Thoughts on the Path to Dune Part 3

Just out in front of all of this I am going to say if Peter Dinklage doesn’t get cast as Bijaz I am going to be extremely disappointed.  I mean, he can’t get ALL the dwarf roles, I know.  But I also think his body of work shows him to be well suited for this particular part.

So yeah, it has been confirmed that Denis Villeneuve will be bringing us a third film in the Dune saga based off of the second book in the original series (or the 14th book in the expanded Dune-verse if you’re into that) Dune Messiah.  I mentioned that in my look at Dune Part 2, and that set me on a path.

The thought of Dune Messiah being made into a film prompted me go back and re-read it to see just how strange it was going to have to be.  I hadn’t looked at it since the late 80s, so it was clearly time for a refresh.

But before I did that I went and skimmed Dune first.  I couldn’t bring myself to read it fully through… I’ve read it a few of times and both films and the mini-series were so true to so much of the start of the book that I felt like I had just read it even though it has been a few years.

Still, I jumped through enough to get a good refresher, remind myself of the timeline from the books, which as I noted in my post about Dune Part 2, were considerably different than the latest film, and a few other key items.  I had forgotten how early on in the tale Paul knows who his grandfather really is, how Paul brings a fighting technique… the “weirding way” so-called… which is what gives the Fremen mastery over the emperor’s Sardaukar, and the fact that Paul has been trained as a mentat, a human computer.

That last omitted from the film kind of annoys me if only because it is set up by a scene that could have been played for a laugh.  It could have gone something like this:

Leto: Oh, and we’re going to start training you as a mentat.

Paul: I thought you couldn’t tell somebody they were being trained until they reached the right age as they needed to be conditioned for it without their knowledge.

Leto: …

Paul: …

Leto: …

Paul: Oh, right… I guess I am that age now…

Also, the fact that Paul is a mentat… and mentats in general… make kind of a critical plot point going into the next book.  But they can probably gloss over that a bit.

Anyway, I was grounded enough to dig into Dune Messiah, which takes place years later with Paul as emperor, Princess Irulan, the old emperor’s daughter as his wife, Chani as his lover, and Alia, Paul’s sister, now the teenage high priestess of the cult of Paul.

Oh, and the Fremen jihad has cleansed the life from dozens of planets, brought hundreds under the rule of Paul, and have caused the death of something like 60 billion people along the way.  Paul isn’t all that happy about his lot or being used as the justification for such mass slaughter.  But he wasn’t happy with the old order either and he can see the future in a vague way and is trying to thread the needle to find the best path forward.

Meanwhile, the old order isn’t too happy with him either.  The Bene Gesserit, the Spacing Guild, and the Tleilaxu have teamed up to try and, if not overthrow Paul, to at least gain control of him to make him do their bidding.

And here we’ll get into some deep water with the next film.

We got a bit about the Bene Gesserit in the first film, though not as much foundation as they deserve.  They have been working to shape humanity for centuries, Paul as the Kwisatz Haderach being their ultimate goal, and they are more than a bit salty that they can’t control him after all the effort they put in to bring him into being.  (Yes, technically he wasn’t supposed to be the chosen one, but his mom decided to throw the dice and came up double six.)

But I guess we can get away with what we’ve learned about them so far.  Shady female organization, referred to as “witches” by resentful men, and wearing sinister costumes… though again, I think there was some comedy missed in not going somewhere with strange women with boxes administering painful tests being no basis for a system of government or something.

Then there is the Spacing Guild, which figures at least somewhat in the conspiracy against Paul.  I will say again, I want to see this sort of thing.

Image from Screen Rant

And the story pretty much demands it.  The Spacing Guild ambassador, in his zero-grav mobile spice huffing tank, is the conduit of the conspiracy, at least initially.  But I guess we could pass them over yet again, not get bound up in their weirdness, if the script is getting out of hand.  But if you want to know where David Lynch got his vision of the guild navigators as in the image above, Dune Messiah was the place. (He was also sizing up a second film based on the second book.)

Which leaves us with the Tleilaxu, or the Bene Tleilax, to contend with. (I didn’t casually know those two names for the same thing, I had to look that up even after reading Dune Messiah.)  They and their abilities and their skill with genetic manipulation and their ability to bring people back from the dead… kind of a big effing plot point in Dune Messiah.  You don’t dig into that, you might as well just admit you’re throwing Frank Herbert overboard and just doing your own thing.

Unlike the Spacing Guild, it is okay that they didn’t get a mention in the first two films.  In the books they get a passing mention in Dune, being the provider of specially horrible mentats.  Baron Harkonnen’s mentat, Piter De Vries, was a Tleilaxu special, and the baron mentioned that he needed to put in an order for a fresh on as De Vries seemed to be about done.

But with Dune Messiah they are out front and demand attention.  I will be very interested to see how they translate the aspects of the Tleilaxu onto the big screen.  Some of it will lend itself to a visual medium.  The metal Tleilaxu eyes and the face dancers should make for interesting sights.  But how to get across what the Tleilaxu do without having it all intoned by some character telling you what is up will be an issue.

And, like I said, Peter Dinklage better get the Bijaz role.

We have a couple of years before it will be released.

Meanwhile, now that I have wrapped up Dune Messiah, do I carry on into Children of Dune?  Again, I haven’t touched any of the Frank Herbert work besides the first book since the late 80s.  As I recall, this is where things start getting really strange.  Dune Messiah though, it was short and wrapped up the main story line pretty well.  Not the worst title you could pick up and read.