with this weird

(07:40):
House Cinema episode is instead of rolling through the entire
cast or notable members of the cast before going into
the plot, we are touching in on cast members as
we go. And this was in order to try and
make the split between the two episodes a little less
jarny mm hmm.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
So the farthest we got into the plot in part
one was we talked a lot about the opening narration
from Virginia Madsen, where she talks for a long time
about the Spacing Guild and all that, And then we
talked about the scene where the Spacing Guild arrives on
the Imperial home planet and a Guild navigator in his

(08:19):
sort of in his fish tank locomotive comes into the
Emperor's throne room to consult with the Padisha Emperor Shaddam
the Fourth played by Jose Ferrer, and they have a
talk about essentially the entire plot that's going to unfold
in the first half of the movie, the plot against
how Streides and how the Emperor is planning to use

(08:39):
House Harkonen to destroy Duke Letto and his line.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
Yeah, and then then we had to cut for time,
so we're jumping back in here with more build up
to the key plot. We're on a different planet. We're
on a wet planet, so let let's jump right in.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
Okay, So here we are at the planet Caladan. This
is the home of House Atriades. It is a gray
planet of rain and oceans, totally contrasted with the dryness
of dune, though often comparisons are made between the waves
of the sea and the dunes of the desert, and
this comes up in several adaptations of the story as well.

(09:18):
But here we get more narration. Now, last time we
were joking about the amount of voiceover narration. There is
to explain what's going on in this movie, and there's
even more to come. So Princess Erilan continues on the soundtrack.
She says, the powerful Bennie jesser At Sisterhood for ninety
generations has been manipulating bloodlines to produce the Quisat's Hatarak,

(09:40):
a super being on Caladan. Jessica, a member of the
Sisterhood and the bound concubine of Duke Letto Atredees, had
been ordered to bear only daughters because of her love
for the Duke. She disobeyed and gave birth to a son, Paul.
Paul atreades. Even all that exposition raises some questions, but like,

(10:03):
I think it was part of the story that the
Benny jestertz they have many powers that they train for.
They have powers of mind, the mind that can sort
of command matter in various ways, and one of them
is that say, they can like control the sex of
their offspring with their minds psychically and things like that.
But so yeah, she disobeys the rules of this powerful

(10:26):
sisterhood and gives birth to Paul, who is yet you know,
he's going to be some kind of terrible messiah.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
So Paula Trds in this film is played by Kyle
McLachlin born nineteen fifty nine. Kyle would have been in
his early to mid twenties here, I believe, and it's
awkward and it's difficult casting, but he, you know, awkwardly
feels a bit too old in the first half of
this movie.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
I yeah, So this is not a knock on Kyle
McLaughlin at all. I love Kyle McLachlin. I love his
working relationship with David Lynch. He you know, they're perfect
for each other in Twin Peaks and all that. And
I am always happy when I see Kyle McLaughlin in
a movie. He's an actor I love. But for some reason,

(11:12):
I think I just have to admit he does not
feel right in this role. Something about his approach does
not fit either the great or the terrible purpose of Paul.
He doesn't seem to embrace the spirit of Epicanus really. Instead,
he comes off as Kyle McLaughlin like, he's kind of

(11:34):
nerdy and funny, and he like giggles a lot. And
there have been various criticisms of Kyle's coy Maclaughlin's performance
in this movie, and I have to just sort of
agree with them. I want to love Kyle here, but
something about him is kind of uncomfortable in the role.
He has this overwhelmingly wholesome innocence and doesn't really capture

(11:57):
that boy with dangerous potential feeling. He's more of a
cosmic Martin Prince in here.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
Yeah, he never feels like a boy. He always feels
like a young man or you know, a guy in
his twenties anyway, And I guess the moments where I
think he is best are the sort of cold moments.
Sometimes it's even a moment with the internal voice going on.
And in these moments it's it's almost like Paul is
more of a cipher, you know, Paul kind of seen

(12:25):
through the lens of say, the protagonist in David Clintenberg's Scanners.
You know, someone whose mental reality, whose relationship with his
own thoughts and the world around him is so different
from ours that he feels a little alien, you.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
Know, personality.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Yeah, so there are moments like that that that worked
for me. And yeah, for the most part, I don't
think it's a bad performance, you know, We've seen plenty
of movies where the central handsome lead is not a
good actor and is not good in any of his scenes.
So it's nothing like that. It's a totally different beast.
And it is very difficult and ultimately not fair to

(13:06):
compare him in his performance to Timothy Challomy in the
New Dune movies, because in my opinion, Challo May is
just absolutely perfect because for one, on one hand, he
is able to capture the youthfulness of Paul in part one,
he really does look like a kid that is maybe fifteen,
which I believe is his age in the book. And

(13:28):
yet he is still label and I wasn't. I was
doubtful until I went into part two. He's still able
to deliver that more serious awaken Paul, that dangerous Paul
that we get in the second half of dv's version
of Doom.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
I totally agree. I think Chalomey is great in his
role in the new movies, and he gets both sides
of it, just like you say, he's you know, he
has that youthful spirit of adventure you're so on his
side in the first movie, and then that awakening to
the terrible purpose, the sort of art toward tyranny and
the and the coldness and abuse of power. You see

(14:04):
that come on, uh with with such convincing intensity in
the second film. And he I think he does a
really really commendable job. And I just want to say again,
I'm I'm not generally knocking Cole McLaughlin. I love Kyle.
I think he's great. I just think it's like he
maybe didn't get something about this character.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah, you know, despite the fact that you know, I remember,
I think I've read in places that he was like
a real student of the book, you know, and like
came in and and was was you know, done his homework,
and and certainly, you know, like you said, he'd go
on to have a very accomplished career. He is a
two time Ammy Award winner for his work on Lynch's

(14:47):
Twin Peaks. This was his film debut, which he followed
up with with Lynch's Doom follow up, The neo noir
Blue Velvet. And this is not a surprise for anyone,
but because he's probably seen him in some he's a
terrific comedic actor as well. Yeah, he has great comedic timing.
I really enjoyed on Portlandia, for example, yes, then he

(15:08):
played the mayor.

Speaker 3 (15:09):
I think, yeah he did.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
All right, Well, what's what's Paul doing. What's Paul up
to this early in the film.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
Well, we meet him in a room that looks kind
of like the officer's cabin in a British man O war.
It's this big, like stately wooden room with ornate molding
and flourishes, and basically what we're going to get in
this scene is yet another sizable exposition dump, serving to
fill in more information about the setting, characters, and politics.

(15:36):
So at the beginning of the scene, Paul is messing
around with something that looks suspiciously like a computer. I
don't think they have computers in this world. They should
have the what are the little like magnified scrolls or something.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
Yeah, yeah, they better not have computers. Yes, because that's
of course the whole big deal in the universe that
we have the Butlerian Jahad that eradicated thinking machines, and
we have this strong date, you know, religious and cultural
that thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness
of a human mind.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
Right, which is why in this world they have the mentats.
These are humans who are essentially trained to be computers
while remaining human. Yeah, but whatever this object is he's
messing with. It's displaying encyclopedic information on screen about different planets.
We see information on Caladan, Benny, Tlilax, and Aracus. We
learn about the mentats, the human computers with their red

(16:27):
stained lips. We learn about how the spice milange is
mined from the surface of Dune. We learn about the
worms of Iracus, which attack all rhythmic vibrations, and we
learn that the Harconins are the sworn enemy of Houseitreides
and their home world gide Prime is close is close
to Aracus.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
It is interesting that this film decides to go ahead
and lay out stuff, you know, information concerning the Toley Laksu,
who are not going to be important in this film
at all, Like they were clearly thinking ahead to subsequent
film elms. I mean, they're part of it, like their
their work is present here, but you don't actually need
to bring them up. Likewise, later we're gonna get a
mention and you know, previously we had a mention of IX,

(17:11):
and X is not evenally important to this film either.
So it seems like if you wanted to like cut
down on the amount of information you're hitting the viewer with.
These would have would have been things you could have
left on the cutting room floor.

Speaker 3 (17:22):
Yeah, yeah, interesting choice. We have just folded space from IX. Yes.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (17:29):
Anyway, so Paul is approached in his state room here
by three characters who are servants of House the Treades.
There is Thufar hawat the mentat, and his eyebrows would
function as arrowfoils. Essentially, he's got like gigantic wing like eyebrows,
and he seems to be he's wearing like a fur

(17:50):
fringed coat at the strange choice, but I like it. Yeah.
We also meet in the scene Gerny Halleck, the Master,
the war master who trains Paul in the Marshall Virtues.
And we meet doctor Wellington Ua, the physician of House
A Treades. The he's a called a Suk doctor. And
the Souk school of medicine is I think like the

(18:11):
it's like the main sort of way medicine is done
in the world of Doune.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
All right, let's go ahead and lay out these three
actors then, because they come in like next to each other,
it's almost kind of comedic the way they come out,
But you know, and and so, first of all, we
have we have Howitt played by Freddie Jones, who lived
nineteen twenty seven through twenty nineteen, British character actor who
we talked about in our episode on eighty three s Kroll.
He had previously been in Lynch's The Elephant Man, and

(18:38):
he has a slew of other credits, including nineteen sixty
nine's Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, though that is generally I
think one that a lot of people choose to skip
in the Hammer of Frankenstein legacy. But in anyway, he's
perfectly fine in this, if a bit doddering for my taste.
I always picture Howitt as being a little more I
don't know, he's more loof here, which is in fitting

(19:01):
with the mintat but I tend to imagine him always
as being a bit more assertive. I mean, he's the
master of Spies for House of Tredes, like.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
Yeah, simultaneously serene but sharp, and I think Stephen McKinley
Henderson gets that in Dune Part one absolutely yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
And I do love the eyebrows like this is a
film that does commit to helping the viewer out by
having a lot of visual cues regarding factions, houses and
different types of psychically enhanced people. And so the Mintats
all have just out of control eyebrows and I'll allow it.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
It's gonna need okay. And he's got the red stained
lips from the juice that the Mintat straight.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yes, yes, more than that in a minute.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
But okay. So that's through fear how the Mentat. But
we also have Gurnie Halleck and doctor Ua.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah, Hallick is of course. Gurney here is played by
Patrick Stewart born in nineteen forty. You know who Patrick
Stewart is. We're talking about Captain John luc Picard. We're
talking about Charles Xavier. His pre track films also include
nineteen eighty five It's Life Force. He was born in
nineteen forty. We talked about him briefly in our episode
on Nyazaki's Nausica because he did one of the voices,

(20:16):
so one of the key voices for that and did
an excellent job. But yeah, he is our troubadour warrior
in Lynch's Doom.

