Priyanka Goyal Mansata

The Dune series impresses upon the audience’s mind with intense story telling combined with a creation of an archaic future world, unique sand characteristics and technology creations that has impressed upon the current fiction and would arguably set the tone for great science fiction writing for ages to come. It is no wonder that the winner of the Nebula Award, and the Hugo Award sets a precedence for archetype characters and story influences. The story of warring intergalactic empires, sand planets where wormlike creatures swallow people is both shocking and uniquely philosophical.

In fair admission, I have not read Frank Herbert’s book series that inspired the two movies Dune I and Dune II, but found the world portrayed in the movies both intriguing and at some level disturbing, yet not more than the real world of political aspirations already is.

To provide some context, the movies Dune I and Dune II, modelled on the Herbert’s books, is set thousands of years into the future and centers on Paul Atreides, the scion of a noble family. With his father, Duke Leto, and mother, Lady Jessica, Paul starts life on a desert planet Arrakis, or Dune. The beginning of the movie centers on Duke Leto, who, on orders from the emperor, is going to take charge of the Arrakis, which is home to monstrous sandworms, enigmatic nomadic Arab-like inhabitants and an addictive, highly valuable resource called spice.

Fighting Inter-Galactic Empires Mirrors the Present Unrest

The current wars in the gulf mirror the unending conflict and strife of the people to survive in a destructive and difficult environment.  Dune is a novel and a movie entangled in contradiction, a story about the sins of colonizers.

Sandworms are giant creatures found only on the desert planet Arrakis. They are reverently called Shai-Hulud by the planet’s indigenous Fremen, who worship them as agents of God or some form of divine intervention. Sandworms produce a substance called melange, also known as “the spice”, a valuable commodity. Melange lengthens life span, increases vitality, and heightens awareness and is linked to the blue eyes of the Fremen. More importantly, it can unlock prescience in some people, making safe and accurate interstellar travel possible. The harvesting of melange is therefore essential but is also a highly dangerous undertaking due to the presence of sandworms who are also responsible for providing the key ingredient for it. The family that rules Arrakis controls the spice trade.

Spice is both wealth and power. The Bene Gesserit, a powerful sisterhood, use spice to access their psychic powers.

The Imperium consists of impossibly wealthy Great Houses who have fiefdoms of entire planets. Billions of people under the rule of absolute tyrants who are utterly indifferent to their day-to-day suffering or their needs. It ultimately doesn’t matter who is in charge, if you’re one of the common people, you ultimately don’t matter in the Dune saga.

Dune often omits battles and action sequences entirely, instead focusing on the clash of ideas and political consequences. The struggle for control over Arrakis and its spice underscores the current conflicts over oil, water, and other resources, pointing towards resource exploitation and the environmental consequences of wars and conflicts.

The lack of resources and the intense fight to keep them, the lack of peace where characters in armored suits, constantly worry about their lives, conserving breaths to circulate and reuse the water in their bodies. The parched world portrayed in Dune with fighting lords who wear stillsuits and people as commodity, provides a peek into a future scenario that does not look very appetizing. And that is possibly why the movie holds our attention, with the nature of humankind, the power struggle, the lack of value of ordinary lives and that of the indigenous populations.

Indigenous Populations

Myriads of influences seem to have inspired Herbert ranging from Navajo, Aztec, Turkish, Persian to Arabic, that is indicated in the Fremen language and culture, making Dune a global narrative. The Fremen language and religious mythology picks its terminology from the Arabic language and religious texts. The outworlder voice of the lisan al-gaib, or the messianic Mahdi, might mean “tongue of the unseen/missing” in Arabic. The movie reveals the Fremen as a vibrant culture, inherently authentic and righteous people as a result of their association with Arab history. 

Dangers of Artificial Intelligence

While we envision life to become easier with the advent of AI, Dune with in its stark barren environment predicts just the opposite. The prophecies endanger people, the Voice becomes an instrument of manipulation and control.

Words don’t mean anything, and promises are broken in the anti-war scenario. The humans it is clear cannot be trusted. Dune severely lacks in trustworthy characters that the audience can draw comfort from. In that it is markedly different than the other Sci-Fi work Star Wars where the characters such as the Yoda comfort with their larger presence. In Dune, nothing changes for the better even in a world marked twenty thousand years away from now. If at all as resources diminish and our powers grow, (can voice and powers to see the future be compared to the advancements in artificial intelligence?) If at all the world can be seen as not becoming better by all the advancements.

The Future

Herbert created five sequels of the Dune and book series continued to grow after his death. The series will possibility make for a continued and highly anticipated movie franchise. Dune raises more questions than answers them and the audience is forced to think its choices. Twenty thousand years hence, will the humankind fight for water? Are we ignoring the ill effects of climate change and artificial intelligence?

In the end we also revel in the spirit of the homo sapiens fighting in a bid for survival, holding strong in extreme adversity. The Dune’s over all message with its moral ambiguity, socio-political leanings, is telling us we should start thinking generations into the future in conserving resources and fighting wars. And may be its time we do.