Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Dune (1984), part 2

In this classic 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. (originally published 3/15/24)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is
Rob lam and we're going to air the second of
our two part look at David Lynch's Dune from nineteen
eighty four. This was an episode that published three point
fifteen twenty four. Big Dune fan, Obviously, we love David
Lynch as well, so let's jump in and discuss the

(00:26):
second half of this marvelously weird motion picture.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
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,

(01:09):
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 1 (01:26):
I mean depends on which which version, which cut you're going, right,
But yeah, we just we had to split this one
into 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 and then we just have such
a rich cast that we have to at least acknowledge

(01:47):
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 movie and this is

(02:09):
the time to do it.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
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.

(02:32):
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 Dune both. I guess I'll three the novel,
the Lynch adaptation, and the new adaptation. And I thought

(02:55):
some of the differences in the choices where it diverged
from the book and from the eighty four movie we're
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

(03:15):
emerge towards 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 1 (03:30):
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 ven
News film is a different beast. While being very true
to the book, I believe that the spirit of his
portrayal of Paul is very much in keeping with the

(03:52):
book and certainly in keeping with the trajectory to come.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I guess we'll
probably talk 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.

(04:16):
We talked about David Lynch and 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,

(04:36):
and he has to some extent disowned it.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
He was very.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
Dissatisfied with the final product that was released, and he'd
even said that working on this version of Dune, 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 in

(05:00):
the wake of this where he did have creative control
and are celebrated by many as a very strange, interesting,
excellent artistic achievements.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
Dune was not.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
Beloved by critics at the time it came out. I
think in the years since critical opinion has softened somewhat.
It kind of has a 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,
and I think that you can make an argument that
it is in many ways a failure to adapt the

(05:33):
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 doing is great.
I love this movie and I have a great time
watching it.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
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

(06:15):
are some very important thematic notes and ultimately happenings that
they we'll discuss that I don't love. But still a
lot of it. Is there, a lot of the look
of Dune. Is there, a lot of the feel of Dune.
Is there, lots of great performances, So you know, it's
and even throwing on the fact that he had to
cut it down so much, given all of these limitations,

(06:38):
the finished product is a lot of fun. It has
a lot of greatness in it.

Speaker 3 (06:42):
You know, 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 Duane is to
adapt for multiple reasons. On one hand, it's difficult because
so much of the story is contextual at stuff about

(07:04):
the setting 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

(07:25):
a thinking face while you hear their internal monologue, you know,
say saying ooh, dune iraq, you know, thinking through something.
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

(07:46):
faces and hearing their internal thoughts.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah. 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 gonna
ignore us and you're just gonna roll into part two
without listening to part one, is that the one thing

(08:09):
we're doing different with this differently with this Weird 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 (08:28):
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

(08:49):
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 Straades and how the Emperor is planning to use

(09:10):
House Harkonen to destroy Duke Letto and his line.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah, and 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 Okay.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
So here we are at the planet Calidan. This is
the home of House Atraades. 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. But

(09:49):
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 there's
even more to come. So Princess Erirol continues on the soundtrack.
She says, the powerful Benni Jeserts Sisterhood for ninety generations
has been manipulating bloodlines to produce the Quisat's Hatarak, a

(10:11):
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 Atreides. Now, even all that exposition raises some questions,

(10:33):
but like I think it was part of the story
that the Benni jests 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 control the sex
of their offspring with their minds psychically and things like that.
But so, yeah, she disobeys the rules of this powerful

(10:57):
sisterhood and gives birth to paul who is yet you know,
he's going to be some kind of terrible messiah.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
So Paula Trades 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 (11:22):
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 McLachlin in
a movie. He's an actor I love. But for some reason,

(11:43):
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 epess really. Instead,
he comes off as Kyle MacLaughlin like he's kind of

(12:05):
nerdy and funny and he like giggles a lot. And
there have been various criticisms of Kyle's coy m macglaughlin'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

(12:28):
that boy with dangerous potential feeling. He's more of a
cosmic Martin Prince in here.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
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 almost like Paul is more

(12:53):
of a cipher, you know, Paul kind of seen through
the lens of, say, the protagonist in David Clintenberg 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 know, personality. Yeah,

(13:16):
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 compare

(13:38):
him in his performance to Timothy Chalomey in the New
Dune movies, because in my opinion, Chalomy 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

(13:59):
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 of dv's
version of Doom.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
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 that awakening
to the terrible purpose, the sort of arc toward tyranny
and the and the coldness and abuse of power. You

(14:34):
see that come on 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 1 (14:57):
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 was was you know, done his homework,
and certainly, you know, like you said, he'd go on
to have a very accomplished career. He is a two
time Emmy Award winner for his work on Lynch's Twin Peaks.

(15:19):
This was his film debut, which he followed up with
with Lynch's doune follow up, The neo noir Blue Velvet.
And this is not a surprise for anyone, but because
he's probably seen him in something. He's a terrific comedic
actor as well. He has great comedic timing. I really
enjoyed on Portlandia for example. Yes, he played the mayor.

(15:39):
I think, yeah he did. All right, Well, what's what's
Paul doing. What's Paul up to this early in the film.

Speaker 3 (15:45):
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 what basically what we're going to get
in this scene is yet another sizeable exposition dump, serving
to fill in more information about the setting, characters, and politics.

