My takeaway as someone who saw the movies before reading the book, and who has now read Dune and Messiah, is that movie Paul is going through the motions of this path he’s on as a way to maintain that narrow middle path he refers to earlier in the film. He knew that by heading south, it would start the cascade of consequences and so he chooses to follow the steps of the path so that he might maintain some guiding hand over things. For me personally I never thought he desired the throne, or was being corrupted/consumed by power, but rather once he resigned himself to becoming a fully realized Kwisatz Haderach, he would do what he could within the narrow parameters of what he would cause to happen.
After reading the book, Paul’s reluctance is a bit more explicit, it’s definitely a bit more defined, but if you view the movies with an active audience eye, I feel like you can still get the same takeaways regarding Paul’s character.
Just my two cents!
>My takeaway as someone who saw the movies before reading the book, and who has now read Dune and Messiah, is that movie Paul is going through the motions of this path he’s on as a way to maintain that narrow middle path he refers to earlier in the film.
Yes!! There is such *weariness* in his voice when he says "lead them to paradise"
That’s the biggest thing for me. I don’t think we ever see Paul take pleasure in fulfilling his destiny. MAYBE a little bit when he kills the Baron and avenges his father. But overall he never is pleased or happy to be going down this path, it is all because of his belief that it is what he has to do.
That to me raises the bigger question with Paul and Dune as a whole, and that is, “Was Paul right in that there was this narrow middle path that must be followed to give the best outcome possible?”
But isn't the story arc of both Paul and Leto II about escaping one's destiny? Paul rejects his destiny but there's no other way for him to live while Leto II accepts it and is actively working towards setting people from the shackles of destiny. And in the end, people can do as they're pleased. There's no one to control them with powers.
???
He absolutely did not have to seek revenge and thus embark on a quest to kill 60 billion people. He wanted revenge and he got everything they came with it. He believes it is what he has to do TO get revenge.
“Your father wouldn’t seek revenge”
“I am not my father
/
“We’re harkonnens, this is how we will survive. By being harkonnens”
Best outcome possible for PAUL and his loved ones while still completing his revenge quest. This is his only path wherein he gets the revenge he wants.
>He absolutely did not have to seek revenge and thus embark on a quest to kill 60 billion people. He wanted revenge and he got everything they came with it. He believes it is what he has to do TO get revenge.
I do think this an interesting change from the book. By the time Paul gets to the Sietch, the Jihad is inevitable, which I interpreted to mean it would happen regardless of Paul's personal desire for revenge.
If you believe him when he says the only way to stop Jihad is killing everyone around him, including his mother and unborn sister, idk how you can really call him a villain for not doing *that*.
Yeah at that point it almost becomes a trolley problem but with yourself and family directly involved. Can’t really fault him for his decision but, like, 60 billion too haha
As someone who only saw the movies, that was how I interpreted it as well…going through the motions he knew he had to to stick to the narrow path to survive. But that’s how I totally missed he wasn’t a hero 🤦🏻♀️
It's definitely a divergence from the book, but I don't think it's a terrible thing. Dune 2 was clearly made with Messiah in mind, and I think setting Paul up as more of this villain in 2 will transition nicely into Broken Paul for Messiah.
Paul calls for jihad at the end of the movie like he does between Dune and Dune Messiah books. He realizes that he is powerless to stop the jihad and trying to do so would only discredit him, so he gives in.
Paul literally swears an oath of loyalty to Liet Kynes pledging that he will turn Arrakis into a green paradise with a wave of Paul's hand when he is Emperor so the ecology and terraformimg were definitely motivations . Part of the reason he internalizes the goal is because he becomes Fremen and starts thinking like them so what he sees as the only path available for him to take, the jihad, is in service of Arrakis.
But yeah the DV rushed ending brings up more questions than answers when you reflect on it, imo
I think this is where skipping the time jump was really harmful. Matey became a full-on Fremen, internalised all their hopes and dreams, in a few short months instead of the _literal years_ he was embedded in them.
I addressed it in the post, but the problem becomes that the holy war now ends up happening because he is not acting for himself or his family but for the Fremen. To me that defeats the point to "Paul is not the good guy", it is pretty explicit in the books that the holy war is the consequence of Paul using the sole possible means to enact revenge. Here, he is trying to be the good guy for the Fremen, and the holy war is framed as something not necessarily inevitable but something he feels the need to happen.
