Does Villeneuve’s Dune series live up to Frank Herbert’s vision?

Most reviews of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two so far have been generous, to say the least. But as a fan of the books, I must take the road less travelled and state the difficulty in admitting the same. With over six books, Frank Herbert’s Dune is a dense universe — far more cerebral than any movie can contain (David Lynch sure tried his luck in 1984). Perhaps it would have been better if the text was adapted as a series extending over a period of time, for a sudden plunge into the water-pumping and tear-tasting world of Arrakis elicited many laughs from the audience, who could only read Fremen’s obsessive act of preserving water as some kind of water fetish (the scene where Stilgar tells Jessica to hold her vomit calls for a Freudian reading). (Also read: Dune 2 first reactions: Villeneuve’s futuristic vision earns rave reviews, deemed Sci-Fi legend)
Because of such gaps in context, the sacred waters — water collected from the body of the dead — that hold the key to changing the entire topography of the planet (and simultaneously reshaping the intergalactic power dynamics with curbed production of spice) fall flat on the screen. With this, the statement about spice, which stands as a smokescreen for petroleum in our own world (relevant in Herbert’s time and with an ongoing war in the Middle East — even more relevant today), is completely lost.
But what impresses is Feyd-Rautha’s (played by Austin Butler, who seems like a Skarsgård brother lookalike) birthday duel. The scene isn’t exemplary by any means. The dialogues are standard, and so is the style of the duel. But the award-winning cinematography returns to the screen with a bolder gait, as if Villeneuve and his crew, waiting in the shadows, leap out to deliver a scene that is no less than a segment from an indie art film. The stark monochrome colours, placed to remind one of WW2 footage and Nazi Germany, pan over appealing symmetrical shots that almost lean into a surrealist take. The looming guards behind Rautha are the most pleasing stage props. The Bene Gesserit spying on Rautha with her opera glasses took me by surprise and pushed me into a French Noir, if only for a second.
However, a similar black-and-white placement did not work well when it came to the plot. When we are reintroduced to Rabban (Dave Bautista), a whiff of Marvel and their common, but not rare, two-dimensional villains creep in. Granted, Rabban is true to the books, but given the paucity of time, it would have been wiser to expand the Baron’s (Stellan Skarsgård) screen time instead. The book fans might already know that Baron is more than a meat suit and how his “plans within plans” leap with politics worthy of a Game of Thrones episode.
Against this black and white opposition, it is already too late to take Paul’s (Timothee Chalamet) word when he admits to being a Harkonnen as well (an equal tyrant by all means). But this “fighting fire by fire” approach is challenged by a headstrong Chani (Zendaya), who can ironically see Paul’s fallacy that would drive him into a destructive future. Chani is a welcome and time-sensitive addition to the plot — I say ‘addition’ because Chani is more or less perpetually in the background in Herbert’s Dune.
Amidst Herbert’s plot full of conspiring spinster women, Chani’s rebirth might be a redemption in disguise — if only Zendaya’s American accent wasn’t too heavy and anachronistic on the ears. But Chani’s rebellion and its final implications can also be read as a possible plot hole. Towards the end of Villeneuve’s Dune, when Paul has to choose between his mother and his girl (a choice which is depicted all too easy for him), it is implied how he could have turned his fate if only he had not chosen the fascist path that his grandfather walked on, and simply took a backseat to the prophecy.
When I read the books, I did not think of this choice altogether — it is definitely food for thought. Yet it is also true that Paul has a very nuanced relationship with time in books. Only after weighing several possibilities could he decide to overthrow the emperor (Perhaps this was his Eren Yeager moment). So, to say, “If only he had listened to Chani”, would be a sublation of the plot to the highest degree. After all, this Hamletian sci-fi drama is more than Paul’s revenge and extends beyond to leap into a Machiavellian enquiry into the choices of a ruler. And yet, Villeneuve’s Dune is only able to retain Paul’s self-aware tightrope-walk between a white saviour and a refugee. His relationship with time (after drinking ‘the water of life’) is reduced to a single shot spanning artistically on Chalamet’s gesticulating fingers.
But Villeneuve’s biggest sin yet, in my opinion, remains the dull thud of its final plot reveal. When I was reading the conclusion to Dune (it must be three in the night), I was stunned by Paul’s trump card: he had the power to obliterate sandworms and spice production. The movie, on the other hand, fails to remind us how stopping spice production would put a hold on all intergalactic travel altogether. Zipping right past this checkmate, in Villeneuve’s Dune, we conclude with the Chani-Irulan rivalry that only undermines the previous feminist course correction.