Speaker 3 (20:24):
There's something about the way this character is realized in
the movie that makes him less exciting than he could
have been. Patrick Stewart in the role of Gurney Halleck.
Sign me up. That sounds amazing. A lot of his
scenes are kind of underwhelming, and it feels like it's
not necessarily Patrick Stewart's fault. It something about the way
it's that they're written and edited together. Like he's very

(20:45):
abrupt when he starts that we're about to get into
this like sparring fight training scene. It's just like very abrupt,
and he has not given a lot of room to
express the character, it seems to me.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
Yeah, yeah, Well, Meanwhile, in the recent Dune films, Josh
Brolin has really had had more of an opportunity, I think,
to inhabit this role and ultimately is just tremendous in it.
So Josh Brolin easily my favorite journey that we've seen
on film.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
However, Patrick Stewart does serve as the human vehicle for
my favorite character in this whole movie, which is Pug Atraodes.
We'll get to that a little bit.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
Yeah, anytime he's on camera bravely defending the atrides strategic
stockpile of pugs, he's a joy, all right. And then
we have yeah, we have doctor Wellington Ua played by
Dean Stockwell. Who've lived nineteen thirty six through twenty twenty one,
a wonderful American actor that we discussed in depth for
our episode on the Dunwich Horror in which he starred

(21:45):
as the warlock Wilburt Wetley. Definitely go back and listen
to that episode if you want to hear us talk
more about Dean Stockwell. But I think he does a
fine job here and makes for a very sympathetic Ua.
Chan Chin is also great in the two thou twenty
one adaptation.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
I agree. I feel like doctor Yue is one of
those characters that is hard to realize on screen because
so much of his drama is internal. Like we like
we were talking about that, you know, like he has
sort of the the reader in the book is given
access to some of his internal thoughts that give a
lot of meaning to his activity, to his his sort

(22:24):
of tragic character arc.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yeah. Yeah, but if you're going into it cold, you
really only you're still only encountering him for a short
amount of time, So there's a lot of emotion and
turmoil to pack into that performance in a very short time.
I think both of these two gentlemen do a great
job with it. In their own way, and clearly this
is something we'll touch on later, but clearly they shot

(22:46):
more scenes with Dean Stockwell, because at times they'll just
like they'll like zoom zoo, they'll like fade into a
scene where he's having like a really emotional moment about
what he's about to do, and then we we fade
back out of that. This was a longer scene that
was going to be in the intended longer cut.

Speaker 3 (23:04):
Yeah, yeah, and I can imagine that being a particular
sore spot if like the producers were saying, we got
to cut all this doctor Ue stuff from the first
third of the movie. Anyway, So these three men have
all sort of been involved in training Paul to become
a superhuman of sorts. He for example, when they walk
into the room, he grins very pleased with himself and

(23:27):
claims that he could tell who was approaching him from
behind without looking. You know, he seems almost giddy with
how powerful his ears are, and Gurney engages. Gurney comes
up and he's like, okay, time to knife fight Paul.
So they're gonna have a knife sparring match. Paul is
trained to fight with the blade using energy shields and

(23:49):
at first Paul says, you know, we already did our
knife training this morning. I'm not in the mood for more,
and Garney Hallick says, moods a thing for cattle and
love play, not fight. So that's a pretty good moment
for Patrick Stewart. But anyway, so they go into this fight,
and the way the energy shields are represented in this

(24:12):
movie kind of makes it so you can't really see
the actors anymore. They're represented as these animated prisms that
extend over the body from a device on the belt,
and they make the characters look like sort of blocky
early CGI characters like in the Money for Nothing video.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yeah, this was disappointing for me rewatching the movie because
these effects were much better in my memory. I like
the concept of the shield technology being you know, kind
of blocky. I like the idea of being this kind
of like brownish color. The color schemes good. And interestingly enough,
i'd recently watched an extra about the excellent low Ki

(24:52):
series mini series that came out. Well, I guess it's
more than many series went two seasons, but they were
inspired by these effects to create their portal doors, which
are important to the plot of low Key, so clearly
it resonated with other people, but yeah, rewatching it, they
just end up hiding almost all of the action. The
new films do a much better job not only just

(25:13):
effects wise, but also creating a complex shield tech on
the screen that makes instant visual sense because there are
a lot of ins and outs to the way they work,
and it's pivotal for understanding various things about combat and
the Donning universe.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
Yeah, it's a difficult thing to represent, but they do
a good job in the new movie. So the idea
is that these personal energy shields deflect fast moving incoming objects.
So if you try to stab somebody or shoot them,
the shield will deflect that. So the way to harm
someone with wearing one of these shields is quote the
slow blade. You have to slowly move the knife through

(25:50):
the shield. So it's counterintuitive to normal you know, fighting instincts,
and the way it's represented in the new movies is
that something that comes in fast and is deflected by
the shield, the shield glows blue, but when something slowly
is able to move through the shield, it turns red.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah, which is a great visual system for the viewer.
You know, let us understand what's happening on the screen
in the same way that mentats have giant eyebrows in
this movie.

Speaker 3 (26:17):
Right, So, after the fight, Paul and doctor Ua trade
information about Irakus. Paul is extremely interested in the worms,
and we also learned about the people called the Fremen
who live on dune and have extreme blue eyes from

(26:40):
their use of the spice millange. Also in this scene,
Paul reveals that he suspects the Emperor is supporting the
Harconins against them, again revealing a lot right at the beginning.
So not only does the Emperor explain his whole plot
at the beginning of this movie, Paul says, like, I've
just figured it out. I know it before it happens.

(27:01):
So the a trainees like, no, Aracus is a trap,
but they're going to go anyway, yep.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
And you know that alone, that statement alone is perhaps
not completely out of keeping, Like there are people in
House of Tredes that realize that this is this is
a trap. But key is that they think it is
a trap that they can turn to their advantage.

Speaker 3 (27:23):
Right. Oh, and then we get even more fight training
this one. This one is a real upgrade I think
from the the energy shield scene. Now we're going to
get the weirding module with the stabbing robot. So they say,
doctor Ua put the weirding module on him, rob How
would you describe what the weirding module is and what
it does.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
I mean, it looks like an underwater camera housing is
what it looks like. And I guess this is not
in the book, but it is supposedly some sort of
thing that turns your voice into a weapon. The weirding
way is a movement technique martial arts that the benjesterate
that is in the books. But if memory serves the

(28:04):
filmmakers here, and I think maybe Lynch in particular wanted
to avoid putting martial arts in their film. I think
there's something about like Lynch didn't want to see karate
on the dunes of Iracus. Or this might also be
classified as something you could consider like the fear of
looking silly and cinematic adaptations of Dune, which is something

(28:27):
you see, and at least this and the more recent adaptations,
there seem to be some choices that were made where
they're like, okay, we can't do that. That might look
too silly, or at least that's the way I read
into some of those changes, so, you know, fair enough,
but the device and the concept here are kind of clunky,
and it forces us to have to figure out another
strange technology after just having experienced the shields.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
That's right. But the weirding module is silly. I'm so.
I mean, I like it. I wouldn't want it removed
from the movie. But it's funny because, as you said,
it translate like sounds or voices into lethal energy attacks.
So it's like a blaster that you operate by saying.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Zap, yeah, zap, zong, et cetera. You can use it,
et cetera, can be a killing.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
Word, that's right. I think I read somewhere that, as
you said, you know, so, the Weirding module is original
to Lynch's movie. It's not in the book. And I
read somewhere that this might be like a strange literalization
of a line in the novel about the name of
maudieb the name later taken by Paul when he joins
the Fremen, that name being a quote killing word, which

(29:37):
I think may have been a metaphor in the original context,
but then literalized into it. This piece of sci fi
technology m.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
H and so they run with it. It is it's
it's weird. It's fun, but it is clunky, and it's
it's not something I'm super attached too.

Speaker 3 (29:53):
Yeah. So he fights the stabbing robot and Paul is
shown to be very powerful at the weirding way.

Speaker 2 (29:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:59):
Nice to track during this. I like it. Oh that's right,
yeah with the percussion. So later we see Paul meeting
other characters. He meets Duncan Idaho, who must go ahead
of them to Aracus. He is the sword master of
House A Treades, and I think he's going to go
ahead to sort of meet with the Fremen and try
to interface with them. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
Played here by Richard Jordan, who lived nineteen thirty seven
through nineteen ninety three, Emmy nominated actor whose credits include
seventy six is Logan's Run nineteen ninety is The Hunt
for Red October in nineteen ninety three is Gettysburg. Not
much really to say about him here, though, because he
has almost no screen time and he's just quickly forgotten.
He's an important character in the novel Dune and moving

(30:41):
forward in the Dune series, but he's treated like a
red shirt here. At least in this cut. The twenty
twenty one film with Jason Momoa in the role, is
I think the best version of the character we've seen
so far in an adaptation. And we'll just see where
it goes from there in the future. Ah.

Speaker 3 (30:58):
Yeah, I didn't put it together yet. We may get
a Jason Momoa.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
Gola a mamola if you will.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
So we also meet here Duke Leto, the head of
house Atredes, who meets with his son Paul, and we
learned Duke Letto is very proud of his son. Duke
Leto is shown to be, within the context of the story,
a very a very kind, fair and you know, stern,
but just kind of ruler. And he, you know, he

(31:29):
encourages his son Paul and tells him he's proud of him.
He says, without change, something sleeps inside us and seldom awakens.
The sleeper must awaken.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
Yeah, this is a great bit, recurring bit in this film.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
I like it.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
The Duke here is played by German actor Jurgen Procnow
born nineteen forty one. His big breakout role was, of course,
playing the captain in nineteen eighty one's The Boat or
Doss Boat or doss Boot if you will see previous
discussions on the title for this film. But actor with
a tremendous face and a great presence for playing stern, serious, distant,

(32:08):
and sometimes threatening characters. His filmography is all over the place,
but a few notable points include Michael Mann's The Keep
from eighty three, Twin Peaks Firewalk with Me in ninety two,
kind of continuing this trend of Lynch often bringing back
actors that he worked with on Doune for other projects.
He of course plays the author Sutter Kane and John

(32:29):
Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness. He has a role
in the Judge Dread film from ninety five, and he
pops up in The English Patient in ninety six, but
lots of other credits. I think he even plays an
older Arnold Schwarzenegger in a TV bio movie about Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
What.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Yeah, it was like an A A and E movie
or something. I remember it looked did not look.

Speaker 3 (32:51):
Good, like a movie about an existing actor projecting that
ac actor into the future.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
Yeah, I don't know, but at any rate, you know,
it ends up being a more distant feeling duke here,
And I think I think it works, you know, concerning
his relationship with Paul, and there are these moments of
warmth like the Sleeper Awaken speech. But I would say
he's my third favorite Duke Leedo, the first behind Oscar

(33:21):
Isaac and William Hurt.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
I also really like Oscar Isaac's performance in the new film.
So so yeah, that's Paul's father. We also meet Paul's mother,
Lady Jessica, whom we meet walking through the rain in
the courtyard of the palace, hidden under this voluminous hood.
And she seems very interesting and mysterious when we first

(33:44):
meet her, because we hear her inner voice worrying about
Paul and saying that he must face the box. No
man has ever faced it before, and tonight she may
lose her son. So when we meet her, she's already
worrying that she may have committed her son to a
lethal challenge.

Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah, and she was played here by Francesca and Niece
born nineteen forty five, English actor who also played the
Witch of the Web in nineteen eighty three Skroll. So
another Kroll connection. Extensive stage, screen and TV credits. She
played Lady Macbeth in that excellent nineteen seventy two film adaptation.

Speaker 3 (34:21):
I like her in this role, and she plays it
with this interesting mix of deference and defiance. These two
elements come out in different moments. She's like a character
pulled back and forth between duty to authority and following
her own heart and her love for her family. And
so I really like her in this role. I feel
like she kind of gets her character gets downplayed in

(34:42):
the second half of the story here in the eighty
four adaptation, and I like more. I think what is
done with Rebecca Ferguson's role in the newer adaptations?

Speaker 2 (34:55):
Agreed, Yeah, I think Rebecca Ferguson just gets more to
do with the character. We get a strong portrayal of
Lady Jessica both before and after the initial fall of
House Atreades.

Speaker 3 (35:07):
Oh, but all of this is leading up to the
return of a character we've already met. We talked about
in the last episode, the Reverend Mother gaias Helen Moheim,
and we met her with the Emperor because she is
the Emperor's truth sayer. You know, she was supposed to
try to listen in on the meeting between the Emperor
and the Guild Navigator, and as she learns from that

(35:29):
meeting that there is some significance to Paula Trades, the
young heir of House Atreades, and that she and the
Benny Jester at Sisters must learn more about Paul to
find out what his significance is. So here she is yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
So, and this is where we get our goamja bar scene,
which is I think pretty effective here. I like it
in both this adaptation and the recent adaptation. You know,
it's one of the most famous scenes in the whole novel,
and it's also one of the first big scene in
the novel. As I think we've discussed before, Like it
happens almost immediately in your reading of.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
The book, that's right. So the premise of the scene
is that the Reverend Mother arrives, she speaks with Lady Jessica,
and Paul sort of awakes and overhears them speaking a
little bit about something about his purpose and that he
must be tested. So Paul is woken in the night
and taken before the Reverend Mother. We do get some

(36:25):
chewing out of Lady Jessica by the Reverend Mother because
of her hubris, disobeying orders and having a son trying
you know, she's like you're trying to create the queens
Out's hatterak. You're not supposed to do that. That is
the super being of the universe. That's violation of orders.
So forth. Now, somewhere before we actually get the hand
in the Box, there's a moment here where we see
Duke Leto alone in his office, apparently maybe aware of

(36:47):
what's going on, but not intervening. I don't recall if
in the book he was aware or not, but anyway,
we see him sitting alone in his office. And this
is the first time we see the House of Trade pug.
Can we set off a pug alarm pug alert sidebar

(37:10):
on the pug, So we're gonna see this pug pop
up a number of times, like when they arrive on
the planet, they've got the pug with them. And then
also later when the Harconins attack the House of Tredes,
we see Gurnie Halleck Patrick Stewart running into battle with
like this science fiction rifle, clutching the pug to his chest.

(37:32):
I have always loved this detail. It seems so characteristically Lynchian.
The warriors of this feudal house have toy breed dogs
that they carry around with them from planet to planet,
even taking them into battle as if they are tokens
of good fortune or provide magical protection. There is. It's

(37:53):
like a lot of images in David Lynch movies, and
I think part of what makes him a really great
filmmaker and artist is he puts in these weird images
that on one hand feel kind of off, but on
the other hand you think about them and they just
feel right. Something about the pug works. I don't know
what it means, but it feels like, yeah, they would

(38:14):
have a pug like this.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
Yeah, well, we saw the Emperor had his own dog
breeds running around, so it's weird, but it feels it's
also kind of fitting that a great house would have
its signature dog breed. The pug is also the closest
thing that we get to a chair dog, which we
get much later in the book series.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
I think the pug is not mistreated. We see the
pug treated very lovingly and respectfully.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
Well, cheer dogs are not mistreated either. They just do
they have a function you sit on them, and that
you're not mistreating a chair dog to sit on a
chair dog.

Speaker 3 (38:43):
Surely, Oh okay, I misunderstood the.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Cheer dog doesn't have a face or presumably a butt.
I guess it's I don't know. There's probably some inherent
cruelty in the creation of a chair dog, but it's
never really explored.

Speaker 3 (38:58):
Not to get too dark. I guess you could say
some cruelty in the creation of a pug as well,
but that's they don't have to go. But these, these
pugs are treated. These are beloved pugs. The atrendees love
their pugs.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
Pugs are cuties, no doubt about it. We have made
a dog in the semblance of a human baby.

Speaker 3 (39:18):
We were told we shall not, but you just can't
follow those rules. Okay, so sorry. We coming back to
the Gomjabar scene. So this is where the reverend Mother
confronts Paul alone in the study in the house on
Kaladan here and she starts to command him using the voice.
This is one of the many Beni Jesert arts having

(39:38):
a way of manipulating their voice so as to sort
of hypnotize and command people, even against their will. The
Reverend Mother tries to use the voice to command Paul,
but he's somewhat resistant at first. When she talks. In
this movie, it's kind of a lizard queen speaking through
a fan voice.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
Yeah, it sounds it sounds really good in my opinion.
Also really like the way that it's brought to life
in the new film adaptations, and they feel similar. They're
probably not that similar if you line them up one
to one, but they're both effective for me.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
Yeah, I agree. So Paul is given this trial, the
trial of the Box where the reverend. So he puts
his hand in a box that the reverend mother offers him,
and then she puts a sort of poisoned thimble with
a needle on it against his neck and tells him
there's going to be pain in the box. He will
want to remove his hand, but if he removes his hand,

(40:32):
she will stab him with the gum jabbar the poison needle,
and he will die. He's suffering, it's burning, the fire
is consuming the flesh down to the bone, he thinks,
or at least it feels that way. And the whole
point is that someone of inferior will would remove their
hand from the box in response to the pain. But

(40:53):
there's something she's testing for kind of will in Paul
to face the pain and keep his hand inside. And
in this scene when trying to get through the pain.
We hear Paul's inner voice reciting the Litany against Fear.
One of the great things from the novel and the
version of it used in the movie, is that he says,
I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear

(41:16):
is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will
face my fear. I will permit it to pass over
me and through me. And when it has gone past,
I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only
I will remain.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
And I really like his reading of this with the
inner voice. It's kind of there's an urgency to it
because he is in pain. I heard the sample in
a mix once before. I believe it was an Autecher mix.
It was fay well, very well utilized.

Speaker 3 (41:48):
I think there are slight changes to the Litany against
Fear here from in the book. I don't remember what
the changes are, but I like this version of it.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
Yeah, yeah, it's still very much. It keeps most of
the words and definitely keeps the spirit of the thing.

Speaker 3 (42:02):
And colwahad, He's okay, he passed the test. The reverend
mother says coolwahad, which is a phrase meaning I am
profoundly stirred, and she explains the prophecy of the quisats
Haderak to Paul, but Paul fears for his father, and
the reverend mother tells him what can be done to
protect his father has been done, So you know, it's

(42:23):
there's a kind of fatalism going on here.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
Yeah, all right, it's time to planet hop again.

Speaker 3 (42:36):
Oh boy, and now we're getting really depraved. So let's
go to Gidee Prime, home of House Harconin and lured.
The way the Harconins are realized in this movie, there
is a level of weirdness that again goes beyond the books,
is purely David Lynch, I think, so. First of all,
I just wanted to focus. They give us a brief

(42:58):
look at the exterior of Gidee Prime before we meet
the characters, and it appears to be a kind of
urban landscape of shadows and green light, with these unbroken
walls of industrial looking buildings stretching up until they vanish
into a dark sky. There's black smoke pouring out of
a hidden orifice in the city walls, towers of metal

(43:21):
struts in the foreground, almost like watchtowers or guard stations,
with some kind of tortured sculpture looming between the buildings.
And we see the sculpture many times. It is like
a giant porcelain face on which the eyes and nose
are hidden behind a shadow, and all that's visible is

(43:42):
a giant gaping mouth over a plump chin, almost like
the mouth of a fish, but on the head of
a human baby. So is this sculpture opening its mouth
to devour food, to scream in pain, or to gasp
for breath? All seem to be implied this design for
the home world of the Harconins, because it's like this

(44:04):
little sculpture with the eyes hidden, is like greed, pain, fear,
and desperation luxuriating in the ambiguity between them all.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
And is it also piping out smoke or some sort
of vapor because the planet itself is supposed to be
heavily polluted. So yes, I kind of like see it
as that as well, like everything you said, but on
top of that, it's spouting pollution.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
There you see smoke coming out. I interpreted as the
smoke coming out from behind the sculpture, but I don't know.
It could be it could be, but yeah, the planet
has a very I think a lot with the green
designs is to suggest not a natural green like plants,
but like a poisonous green, a kind of industrial green ooze.

Speaker 2 (44:51):
Absolutely, yeah, I love this look. We only see like
really a glimpse of it here, but it's reminiscent of
hr Giger's original biomechanical designs for the planet from I
believe the Jodroowski adaptation that never came to fruition, but
little bits like that has kind of been passed down
and become part of the tradition of portraying Dune on film,

(45:13):
even in the recent DV adaptation. So we see a
lot more of this planet in part two, of course,
and they have their own wonderful and an inventive way
of envisioning it, but there is still that biomechanical gothic
aspect to everything.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
Yeah. Yeah, Well in the new movie, I love that
they do it as a very desaturated or I don't
know if that's the right term. Actually it's a black
and white kind of environment with high contrast that I
think is explained by Gideye Prime having a black son
so they say there's no color on the surface of
the planet.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's supposed to be the reason
for it, and give him an excuse to shoot it
an infra red apparently.

Speaker 3 (45:55):
So we meet here the Harkonen Mintat Piterer Devrees, who
is the you know, the court, the equivalent of Thufir
Hawat to house the Treades. This is played by.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
Oh well, this of course is Brad Dorif born nineteen fifty. Yes,
one of American cinema's finest weird actors. We've talked about
it on the show before, in our episode on Toby
Hooper's Spontaneous Combustion from nineteen eighty nine. And he's one
of these actors that's enjoyable in pretty much anything, regardless
of overall film quality. You know, he's probably best known

(46:32):
for his performances in such films as nineteen seventy nine's
Wise Blood, which is generally excellent, nineteen eighty eight Child's
Play in two thousand and two's Lord of the Rings
the Two Towers.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
In which he plays Grima worm tongue.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, he had great performance there in which he has
no eyebrows. But in this in Lynch's Doom, he of
course has Mintat eyebrows, and I do love him in this.
He captures the viciousness of Pider, But at the same time,
this is a Dune character that I dearly love, and

(47:07):
there's never enough time in any adaptation to explore him
and his delicious, dangerous relationship with the baron, where they
both expect to know that the other will try and
kill them at one point the other. It's like a
delicate balance.