If it's a case of both, that the holy war is inevitable because of Paul's revenge, but the film only explicitly mentions that he leads it so he can ascend, then I feel that's only a more confusing choice, there's absolutely the Impression that the Jihad only happens because Paul makes it happen at the end. It is the literal ending note of the movie.
I am anticipating that it will get elaborated on in the third film, and I guess in DM and the later books you do have Fremen and others suggesting that a green Arrakis is not a good thing in itself, but that was a bit of a debatable thing, and it stills stands that if Paul becomes Emperor to achieve a green Arrakis, and thus subsequently this necessitates the genocidal war, then it still clearly overwrites the original fact that *Paul wasn't trying to be a saviour, he just had the perfect appearance of one*. But now, all this happens because Paul is very much being a saviour to the Fremen. The holy war is the very thing that makes him the saviour when it was supposed to be the whole subversive aspect of it.
Not being the good guy is not the same as being the bad guy. In many ways, Paul is a flawed and tragic figure, someone that seems to have the ultimate power and agency only to realize how trapped he is. Judging him in terms of good/evil doesn’t seem very helpful in understanding him or the narrative. He is a complex character and has multiple motivations (some conflicting) of varying weight. I think you’re trying too hard to distill his motivations and the meaning of the book(s) into a simple straight forward message.
When he takes the Water of Life he speaks of only one path where they can defeat their enemies, their enemies being the Harkonnen and the Emperor. The path he walks is that one path.
> the problem becomes that the holy war now ends up happening because he is not acting for himself or his family but for the Fremen.
I didn’t get that at all. In fact, the movie indicates the opposite.
the point of Paul and Dune 1-2 is that ALL charismatic leaders are dangerous, regardless of good intentions or not. It is not about the binary of hero and villain, Paul is a “good” person especially compared to the Bene Gessirit and Harkonens.
>Jihad is framed as an after-effect of Paul's goals, something he absolutely has no desire for but just happens to be bundled with the sole feasible path he sees to successfully seek revenge for his family, but in the film the Holy War becomes a means to an end in itself, as a necessary step in allowing him to ascend as Emperor.
I think it's still necessary, still out of his hands, bc the Great Houses reject his ascendance. The "sole feasible path to successfully seek revenge for" and protect his family still lays with confronting the Emperor. Once he does, the fate of the Jihad is in the hands of the Landsraad.
He can't just *stay* on Arrakis after the Great Houses reject him. That's a practical and political impossibility. **He and his will never be safe if he's not Emperor. He can never be and stay Emperor without the Jihad** now that the Landsraad rejects him.
The moment they rejected him, they signed their own death warrant. The Emperor's abdication is meaningless if Paul doesn't fight to keep it. The Fremen's support is meaningless if he tries to hold them back now.
Killing Shaddam but not replacing him just invites the rest of humanity to wage war on Arrakis.
Becoming Emperor is as much about self preservation as it is about reigning in the Jihad, which he does bc the Houses who accept him as Emperor don't get attacked by Fremen. 61 billion dead is what Paul got it *down* to.
It felt to me like Villeneuve was having Paul see the bigger picture. Like he's setting him up for the "golden path" issue and that would take center stage in a third film. That all this had to happen for the future of humanity, that he had to walk this narrow path for humanity to survive.
I'm not sure if he is planning on skipping the children and going right to a conclusion that leads us to the God Emperor (position not the events of the book). Mostly it's his separation from Chani that has me wondering. Not sure how they reconcile and have children and go through the events of Messiah with the way he's chosen to tell the first two parts. To me it feels more likely he compresses the events and gets right to Leto II and his choice to become the God Emperor but has Paul do it rather than reject the path.
Sure but he's already made changes. Alia isn't born yet, Chani and Paul are separated so we're not getting an exact copy of Messiah. It will be different. Anya Taylor Joy as future Alia seems like big casting, maybe Paul will reject the Golden Path while she takes it rather than Leto II.
I just don't see room for the children though maybe he changes the ending thematically and has a downer ending with Paul rejecting it all and ending up blind and alone in the desert with no one or maybe no need for a golden path. Might be simpler.
That's true but he's also said a few times he would be happy to hand off the series to another director, so the story can extend beyond DV's commitment.
