‘Dune: Part Two’ Made a Major Change to the Books Without Sacrificing Their Power

Due to its sweeping narrative, starry forged, and sumptuous cinematography, Dune 2 is already attracting 2025 Oscars buzz. Each motion scene is nimbly choreographed and memorably cool. Each actor is on the high of their recreation. Each sound serves a goal, each line a theme. When critics say it’s a “defining” film of the sci-fi style, that’s not hyperbole.

That stated, Dune 2 would possibly credit score a few of its success to its supply materials: the similarly-titled 1965 novel written by Frank Herbert. Dune 2 is basically trustworthy to that seminal sci-fi tome and thoroughly preserves its essence. Nonetheless, Dune 2 did make some notable tweaks to the novel within the title of cinematic awesomeness. A few of these tweaks are small: Few Dune purists are indignant that the film invented a Southern fundamentalist sect of Fremen.

However a few of these tweaks are extra noticeable. Zendaya’s character, Chani, is far more dynamic within the films than within the novel. As a substitute of standing idly by as Paul proposes to a princess he met ten minutes in the past, she skulks off to the desert and angrily worm-rides her emotions out. 

Paul (Timothée Chalamet) is equally risky – prickly and moody at first, then absolutely psychotic by the top. The portrayal is kind of near Herbert’s imaginative and prescient for the character and (in some methods) a purer distillation of it. And if it is nearer to Herbert’s imaginative and prescient, that’s because of one main change.

*spoilers forward*

Followers of the Dune books have been appropriately disconcerted when Paul, as an alternative of his sister Alia, killed Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), the Large Baddie of the film. In reality, Alia was nowhere to be discovered. All through the film, she whispered to her mom Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) from the womb; however then she stayed there. She solely appeared as soon as, within the type of Anya Taylor-Pleasure, in a dream that Paul had.

This was maybe Dune 2’s largest departure from its father or mother textual content. Alia within the novels was an absolute freak – an excellent, omniscient, ruthless toddler who code-switched between dribbling milk down her shirt and stabbing her grandfather to demise. She might already stroll and have interaction in diplomatic relations earlier than she was one. And lest you decide, she inherited the ancestral reminiscence of a complete murdered bloodline on the ripe age of zero years outdated, so give her a break. 

In any case, Alia was one among Dune’s most indelible characters – a two-and-a-half-foot-tall proto-autocrat or an murderer in Huggies diapers (relying on the way you checked out it). And when she pricked her grandfather, the Baron Harkonnen, with a gom jabbar, or lethal poison needle, it was gaggy.

That doesn’t imply that it wasn’t gaggy to have Paul kill his grandfather as an alternative. In actuality, it sped up his character growth and set the tone for Dune 2’s inevitable sequel. As readers already know, Paul was at all times destined for anti-hero standing; it was written within the playing cards the second he recruited that Fremen military. However by having him stab Harkonnen and growl, “You die like an animal,” it turned him right into a vicious, power-hungry egomaniac before Frank Herbert ever did. Properly, technically, that transformation turned full when Paul ordered his Fremen military to guide his enemies to “paradise.” However the stabbing strengthened the concept that Paul was down a darkish path, underscoring that ultimate line. Additional highlighting the importance of that line was the second when the Emperor (Christopher Walken) instructed Paul that his dad was a failure as a result of he’d practiced empathy. That’s not the life lesson you give to somebody who’s going to prove OK. 

In different phrases, there was now not any query as as to whether Paul was about to grow to be a ruthless chief.

Although markedly totally different from the books, this Alia-less climax continues to be loyal to Frank Herbert’s general aim. In 1985, the creator stated in a speech at UCLA, “I wrote the Dune collection as a result of I had this concept.. that charismatic leaders ought to return with a warning label on the brow: ‘Could also be Harmful to Your Well being.’ Even director Dennis Villeneuve instructed in 2021 that Paul was an anti-hero, saying, “I feel Herbert wrote [Dune] as a warning, [against] leaders that faux to know what is going to occur, who faux to know the reality, who is perhaps missing humility.”

After all, anybody who has learn past the primary Dune novel will know that Paul will get extra power-hungry as time goes on, bringing his personal worst nightmares to life. An ideal anti-hero, if you’ll. However no less than the flicks aren’t pretending in any other case anymore.