Speaker 3 (47:22):
Yeah, he is an evil, vicious character, but also for
some reason I find him pitiable.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
Yeah, yeah, I mean he is a twisted mentat. He
is the product of some sort of either bizarre corruption
of a normal mentat or some corruption of the mentat process.
And with all these things you have to sort of
pick and choose how are you going to present him.
I do quite love David Datzmachian's performance in the recent
adaptation as well, but it's just a different slice of

(47:51):
the same character. He's more cerebral and withdrawn in that performance,
and it still works. It still captures a part of
what is a ultimately a brief but complex character.

Speaker 3 (48:02):
Right. So, Pider, he's speaking to himself. He says, it
is by will alone, I set my mind in motion.
So he's reciting a kind of Mintat litany here, some
sort of equivalent to the Litany against Fear, except instead
of about avoiding fear, this is about, like, you know,
realizing your potential with the help of drugs. Because it

(48:24):
goes on to say it is by the juice of
Sappho that thoughts acquire speed, that lips acquire stains, the
stains become a warning, and then he says that a
bunch of times.

Speaker 2 (48:34):
Yeah, this mintat Mantra is not from the books, but
it is. It's one of those additions that feels perfectly
at home in the Dune universe. It works, It absolutely works.
And the whole thing about the juice of the Sappho
is very much in the text.

Speaker 3 (48:49):
Yeah, he's so this is a nervous and unhappy Mintat
in a dangerous situation.

Speaker 2 (48:54):
Yeah, nervous, angry, scheming, all those things, and yeah, we
get it in this performance.

Speaker 3 (49:01):
So there are more visions of Giddee Prime people in
pure white clothing walking through industrial mazes illuminated by green light.
It's a very striking vision. Again, I love the designs
of the planet here. I think they really work. We
see harconin soldiers standing lined up with multiple barreled firearms
in hand. Then finally we go to meet the Harconein

(49:23):
Royalty in a room that is almost like it's green,
like a bar of soap, and the Harconins are being
attended by servants with almost Clive Barker style body modifications.
Ears clipped and sown folded in on themselves, eyelids sewn
shut with threads and tacks driven into the eyes. Also,

(49:44):
everybody that has hair has red hair.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
Yeah, and the red hair touch is nice and helps
us identify Harconins. But already this scene is too much
like the eyes and ears sewn up is is just
too much. And also that green, that green is too
much like a modern perspective. I'll occasionally see stills from

(50:08):
this and I'll initially think, oh, this is an unfinished sequence.
That's green screen, you know, like that's where my mind goes, like,
that's how alarming that green color is.

Speaker 3 (50:17):
So we finally meet the patriarch of the villainous house Harconin. Here,
the Baron Vladimir Harconin being attended by doctors. So when
we first see him, his face is covered in boils
of some kind, and the doctors are doing something grotesque
with them with a needle.

Speaker 2 (50:35):
Yeah. Now, this Baron Vladimir Harconin is played by Kenneth McMillan,
who lived nineteen thirty two through nineteen eighty nine. American
character actor who often played heavies and a reminder that
by heavies I mean like threatening or dominant antagonists. He
also played a lot of gruff authority figures. He didn't
apparently didn't pursue an acting career until he was in

(50:56):
his thirties, and he was forty before his first screen
TV credits appear, showing up in a couple episodes of
Dark Shadows, as well as an uncredited role in nineteen
seventy three Serpico. He followed this up with small roles
in the Taking of Pelham one, two three, The Stepford Wives,
and Dog Day Afternoon. A fair amount of TV followed,
including a role on the series Rota. He played a

(51:19):
cop in the nineteen seventy nine Salem's Lot mini series
from Toby Hooper, and he'd follow up Doune with a
role in nineteen eighty five's Runaway Train and then mostly
TV work.

Speaker 3 (51:30):
So this version of Baron Harkonen likes to scream and
fly around in the air while screaming.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
Yeah. This character, this characterization of the Baron is a
lot in the text. We are privy to his inner thoughts,
and there are various dimensions to the character of the Baron,
all of them evil. He is a man of vast
greed and ambition, of appetite, brutality, fear, and endless plotting,

(51:57):
and you can't possibly capture all of that on screen,
so you pick and choose what you can. The recent
adaptations do a great job focusing mostly on the brutal
plotting aspect of the character. While this version of the
Baron is a wild, gross demon of consumption, cackling, floating around, spitting,
oozing and so forth. It's just too much, But to

(52:18):
McMillan's credit, he rolls with it and delivers some nice menace.
I'd say ultimately he's my third favorite Baron behind stellin
Scars Guard. In the more recent adaptations, who's more of
like the threatening and cerebral Baron? And then I have
to say that Ian McNeice did a great job with
it in the mini series, the sci fi mini series

(52:39):
as well.

Speaker 3 (52:40):
Yeah, this is a less serious portrayal of the Baron
than we get like with the Scar's Guard. Obviously, that
is a very deep, dark, scary baron. This Baron is
a lot funnier and that kind of continues with how
the rest of how Harkonin is portrayed. We meet the
baron's to nephew is a Fadea, and the Beast Rabon.

(53:03):
I think they're called the Beast by the people of
Irakus Rabon. What's his first name, Glossu or something, I believe.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
So, yeah, So the Beast here is played by Paul L.
Smith of nineteen thirty six through twenty twelve, So this
is another over the top performance just by another noted
gruff character actor. So he's an American actor who played
Bluto in the nineteen eighty Pope Eye movie. Other credits
include Sam Raimi's Cohen Brothers scripted film Crime Way from

(53:33):
eighty five, Red Sonia from eighty five, Gore from eighty seven,
and the nineteen eighty two Spanish horror movie Pieces, which
is on our potential to do list. But yeah, basically,
this Beast is just a grotesque cartoon character. Dave Bautista
does a solid job as the character in the recent films,
and they really expand the role to make the role

(53:55):
more meaningful and give Bautista much more to do.

Speaker 3 (53:59):
Like we were saying with Pider earlier, this is another
character who is totally completely evil but also ends up
being rather pitiable in the story.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
Yeah, and now the other son is, of course the
golden child of House Harkonen. This is fate rap though,
like you said, played by Sting, Yeah, fifty one. I
believe this was only his fourth acting role, following nineteen
eighty two's Brimstone and Treckle. And he'd follow this up
by playing Frankenstein in nineteen eighty five's The Bride. That's

(54:31):
the Doctor, by the way, that the true Frankenstein, not
Frankenstein as a shorthand for the Monster. He's continued to
act on and off over the years, often you know,
really good, especially in small doses here and there. He
is an Oscar winner. But in the original song category.

Speaker 3 (54:49):
Mm okay, I'm trying to think of what other movies
is he He was in that. He was in the
Who's Other Rock Opera? Not Tommy but Quadrophenia.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
He was, Yeah, he was. I think he had a
small role in Lockstock and two smoking barrels much later,
and like that was one where it's a very small role,
but he's really good in it.

Speaker 3 (55:09):
You know, what do I think of Sting's performance in
this movie? You know, it's absolutely memorable. I'm never gonna
not be thinking about him in this role, especially his
line delivery during the final fight scene, We'll get too
later with you. I will kill him, I will kill you.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
Yeah, it's a it's a lot to figure out because
he is he is over the top, and it's weird.
It's a weird performance. He looks amazing and Fade Rotha
on top of that is a strange character, like and
no film adaptation, in my opinion, has really done him
complete justice. Like he we don't know a lot about

(55:51):
him ultimately, but we know and we know enough about
him in the book that he's he's brash, he's not
the plotter in the planner that his uncle is. His
uncle is doing a lot to try and ensure that
he moves up in the world and becomes the new
face of House Harkonen. But there seems to be a
lot of frustration with his maturity level and his appreciation

(56:11):
for all of this. And you know, we just we
tend to see less of that in the film adaptations.

Speaker 3 (56:17):
Yeah, the new movie does a good job of setting
him up as a foil to Paul, that there are
sort of two sides of the same coin. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
Yeah, Austin Butler does a great job in doing Part
two as this character, but it's a it's a rather
different read on him. Like, on one hand, he's still
supposed to be a kind of hot and supposed to
be a definite threat to Paul, though perplexingly the new
adaptations portray him as an honorable fighter, which I'm still

(56:49):
trying to figure that out. I need to view Part
two again in order to figure out how I really
feel about all this, because I think one of the
appeals of the character in the book and in this
adaptation is that he will absolutely cheat to win, Yes,
And I feel like that helped that that actually makes
him more of a threat to Paul, because this is
a guy will that will win at any cost and

(57:10):
is used to winning at any cost and feels no
shame about it.

Speaker 3 (57:13):
Yeah. Originally, the Harconins are not like worthy opponents or
you know, honorable honorable villains. They are They're absolute like
liars and cheaters and dirty tricksters and they'll do whatever
they can.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Yeah, So I'm sure dv has has his reasons, And
like I say, I need to watch Doing Part two
again to sort of figure out exactly how I feel
about that performance. Now.

Speaker 3 (57:37):
I do love the book, but I think there is
a new There's a change made in the new movie
that I appreciate, which is that it excises from the
Harconin plot line and characterization some elements that I think
you could fairly argue are homophobic in the original portrayal,
where like these like the Harconin characters, especially the Baron,

(57:57):
are portrayed as having same sec attraction and I think
you can you can say fairly it is not incidental
to the fact that they're villains, but more sort of
portrayed as part of their deviousness.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
Yeah. I think that was a solid cut for for
the the new adaptations for sure. And and it's it's
something that is handled in this adaptation, in Lynch's adaptation
in a way that has that has attracted a fair
amount of criticism over the years.

Speaker 3 (58:28):
Yeah, from what I can tell, it seems more implicit
in Lynch's movie and a little more explicit in the book.
But still I think it's somewhat there in the movie.

Speaker 2 (58:37):
Yeah, but let's not detract from the utter weirdness of
this absolute Lynchian circus of a scene.

Speaker 3 (58:44):
Yes, because the setting. We haven't even finished describing the
room they're in that. Oh no, okay, So interesting things
about this scene. There is boiling acid under the floor,
and it just seems to be part of the culture
of Gidee Prime that when you're done with things, like
the way we might throw something in the garbage can,
they can throw things through a hole in the floor

(59:05):
grate into the boiling acid below. So they use the
boiling acid as the dumpster, and it's just there underneath
the floor at all times, and I guess they're presumably
breathing the fumes from it constantly.