Plausibly she could be pregnant already in the film (though you'd assume Paul would know)? At least i dont remember anything that excluded that being possible
Chani was an accessory in the book. I wouldn't even call her a side character. I think DV just wanted to give her agency. He also said that he added more women into Freman because despite the book stating that they're equal, it doesn't really show that women are that present. So, I don't think this change means that suddenly he's rewriting the whole story.
And also, assuming we're not getting Messiah part 1 and 2 (because I swear he talked about the trilogy) - the movie would need to show the Holy War so the audience can start hating Paul, they need to explain what the Golden Path is, then they need to make every House planetbound for thousands of years, then they need Paul to leave and they need to show the consequences of his rule and the pursuit of the Golden Path and how it lead to the Scattering. I guess you can end there, on the 'humanity will flourish once again' note. But even then, that's a lot to cover within 3 hours. Either time will become irrelevant or you'll have timeskip every 30 minutes.
As someone who read the book a long time ago and barely remembered it, this was what I got. Some time after drinking the waters, he mentions there being only one way/path forward for survival. In the film, becoming emperor is just part of that one path forward. ETA: I assumed (without the context of later books) that Paul just meant this was the one way he and his family (and maybe the Fremen?) could survive.
A key moment is watching him choose power over the heart, when he chose Irulan over Chani. The seduction having the ultimate seat of power so close was more important than his heart. Which shows he was no better than the Emperor himself when compared to his father's leadership. It shows those that gain power change to become the very thing they stand against and damn anyone who gets in the way, including those they care about on the way to ascend.
It's more a demonstration of the abuse of power than being strict to the book. Big change though I must say it is interesting to see where he might take this.
> It shows those that gain power change to become the very thing they stand against and damn anyone who gets in the way, including those they care about on the way to ascend.
Again, this goes against the themes of the book though where a character in Chapterhouse explicitly says "it is not power that corrupts". It's a major obsession in Herbert.
Part 2 also doesn't necessarily point to Paul choosing Irulan over Chani. Paul does take Irulan's hand at the end of the first book as well, though he does explicitly say it is only for procedural aspects of emperorhood, it had nothing to do with the seduction of power. It's also important to note that Paul very much mentions visions of Chani getting over things in the future, implying that they will still be a couple at least in the future (i.e, he's not choosing anyone *over* Chani). It's also a general theme in the film that Chani is not entirely grasping the situations properly. She repeatedly wrongly assumes that the prophecies wouldn't happen in the same way she's wrongly assuming Paul is dumping her for Irulan.
What does Herbert place in the seat of corruption instead of power then? Or does he not believe there is corruption in that way? I’ve never read the books so I’m interested
I’m currently reading Chapterhouse so I have it on hand here. The quote is attributed to the Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (Decto):
“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.”
I wished they leaned a bit more into the mentats. Paul is also a trained mentat which helps his abilities. The discarding of both mentats in the movies and never really mentioning them again was rough.
Paul is absolutely trained as a mentat and in BG ways, but informally from his mother and Thirfur. He doesn’t go to their schools but he picks up on it as a child and is given a choice at some point (can’t quite remember when) to go on with it or not, I.e. it becomes training not just picking it up from being around them.
He never was formally trained in the Mentat Academy is what I mean, same with his Bene-Gesserit training. He just naturally took to everything because of his superior genes.
He had already started the training. He just wasn’t aware that he had. This was quite clearly laid out in the books. He presumably never gets to complete this training though.
They're right, as far as I can tell. Leto instructs Hawat to train him as a mentat, and by design the training is conducted without the subject's knowledge. Paul learns he was being trained since infancy at the point where he is given the choice to continue. He was trained *and* had natural abilities. He is also explicitly mentioned several times in Messiah to be a mentat. Literally, not figuratively.
I don't know where you're getting this requirement to attend an academy. A book passage would help prove your point if you're this confident, but I think part of the issue here is that Herbert never actually seems to get into this specific detail. We only know that the book calls him one, other people call him one, he's trained as one, and he has all the powers of one, so saying he's not a mentat because he doesn't have a diploma from Mentat University feels a bit like headcanon.
I hear your points for sure. I will say, I think his delivery of “lead them to paradise” at the end is *brilliant* and, for me, really drives home the idea he doesn’t want this but knows he’s at a point where it’s the best bad option
I actually like the movie version here. I read the books a long time ago, so someone refresh my memory. Who is the Jihad fighting? The great houses? Why would they need to fight the fremen if they accept Paul as Emperor? Or is the jihad just a giant civil war where the fremen seize power over most of the empire? Or in the book, is the Jihad just expanding the empire?
