“Who will our next oppressors be?”

By Lewis Knight

Published: Friday, 01 March 2024 at 15:00 PM

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**Warning: contains spoilers for Dune: Part Two.**

“You of all people should know by now, there’s no such thing as sides.”

Charlotte Rampling’s imperious Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam delivers this cynical line to her gloating former pupil Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) at the climax of the epic and rather nihilistic Dune: Part Two.

Denis Villeneuve has certainly made his fair share of adaptational changes when approaching the landmark sci-fi novel Dune by Frank Herbert, but none that haven’t furthered the messaging of the original text.

Dune is, above all else, a cautionary tale about the power of messiahs, the dangers of organised religion, and the cult-like adoration of a single person.

Herbert himself once noted in the introduction to his short-story collection Eye: “Dune was aimed at this whole idea of the infallible leader because my view of history says that mistakes made by a leader (or made in a leader’s name) are amplified by the numbers who follow without question.”

In the novel and films, Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) begins his journey as a somewhat daunted teen aware of his potential as the chosen one dubbed the Kwisatz Haderach by his mother’s sisterhood, the Bene Gesserit; a male figure with all the prescient abilities of the sisterhood, achieved through generations of breeding plans.

By the time of Dune: Part Two, Paul is all the more aware of his destiny and what his power could bring – a bloody holy war that will claim the lives of billions across the universe.

While initially trying to avoid such an outcome, Paul is pushed by his mother Lady Jessica to ascend to power, using prophecy, myth and propaganda – with even less internal conflict than her book counterpart and aided through the voice of her unborn child Alia Atreides (voiced by Anya Taylor-Joy).

The decision to not depict Alia as a sentient toddler-like in the novel, as well as a wise tonal decision, also gives a larger role for Lady Jessica and brings the metamorphosis of Paul into starker focus, awarding the darker acts of violence to him too.

It is Paul who embraces his dark destiny towards the end of the film and commits the violent murder of his grandfather Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), the man who killed his father Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac).

The ending of the novel Dune always feels rather hollow, even on re-reads, as it is supposed to. While Paul – the hero of the story – succeeds in defeating the Imperium and House Harkonnen, this happens so quickly and he is soon treating terms with Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV and even becoming engaged to his daughter, Princess Irulan.

• Read More: How is Dune: Part Two different from the book? Book changes explained

Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

Villeneuve embraces this weighty feeling of emptiness in the final scenes, with the clarity of Paul’s similarity to his enemies all the more apparent.

Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh) herself has been prepared in her Bene Gesserit training to embrace whoever is the victor in the battle on Arrakis as their consort – highlighting the pragmatism at play and the moral decay at the centre of power in the Imperium.

Additionally,  Jessica comments to her sentient unborn child Alia as the Fremen ships leave Arrakis to wage a bloody war that the conflict has only just begun. A happy ending, this is not.

This feels in stark contrast to the lambasted David Lynch adaptation of the novel, which saw Paul’s god-like nature celebrated and even saw him miraculously bring rain to Arrakis in a moment of apparent divine intervention.

Instead, in the new film, the decision to place the audience with Paul’s Fremen lover Chani (Zendaya) in these final scenes underlines this. Unlike the novel, where a saddened and grieving Chani resigns herself to a life as Paul’s concubine with Jessica comforting her, here we see Chani outrightly reject this new world order where the love of her life has essentially just replaced the previous dictators of Arrakis to be the next one.

Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

Even this rejection feels empty and hollow, as earlier, Paul told his mother Jessica that his prescient abilities had shown him that eventually Chani would be won round to his cause – feeling all the more sinister and manipulative for it.

Harking back to the prologue for Dune: Part One, Zendaya’s steely Chani narrates the initial departure of House Harkonnen from Arrakis and questions, “Who will our next oppressors be?”

While the arrival of the more principled House Atreides may have felt like an assumption of a newer and more liberal regime on Arrakis, the truth is that they – and specifically Chani’s soulmate Paul – remain the oppressors of the Fremen, even if they have empowered the native people of Arrakis to seize more agency and violence.

Thus it is a perfect bookend that Chani should reject Paul at the end of the story and remain true to her principles.

Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

Additionally, that final near-telepathic exchange between Jessica and Reverend Mother Mohiam also underlines that there is no true difference between Paul and his enemies – in fact, Paul is even Harkonnen in lineage and comments to his mother that they must become Harkonnens to defeat them.

This is a tale of colonialism, repression and wider cultural manipulation by outside oppressors and Villeneuve is not hiding from that throughline of the novel at all.

Ultimately, Dune: Part Two is even more explicitly dark than its source material and certainly embraces the even starker pessimism of the sequel novel Dune Messiah.

Whether Villeneuve’s adaptation of Messiah will ever make it to the screen as a third film remains to be seen (even if it is likely), but the director has certainly set an appropriate tone for the tragedy to come.