(16:06):
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 what are the little like magnified scrolls or something.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yeah, yeah, they better not have computers, Yes, because that's
of course, a whole big deal in the universe that
we have the Butlerrian Jahad that eradicated thinking machines, and
we have this strong dictate, you know, religious and cultural
that thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness
of a human mind.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
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

(16:58):
stained lips. We learn about how the spice milange is
mined from the surface of Dune. We learn about the
worms of Aracus, which attack all rhythmic vibrations. And we
learned that the Harkonins are the sworn enemy of Houseitreades
and their home world gide Prime is close is close
to Oracus.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
It is interesting that this film decides to go ahead
and lay out stuff, you know, information concerning that tay Lasu,
who are not going to be important in this film
at all, Like they were clearly thinking ahead to subsequent films.
I mean they're part of it, like their work is
present here, but you don't actually need to bring them up. Likewise,
later we're gonna get a mixtion. And you know, previously

(17:40):
we had a mention of IX, and IX is not
really 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 would
have been things you could have left on the cutting
room floor.

Speaker 3 (17:52):
Yeah, yeah, interesting choice. We have just folded space from IX.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
Anyway, So Paul is approached in his state room here
by three characters who are servants of House Aitraades. There
is Thufir 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

(18:20):
fringed coat. At the strange choice, but I like it.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
We also meet in the scene Gerney Halleck, the war
master who trains Paul in the Marshall Virtues, and we
meet doctor Wellington Ua, the physician of hous Aitraades. He's
a called a suk doctor and the Suk school of
medicine is I think like the it's like the main
sort of way medicine is done in the world of Doune.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
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

(19:09):
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 aloof here, which is in fitting

(19:32):
with a mentat 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 (19:40):
Yeah, simultaneously serene but sharp. And I think Stephen McKinley
Henderson gets that in Doune Part one.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
Absolutely yeah, 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
how and different types of psychically enhanced people. And so
the Mintats all have just out of control eyebrows and

(20:09):
I'll allow it. It's gonna neat, okay.

Speaker 3 (20:11):
And he's got the red stained lips from the juice
that the mintat straight.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
Yes, yes, more on that in a minute.

Speaker 3 (20:17):
But okay, So that's the fear how the mintat. But
we also have Gurnie Halleck and doctor Ua.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
Yeah Hallick is of course. Gurney here is played by
Patrick Stewart born in nineteen forty, So you know who
Patrick Stewart is. We're talking about Captain Jeohn Luke McCard.
We're talking about Charles Xavier. His pre track films also
include nineteen eighty five's Life Force. He was born in
nineteen forty. We talked about him briefly in our episode
on Nyazaki's Nausicaa because he did one of the voices,

(20:47):
so one of the key voices for that and did
an excellent job. But yeah, he is our troubadour warrior
and Lynch's doom.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
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's something about the way
it's that they're written and edited together. Like he's very

(21:16):
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 1 (21:29):
Yeah, yeah, Well, Meanwhile, in the recent Dune films, Josh
Brolin had 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 Gurney that we've seen
on film.

Speaker 3 (21:47):
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 1 (21:55):
Yeah, anytime he's on camera bravely defending the a treedee
strategic stockpile of pugs, he's a joy, all right. And
then we have Yeah, we have Doctor Wellington Ua played
by Dean Stockwell 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

(22:16):
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. It makes for a very sympathetic Ua.
Chang Chin is also great in the twenty twenty one adaptation.
I agree.

Speaker 3 (22:33):
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 were talking about that,
you know, like he has sort of the reader in
the book is given access to some of his internal
thoughts that give a lot of meaning to his activity,

(22:54):
to his his sort of tragic character arc.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
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

(23:17):
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. Like, clearly this was a longer
scene that was going to be in the the intended
longer cut.

Speaker 3 (23:35):
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 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.

Speaker 4 (23:52):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (23:52):
He For example, when they walk into the room, he
he grins, very pleased with himself and 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

(24:13):
knife sparring match. Paul is trained to fight with the
blade using energy shields, and at first Paul says, you know,
we already did our knife training this morning. I'm not
in the mood for more, and Garnie Hallick says, moods
a thing for cattle and love play, not fighting. So
that's a pretty good moment for Patrick Stewart. But anyway,

(24:36):
so they go into this fight, and the way the
energy shields are represented in this 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

(24:59):
in the Money for Nothing video.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah, this 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 it being
this kind of like brownish color. The color schemes good
and interestingly enough, I'd recently watched an extra about the

(25:22):
the excellent Loki series mini series that came out way
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 Loki.
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

(25:44):
just 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 done universe.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
Yeah, it's a difficult thing to rep resent, 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

(26:20):
knife through 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 1 (26:38):
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 (26:48):
Right, So, after the fight, Paul and doctor Ua trade
information about Iracus. Paul is extremely interested in the worms,
and we also learned about the people called the Freemen
who live on Dune and have extreme blue eyes from

(27:11):
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.

(27:32):
So the attreinees like no, Aracus is a trap, but
they're going to go anyway.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
Yep. And you know that alone, that statement alone is
perhaps not completely out of keeping, Like there are people
in house Atredes 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. Right.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
Oh, and then we get even more fight training this one.
This one is a real upgrade thing from 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 1 (28:14):
I mean, it looks like an underwater camera housing, That's
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 of the Benagest
that is in the books. But if memory serves the

(28:35):
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 Aracus, 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

(28:58):
you see, and at least the 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. That's right.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
But the weirding module is silly.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
I mean I like it. I wouldn't want it removed
from the movie. But it's funny because, as you said,
it translates like sounds or voices into lethal energy attacks.
So it's like a blaster that you operate by saying.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
Zap, yeah, zap, zong, et cetera. You can use that
et cetera can be a killing word. That's right.