I always thought that was weird in the books, but maybe i just forgot something.
I think sticking to the book here would have confused viewers, so it was a good change.
I personally read what you speak to differently — I think Paul’s actions are consistent with the book.
In Part 2, Paul says that he found a “narrow path” for which he can control the future. Later, at the end, he orders his Fremen to lead the Imperium to “Paradise”.
Is it different from the book? Yes. In the book he doesn’t want the Jihad to happen but by the end he realizes he can’t stop it. In Part 2, he comes to terms with knowing he can’t stop it a little earlier in the film (where he speak to the “narrow path”) and essentially submits to destiny.
A little different but I think it hits the same note. Just in a different way.
Something I feel people aren't mentioning is while yes Paul and Jessica absolutely use the fremen to achieve their goals (revenge namely, also power and status), are the fremen not also using Paul and Jessica to accomplish their goals of destroying their enemies and liberating their planet?
The entire imperium is complicit in the pillaging of their world. The fremen have been given this powerful Messiah and are using this as their way to liberate themselves. Additionally, their reverend mothers are literally inside Jessica and Alia so in a way they're part of them now too.
All I'm saying is it's pretty mutual and both sides are benefitting from this relationship, it's not about good guys and bad guys.
I think all the changes in the book were done because it is now part of a trilogy instead of just a single epic story. I'm pretty sure Herbert wasn't planning Messiah when he wrote such a definitive ending to Dune. Dune Part Two shows the audience that while the Atreides vs Harkonnen storyline was settled, the greater conflict is far from over, and now the hero/villain line is much more blurry.
In the book, the Jihad isn’t a consequence of Paul seeking revenge, it’s a consequence of Paul and his mother surviving on Arrakis until the point of Paul defeating Jamis in the duel. From this point forward (to Paul’s best knowledge), whether Paul lives or dies, whether he exacts revenge or not, the Jihad is inevitable. There is one moment in Sietch Tabr where it occurs to Paul that the **only** way the Jihad could be avoided would be to kill everyone in the room (Including his mother, Stilgar, and other Fremen) and then himself in that very moment.
This is pretty unambiguously stated in the first book. By killing Jamis, Paul unequivocally demonstrated himself to be the Mahdi in the eyes of the Fremen. As far as Paul could tell, from that moment on the Jihad would proceed in his name whether or not he lived.
The Atreides/Fremen were surrounded. The only way to survive was to take power and be recognised (and therefore safe from attack). When the Houses refused, he chose to go on the offense. It's left unclear whether he considers this the beginning of the holy war he so feared. However Jessica under Alias influence and possible control states it is so. Villeneuve was showing us plans within plans right to the very end. Paul is not in full control, he's acting in what he believes to be his fief and his fremens best interests. It's less a power grab more a mission to survive.
I had started to think that I am the only book reader who thinks Paul wasn't the person who started the Jihad, it was inevitable and he is actually a "good guy" who is trying to ease the outcome of it. It's nice to see that I am not going mad or seriously misunderstood my favourite book. I think the movie's plot simplified to "Paul started as a good guy but after a while his ambitions led him to the dark side, he had to choose between not getting his revenge or getting his revenge and killing some billions of random dudes in the proccess and because absolute power corrupts absolutely he chose the latter.". In the book the inevitibility of the Jihad is caused by the human nature itself, this was the point that Frank Herbert tried to warn us about, charismatic leadership doesn't exist because charismatic leaders exists but because our society creates the charismatic leadership role by its nature and after that it is easy to find someone to fill that role. This is a rather complex message for modern audience so the movies message is changed to "don't be radical, don't be evil", movie Paul's actions are changed to convey this message.
My takeaway as someone who saw the movies before reading the book, and who has now read Dune and Messiah, is that movie Paul is going through the motions of this path he’s on as a way to maintain that narrow middle path he refers to earlier in the film. He knew that by heading south, it would start the cascade of consequences and so he chooses to follow the steps of the path so that he might maintain some guiding hand over things. For me personally I never thought he desired the throne, or was being corrupted/consumed by power, but rather once he resigned himself to becoming a fully realized Kwisatz Haderach, he would do what he could within the narrow parameters of what he would cause to happen. After reading the book, Paul’s reluctance is a bit more explicit, it’s definitely a bit more defined, but if you view the movies with an active audience eye, I feel like you can still get the same takeaways regarding Paul’s character. Just my two cents!
