"The Holy War begins."
Hello everyone!
As the saying goes. Because look at the quote at the beginning of the page. Huh? HUH?
Yeah, we're headed there baby, and despite the fact we've been actively trying to avoid it since ... well, the start of this all.
But some things are apparently actually predestined, so here we are.
I'm just a tiny bit late when it comes to the release of this movie, but not TOO late, which is just as well so I can ride the tail end of some of this hype.
And there SHOULD be lots and lots of hype, because we're going to be concluding the story in a third one, as already confirmed, although I don't think they'll manage to cover all that Herbert covered in his Dune books to begin with.
Without further ado, let's jump right into Dune Part 2.
To sum up, however: Arrakis is the empire's premier spice provider, and has traded hands more times than one can count. Recently ruled by the Harkonnens, the Emperor (Walken) gave it to the Atreides, and then plotted their downfall behind their backs. The only survivors, Paul (Chalamet) and his mother Jessica (Ferguson) fled into the desert and managed only because of the Fremen.
This is where our story picks up.
The pair are brought to the northern capital of the Fremen by Stilgar (Bardem), where everyone and their unborn child are looking at Paul and wondering if he's their Lisan Al-Gaib, the one who'll lead them back to paradise, a time when Arrakis wasn't a desert wasteland but a lush planet covered with water.
Stilgar insists Jessica must become the Reverend Mother to help achieve this, so she drinks blue cow milk - er, the Water of Life, that is - transmutes the poison because she's Bene Gesserit and knows how to do it, and takes up the position.
The side effect of this is, unfortunately, going to have lasting consequences for her as-yet unborn daughter, who at that moment becomes aware and prescient and can now communicate with her mother like you and I would, just mind-to-mind.
While this is happening, Paul is learning to become Fremen with the rest of them in the desert, falling in love with Chani (Zendaya) and riding giant desert worms as his final test before he's given his Fremen names: Muad'Dib and Usul.
He's perfectly happy fighting by their side to take down Harkonnen spice production, leveraging them to achieve his revenge for the death of his father, Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac), and doesn't much care for the prophecy that the Chosen One, Messiah or whatever you want to call him, is going to be walking among them soon.
His mom and unborn sis have other plans though.
By the time he gets back from his training, she's covered head to toe in weird Reverend Mother clothing, has converted basically all non believers, and is pushing Paul towards a destiny he doesn't want, because he can sense (and occasionally see) that him starting the war everyone expects of him will bring about millions of dead and starvation.
The choice is soon taken right out of his hands, however, because Rabban (Bautista) has failed to restart spice production, so his uncle (Skarsgard) gives Arrakis to his OTHER nephew, Feyd (Butler), who looks like a colourless worm but is actually a psychotic sociopath who loves pain and enjoys being hurt. He's a weirdo, okay.
So while Paul reconnects with another survivor of the Atreides massacre, Gurney (Brolin), Feyd brings artillery to Arrakis and takes out the Fremen capital, with plenty of them dying for this cause Stilgar supports.
This spurs Paul to travel south through the storms, to the part of the planet everyone believes is uninhabitable, but actually holds the fundamentalist Fremen who REALLY dig the prophecy, and where Jessica has been comfortably ensconced for a while, happily spreading her message and waiting for her son to arrive.
When he does, he, too, drinks the Water of Life, but as it's deadly to men (because this series heavily implies men are pieces on a chessboard the Bene Gesserit - all women - move about as they want) he's basically on the verge of death until Chani comes to the rescue.
See, HER Fremen name is Sihaya - Desert Spring. And in the prophecy, it's the Desert Spring's tears that bring the Chosen one back around to them.
So that's what happens, and now Paul can see both past and future, all possible futures, and has a glimpse of his grown-up sister on water-filled Arrakis; fueled by the knowledge so many have died, and knowing there's only a narrow gap they can take to survive, he rouses the Fremen, takes up the role of Lisan Al-Gaib, and leads them back north to war under the Atreides banner.
Oh and also, he issues a challenge to the Emperor who betrayed his father, then bombs the capital with the Atreides nuclear arsenal that everyone thought was lost (nah, says Gurney, ole Leto just hid it real well under everybody's noses).
Swooping in right as the Emperor's punishing the Harkonnens, Paul kills the Baron after letting him know that they're related, because Jessica's his daughter, then takes the imperial group prisoner while the Fremen finally claim Arrakis for their own once more.
He reveals himself to the Emperor as the son of a wronged man, and challenges him to a duel, which Feyd accepts as Imperial champion, and bites the dust because he's no real match for Paul who can see everything coming.
Then, because the Bene Gesserit have claws and hooks in everyone (indeed, Lea Seydoux plays one who seduces Feyd so that 'the bloodline is secure' earlier), Princess Irulan (Pugh), the Emperor's daughter, pleads for her father's life and promises to be a willing bride to this new conqueror, something Paul has foreseen and known had to happen if he's to have any shot at taming the other Great Houses.
Who, by the way, have all arrived to watch this battle for Arrakis, don't really much care for the Usurper, and won't support his ascension, which leaves Paul no choice but to declare Holy War - a war he's spent the past two movies avoiding, by the way - and launch an attack into space.
The Fremen rally to his call, because, Fremen; Jessica's entirely too gleeful about it, looking smug like a cat who just ate the canary; and Chani's disappointed at what she believes is against everything Paul used to stand for (but she just hasn't been paying attention, IMO), and defiantly returns to the desert instead of fighting for him.
And that's where we leave them, with everything going to hell in a hand basket, war beginning, and a lot of the Harkonnen key players dead because of their part in the Atreides massacre (Rabban gets got by Gurney, who really digs this whole revenge thing). The movie shows quite clearly how the Bene Gesserit run the galaxy and the Empire with no real remorse or thought to the actual humans taking part in their ploys, and someone really needs to explain to me what's so special about the Harkonnen bloodline.
Even Paul says it best: So that's how we survive - because we're Harkonnens.
There's something about them that the Bene Gesserit have chosen to push forward, and considering they were the ones to manipulate and start this whole idea of prophecy on Arrakis in the first place (something some of the northern Fremen suspect, because how will you control a whole planet with ease, if not by giving them some random ass hope?), you really have to ask yourself a lot of questions.
Like, why did Jessica defy the Reverend Mother's initial order to beget a daughter, whose son would be the one to do what Paul's doing now? Why did the Reverend Mother say the Atreides were wiped out (allegedly, by her knowledge) because they were becoming "dangerously defiant"? There's an end game here that we can't see yet, and now there's a wild card on the loose in the middle of it all.
Paul Atreides was never meant to be born, nor was he meant to start the Holy War, but Jessica has been playing her own game for a long time, and now he's the one nobody can really control or predict what he'll do because he wasn't supposed to exist in the first place.
Villeneuve promises to conclude this story in his third movie, and I, for one, can't wait, because I believe it's going to cover Dune: Messiah, which will hopefully bring further insight into what this is all about. In the meantime, the television show Dune: Prophecy is headed full-steam to IMAX, so we'll hopefully get even more explanations about the beginning of all of this.
Until next time, friends.
xx
*images and video not mine
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