The latest movie adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic novel Dune, Dune: Part Two directed by Denis Villeneuve, has set truly intergalactic box office records, and been globally exalted by movie critics. Dune: Part Two has, of 24 March, hit over US$220 million in the United States domestic box-office, and worm-holed its way to over US$520 million globally. Villeneuve’s latest foray into the harsh world of Arrakis has been critically acclaimed as a masterpiece, with the film compared favourably to the brilliant Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back, while it currently enjoys near-perfect popular and critical reviews.
Dune: Part Two returns us to the story of Paul Atreides, quickly picking up from where Dune: Part One left us, as he enters the harsh desert climate of Arrakis in the company of the planet’s indigenous inhabitants, the Fremen. In the film, the young Atreides must rally the ‘desert power’ of the Fremen, spurred on by his mother Lady Jessica, to have any hope of exacting vengeance against the brutal Family Harkonnen, who butchered his father Duke Leo Atreides and the rest of his royal House in Dune: Part One. The film depicts Paul gradually mobilising the thousands upon thousands of Fremen warriors across Arrakis against the Harkonnen rulers, and eventually in opposition to Emperor Shaddam IV himself, as his prescient visions reveal that his growing power will lead to an intergalactic holy war, much to the initial fear of himself and the revulsion of Chani, his Fremen comrade and lover.
Much good work has been written on Dune: Part Two as an example, or critique, of the white saviour narrative; a demonstration of interplanetary fascistic war; an exposé of brutal colonial violence; a self-aware Orientalist appropriation of a sandbox of non-Western cultures; a piece that deemphasises the complexity and agency of women from Herbert’s original book; a movie that has noted analogies with the current Israel-Palestine war; and a movie that obviously took inspiration from Islamic and North African and Middle Eastern sources but equally relegates this recognition. Now, in preparation for seeing this movie for the third time at the local IMAX cinema, I wanted to do something a bit different before strolling in, and I swapped the 3D IMAX glasses for my Marxist spectacles to try to understand some key themes of this intergalactic blockbuster… spoiler alert! (for both Marxist theory and Dune: Part Two).
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