Speaker 3 (29:46):
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 I think may have

(30:08):
been a metaphor in the original context, but then literalized
into it this piece of sci fi technology.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
And so they run with it. It's weird, it's fun,
but it is clunky, and it's not something I'm super
attached too. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:24):
So he fights the stabbing robot, and Paul is shown
to be very powerful at the weirding way.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
Yeah. Nice Toto track during this. I like it.

Speaker 3 (30:32):
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 Iracus. 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.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah. Played here by Richard Jordan who lived nineteen thirty
seven through nineteen ninety three. Emmy nominated actor. His credits
include seventy six is Logan's run nineteen ninety's The Hunted
Red October in nineteen ninety three is Getty's not much
really to say about him here, though, because he has
almost no screen time and it's just quickly forgotten. He's
an important character in the novel Dune and moving forward

(31:12):
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 (31:29):
Yeah, I didn't put it together yet, but we make
a Jason Momoa gola a Momola if you will. So
we also meet here Duke Leto, the head of house
a Treades, 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,

(31:50):
a very a very kind, fair and you know, stern,
but just kind of ruler. And he, you know, he
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 1 (32:09):
Yeah, this is a great bit, a recurring bit in
this film. I like it. 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

(32:30):
for this film. But actor with a tremendous face and
a great presence for playing stern, serious, distant 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

(32:52):
actors that he worked with on Doune for other projects.
He of course plays the author Sutter Kane and John Carr.
There'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 Swarzenegger. What. Yeah,

(33:17):
it was like an A A and E movie or something.
I remember it looked did not look good.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
Like a movie about an existing actor projecting that actor
actor into the future.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
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 leto the first, behind Oscar

(33:52):
Isaac and William Hurt.

Speaker 3 (33:54):
I also really like Oscar Isaac's performance in the new film.
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 meet her,

(34:15):
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 1 (34:34):
Yeah, and she has played here by Francesca her Niece
born nineteen forty five, English actor who also played the
Witch of the Web in nineteen eighty three Skrawl. So
another Krawl connection. Extensive stage, screen and TV credits. She
played Lady Macbeth in that excellent nineteen seventy two film adaptation.

Speaker 3 (34:52):
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

(35:13):
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 1 (35:26):
Agreed, Yeah, I think Rebecca Ferguson just gets more to
do with the character. We get a stronger portrayal of
Lady Jessica both before and after the initial fall of
House of Tredes.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
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 Mohem,
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

(36:00):
meeting that there is some significance to paul A Trades,
the young heir of House Atreadees, and that she and
the Benny Jester at Sisters must learn more about paul
to find out what his significance is.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
So here she is, yeah, 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 scenes in the novel. As I
think we've discussed before, Like it happens almost immediately in

(36:34):
your reading of the book, that's right.

Speaker 3 (36:36):
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 chewing out of

(36:56):
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 Queisout's hatterak, You're not supposed
to do that. That is the super being of the universe.
That's violation of orders.

Speaker 1 (37:09):
So forth.

Speaker 3 (37:10):
Now, somewhere before we actually get the Hand in the Box,
there's a moment here where we see Duke Letto alone
in his office, apparently maybe aware of 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 Trades pug. Can we

(37:32):
set off a pug alarm pug alert sidebar on the pug.
So we're going to 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 Atrdes, we see Gurnie

(37:55):
Hallick Patrick Stewart running into battle with like this science fictionifle,
clutching the pug to his chest.

Speaker 1 (38:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:03):
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. It's like

(38:24):
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 have a pug

(38:45):
like this.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
Yeah. Well, we saw the Emperor had his own dog
breeds running around, so it's weird, but 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 (39:01):
I think the pug is not mistreated. We see the
pug treated very lovingly and respectfully.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
Well, cheer dogs are not mistreated either, They just do
they were. 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 (39:14):
Surely, Oh okay, I misunderstood.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
The 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 cheer dog, but it's
never really explored.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
Not to get too dark, I guess you could say
there's 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 atreadees love
their pugs.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
Pugs are cuties, no doubt about it. We have made
a dog in the semblance of a human baby.

Speaker 3 (39:48):
We were told we shall not. But you just can't
follow those rules. Okay, so sorry, we could Coming back
to the Gomja bar scene. So this is where the
reverend mother confronts Paul alone in the in the house
on Kaladan.

Speaker 1 (40:01):
Here and she.

Speaker 3 (40:03):
Starts to command him using the voice. This is one
of the many Benni Jesert arts having 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 1 (40:27):
Yeah, it sounds really good in my opinion. I 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. Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 3 (40:44):
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, she
will stab him with the gom jabbar, the poison needle,

(41:06):
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
there's something she's testing for kind of will in Paul

(41:27):
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
is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will

(41:50):
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.
The fear has gone, there will be nothing.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
Only I will remain. And I really like his reading
of this with the inner voices, so 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,
in an autech or mix. It was very well, very
well utilized.

Speaker 3 (42:18):
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 1 (42:26):
Yeah, yeah, it's still it very much keeps most of
the words and definitely keeps the spirit of the thing.

Speaker 3 (42:33):
And col wahad, 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
Quisat's 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,

(42:54):
it's there's a kind of fatalism going on here.

Speaker 4 (42:56):
Yeah, all right, it's time to planet hop again.

Speaker 3 (43:07):
Oh boy, and now we're getting really depraved. So let's
go to giedde Prime, home of House Harconin and Lord.
The way the Harconans are realized in this movie, there
is a level of weirdness that again goes beyond the
books is purely David Lynch, I think.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
So.