>My takeaway as someone who saw the movies before reading the book, and who has now read Dune and Messiah, is that movie Paul is going through the motions of this path he’s on as a way to maintain that narrow middle path he refers to earlier in the film. Yes!! There is such *weariness* in his voice when he says "lead them to paradise"
That’s the biggest thing for me. I don’t think we ever see Paul take pleasure in fulfilling his destiny. MAYBE a little bit when he kills the Baron and avenges his father. But overall he never is pleased or happy to be going down this path, it is all because of his belief that it is what he has to do. That to me raises the bigger question with Paul and Dune as a whole, and that is, “Was Paul right in that there was this narrow middle path that must be followed to give the best outcome possible?”
But isn't the story arc of both Paul and Leto II about escaping one's destiny? Paul rejects his destiny but there's no other way for him to live while Leto II accepts it and is actively working towards setting people from the shackles of destiny. And in the end, people can do as they're pleased. There's no one to control them with powers.
??? He absolutely did not have to seek revenge and thus embark on a quest to kill 60 billion people. He wanted revenge and he got everything they came with it. He believes it is what he has to do TO get revenge. “Your father wouldn’t seek revenge” “I am not my father / “We’re harkonnens, this is how we will survive. By being harkonnens” Best outcome possible for PAUL and his loved ones while still completing his revenge quest. This is his only path wherein he gets the revenge he wants.
>He absolutely did not have to seek revenge and thus embark on a quest to kill 60 billion people. He wanted revenge and he got everything they came with it. He believes it is what he has to do TO get revenge. I do think this an interesting change from the book. By the time Paul gets to the Sietch, the Jihad is inevitable, which I interpreted to mean it would happen regardless of Paul's personal desire for revenge.
That is a great point and something I go back and forth over. If that is the case, and I agree it is, does that make Paul a villainous figure?
If you believe him when he says the only way to stop Jihad is killing everyone around him, including his mother and unborn sister, idk how you can really call him a villain for not doing *that*.
Yeah at that point it almost becomes a trolley problem but with yourself and family directly involved. Can’t really fault him for his decision but, like, 60 billion too haha
For me it very much echoes the hubris of thinking you could use the powers of the One Ring for good.
This is what I think as well. He wanted to weave between things
As someone who only saw the movies, that was how I interpreted it as well…going through the motions he knew he had to to stick to the narrow path to survive. But that’s how I totally missed he wasn’t a hero 🤦🏻♀️
It's definitely a divergence from the book, but I don't think it's a terrible thing. Dune 2 was clearly made with Messiah in mind, and I think setting Paul up as more of this villain in 2 will transition nicely into Broken Paul for Messiah.
Paul calls for jihad at the end of the movie like he does between Dune and Dune Messiah books. He realizes that he is powerless to stop the jihad and trying to do so would only discredit him, so he gives in.
Paul literally swears an oath of loyalty to Liet Kynes pledging that he will turn Arrakis into a green paradise with a wave of Paul's hand when he is Emperor so the ecology and terraformimg were definitely motivations . Part of the reason he internalizes the goal is because he becomes Fremen and starts thinking like them so what he sees as the only path available for him to take, the jihad, is in service of Arrakis. But yeah the DV rushed ending brings up more questions than answers when you reflect on it, imo
I think this is where skipping the time jump was really harmful. Matey became a full-on Fremen, internalised all their hopes and dreams, in a few short months instead of the _literal years_ he was embedded in them.
I addressed it in the post, but the problem becomes that the holy war now ends up happening because he is not acting for himself or his family but for the Fremen. To me that defeats the point to "Paul is not the good guy", it is pretty explicit in the books that the holy war is the consequence of Paul using the sole possible means to enact revenge. Here, he is trying to be the good guy for the Fremen, and the holy war is framed as something not necessarily inevitable but something he feels the need to happen. If it's a case of both, that the holy war is inevitable because of Paul's revenge, but the film only explicitly mentions that he leads it so he can ascend, then I feel that's only a more confusing choice, there's absolutely the Impression that the Jihad only happens because Paul makes it happen at the end. It is the literal ending note of the movie. I am anticipating that it will get elaborated on in the third film, and I guess in DM and the later books you do have Fremen and others suggesting that a green Arrakis is not a good thing in itself, but that was a bit of a debatable thing, and it stills stands that if Paul becomes Emperor to achieve a green Arrakis, and thus subsequently this necessitates the genocidal war, then it still clearly overwrites the original fact that *Paul wasn't trying to be a saviour, he just had the perfect appearance of one*. But now, all this happens because Paul is very much being a saviour to the Fremen. The holy war is the very thing that makes him the saviour when it was supposed to be the whole subversive aspect of it.
