Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Dune (1984), part 2
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Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema Rewind. This is Rob Lamb, and we're going to air the second of our two-part look at David Lynch's Dune from 1984. This was an episode that published 3-15-24. Big Dune fan, obviously. We love David Lynch as well. So let's jump in and discuss the second half of this marvelously weird motion picture. ♪

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb. And this is Joe McCormick. And today we are back with our first ever part two of a Weird House Cinema episode. We do not think we're going to make this a regular occurrence, but there is a reason we had to split last Friday's episode in two. And it's that we were talking about the 1984 David Lynch adaptation of the novel Dune, a movie that

I don't think it would be possible for us to talk about for less than three hours. In fact, if we got maximally self-indulgent, Rob, I think we could talk about David Lynch's Dune for six hours, maybe seven. How many movie runtime lengths could we go? I mean, it depends on which version, which cut you're going, right?

But yeah, we had to split this one in two because there's just too much weirdness because it is a David Lynch film and it is based on the already weird book Dune by Frank Herbert, published in 1965. And then we just have such a rich cast that we have to at least acknowledge these various performers who really give it their all. And then on top of all of this, Dune Part 2 just came out in cinemas. It is already...

A huge hit. Everyone's loving this film. Dune is in the air again. The Spice is in the air again. And so we figured, well, if we're going to cut a Weird House Cinema episode into two like this, this is the movie and this is the time to do it. So I actually have rather big news with respect to Denis Villeneuve's Dune Part 2.

We managed to see it in theaters. This is actually the first movie that Rachel and I have managed to go out to the movie theater to see since our daughter was born. And, oh man, it was worth it. We had such a great time. We were just like pumping our fists during the worm riding scenes. It was great. And I think...

I guess we should say at the beginning of this episode here, there will be significant spoilers in this episode for the plot of Dune, both, I guess, all three, the novel, the Lynch adaptation and the new adaptation.

And I thought some of the differences in the choices where it diverged from the book and from the 84 movie were quite interesting. And I think in some ways really smart and in other ways really taking on a challenge of portraying some of the differences

darker and less heroic aspects that emerge toward the end of the novel that, you know, are definitely part of Herbert's idea of what the story meant, but I think are sort of left out of David Lynch's version, which embraces a more full spirit of adventure. Yeah, yeah. And ultimately...

lands on a very heroic note. We see Paul as a savior at the end of this film, and we'll get into all this. But Venu's film is a different beast. While being very true to the book, I believe that the spirit of his portrayal of Paul is very much in keeping with the book itself.

and certainly in keeping with the trajectory to come. Yeah, yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I guess we'll probably talk some more about this as we go on. But obviously, if you have not heard part one of this Weird House series, you should go back and listen to part one of our talk on Dune from last Friday 1st.

A brief recap. We let's see. We talked about the novel Dune and Frank Herbert. We talked about David Lynch and his sort of film career and some of the common themes and characteristics of his filmmaking. Some of the story behind the making of 1984's Dune, where.

David Lynch, this movie is largely regarded as sort of an outlier in David Lynch's filmography, and he has to some extent disowned it. He was very dissatisfied with the final product that was released, and he'd even said that working on this version of Dune produced by Dino De Laurentiis sort of taught him that he would rather not make a movie at all than make a movie that he didn't have full creative control over.

And he would go on to make many more movies in the wake of this where he did have creative control and are celebrated by many as a very strange, interesting, excellent artistic achievements.

Dune was not beloved by critics at the time it came out. I think in the years since, critical opinion has softened somewhat. It kind of has people look back on it now and remember it fondly. But a lot of people did not like this movie at all when it came out. And I think that you can make an argument that it is in many ways unpopular.

a failure to adapt the novel appropriately. I think you can argue in ways also that it is highly artistically compromised. You know, it's not what the director wanted it to be. But at the same time, I think David Lynch's Dune is great. I love this movie and I have a great time watching it.

Yeah, I think especially as time has gone by, I think more and more people, I think people who have attempted to adapt it can recognize this and know more about the history of adaptation regarding this novel. But I think the more time has passed, the more a lot of people have realized that this was still a commendable effort. It's still a pretty great telling of a Dune story, even if there are some very important thematic notes and ultimately happenings involved.

that we'll discuss that I don't love. But still, a lot of it is there. A lot of the look of Dune is there. A lot of the feel of Dune is there. Lots of great performances. And even throwing on the fact that he had to cut it down so much, given all of these limitations, the finished product is a lot of fun. It has a lot of greatness in it. You know, I noticed something when watching the new movie, Dune Part 2,

uh, that made me think differently on some stuff I said in, in part one of the series. Um,

So last time we talked about how difficult Dune is to adapt for multiple reasons. On one hand, it's difficult because so much of the story is contextual. It's stuff about the setting rather than action that happens directly within the story. So it's a lot of world building that's very interesting and sort of gives the direct plot meaning. But the other half being that a lot of the drama is internal. It's like characters' internal thoughts and stuff. And we were joking about how in Dune,

David Lynch's adaptation, there is often like a close-up on somebody's face and they're making a thinking face while you hear their internal monologues, you know, saying, oh, Dune, Iraq, you know, thinking through something. And it's often funny in David Lynch's adaptation. But I realized the new movie does the same thing. And for some reason, it just doesn't look as funny. I don't know if the actors were instructed to make different kinds of faces, but there is zooming on people's faces and hearing their internal thoughts. Yeah.