Speaker 3 (43:26):
First of all, I just wanted to focus. They give
us a brief look at the exterior of Geedee 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

(43:47):
pouring out of a hidden orifice in the city walls,
towers of metal 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

(44:08):
eyes and nose are hidden behind a shadow, and all
that's visible is 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. I

(44:30):
love this design for the home world of the Harconins
because it's like this little sculpture with the eyes hidden,
is like greed, pain, fear, and desperation luxuriating in the
ambiguity between them all.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
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 (45:00):
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 1 (45:21):
Absolutely, yeah, I love this look. We only see really
a glimpse of it here, but it's reminiscent of hr
Giger's original biomechanical designs for the planet from I believe
the Jodowski 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,

(45:44):
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's still that biomechanical Gothic aspect
to everything.

Speaker 3 (46:01):
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 it's a
black and white kind of environment with high contrast that
I think is explained by Gidee Prime having a black son.
So they say there's like there's no color on the
surface of the planet.

Speaker 1 (46:19):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's supposed to be the reason
for it, and give himn excuse to shoot it an
infra red apparently.

Speaker 3 (46:25):
So we meet here the Harkonen Mintat Piter Devrees, who
is the you know, the court, the equivalent of Thufr
Hawat to house the Treades.

Speaker 1 (46:36):
This is played by 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.

(47:00):
You know, he's probably best known 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, in
which he plays Grima worm tongue. Yeah, he had great
performance there, in which he has no eyebrows. But in this,

(47:22):
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 there's never enough
time in any adaptation to explore him and his delicious,
dangerous relationship with the baron, where they both expect to

(47:47):
know that the other will try and kill them at
one point or the other. It's like a delicate balance.

Speaker 3 (47:53):
Yeah, he is an evil, vicious character, but also for
some reason I find him pitiable.

Speaker 1 (47:59):
Yeah yeah, I mean is a twisted Mintat. He is
the product of some sort of either bizarre corruption of
a normal mintat 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

(48:22):
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. Right.

Speaker 3 (48:33):
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 goes

(48:55):
on to say it is by the juice of Sappho
that thoughts acquire speed, that lips acquires stains, the stains
become a warning. Then he says that a bunch of times.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
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 Sapho
is very much in the text.

Speaker 3 (49:20):
Yeah, so this is a nervous and unhappy Mintat in
a dangerous situation.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
Yeah, nervous, angry, scheming, all those things, and yeah, we
get it in this performance.

Speaker 3 (49:32):
So there are more visions of gide 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 Harcone

(49:54):
and 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's style body modifications,
ears clipped and sewn folded in on themselves, eyelids sewn
shut with threads and tacks driven into the eyes. Also,

(50:15):
everybody that has hair has red hair.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
Yeah, and that the red hair touch is nice and
helps us identify Harconins. But already the scene is too
much like the eyes and ears sewn up is just
too much. And also that green, that green is too
much like a modern perspective. I'll occasionally see stills from

(50:38):
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 (50:48):
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 boil
of some kind and the doctors are doing something grotesque
with them with a needle.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
Yeah. Now, this Baron Vladimir Harkonen 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

(51:27):
his thirties, and he was forty before his first screen
in 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

(51:50):
played a 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 (52:01):
So this version of Baron Harkonen likes to scream and
fly around in the air while screaming yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:08):
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,
and you can't possibly capture all of that on screen,

(52:30):
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
McMillan's credit, he rolls with it and delivers some nice menace.

(52:55):
I'd say ultimately he's my third favorite Baron behind stellin
Scarsguard and 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 as well.

Speaker 3 (53:11):
Yeah, this is a less serious portrayal of the Baron
than we get like with the Scars Guard. Obviously that
is a very deep, dark, scary baron. This Baron is
a lot funnier and and that kind of continues with
how the rest of how Harkonin is portrayed. We meet
the Baron's two nephews, Fade Rautha and the Beast Rabon.

(53:34):
I think they're called the Beast by the people of
Irakus Rabon. What's his first name, Glossu or something I believe.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
So, yeah, So the Beast here is played by Paul L. Smith,
who 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 Popeye movie. Other credits include

(54:01):
Sam Raimi's Cohen Brothers scripted film Crime Way from 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

(54:21):
a solid job as the character in the recent films,
and they really expand the role to make the role
more meaningful and give Bautista much more to do.

Speaker 3 (54:30):
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 1 (54:40):
Yeah, and now the other son is, of course the
golden child of House Harkonen. This is Fate Roth though,
like you said, played by sting Yeaheen 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 ten eighty five's The Bride. That's

(55:02):
the Doctor, by the way, that the true Frankenstein, not
Frankenstein as you know 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 (55:20):
M 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 1 (55:29):
He was, Yeah, he was. I think he had a
small role in lock Stock 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 (55:39):
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.
I will kill him, I will kill you.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
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

(56:21):
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 a new
face of House Harkonen. But there seems to be a
lot of frustration with his maturity level and his appreciation

(56:42):
for all of this, and you know, we just we
tend to see less of that in the film adaptations.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
Yeah, the new movie does a good job of setting
him up as a foil to poll that they are
sort of two sides of the same coin.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
Yeah. Yeah, Austin Butler does a great job in doing
Part two. Is the 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

(57:19):
still trying to figure that out. I need I need
a 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 that will that will win

(57:40):
at any cost and is used to winning at any
cost and feels no shame about it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:44):
Originally, the Harkonins are not like worthy opponents or you know, honorable, honorable.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
Villains.

Speaker 3 (57:51):
They're They're absolute like liars and cheaters and dirty tricksters,
and they'll do whatever they can.

Speaker 1 (57:57):
Yeah. Though I'm sure DV has as 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 (58:07):
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 exercises 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

(58:28):
are portrayed as having same sex 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 1 (58:40):
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 (58:59):
Yeah, from what I can tell, Well, 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 1 (59:07):
Yea. But let's not detract from the utter weirdness of
this absolute Lynchian circus of a scene.