Speaker 2 (59:18):
It's world building, baby.

Speaker 3 (59:20):
I like the detail. It's good. I don't recall if
there's anything like that in the book, but it makes
sense in this movie. The doctors attending the baron also
have a very David lynch quality to them. This seems
like purely Lynchy and flourish. One of them is like
saying a little sort of nursery rhyme to the boils

(59:40):
as he is picking at them, so he says, like,
put the pick in their peete, turn it round real neat.
That kind of cutesy rhyming in this grotesque context is
an extremely David Lynch kind of thing to do.

Speaker 2 (59:54):
Yeah, I'll just mention briefly that that's the Leonardo Chimino
playing the Baron's Doctor livednineteen seventeen through twenty twelve. You
probably saw him in water World or in nineteen eighty
seven's The Monster Squad when he played where he plays
the old German guy. But yeah, this is weird and
not in the books and just just strange, just strange

(01:00:15):
and grotesque.

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
Speaking of strange and grotesque, what is the thing that
Rabond like crushes and then drinks the juice of here?
Is this in some way a spice based cocktail? I
don't think, as far as I know, Rabond is not
consuming spice, because do we see him with blue eyes
at all? He crushes something in a glass box and
then sucks up its juice.

Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
I don't think this is spice though. To be sure,
in the book they mentioned that you know a lot
of royal houses use spice because spice extends your human life,
And so I mean it's maybe they're using spice and
they just don't use it at the levels that frem
and use it to gain their eyes.

Speaker 3 (01:00:57):
This, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
I always kind of read this as some other kind
of strange space drug in this universe of weird space drugs.
It's like a mummified frog juice box. It's like you
auto crush a petrified creature and then you inhale it,
and then you, of course you chunk the juice box
across the room. I'm not sure what this is all about.
I don't think it's anything from the book or the books,

(01:01:19):
but it is marvelously strange. I like it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:22):
So anyway, you know, they're talking about their plots against
House of Treades and the Baron. Just a note, generally
he often starts levitating up in the air when he
gets really excited. Again, the difference I think from the
book that like in the book they say the Baron
has like suspensers that help him like stay aloft, like
help him stand up or something like that. But this

(01:01:44):
is he's just flying all the time here.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
Yeah. Yeah, this movie made the choice that he was
going to fly around and float around, and all subsequent
adaptations have gone on that route as well, though it's
more comical in this version, and it's more threatening and
ominous in dv's adaptations. But we're still not out of
all the weird creations and recreations for this scene.

Speaker 3 (01:02:07):
Oh no, there's also like, oh, this grotesque thing where
like many of the servants and people like the people
who work for the atreadees or not the Atredees. Sorry,
the Harconans have this like plug, this like a valve
in their heart that the Harconans can just like pull
out the plug and like all their blood runs out
of their chest and they die. And it seems that

(01:02:29):
the baron just sometimes removes people's plugs for fun.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Yeah, this is not in the books, but it is.
It is kind of a fitting invention for the hearkens
on a hole because yeah, so the baron apparently likes
to level the playing field with his servants in his
underling so that he can kill them at will by
simply pulling this thing out. But this sequence in particular
that follows because basically a what I think he's credited
as a flower boy, like a servant comes in and

(01:02:57):
the baron approaches him rather lustily and then pulls out
his heart plug and blood goes everywhere. And this sequence
has generated for amount criticism over the years due to
not only its grotesque qualities, but also questionable implications during
the AIDS crisis of the nineteen eighties. Given that in
Quick Secession we see same sex desire, physical illness on

(01:03:20):
the part of the baron, and also blood spraying everywhere.
I don't think any of that was actually intentional, and
Lynch is drawing directly on elements from the book here
in many cases. But there's longstanding social criticism of this sequence.

Speaker 3 (01:03:35):
Yeah, I can see, maybe an isolation, some of these
weird elements working better individually, but put together like this,
I can absolutely see what the critics are saying there.
And again, I think it was a good choice in
the newer movies to remove the same sex attraction element
from the Harconins because it's just not really necessary and
it avoids this kind of implication, the implication that like

(01:03:58):
that in itself is part of their deviousness or is
evil in some way. Okay, so I think we're done
with Gidee Prime for now, right, Could we onto Aracus? No? No, no, no,
not onto Aracus. We're gonna go back to Caladan first. Okay,
So we see, you know, the the Atredes leaving the
planet with their pug, Jessica, Letto and Paul. So they

(01:04:19):
get on board the spaceship and blast off for Dune,
and the spaceships we see them approaching the Guild Highliner,
which is like an object that's sort of like a
city sized baton floating in the void. And these are
the ships that can travel through folded space. So you
take a spaceship up to the Guild Highliner, I think,
you get on board it, and then it takes you

(01:04:40):
between the different stars in the galaxy. And so their
ship enters the Guild Highliner through a huge opening framed
by ornate gold decorations, like the frame of a Renaissance painting.
I like that detail, and I really like this sequence
because here space travel is true. We did with apprehension

(01:05:01):
and reverence as a mystical, almost magical event. It's so
far from the kind of casual jet fighter pilots in
space themes that we would get in so many other
sci fi movies of the time. I love the feeling
created here that to travel on a Guild Highliner is
to participate in a profound and unsettling mystery.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
Yeah, absolutely, and one that is managed by a reclusive
cult that has a complete monopoly on space travel. A
reminder that no one is moving star to star in
the Doom universe except for the Guild. So there are
no space battles because there's nobody to engage in those
space battles. The Guild controls everything.

Speaker 3 (01:05:46):
Yeah, that's a really good point. But so I think
this is something that the Lynch movie does especially well,
is create this sense of awe and mystery and intrepidation
and danger about interstellar travel. Yeah, you're at the mercy
of this, this reclusive cult, as you said.

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
All right, so we board up the high liner and
then we set off onward to Aracus.

Speaker 3 (01:06:17):
That's right. Finally we're at Doune, So the planet appears
as a reverse setting sun and they go down to
the surface. Jessica, Letto and Paul arrive and set foot
on the planet, and then Princess Irelon resumes the narration.
Got to get more more voiceover narration. She says that
House of Trades took control of Iracas sixty three standard
days into the year ten thousand and one, ninety one,

(01:06:40):
it was known that the Harconins, the former rulers of Aracus,
would leave many suicide troops behind. A trade's patrols were doubled,
and we learn in the following scenes that the Harconans
have sabotaged machinery and defenses on the planet. We of
course meet Duncan Idaho yet again. He comes to Duke Letto.

(01:07:00):
He's dressed in a still suit. This is the first
glimpse we get. I think of what the still suit
looks like here, which it looks just kind of like
a padded full body suit, but it's got the hose
that connects to the nose. This is the local freemen attire,
which allows one to survive in the desert without losing water.
It recycles your sweat, the vapor in your breath, your urine,

(01:07:21):
your feces, everything, All the water comes back.

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
Yeah. Yeah, and the suits look pretty darn good in
this film. In fact, I know people who prefer these
suits to the new adaptations. But I like him in both.

Speaker 3 (01:07:34):
Yeah, I do too. So Duncan reports to the Duke
that he's made contact with the Fremen and they could
be powerful allies, especially since he believes there are many,
many more of them than the Emperor realizes. They exist
in vast numbers hidden from the Imperial census. So that's
kind of threatening. So we watch the atreadees troops being

(01:07:56):
trained to preserve water, and we meet a new character.
We meet Leat Kines, the Judge of Change, which means
he's supposed to oversee the change between the Harconean control
of Iracus to a Trade's control of Iracus and then
report to the lands Rad which is like the Parliament
of this universe, and like make sure that everything has

(01:08:19):
been done fairly. But he's also an ecologist. He's an
imperial ecologist, and he's been on the planet a long time.
I might have even been born here. He's sort of
adapted to Fremen ways and he has blue eyes from
the Spice.

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
Yeah, And this is of course Max Foncito playing in
the role I lived in nineteen twenty nine through twenty twenty.
See our recent episode on Flash Gordon for a longer
discussion on Max here. But he is as always a
fine presence in a film, but he is barely in this.
This character's presence is much reduced. We see a lot
more of kinds in the recent films, played by Sharon

(01:08:55):
Duncan Brewster, who is also great.

Speaker 3 (01:08:57):
Yes she is. I wonder why they use so little
of doctor Kynes in this movie. Makes you wonder if
stuff got cut.

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
Oh yeah, I get the feeling. It's just like the
economy of the cut here. And you know I should
throw in I probably mentioned this in the last episode.
There are those longer unauthorized cuts of nineteen eighty four's
Dune that Lynch totally disowns. Those are like, you know,
Smithy directed productions, and I really haven't seen those in full.

(01:09:28):
So maybe we can have some listeners ride in with
their thoughts on deleted scenes that pop up again in
that longer cut. But certainly, in this the only official
cut of David Lynch's Dune, this character is barely present.

Speaker 3 (01:09:42):
He is present long enough to observe that Paul wears
a still suit as if he was born to it,
because the you know, the treadees are putting on still
suits to go out and survey spice production. Paul is
wearing his like a pro so that's part of a prophecy. Actually, oh,
how do you even? This is actually a good point
to discuss the way that I think the Lynch movie.

(01:10:04):
One way it sort of fails is it it plays
up a lot about the Spacing Guild that is not
really in the original Doune novel, But it really under
sells the role of the Beni Jessert, I think, and
like their whole plot to like establish, like seed these
prophecies throughout the cultures of the galaxy that would later

(01:10:27):
connect to the figure that they're going to use to
attain power, the Quisat's Hatterak. And so they put all
of these prophecies out among the people, and Paul arrives
on this planet and is immediately observed by people who
are familiar with these prophecies to fulfill them.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
Yeah. Yeah, like the ground has been prepared for one
such as he, and that's it's an important factor. Yeah,
that is just not as present in this adaptation.

Speaker 3 (01:10:55):
And that's something again I really appreciate about the new
movies is they sort of downplay the role of the
Spacing Guild and play no I mean, I don't know,
the Spacing Guild is cool too, so it's not like
I don't want to see them, but they focus more
on the plots and politics of the Beni Jesert, which
I think is a smart move. Ye anyway, and this
is the scene where Letto, Paul and Kines go out

(01:11:18):
in a flying machine to observe spice harvesters at work.
They're seeing, you know, the machines out in the desert
getting the spice from the sand. But uh oh, there
is worm sign. This apparently is a common thing about
how spice production takes place. The harvesters will work up
until the last minute when a worm is about to
arrive and eat them, and then they will be lifted
away by a flying vehicle called a carry all and

(01:11:41):
taken to safety. But uh oh, they're observing here that
a spice harvester is working, a worm is on the way,
and the carry all that is supposed to rescue it
has been sabotaged. So Duke Leto leads a rescue of
the men working. The spice harvester is leaving the spice behind,
rescuing the workers and bringing them onto his ornithopter. And

(01:12:03):
then we see a worm eat the harvester as they
take off, and we hear Kine's inner voice saying, oh,
I like this, Duke. He left the spice behind and
saved the men.