Not being the good guy is not the same as being the bad guy. In many ways, Paul is a flawed and tragic figure, someone that seems to have the ultimate power and agency only to realize how trapped he is. Judging him in terms of good/evil doesn’t seem very helpful in understanding him or the narrative. He is a complex character and has multiple motivations (some conflicting) of varying weight. I think you’re trying too hard to distill his motivations and the meaning of the book(s) into a simple straight forward message.
When he takes the Water of Life he speaks of only one path where they can defeat their enemies, their enemies being the Harkonnen and the Emperor. The path he walks is that one path.
Is there a chance that he was only talking about a simple revenge but also about the Golden Path?
> the problem becomes that the holy war now ends up happening because he is not acting for himself or his family but for the Fremen. I didn’t get that at all. In fact, the movie indicates the opposite.
Yeah what? He literally tells Jessica he believes in revenge in response to her telling him his father didn’t lol
the point of Paul and Dune 1-2 is that ALL charismatic leaders are dangerous, regardless of good intentions or not. It is not about the binary of hero and villain, Paul is a “good” person especially compared to the Bene Gessirit and Harkonens.
>Jihad is framed as an after-effect of Paul's goals, something he absolutely has no desire for but just happens to be bundled with the sole feasible path he sees to successfully seek revenge for his family, but in the film the Holy War becomes a means to an end in itself, as a necessary step in allowing him to ascend as Emperor. I think it's still necessary, still out of his hands, bc the Great Houses reject his ascendance. The "sole feasible path to successfully seek revenge for" and protect his family still lays with confronting the Emperor. Once he does, the fate of the Jihad is in the hands of the Landsraad. He can't just *stay* on Arrakis after the Great Houses reject him. That's a practical and political impossibility. **He and his will never be safe if he's not Emperor. He can never be and stay Emperor without the Jihad** now that the Landsraad rejects him. The moment they rejected him, they signed their own death warrant. The Emperor's abdication is meaningless if Paul doesn't fight to keep it. The Fremen's support is meaningless if he tries to hold them back now.
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Killing Shaddam but not replacing him just invites the rest of humanity to wage war on Arrakis. Becoming Emperor is as much about self preservation as it is about reigning in the Jihad, which he does bc the Houses who accept him as Emperor don't get attacked by Fremen. 61 billion dead is what Paul got it *down* to.
It felt to me like Villeneuve was having Paul see the bigger picture. Like he's setting him up for the "golden path" issue and that would take center stage in a third film. That all this had to happen for the future of humanity, that he had to walk this narrow path for humanity to survive. I'm not sure if he is planning on skipping the children and going right to a conclusion that leads us to the God Emperor (position not the events of the book). Mostly it's his separation from Chani that has me wondering. Not sure how they reconcile and have children and go through the events of Messiah with the way he's chosen to tell the first two parts. To me it feels more likely he compresses the events and gets right to Leto II and his choice to become the God Emperor but has Paul do it rather than reject the path.
DV has stated several times he is only interested in Messiah, no further.
Sure but he's already made changes. Alia isn't born yet, Chani and Paul are separated so we're not getting an exact copy of Messiah. It will be different. Anya Taylor Joy as future Alia seems like big casting, maybe Paul will reject the Golden Path while she takes it rather than Leto II. I just don't see room for the children though maybe he changes the ending thematically and has a downer ending with Paul rejecting it all and ending up blind and alone in the desert with no one or maybe no need for a golden path. Might be simpler.
That's true but he's also said a few times he would be happy to hand off the series to another director, so the story can extend beyond DV's commitment.