Speaker 3 (59:14):
Yes, because the setting. We haven't even finished describing the
room they're in the 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

(59:36):
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.

Speaker 1 (59:48):
Constantly. It's world building, baby, I like the detail. It's good.

Speaker 3 (59:52):
I don't recall if there's anything like that in the book,
but it makes sense in this movie. The doctor is
a ten. 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 as he is picking at them,

(01:00:13):
so he says, like, put the pick in there, Pete,
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 1 (01:00:25):
Yeah, I'll just mention briefly that that's the Leonardo Chimino
playing the Baron's doctor Live nineteen 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 and grotesque.

Speaker 3 (01:00:47):
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 1 (01:01:09):
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. This, I don't know.
I always kind of read this as some other kind

(01:01:30):
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 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,
but it is marvelously strange. I like it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:53):
So anyway, they're you know, they're talking about their plots
against House of Treades and the baron to 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

(01:02:15):
he's just flying all the time here.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
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 (01:02:38):
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 Atredees or not the atreadees, sorry,
the Harconins have this like plug, this like a valve
in their heart that the Harconins can just like pull
out the plug and like all their blood runs out
of their chest and they die. And it seems that

(01:03:00):
the Baron just sometimes removes people's plugs for fun.

Speaker 1 (01:03:04):
Yeah, this is not in the books, but it is
kind of a fitting invention for the hearkens on a
whole because yeah, so the baron apparently likes to level
the playing field with his servants and his underlings so
that he can kill them at will by simply pulling
this thing out. But this sequence in particular that follows
because basically what I think he's credited as a flower boy, like,

(01:03:26):
a servant comes in and 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, dude to not only its grotesque qualities
but also questionable implications during the AIDS crisis of the
nineteen eighties, given that in quick succession we see same sex, desire,

(01:03:49):
physical illness on 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 (01:04:06):
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 like remove the same sex attraction
element from the Harconins because it's just not really necessary
and and it avoids this kind of implication, the implication

(01:04:28):
that like 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, Can.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
We onto Aracus? No?

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
No, no, no, not onto Aracus.

Speaker 1 (01:04:42):
We're gonna go back to Caladan first. Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:04:45):
So we see, you know, the the Atredees leaving the
planet with their pug Jessica, Letto and Paul. So they
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 sort of like a
city sized baton floating in the void. And these are
the ships that can travel through folded space. So you

(01:05:06):
take a space ship up to the Guild Highliner, I think,
you get on board it and then it takes you
between the different stars and the galaxy. And so their
ship enters the Guilt 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

(01:05:27):
because here space travel is treated with apprehension 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

(01:05:48):
that to travel on a Guild highliner is to participate
in a profound and unsettling mystery.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Yeah. Absolutely, and one that is managed by a reclue
cult that has a complete monopoly on space travel. A
reminder that no one is moving star to star in
the Dune 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 (01:06:17):
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 reclusive cult, as you said.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
All right, so we board up the highliner and then
we set off onward to Aracus. That's right.

Speaker 3 (01:06:48):
Finally we're at doune, so the planet appears as a
reverse setting sun and they go down to the surface. Jessica,
Leto and Paul arrive and set foot on the planet,
and then Princess Irelon resus the narration gotta get more
more voiceover narration. She says that House of Trades took
control of Iracus sixty three standard days into the year

(01:07:08):
ten thousand and one ninety one. It was known that
the Harconins, the former rulers of Aracus, would leave many
suicide troops behind a Trades 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 Leto. He's

(01:07:31):
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 fremen attire,
which allows one to survive in the desert without losing water.
It recycles your sweat the vapor in your breath, your urine,

(01:07:52):
your feces, everything, all the water comes back.

Speaker 1 (01:07:55):
Yeah. Yeah, And the suits look pretty darn good in
this film. In fact, I know peopleeople who prefer these
suits to the new adaptations, but I like him in both. Yeah,
I do too.

Speaker 3 (01:08:06):
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 watched the Attraadees troops being trained to preserve water,

(01:08:29):
and we meet a new character. We meet leat Kines,
the Judge of Change, which means he's supposed to oversee
the change between Harcone and 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 been done fairly. But

(01:08:51):
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 a daph did
to Fremen ways and he has blue eyes from the Spice.

Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
Yeah, and this is of course Max Foncito playing in
the role, who lived 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

(01:09:25):
Duncan Brewster, who is also.

Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
Great, yes she is. I wonder why they use so
little of doctor Kines in this movie. Makes you wonder
if stuff got cut.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
Oh yeah, I get the feeling. It's just like the
economy of the cut here. And you know I should
throw in I've 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.

(01:09:59):
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 (01:10:12):
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.

(01:10:35):
One way it sort of fails is it it plays
up a lot about the Spacing Guild that is not
really in the original Dune novel, But it really under
sells the role of the Benny Jessert, I think, and
like their whole plot to like establish like seed these
prophecies throughout the cultures of the galaxy that would later

(01:10:58):
connect to the gear 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 1 (01:11:16):
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 (01:11:26):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
I mean, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:11:34):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:44):
Anyway, and this is the scene where Leto, Paul and
Kines go out 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

(01:12:06):
is about to arrive and eat them, and then they
will be lifted away by a flying vehicle called a
carry all and 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

(01:12:27):
is leaving the spice behind, rescuing the workers and bringing
them onto his ornithopter, and 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 1 (01:12:43):
I talked a lot about ornithopters in Wednesday's short form episode,
but briefly, I'll just say 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 the
jestic on the screen in this adaptation, especially the Atreades

(01:13:04):
ornithopter is like a big metal berb. You know, 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 whole flapping of wings.