Speaker 2 (01:12:12):
I talked a lot about ornithopters in Wednesday's short form episode,
but briefly, I'll just say, yeah, the ornithopters in the
recent adaptations are amazing. They're like apache helicopters combined with
a dragonfly in a way that it's like terrifying and
majestic on the screen. In this adaptation, especially the Atreades

(01:12:33):
ornithopter is like a big metal berb, you know. It's
it's clunky, it's chonky. It's got these little wings that
seem decorative and not functional. The Harconin ornithopters, which I
don't even know if we really get to see them
all that much, but the design for those is a
lot more interesting, but also still doesn't fully embrace the

(01:12:54):
whole flapping of wings.

Speaker 3 (01:12:56):
Yeah. Okay, so we're getting into the plots here against
House a Treadees. So first of all, Lady Jessica determines
that doctor Yua has a secret concerning his wife and
his hatred of the Harconans, but that is not fully
fleshed out yet. We get to meet the housekeeper on
Erken here, the capital of Iracus. This is shout out mapes.

(01:13:19):
Paul tries spice for the first time, and he has
visions the second moon the sleeper must awaken. And we
also get the hunter Seeker attack on Paul, which is
something that's realized in both movie adaptations, where there's like
this little needlelike mosquito type creature that's trying to assassinate

(01:13:39):
Paul and he manages to avoid it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:42):
Yeah, great sequence in both films and mapes. By the way,
is played by Linda hunt Boord nineteen forty five Academy
Award winning actor. She played Billy Kwan in the Year
Living Dangerously from eighty two, so I have to single
her out.

Speaker 3 (01:13:56):
Yeah. So, but here we're getting to the Harconin attack.
The double Cross is in motion now, so there has
we've we've received word that there was a trader among
house the trades, and we finally learn it is doctor
Yua here uh and there are reasons so uh. Doctor
Ua ambushes Duke Letto in the night with a with

(01:14:16):
a drugged dart that kind of paralyzes him, and then
doctor Ua explains his plot. He has sabotaged the shields
of the city, destroyed the weirding modules, and the Harconin
troops are on the way, but He's like, Okay, it's
not over, Duke Leto, you can still kill Baron Harconin,

(01:14:36):
and he gives Leto the poison gas tooth. He tells him,
when you see the baron, remember the tooth. And this
is a great plot point.

Speaker 2 (01:14:45):
Yeah, the tooth stain is of course fittingly grosser in
this adaptation, like even when uas like getting it out
of its box to implant it, like it just like
this is gonna hurt. This is gonna be a little gross.

Speaker 3 (01:14:56):
The idea is he'll bite down on it when the
baron leans over him, and that will that'll spit the
poison gas in the Baron's face and kill him. And
we learn, of course doctor Yue is not doing this
out of maliciousness toward House Atredees, but he wants revenge
against the baron because the Harconans have for many years

(01:15:17):
captured his wife and have probably murdered her.

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
But he has to know for sure, and this is
how he's going to get to know for sure. But
he's also going to plot the destruction of the architect
of his wife's probable death right.

Speaker 3 (01:15:33):
So the attack begins. The Harconin troops here look so creepy.
They look like welders with these black full hood masks
with a little green square window in the front, and
so that looks really creepy. However, the actual violence in
this battle scene is not very cool. It is mostly
i think, unintentionally funny.

Speaker 2 (01:15:54):
Yeah, it's a little hockey.

Speaker 3 (01:15:56):
Baron Harconin leaves Paul and Jessica with Pyder Devrees with
instructions to kill them. They are sent off to the
desert to be left there to be eaten by worms
so there will be no evidence this was doctor Yuay's idea.
But actually it turns out Doctor Yua has been trying
to protect them. He has packed still suits for them,
and Paul and Jessica use the Beni Jesert voice to

(01:16:17):
command the Harconean troops and escape into the desert. Meanwhile,
Duke Letto's tooth strike against the Baron is about to
unfold the Barons. They're gloating over him, but it fails
to get the baron. Instead, it kills Pyder DeVries, it
kills the house harcone in Mintat played by Brad Duraf,
and the baron we get his reaction where he's like,

(01:16:39):
I'm alive. I'm alive, floating in the air, screaming so inspiring.

Speaker 2 (01:16:45):
The poison tooth sequence, at least when they have when
they refer back to it visually, it is, as you
might expect, far more grotesque in this adaptation, because we
see that it's like an explosion of gas stick gas
has gone off in the Duke's mouth and is like
eaten through his cheek. Even so, it's it's grim stuff. No.

Speaker 3 (01:17:07):
I know, we've been dwelling on a lot of detail
in the plot, so I think maybe we should shift
into moving a little more quickly through the movie. And
this is a good place to do it, because this
is also where the movie starts moving much more quickly
through the plot. And this, I think is a is
a fair major criticism of the eighty four Dune is
that somewhere around right here things start happening way too fast.

Speaker 2 (01:17:32):
Yeah, it becomes fragmentary and kind of feels like Doune
the scrap Book leading up to like the final confrontation.

Speaker 3 (01:17:39):
Yes, yes, okay, So Paul and Jessica escape into the desert.
They go to the forbidden South Polar regions. They're trying
to avoid being eaten by a worm. And this is
where Paul really like he gets he gets deep spice,
exposure to spice. In the desert, he sees the second moon,
you know. He hears the voice saying the sleeper must awaken.
He sees a hand reaching from space. He knows the

(01:18:00):
and the Guild want him destroyed, and finally he hears
that they will call him wad Deep. So that's a
premonition of everything to come. And he realizes that the
spice is in everything on the planet, and the spice
is changing him. It's causing him to reach his potential
as the chosen One, and he knows the future and
his own terrible destiny. Also revealed here is that Jessica,

(01:18:22):
Lady Jessica, is pregnant with Paul's sister, who is also
faded for greatness in some way. And there's adventure in
the desert as Paul and Jessica travel across the sand
trying to avoid worms. They have to, of course, do
the Fremen walk to walk without rhythm on the sand,
and here we do see the worm in its full

(01:18:42):
glory while it's chasing them. We see its trifled maw
leaping out from the sand and its design is almost
like a flower with petals opening around this toothy mouth.
I really do like the design of the worms in
this movie. I think they look great. They're scary and menacing.
Some of the worm riding scenes, however, are quite funny

(01:19:03):
and don't really have the same grandeur as when you're
just seeing the worm in its opening mouth. Also, somewhere
in the sequence we first see the use I think
of the thumper, a very important technology in this movie.

Speaker 2 (01:19:17):
Thumpers are huge in this movie, and it works. Like
you'll often see on the poster, there's Paul Addredes with
something slung across his back in the desert. That's the thumper.
So yeah, it's big, no criticism, it's just a big
idea of what these things look like.

Speaker 3 (01:19:35):
So Paul and Jessica come across a Fremen seat, a
Fremen encampment in the rocks. So they find man car
steps and they go into the rocks and they just
kind of walk up on it and all of the
freemen are there, like as symboled waiting for them, eyes
glowing blue. It's almost like they're standing at attention for
their arrival. And here we meet Stilgar the leader of

(01:19:56):
the Fremen group, and we're also going to meet Channi
of the Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:20:01):
So, still Gar is played by Everett McGill born nineteen
forty five, accomplished American character actor with a very signature look.
His other credits include eighty one's Quest for Fire, eighty
five Silver Bullet, The Stephen King, Werewolf Movie, eighty six's
Heartbreak Ridge, nineteen eighty seven's Werewolf, eighty nine's Licensed to Kill,
Twin Peaks nineteen ninety ones, The People Under the Stairs

(01:20:23):
under Siege two, and Lynches The Straight Story. Again, not
really fair to compare this performance to Javier Bardam Stillgar
in the new movies because he, again, like a lot
of these characters, he had a lot more room to breathe,
and there's a lot more space for that character to
come alive.

Speaker 3 (01:20:38):
Yeah, this is speed still Gar. Yeah, I guess we
should go ahead and introduce Chawny as well. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:20:44):
Channie is played by Sean Young born nineteen fifty nine,
American actress who had previously appeared in nineteen eighty one
Stripes and more importantly eighty two's Blade Runner as the
replicant Rachel. Subsequent roles included eighty seven's No Way Out
in Wall Street ninety one, Kiss Before Dying ninety four
is Ace Venture a pet detective, and more recently Blade

(01:21:04):
Runner twenty forty nine. In another case, hard to compare
this Channey to the recent film, where Zendeia does a
great job playing a more complex and I think arguably
stronger vision of this character. Chani is a strong character
in this nineteen sixty five novel, but I think some
of our strengths had to be updated for like a

(01:21:25):
modern audience.

Speaker 3 (01:21:26):
Well, also in the new movie, I think you could
argue in some ways Part two is is you get
a lot of the story from Channi's perspective, which makes
a lot of sense. That's a good way to frame it,
to see, like the way Paul changes. So I think
that was a really strong choice. And like you said,

(01:21:46):
Zendeia is great in the new one. I don't want
to as is Harve or Barden. Also, they're both fantastic
in the new movie. I don't want to blame Sean
Young and Everett McGill for the shortcomings of these characters
in this version. I think it is not the fault
of the actors. I think it is the fault of
the script and the editing that like, these actors are
just not given time to portray these characters in the movie.

(01:22:09):
It's just just lightning speed editing from now on. So,
like what happens when they arrive at the siege is
that you know still Gar. He's like, oh, hi, I'm Stillgar.
You know I'm the leader of the Fremen group. The
boy man will be taken into the tribe and then
Lady Jessica like grabs him by the throat. Paul scrambles.
He says, oh, she has the Weirding way. If you
can do this to the strongest of us, you're worth

(01:22:31):
ten times your weight in water. And then still Gar says,
teach us the Weirding way, and you shall have sanctuary.
And Jessica accepts, and Paul meets Johnny daughter Channi is
the daughter of Leat Kinds. She's a member of the
Fremen tribe here and you know he has seen her
before in dreams and premonitions, like a warrior of great

(01:22:51):
bravery and great beauty. Kyle, of course, is smitten. Here
they introduce to still Gar. You know it's all going
to be You're welcomed by the people. Oh you need
a new name. Your name will be Usel that is
the pillar of strength. Oh but what else can be
your name? Your name will be wad deeb. Paul picks
that because it's the name of the desert mouse, whose
figure is seen on the second moon of the planet.