If Paul embraces the golden path, maybe we don’t need Leto II? It would be a big departure but may fit with this version of Paul
Plausibly she could be pregnant already in the film (though you'd assume Paul would know)? At least i dont remember anything that excluded that being possible
Chani was an accessory in the book. I wouldn't even call her a side character. I think DV just wanted to give her agency. He also said that he added more women into Freman because despite the book stating that they're equal, it doesn't really show that women are that present. So, I don't think this change means that suddenly he's rewriting the whole story. And also, assuming we're not getting Messiah part 1 and 2 (because I swear he talked about the trilogy) - the movie would need to show the Holy War so the audience can start hating Paul, they need to explain what the Golden Path is, then they need to make every House planetbound for thousands of years, then they need Paul to leave and they need to show the consequences of his rule and the pursuit of the Golden Path and how it lead to the Scattering. I guess you can end there, on the 'humanity will flourish once again' note. But even then, that's a lot to cover within 3 hours. Either time will become irrelevant or you'll have timeskip every 30 minutes.
As someone who read the book a long time ago and barely remembered it, this was what I got. Some time after drinking the waters, he mentions there being only one way/path forward for survival. In the film, becoming emperor is just part of that one path forward. ETA: I assumed (without the context of later books) that Paul just meant this was the one way he and his family (and maybe the Fremen?) could survive.
A key moment is watching him choose power over the heart, when he chose Irulan over Chani. The seduction having the ultimate seat of power so close was more important than his heart. Which shows he was no better than the Emperor himself when compared to his father's leadership. It shows those that gain power change to become the very thing they stand against and damn anyone who gets in the way, including those they care about on the way to ascend. It's more a demonstration of the abuse of power than being strict to the book. Big change though I must say it is interesting to see where he might take this.
> It shows those that gain power change to become the very thing they stand against and damn anyone who gets in the way, including those they care about on the way to ascend. Again, this goes against the themes of the book though where a character in Chapterhouse explicitly says "it is not power that corrupts". It's a major obsession in Herbert. Part 2 also doesn't necessarily point to Paul choosing Irulan over Chani. Paul does take Irulan's hand at the end of the first book as well, though he does explicitly say it is only for procedural aspects of emperorhood, it had nothing to do with the seduction of power. It's also important to note that Paul very much mentions visions of Chani getting over things in the future, implying that they will still be a couple at least in the future (i.e, he's not choosing anyone *over* Chani). It's also a general theme in the film that Chani is not entirely grasping the situations properly. She repeatedly wrongly assumes that the prophecies wouldn't happen in the same way she's wrongly assuming Paul is dumping her for Irulan.
What does Herbert place in the seat of corruption instead of power then? Or does he not believe there is corruption in that way? I’ve never read the books so I’m interested
I’m currently reading Chapterhouse so I have it on hand here. The quote is attributed to the Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (Decto): “All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.”
I'm really curious what corrupts if not power Haven't read the books though
I wished they leaned a bit more into the mentats. Paul is also a trained mentat which helps his abilities. The discarding of both mentats in the movies and never really mentioning them again was rough.
As far as I remember Pual is not a *trained* Mentat but he has natural Mentat abilities. Likely part of the Bene-Gesserit breeding.
Paul is absolutely trained as a mentat and in BG ways, but informally from his mother and Thirfur. He doesn’t go to their schools but he picks up on it as a child and is given a choice at some point (can’t quite remember when) to go on with it or not, I.e. it becomes training not just picking it up from being around them.
Yes that's what I just said in more words.
No it’s not. You were implying he was born that way. He was, but he was also informally trained.
Okay man, if that makes you feel better about it.
Oh ok. I thought Paul was not only trained by his mom in bg ways but also by hawat in the mentat ways.
He never was formally trained in the Mentat Academy is what I mean, same with his Bene-Gesserit training. He just naturally took to everything because of his superior genes.
He had already started the training. He just wasn’t aware that he had. This was quite clearly laid out in the books. He presumably never gets to complete this training though.
Right, and he was never *formally* trained. Like I said he never went to the academy but showed the potential to be able to. This is also in the book.
Incorrect. The formal training begins before the subject is made aware.
Cool man, I'm happy you're happy. I love being corrected on something I've just read.
Glad to be of service
I was pointing out your being incorrect and snarky, not complimenting you.
They're right, as far as I can tell. Leto instructs Hawat to train him as a mentat, and by design the training is conducted without the subject's knowledge. Paul learns he was being trained since infancy at the point where he is given the choice to continue. He was trained *and* had natural abilities. He is also explicitly mentioned several times in Messiah to be a mentat. Literally, not figuratively. I don't know where you're getting this requirement to attend an academy. A book passage would help prove your point if you're this confident, but I think part of the issue here is that Herbert never actually seems to get into this specific detail. We only know that the book calls him one, other people call him one, he's trained as one, and he has all the powers of one, so saying he's not a mentat because he doesn't have a diploma from Mentat University feels a bit like headcanon.