Speaker 3 (01:13:27):
Yeah, okay, So we're getting into the plots here, the
plots against House Atreadees. 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 Aracus. This is shout

(01:13:48):
out Mapes. 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 needleli like mosquito type creature that's

(01:14:09):
trying to assassinate Paul and he manages to avoid it.

Speaker 1 (01:14:12):
Yeah, great sequence in both films and Mapes, by the way,
is played by Linda Hunt born 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. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:14:27):
So but here we're getting to the Harconin attack. The
double Cross is in motion now, so there we've received
word that there was a trader among house the trades,
and we finally learn it is doctor Yua here and
there are reasons. So doctor Yua ambushes Duke Leto in
the night with a with a drugged dart that kind

(01:14:48):
of paralyzes him, and then doctor Yua explains his plot.
He has sabotaged the shields of the city, destroyed the
weirding modules, and the Harconin troops are.

Speaker 1 (01:14:59):
On the way.

Speaker 3 (01:15:00):
But he's like, okay, it's not over, Duke Leto, you
can still kill Baron Harconin, 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 1 (01:15:15):
Yeah, the tooth stain is of course fittingly grosser in
this adaptation, like even when Ua is like getting it
out of its box to implant it, like it's just
like this is gonna hurt, This is gonna be a
little gross.

Speaker 3 (01:15:26):
The idea is he'll bite down on it when the
baron leans over him, and that'll spit the poison gas
in the baron's face and kill him. And we learn,
of course, doctor Eua is not doing this out of
maliciousness towards House aitredees, but he wants revenge against the
baron because the Harconans have have for many years captured

(01:15:49):
his wife and have probably murdered her.

Speaker 1 (01:15:52):
But he has to know for sure, and this is
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 (01:16:04):
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 1 (01:16:24):
Yeah, it's a little hockey.

Speaker 3 (01:16:26):
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 Uey's idea.
But actually it turns out doctor yue has been trying
to protect them. He has packed still suits for them,
and Paul and Jessica use the benijesrit voice to command

(01:16:48):
the Harconin troops and escape into the desert. Meanwhile, Duke
Letto's tooth strike against the Baron is about to unfold.
The barons there gloating over him, but it failed to
get the baron. Instead, it kills Pyder degrees, it kills
the house harcone in Mintat played by Brad Duraf and
the baron we get his reaction where he's like, I'm alive,

(01:17:11):
I'm alive.

Speaker 1 (01:17:12):
Floating in the air, screaming. So inspiring 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 like it's
like an explosion of gas, caustic gas has gone off

(01:17:32):
in the Duke's mouth and is like eaten through his cheek.
Even so, it's grim stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:17:38):
Now, 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
fair major criticism of the eighty four Dune is that
somewhere around right here, the things start happening way too fast.

Speaker 1 (01:18:03):
Becomes fragmentary and kind of feels like done the scrap
book leading up to like the final confrontation.

Speaker 3 (01:18:09):
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

(01:18:30):
Emperor 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,

(01:18:53):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:19:10):
And here we do see the.

Speaker 3 (01:19:12):
Worm in its full glory while it's chasing them. We
see its trifled maw leaping out from the sand, and
it's design is almost like a flower with like petals
opening around this toothy mouth. I really do like the
design of the worms in this movie. I think I
think they look great. They're scary and menacing. Some of
the worm riding scenes, however, are are quite funny and

(01:19:34):
don't 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 1 (01:19:48):
Thumpers are huge in this movie, like then, and it works.
Like you'll often see on the poster. There's Paul Adrades
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 (01:20:05):
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 assembled, waiting for them, eyes glowing blue.
It's almost like they're standing at attention for their arrival.
And here we meet still Gar, the leader of the

(01:20:27):
Fremen group, and we're also going to meet Channi of
the Fremen.

Speaker 1 (01:20:31):
Yeah. 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 is Heartbreak Ridge, nineteen eighty Seven's Werewolf, eighty nine's
Licensed to Kill, Twin Peaks nineteen ninety ones, The People

(01:20:52):
Under the Stairs, Under Siege Too, 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 (01:21:09):
Yeah, this is speed still gar Yeah, I guess we
should go ahead and introduce Channi as well.

Speaker 1 (01:21:14):
Yeah. Chani 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's A Kiss Before Dying, ninety
four's Ace Venture a pet detective, and more recently Blade

(01:21:35):
Runner twenty forty nine. In another case, hard to compare
this Channey to the recent film where Zindia does a
great job playing a more complex and I think arguably
stronger vision of this character. That Chani is a strong
character in this nineteen sixty five novel, but I think
some of her strengths had to be updated for like

(01:21:55):
a modern audience. Well, also in the new movie.

Speaker 3 (01:21:59):
I think you could argue in part two is is
you get a lot of the story from Channie's perspective,
which makes a lot of sense. That's a good way
to frame it, to see like the way Paul changes. Yeah,
so I think that that was a really strong choice.
And like you said, Zendeia is great in the new one,

(01:22:19):
I don't want to as is Javi 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.

(01:22:39):
In the movie, 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 still Gar. 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.

(01:22:59):
If you can do this to the strongest of us,
you're worth 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 Channida.
Channi is the daughter of the at kinds. She's a
member of the Fremen tribe here and you know he
has seen her before in dreams and premonitions, like a

(01:23:21):
warrior of great bravery and great beauty. Kyle, of course,
is smitten. Here they introduced to Stilgar. You know, it's
all going to be. You're welcomed by the people. Oh,
you need a new name. Your name will be Ussel,
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,

(01:23:41):
whose figure is seen on the second moon of the planet.
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.