(01:23:14):
And so they're brought into these subterranean caverns where the
Fremen live. They discover that the Freemen have huge caches
of water they are collecting from the atmosphere via wind traps,
these vast pools in the dark. And this whole sequence
where Jessica and Paul are welcomed into the Fremen world.
You know, the cast is doing the best they can.
The sets are cool and stuff, but it is so rushed.

(01:23:37):
The introductions are not given a chance to breathe. It's
just like, hi, oh wow, you were really strong. Now
you're one of us. Here are all our secrets. I
love you. And it comes so fast.

Speaker 2 (01:23:47):
Yeah, the new has a lot more time to work
with this part of the story, with Paul and Jessica
gradually changing from you know, endangered outsiders to tentative allies
to the Fremen, valued members of a movement to members
of its people, to leaders, and eventually, in Paul's case,
to Messiah.

Speaker 3 (01:24:07):
What is at least half the run time of this
recent movie is like, I don't know five minutes in
this metalle, Okay, let's check in on the Harconins because
they're doing some really good stuff here. So we come

(01:24:28):
into them on They're on Arakine, I think, and Vladimir
Harconin is laughing crazily as he flies around a big
machine in his levitation suit. Rabon, who is supposed to
be running spice production on the planet, he walks up to.
This is what happens. There's like a dead cow hanging
from the ceiling, and Rabon walks up to the dead cow,

(01:24:49):
peels off part of its face starts eating the cow
face raw. Then the baron tells Rabon to be harsh
and brutal in ruling Aracus. And while he's saying this,
he's like reaching his fingers into Rabond's mouth to like
play with the chewed up cow face as he explains this, Yeah,
I have no words. Then Rabond leaves then out comes

(01:25:13):
Fade wearing like this wings of victory speedo. That's amazing.
Top all time Top five movie speedo, and the Baron
reveals that after Rabon has become despised by the people
of Doune, he's going to give the planet to Fade
so that he can be loved by contrast.

Speaker 2 (01:25:33):
Yep, yep, that's the whole plan. I mean, that's part
of the plan. It is legitimately part of the plan.
Rabond's gonna crush the planet, get the spice levels up,
the spice production levels up. Everyone's gonna hate him, and
then Fade's going to come in as the savior and
will be at least to some degree beloved by the people,
or as much as you can love a hard conean despot.

Speaker 3 (01:25:54):
Yeah, and but the Baron's face boils just keep looking
worse and worse. We also see here the captured Sufir
hawat the mintat of House the Treads. They explained to
him that he must milk a hairless cat that has
a rat taped to it every day in order to
acquire the antidote to a poison that the Hearks have
given him.

Speaker 2 (01:26:17):
Yeah. This is also unnecessary and so weird, especially the
cat rat thing. It almost feels like Lynch is trolling
us a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:26:26):
In the book.

Speaker 2 (01:26:27):
This basic situation exists, but it's essentially just a poison
anecdote con like, hey, loyal a tradees mintet, you have
to work for us now, isn't that delightful? And if
you don't, you're going to die because of this poison
in your system. And they apparently filmed sequences of this
plotline for Dune Part two and just had to cut

(01:26:49):
it for time, which you know, is a shame, but
I guess understandable given them all that's going on in
the movie.

Speaker 3 (01:26:54):
Yeah. So, back at the Sieeche of the Freemen, Lady
Jessica is offered to Chants to become the reverend mother
of the Seech, but to do so, she has to
drink the poisonous water of life and survive. And this
calls back to a prophecy about the Quisat's Hatterak that
young Paul would drink the water of life and survive.

(01:27:15):
Other men who have tried have died, but maybe Paul
could survive it as well. But before that, Lady Jessica
has to drink it. She does, and this causes her
later to give birth to When she gives birth to
her daughter named Alia, Alia is like born with all
the knowledge and power of a reverend mother and like
matures very rapidly, so we've got like a super genius

(01:27:38):
Benny jesser At baby and that's just that's just not
what you want, abomination. She's scary as heck when we
see her later in the in the finale, it's one
of the creepiest things ever committed to film.

Speaker 2 (01:27:52):
Yeah, yeah, she is super creepy. Herbert in general likes
creepy super babies and super creepy super children. They pop
up elsewhere in the Doom novels. Obviously, DV went in
a slightly different direction with the way this is portrayed
in the film, and again, interesting, I think it's interesting

(01:28:15):
what they did. It'll be also interesting to see how
this is incorporated into subsequent adaptations of especially done Messiah.

Speaker 3 (01:28:24):
Yeah. Also here we see more of Paul and Chahnnie
falling in love. But also we get Paul addressing the
assembled Frimen fighters and he's like, hey, look, we got
a common enemy, the Harconins. We've got to destroy him.
My mom and I are going to teach you the
weirding way. We've got to attack and destroy the spice trade.
So we see a lot of weirding way training sessions

(01:28:44):
with the weirding module where they're saying like chuck sah
and it you know, makes it shoot a little blast
out that they say will paralyzed nerves, shatter bones, set fires,
suffocate an enemy, or burst his organs, and they're just
going to keep on attacking the Harconins until they have victory.
This is also the my name is a killing word
scene where he discovers that in the name wadd but

(01:29:05):
will like make things break and shatter.

Speaker 2 (01:29:07):
All right, we're getting the troops together. We're gonna we're
gonna bring spice production to its knees and eventually take
out the hearken it so okay.

Speaker 3 (01:29:16):
Now we also get the worm taming scene here where
Paul has to go learn to ride a worm because
you can't be a true freemen unless you can ride
a worm. And so we go. He goes out with
his worm riding materials, the thumper, the hooks, which are
a gift from the Siech, and the freemen are gathered
on the sand dune looking on Stillgar has a very
cold look, but Paul like he sets the thumber going.

(01:29:40):
He does the Litany against fear. They realize he is
called a very big worm. And this is again along
with the prophecies of what the freemen called the Lissan
al Kayib, the you know, the voice from the outer world,
the messiah figure they're waiting for. So we get some
shots of Paul getting onto the worm, like using the
hooks and ro over on the top. Not the best

(01:30:02):
looking shots in the movie. A couple of these do
look kind of kind of cheap, But then when we
see the worm by itself, it looks awesome and the
flower petals open and we see the big mouth heavy
dune theme playing on the soundtrack, as like Stilgar comes
to climb the trailing rope behind Paul and join him
on the worm. But Rob, I think we may have

(01:30:23):
alluded to this earlier. There is a very funny soundtrack
moment here where like the heavy horns of the dune
theme give way to rock and distorted guitars. And I
enjoy this because it's funny, but I don't think it
quite has the intended effect.

Speaker 2 (01:30:37):
Yeah, yeah, it's a little a little goofy. In general,
I have to reiterate love the Toto score. I have
listened to it all the way through a couple of
times since we recorded part one of This Weird House.
But yeah, it's a little little comical here with the guitar.

Speaker 3 (01:30:54):
Oh Man, that desert I mean, it's right on the edge,
like that desert theme. It is pure velveta, Like it
is so smooth and cheesy and rock yacht rock sounding,
but it's also great and it fills me with feelings
I can't deny it. Yeah, So a bunch of time passes,
we see Paul and Stilgar leading frem and attacks on

(01:31:15):
the Hearken and spice mining operations. You know, they're using
the weirding modules to say boom and zap and make
things explode. And then of course Paul thinks he is
going to be able to get his revenge because when
the spice flow stops, that's going to summon the Baron
and the Emperor to the planet because they're going to
come there be forced to deal with us. Yeah. Of course,

(01:31:38):
the Baron and the Emperor become aware of this figure
called wad Deep that like there they're wounded fighters come
back to them and they're muttering what Deep? What Deep?
So like who is this guy? And you know they're like,
we've got to destroy him. We get some more voiceover
from Virginia Madsen telling us that wad Deep and the
Frimen pretty much completely shut down spice production and that

(01:32:02):
Rabond is trying to hide this from his uncle but
apparently not succeeding, and things are getting really dire so
soon I think the Emperor is going to have to come.
Oh but before that, we get Paul's reunion with Gurney
Halleck with Patrick Stewart. They like run into each other.
I guess Garnie Halleck is now working for the Harconins
or working maybe independently as like a spice harvester protector

(01:32:24):
here in the desert, and Paul and Gurney run into
one another and reunite. Of course, Gurney thought Paul was
dead this whole time. By the way, there is maximum
Toto all over the soundtrack in the background of this section,
overdriven guitars wailing the whole thing, and eventually we see
the circumstances they're going to drive us toward the terrible conclusion.

(01:32:45):
So back at the Imperial Palace, the space in Guild
shows back up once again to harass the Emperor some more.
No Guild Navigator. This time, it's only like the Holy
Brotherhood of Hazmatt in their industrial religious looking robes. Once again,
they speak a foreign language that is like automatically translated
by this weird microphone and the language itself. I was

(01:33:08):
listening to it. It sounds like kind of feral. So
there's kind of grunts and snarling like a wild animal,
but also notes of igor in the monster mash. Yeah,
and so they speak to him, and they the conversation
that very much has the effect of wait, who's the
emperor here? Because the Spacing Guild is really browbeating him.

(01:33:28):
They're like, look, if you don't get the spice mining
back under control immediately, you are going to live out
the rest of your life in a pain amplifier. I
don't know what a pain amplifier is, but I get
the idea.

Speaker 2 (01:33:40):
Yeah, I feel like they this is a moment where
they kind of overplay the power of the Guild here
because all tim I mean, the Guild is very powerful
in the Dune universe, but so is the Benajestrit, so
is House Carino. So everything is in kind of like
a precarious balance of power. Yes, and here we're just
kind of like, yeah, the Guild pushes everybody around, which

(01:34:02):
is not really the flavor of the Guild and the
actual source material.

Speaker 3 (01:34:06):
I totally agree, but I also do like that the
Emperor is not portrayed as just all powerful, that he
has factions that he must appease. And you know, if,
like if the lands Rod and the Space and Guild
and people are turning against him, that is a threat
to him. And it's not like he can just crush
them all. That's true anyway. So the Emperor is going

(01:34:27):
to take Sardikar to the planet Iracus. He's like, I
know how we're going to deal with this complete destruction
of every life on the planet. We're just going to
just destroy them all. Meanwhile, we get the sequence where
Paul is finally going to fulfill the prophecy and drink
the water of life. Of course, he tells Channi that
he had a vision and he must do this. She
doesn't like the idea, but he thinks he has no choice.

(01:34:48):
He's got to do it. So Paul is led out
into the desert. Chany pledges her love to him, and
they give him the water of Life to drink, and
he has many more visions of like in a water
dripping in a cavern and the mouth of a worm opening,
and I like how the mouth of the worm is
innercut with an extreme close up of a human eye,
so like the worm's mouth is like the pupil within

(01:35:09):
the iris. I thought that was pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (01:35:11):
And here come the worm jets, because I think this
is where we get the track that Eno collaborated on.