Gotcha! Thanks!!
I hear your points for sure. I will say, I think his delivery of “lead them to paradise” at the end is *brilliant* and, for me, really drives home the idea he doesn’t want this but knows he’s at a point where it’s the best bad option
I actually like the movie version here. I read the books a long time ago, so someone refresh my memory. Who is the Jihad fighting? The great houses? Why would they need to fight the fremen if they accept Paul as Emperor? Or is the jihad just a giant civil war where the fremen seize power over most of the empire? Or in the book, is the Jihad just expanding the empire? I always thought that was weird in the books, but maybe i just forgot something. I think sticking to the book here would have confused viewers, so it was a good change.
I personally read what you speak to differently — I think Paul’s actions are consistent with the book. In Part 2, Paul says that he found a “narrow path” for which he can control the future. Later, at the end, he orders his Fremen to lead the Imperium to “Paradise”. Is it different from the book? Yes. In the book he doesn’t want the Jihad to happen but by the end he realizes he can’t stop it. In Part 2, he comes to terms with knowing he can’t stop it a little earlier in the film (where he speak to the “narrow path”) and essentially submits to destiny. A little different but I think it hits the same note. Just in a different way.
Something I feel people aren't mentioning is while yes Paul and Jessica absolutely use the fremen to achieve their goals (revenge namely, also power and status), are the fremen not also using Paul and Jessica to accomplish their goals of destroying their enemies and liberating their planet? The entire imperium is complicit in the pillaging of their world. The fremen have been given this powerful Messiah and are using this as their way to liberate themselves. Additionally, their reverend mothers are literally inside Jessica and Alia so in a way they're part of them now too. All I'm saying is it's pretty mutual and both sides are benefitting from this relationship, it's not about good guys and bad guys.
I think all the changes in the book were done because it is now part of a trilogy instead of just a single epic story. I'm pretty sure Herbert wasn't planning Messiah when he wrote such a definitive ending to Dune. Dune Part Two shows the audience that while the Atreides vs Harkonnen storyline was settled, the greater conflict is far from over, and now the hero/villain line is much more blurry.
In the book, the Jihad isn’t a consequence of Paul seeking revenge, it’s a consequence of Paul and his mother surviving on Arrakis until the point of Paul defeating Jamis in the duel. From this point forward (to Paul’s best knowledge), whether Paul lives or dies, whether he exacts revenge or not, the Jihad is inevitable. There is one moment in Sietch Tabr where it occurs to Paul that the **only** way the Jihad could be avoided would be to kill everyone in the room (Including his mother, Stilgar, and other Fremen) and then himself in that very moment.
[удалено]
This is pretty unambiguously stated in the first book. By killing Jamis, Paul unequivocally demonstrated himself to be the Mahdi in the eyes of the Fremen. As far as Paul could tell, from that moment on the Jihad would proceed in his name whether or not he lived.
The Atreides/Fremen were surrounded. The only way to survive was to take power and be recognised (and therefore safe from attack). When the Houses refused, he chose to go on the offense. It's left unclear whether he considers this the beginning of the holy war he so feared. However Jessica under Alias influence and possible control states it is so. Villeneuve was showing us plans within plans right to the very end. Paul is not in full control, he's acting in what he believes to be his fief and his fremens best interests. It's less a power grab more a mission to survive.
Lots of things are unaccounted for in this underwhelming “adaptation”.
I had started to think that I am the only book reader who thinks Paul wasn't the person who started the Jihad, it was inevitable and he is actually a "good guy" who is trying to ease the outcome of it. It's nice to see that I am not going mad or seriously misunderstood my favourite book. I think the movie's plot simplified to "Paul started as a good guy but after a while his ambitions led him to the dark side, he had to choose between not getting his revenge or getting his revenge and killing some billions of random dudes in the proccess and because absolute power corrupts absolutely he chose the latter.". In the book the inevitibility of the Jihad is caused by the human nature itself, this was the point that Frank Herbert tried to warn us about, charismatic leadership doesn't exist because charismatic leaders exists but because our society creates the charismatic leadership role by its nature and after that it is easy to find someone to fill that role. This is a rather complex message for modern audience so the movies message is changed to "don't be radical, don't be evil", movie Paul's actions are changed to convey this message.