Speaker 1 (01:23:57):
And this whole.

Speaker 3 (01:23:58):
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.
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 it comes so fast.

Speaker 1 (01:24:18):
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, to valued members of a movement to
members of its people, to leaders, and eventually, in Paul's case,
to Messiah.

Speaker 3 (01:24:38):
What is at least half the run time of this
recent movie is like, I don't know, five minutes in
this metle Okay, let's check in on the Harkonins because
they're doing some really good stuff here. So we come

(01:24:59):
into the They're on Arakine, I think, and Vladimir Harkonen
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 peels off. Part of its face, starts eating the

(01:25:23):
cowface 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.

Speaker 1 (01:25:37):
This, Yeah, I have no words.

Speaker 3 (01:25:42):
Then Rabon leaves, Then out comes Fade, wearing like this
wings of Victory speedo. That's amazing, top all time top
five movie speedo. Yeah, 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 1 (01:26:04):
Yep, yep, that's the whole plan. I mean, that's part
of the plan. It is legitimately part of the plan.
The 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 conan despot.

Speaker 3 (01:26:25):
Yeah, and by the Baron's face boils. Just keep looking
worse and worse. We also see here the captured Soufir
hawat the mintat of house the Treades. 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 1 (01:26:48):
Yeah, this is also unnecessary and so weird, especially the
cat rat thing. It almost feels like Lynch is trolling
us a little bit. In the book, this basic situation exis,
but it's essentially just a poison anecdote con like, hey,
loyal a tradees nintet, you have to work for us now,

(01:27:09):
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 plot line for Dune Part
two and just had to cut 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 (01:27:25):
Yeah. So, back at the Seech of the Fremen, Lady
Jessica is offered a chance 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.

(01:27:46):
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 all 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

(01:28:08):
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 1 (01:28:23):
Yeah, yeah, she is super creepy. Herbert in general likes
creepy super babies and super creepy super children. They pop
up elsewhere in the dooone novels. Obviously, DV went in
a slightly different direction with the way this is portrayed
in the film, and uh, again interesting, I think it's

(01:28:45):
interesting what they did. It'll be also interesting to see
how this is incorporated into subsequent adaptations of especially done Messiah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:28:55):
Also here we see more of Paul and Johnny falling
in love.

Speaker 1 (01:28:59):
But also we get.

Speaker 3 (01:29:00):
Addressing the assembled Frimen fighters and he's like, hey, look,
we got a common enemy, the Harconans. 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 with the weirding module where they're saying
like chucked sah and it you know, makes it shoot
a little blast out that they say will paralyzed nerves,

(01:29:22):
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 wadde but will like make things break and shatter.

Speaker 1 (01:29:38):
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 Its.

Speaker 3 (01:29:47):
Okay, 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 Fremen unless you can
ride a worm.

Speaker 1 (01:29:56):
And so we go. He goes out with his.

Speaker 3 (01:29:58):
Worm riding materials, the thumper, the hooks, which are a
gift from the Siet, 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, he does
the litany against fear. They realize he has called a
very big worm, and this is again along with the
prophecies of what the Fremen called the lisan Al Kayib,

(01:30:20):
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
rolling over on the top. Not the best 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

(01:30:41):
open and we see the big mouth, heavy dune theme
playing on the soundtrack. As like, Stillgar comes to climb
the trailing rope behind Paul and join him on the worm.
But Rob, I think we may have 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,

(01:31:05):
but I don't think it quite has the intended effect.

Speaker 1 (01:31:08):
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 (01:31:24):
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 from an attacks on

(01:31:46):
the Harken 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

(01:32:09):
course the Baron and the Emperor become aware of this
figure called wad Deeb that like 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 Deeb and the
freemen pretty much completely shut down spice production and that

(01:32:33):
Rabon 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 Gurney Halleck is now working for the Harconins
or working maybe independently as like a spice harvester protector

(01:32:55):
here in the desert, and Paul and Gurney run into
one another and reuni. 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.

(01:33:16):
So back at the Imperial Palace, the Spacing 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 has Matt 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.

(01:33:38):
I was 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 Masha, and
so they speak to him, and the conversation very much
has the effect of wait, who's the emperor here, because
the Spacing Guild is really browbeating him. They're like, look,

(01:34:00):
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 1 (01:34:10):
Yeah, I feel like they this is a moment where
they kind of overplay the power of the Guild here
because altimate, 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

(01:34:30):
of like, yeah, the Guild pushes everybody around, which is
is not really the flavor of the Guild and the
actual source material.

Speaker 3 (01:34:37):
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

(01:34:58):
to take Sardikar to the planet. He's like, I know
how we're going to deal with this complete destruction of
every life on the planet.

Speaker 1 (01:35:04):
We're just gonna just destroy them all.

Speaker 3 (01:35:07):
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. He's got to
do it. So Paul is let out into the desert.
Chany pledges her love to him, and they give him
the water of life to drink, and he has many

(01:35:27):
more visions of like you know, water dripping in a cavern,
in the mouth of a worm opening, and I like
how the mouth of the worm is intercut with an
extreme close up of a human eye, so like the
worm's mouth is like the pupil within the iris. I
thought that was pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (01:35:42):
And here come the worm jets, because I think this
is where we get the track that Eno collaborated on.

Speaker 3 (01:35:48):
Oh interesting with the visions.

Speaker 1 (01:35:50):
Here, I think so, I think so.