Speaker 3 (01:35:17):
Oh interesting with the visions here, I think so, I
think so. But worms gather from the desert around the
Fremen to sort of keep a vigil beside Paul, and
they don't attack. It's almost if the worms are showing
reverence from what deep And eventually he is awakened in
Chinese's arms with a new sense of determination and terrible purpose.

(01:35:38):
He's ready to be the messiah of the Fremen now
and he stands before them in this great underground hall
and gives a speech that is in some ways kind
of powerful but unfortunately contains the sentence a storm is coming.
Oh man, if writers just just skip over that one,
you don't need the storm is coming, yeah, but his

(01:36:00):
this kind of differences. He's like, you know, when it arrives,
it will shake the universe. He swears vengeance against the
Emperor and chance long live the fighters. So the Fremen
warriors stream out of their seech and prepare for war,
and we also see the Emperor in his Sardikar arriving
on Oracus from deep space with the help of the
Guild highliners. And the final battle comes about. So the

(01:36:21):
Fremen Mountain assault on Irakan, led by Paul Stilgar and
Gurney Halleck. They will use the a treades house atomics
as well as the power of the worm. So they
deploy all these thumpers and some of what Stilgar calls
worm sign the likes of which God has never seen. Yeah,
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:36:41):
I'm not going to geek out on a bunch of
din stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:36:43):
Bet.

Speaker 2 (01:36:44):
Yeah, I don't like that line, And I don't think
of a Fremen would say it like quite like that.

Speaker 3 (01:36:47):
I don't think so either. Yeah, that's a little uncharacteristic.
But the worms are cool here. I like the way
the worms are depicted is coming into the battle.

Speaker 2 (01:36:56):
Oh yeah, I love the addition of having these kind
of like static electrical discharges in the air around them.

Speaker 3 (01:37:03):
Yeah, it looks really cool as the battle is going on.
There's a confrontation between Baron Harkonen and the Emperor. The
Emperor has killed Rabon and like stuck his head on
a big spike, and then he's gathered people in his
portable throne room. So they got Princess Erilan there, the
Reverend mother, a bunch of Sardocar members of the Space

(01:37:23):
and Guild. The Emperor gives the baron a very I'm
disappointed in you speech. But before the Baron can suffer
a similar fate to Rabond, they are interrupted by the
arrival of someone in black robes. It is a child.
Uh oh, it's Paul's sister Alia, and she is instantly
so so unsettlingly creepy with this horrible voice voiced by

(01:37:45):
an adult. I think we actually see her talk her voice.
I would describe it like putting on a shoe and
then feeling something start moving under your toes.

Speaker 2 (01:37:56):
Yeah, this kid is perfectly unsettling in a way very
similar to the accidental unsettling character of the kid in
a House by the Cemetery. Yeah, where Bob's voice was
dubbed by an adult woman and he comes off in
some sort of like a like a strange being, but

(01:38:17):
it's intentional here and it absolutely works. This kid's creepy.

Speaker 3 (01:38:21):
So Alia, the sort of reverend mother child, has a
confrontation with the Emperor and with the Reverend mother guys
Helen Moheim. She's like, I am a messenger from what deep,
poor Emperor. I'm afraid my brother won't be very pleased
with you. It's it's I can't really do it justice.

(01:38:41):
It's so creepy, and the Reverend mother is like she's
an abomination. But oh she also screams get out of
my mind, exactly like David Bowie and The Man who
Fell to Earth. Oh yeah, anyway, So Paul and the
freemen used the house atomics to blow up the mountains
that are shielding the approach to our Keene, and they
mount their assault. They bring lots of loose worms alongside them,

(01:39:04):
and the freemen and their worms clash with the Emperor's sardikar.
At some point, we see the Emperor personally controlling a
mounted gun to fire at the worms. Not sure about
that choice, like he doesn't seem like much of a
hands on warrior, but also also the Emperor tasks Baron
Harkonen with destroying Alia. But of course Alia, I think

(01:39:25):
she's going to get the better of this encounter. And
she does. She Like, what exactly does she do to
the baron?

Speaker 2 (01:39:32):
She jabs him with the with the gomdjabar.

Speaker 3 (01:39:35):
I believe, Oh yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:39:37):
And kills him like this is the death blow. She
is Alia of the knife after all.

Speaker 3 (01:39:42):
Oh okay. Yeah, we see her like she's so happy
about it. She's dancing around with her eyes closed holding
a knife, and we also see the baron he flies
away as he is dying and then is chomped by
a worm from the That's a bit much. That's a
bit much, okay. So the final confrontation, you know, the
freemen are victorious in the battle. They've taken the city.

(01:40:02):
They gather everybody, all of the power players in like
the big room in the palace at Arikine, and Paul
goes up to the emperor and his retinue and demonstrates
his power. He intimidates the Emperor and silences the reverend
mother with a powerful word. Also, she's like, ah, and
she appears to have metal teeth.

Speaker 2 (01:40:19):
Now, oh wow, maybe she has X and teeth.

Speaker 3 (01:40:23):
I don't know, maybe, but so Paul is confronted by
the remaining member of how Sarcona and the young Fade Rautha.
They're going to have to face one another, of course,
and Fade Rautha takes the Emperor's blade in his hand
for the fight. This is going to be a knife
fight to the death. There are things I really like
about this fight. I like how there are people playing
pyramid shaped drums.

Speaker 2 (01:40:43):
Yeah, those are cool.

Speaker 3 (01:40:46):
Sting keeps yelling I will kill you.

Speaker 2 (01:40:50):
I love that line. This has always been one of
my favorite cheesy lines from this film and just in
from film in general.

Speaker 3 (01:40:56):
We already talked about this difference, but I do like
that this keeps Fade Rautha as a cheater. He's not
the kind of honorable fighter in a way honorable fighter
that they make Fade Rotha in the new movie Fade
Rotha here tries to cheat with a poisoned barb, but
Paul gets arounded by saying, I will bend like a
reed in the wind. And he sort of like bends
and lets Fade come around him and then stabs him

(01:41:19):
in a very very strange way.

Speaker 2 (01:41:23):
Yeah, this is this is a quality kill, and this
is I think this falls in line with what you
were talking about in the first episode we did about
the Lynchian approach to portrayals of death, because he drives
his knife up through a Fade's chin into his brain,
and then after Fade has fallen dead under the floor,

(01:41:45):
he uses the weirding voice to shatter the stone floor
beneath him, a moment that really feels to reson like
it resonates with a kind of biblical power. You know.
It's a moment that I think really legitimately rules in
this film and cements the ascendant might of paul A Triades.

Speaker 3 (01:42:02):
I agree. I think it's very cool. They also say,
you know, Usul no longer needs a weirding module. He
can just like speak a word without the module and
make things shatter. And from here we just sort of
get a rather quick wrap up. Like the Princess, Irelan
narrates that MAUDIEB had become the hand of God fulfilling
the frim and prophecy. Where there was war MODEEP would
now bring peace where there was hatred MADEEP would bring love,

(01:42:25):
et cetera. Uh Yeah, yeah, is that what the story is?
I don't think so, not so much. Yeah, So in
the end, yeah, we get this very heroic kind of conclusion,
and in fact it goes beyond heroic and becomes like transcendent,
almost religious, where Paul literally causes a miracle.

Speaker 2 (01:42:46):
Yes, Paul makes it rain on Racus. It's in a way,
I have to be fair. It is a great visual
capper for the film, but it is one that makes
zero sense within the context of the film and has
no footing in the novel. Because Paul not control the
weather and greening efforts on Aracus, which have been alluded
to and are part of the world of Dune. These

(01:43:08):
are going to be gradual, These are going to be
focused on particular parts of the planet. So this moment
is all feels and no sense.

Speaker 3 (01:43:15):
Yeah. Yeah, So it's a very different kind of ending
than we get from Dune Part two, the New one,
which does go a longer way to try to to
show Paul's change and change not for the better, his
arc toward tyranny and his coldness, especially the most painful
thing being at the end of the movie, the way
he rejects Shawni for his you know, political alliance with

(01:43:40):
House Corono by saying he's going to marry Princess Erolan.
In the new movie.

Speaker 2 (01:43:44):
Yeah, yeah, the movie does a great job of playing
up the fact that this is leading into a massive
holy war, Interstellar Holy war. It is not going to
be peace and love across the universe. It is going
to be pretty grim days ahead, and it is because
as Paul has risen to such power.

Speaker 3 (01:44:03):
On the other hand, if you're just trying to make
a standalone film, the Lynch movie has a much more
feel good ending. Yeah. I don't know if that's something.
I don't know if that's good. It's not really what
the story is, but it doesn't feel as sad as
the ending of the new one.

Speaker 2 (01:44:19):
Yeah. Yeah, the new film has a grimness and a
sadness to it. My son watched the has only seen
these the new adaptations, and he when I was asking
him about how he felt about the movies, he was like, Oh,
it's it's really cool, but it's kind of joyless. And
then that is true. I mean, the film is not

(01:44:40):
a joyful experience, especially as it wraps up. And I
would say that Dune in general is a very joyful thing,
and certainly in my own life, but a lot of
that is in the details of everything in the world
building and the ecology and the philosophy and the use

(01:45:00):
of religion and history. It's like the sum of the
whole is joy, but the actual events that occur in
the film here, especially towards the end, are not.

Speaker 3 (01:45:12):
I feel like there's so much more I could say,
but we've gone on way too long already, so I
think we must wrap it up.

Speaker 2 (01:45:18):
Yeah, if there's any unfinished business and we can discuss
it in future listener mail installments, that'll be a good
place for that. And likewise, Yeah, if you have thoughts
on the new Dune adaptations, the nineteen eighty four's Dune
that we've been discussing in this episode, your history with
the film, any of the merch any of that weird

(01:45:39):
merchandise they put out, like those strange action figures. Are
these legitimately cool revel model kits that I don't think
anybody bought initially, but now go for you know, one
hundreds of dollars online right in We would love to
hear from you. We'll even hear thoughts about those. The
mini series, the sci fi mini series, which again has
a great cast, but some CGI that is really not aged. Well,

(01:46:02):
just a reminder to everybody that's stuff to Blow Your
Mind is primarily a science culture podcast, with core episodes
on Tuesdays and Thursday, short form episode on Wednesdays. On
Mondays we do listener mail, and on Fridays we just
set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
weird movie on Weird House Cinema. If you want a
complete list of all the movies we've covered so far,
and sometimes a peek ahead of the future, go to
letterbox dot com. It's l E T T E r

(01:46:23):
boxd dot com. We are Weird House on there and
we've got a list for you to look at.

Speaker 3 (01:46:28):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjpousway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
topic for the future, or just to say hi, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:46:49):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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