Speaker 3 (01:35:53):
But worms gather from the desert around the frimend 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 arms with
a new sense of determination and terrible purpose. He's ready
to be the messiah of the Fremen now, and he
stands before them in this great underground hall and gives

(01:36:15):
a speech that is in some ways kind of powerful,
but unfortunately contains the sentence a storm is coming. Oh man,
if writers just to skip over that one, you don't
need the storm is coming. Yeah, but his kind of difference,
he's like, you know, when it arrives, it will shake
the universe. He swears vengeance against the Emperor and chance

(01:36:36):
long live the fighters. So the Freemen 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 Fremen Mountain assault
on Arakan, led by Paul Stilgar and Gurney Halleck. They

(01:36:56):
will use the atreades 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.

Speaker 1 (01:37:10):
Yeah, I don't know. I'm not going to geek out
on a bunch of din stuff Bett. Yeah, I don't
like that line, and I don't think of a freeman
would say it like quite like that.

Speaker 3 (01:37:18):
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 1 (01:37:27):
Oh yeah, I love the addition of having these kind
of like static electrical discharges in the air around them. Yeah,
it looks really cool.

Speaker 3 (01:37:36):
As the battle is going on, there's a confrontation between
Baron Harkonen and the Emperor. The Emperor has killed Raban
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 Sardokar members of the Space and Guild. The Emperor
gives the baron a very um disappointed in you speech.

(01:38:00):
Before the Baron can suffer a similar fate to Rebond,
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 an adult. I think we actually
see her talk her voice. I would describe it like

(01:38:21):
putting on a shoe and then feeling something start moving
under your toes.

Speaker 1 (01:38:25):
You know. Yeah, this kid is perfectly unsettling in a
way very similar to the accidental unsettling character of the
kid in an 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.

(01:38:48):
But it's intentional here and it absolutely works. This kid's creepy.

Speaker 3 (01:38:52):
So Alia, the sort of reverend mother child, has a
confrontation with the emperor and with the Reverend mother guy's
Helen Moheim. She's like, I am a messenger from Wa 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.

(01:39:12):
It's so creepy. And the Reverend mother is like she
is an abomination. But oh she also screams get out
of my mind, exactly like David Bowie and The Man
who Fell to Earth.

Speaker 1 (01:39:22):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:39:24):
Anyway, so Paul and the Freemen use the house atomics
to blow up the mountains that are shielding the approach
to raken and they mount their assault. They bring lots
of loose worms alongside them, and the freemen and the
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

(01:39:45):
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 she's going to get
the better of this encounter, and she does.

Speaker 1 (01:40:00):
She Like what exactly does she do to the baron?
She jabs him with the with the gomjabar I believe,
Oh yeah, okay, and kills him like this is the
death blow. She is Ali of the knife after all.
Oh okay. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:40:13):
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 by a worm from.

Speaker 1 (01:40:25):
The That's a bit much. That's a bit much, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:40:28):
So the final confrontation, you know, the freemen are victorious
in the battle. They've taken the city. They gather everybody
all of the power players in like the big room
in the palace at Arikene, and 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

(01:40:49):
to have metal teeth.

Speaker 1 (01:40:50):
Now, oh wow, maybe she has ixy and teeth. I
don't know. Maybe.

Speaker 3 (01:40:55):
But so Paul is confronted by the remaining member of
how Sarkona and the young fade Rautha. They're have to
face one another, of course, and fade Ratha 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 1 (01:41:14):
Yeah, those are cool. Sting keeps yelling I will kill you.
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 (01:41:26):
We already talked about this difference, but I do like
that this keeps. Fade Ratha is 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
Ratha here tries to cheat with a poisoned barb, but
Paul gets arounded by saying, I will bend like a
read in the wind, and he sort of like binds

(01:41:46):
and lets Fade come around him and then stabs him
in a very very strange way.

Speaker 1 (01:41:54):
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 so we did about
the Lynchian approach to portrayals of death, because he drives
his knife up through Fade's chin into his brain, and
then after Fad has fallen dead under the floor, he

(01:42:16):
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 Triades.

Speaker 3 (01:42:33):
I agree. I think it's very cool. They also say,
you know, Ussol 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 Maadib had become the hand of God, fulfilling
the frim and prophecy. Where there was war, Maadeeb would
now bring peace where there was hatred. Madeeb would bring love,

(01:42:56):
et cetera.

Speaker 1 (01:42:57):
Uh yeah, yeah, is that what the story he is?
I don't think so, not so much. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:43:04):
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 1 (01:43:16):
Yes, Paul makes it rain on Oracus. It's a 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 does
not control the weather and greening efforts on Oracus, which
I've been alluded to and are part of the world

(01:43:37):
of Dune. These 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. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:43:46):
Yeah, So it's a very different kind of ending than
we get from Dune part two of 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

(01:44:11):
House Corono by saying he's going to marry Princess Irolin.

Speaker 1 (01:44:14):
In the new movie, 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 Paul has risen to such power.

Speaker 3 (01:44:33):
On the other hand, if you're just trying to make
a standalone film, the Lynch movie has a much more
feel good ending.

Speaker 1 (01:44:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:44:39):
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 1 (01:44:50):
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 really cool, but it's kind of joyless. And then
that is true. I mean, the film is not a

(01:45:11):
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

(01:45:31):
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 (01:45:43):
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 1 (01:45:49):
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

(01:46:09):
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, writ 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 has really not

(01:46:31):
aged well. 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

(01:46:52):
letterbox dot com. It's l E T T E r
boxd dot com. We are Weird House on there and
we've got a list for you to look at.

Speaker 3 (01:46:58):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Pozway.
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 2 (01:47:20):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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