So, yeah, so we're going to continue to talk about these differences, some of these choices as we roll on through here. Let's see, we got into the plot a bit in the last episode. And one key thing, in case you've forgotten or if you have, you're going to ignore us and you're just going to roll into part two without listening to part one, is that the one thing we're doing differently with this Weird House Cinema episode is instead of rolling through the entire cast,

or notable members of the cast before going into the plot. We are touching in on cast members as we go. And this was in order to try and make the split between the two episodes a little less jarring. So the farthest we got into the plot in part one was...

We talked a lot about the opening narration from Virginia Madsen, where she talks for a long time about the Spacing Guild and all that. And then we talked about the scene where the Spacing Guild arrives on the Imperial home planet and a guild navigator in his sort of in his fish tank locomotive comes into the Emperor's throne room to consult with the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV, played by José Ferrer. And they have a talk about essentially the

The entire plot that's going to unfold in the first half of the movie, the plot against House Atreides and how the emperor is planning to use House Harkonnen to destroy Duke Leto and his line. Yeah. And then then we had to cut for time. So we're jumping back in here with more build up to the key plot.

We're on a different planet. We're on a wet planet. So let's jump right in. Okay, so here we are at the planet Caladan. This is the home of House Atreides. It is a gray planet of rain and oceans, totally contrasted with the dryness of Dune. Though often comparisons are made between the waves of the sea and the dunes of the desert. And this comes up in several adaptations of the story as well.

Um, but, uh, here we get more narration. Now, last time we were joking about the amount of voiceover narration there is to explain what's going on in this movie. And there's, there's even more to come. So, uh, princess Irulan continues on the soundtrack. She says the powerful Benny Jesser at sisterhood for 90 generations has been manipulating bloodlines to produce the Kwisatz Haderach, a super being, uh,

on Caledon, Jessica, a member of the sisterhood and the bound concubine of Duke Leto Atreides, had been ordered to bear only daughters because

Because of her love for the Duke, she disobeyed and gave birth to a son, Paul, Paul Atreides. Now, even all that exposition raises some questions. But like, I think it was part of the story that the Bene Gesserits, they have many powers that they train for. They have powers of mind, mind that can sort of command matter in various ways. And one of them is that, say, they can, like,

control the sex of their offspring with their minds psychically and things like that. Uh, but so yeah, she, she disobeys the, uh, the rules of this powerful, uh, sisterhood and, uh, gives birth to Paul who is, you know, he's going to be some kind of terrible Messiah. Yeah.

So Paul Atreides in this film is played by Kyle MacLachlan, born 1959. Kyle would have been in his early to mid 20s here, I believe. And it's awkward and it's difficult casting, but he awkwardly feels a bit too old in the first half of this movie.

I, yeah. So this is not a knock on Kyle McLaughlin at all. I love Kyle McLaughlin. I love his working relationship with David Lynch. He, you know, he, they're perfect for each other in twin peaks and, and all that. And I,

I am always happy when I see Kyle McLaughlin in a movie. He's an actor I love. But for some reason, I think I just have to admit, he does not feel right in this role. Something about his approach does not fit either the great or the terrible purpose

of Paul. He doesn't seem to embrace the spirit of epicness, really. Instead, he comes off as Kyle MacLachlan. He's kind of nerdy and funny, and he giggles a lot.

And there have been various criticisms of Kyle's, Kyle MacLachlan's performance in this movie. And I have to just sort of agree with them. I want to love Kyle here, but something about him is kind of uncomfortable in the role. He has this overwhelmingly wholesome innocence and doesn't really capture that boy with dangerous potential feeling. He's more of a cosmic Martin Prince in here. Yeah, he never feels like a boy.

He always feels like a young man or a guy in his 20s anyway. And I guess the moments where I think he is best are

are the sort of cold moments. Sometimes it's even a moment with the internal voice going on. And in these moments, it's almost like Paul is more of a cipher. You know, Paul kind of seen through the lens of, say, the protagonist in David Cronenberg's Scanners. You know, someone whose mental reality, whose relationship with his own thoughts and the world around him is so different from ours that he feels like

a little alien, you know? Devoid of personality. Yeah. So there are moments like that that work for me. And for the most part, I don't think...

it's a bad performance. You know, we've seen plenty of movies where the central handsome lead is not a good actor and, and is not good in any of the scenes. So it's nothing like that. Yeah. It's a totally different beast and it is very difficult and ultimately not fair to compare him and his performance to Timothy Chalamet in the new Dune movies. Because in my opinion, Chalamet is just absolutely perfect because it's,

On one hand, he's able to capture the youthfulness of Paul in part one. He really does look like a kid that is maybe 15, which I believe is his age in the book. And yet he is still able—and I was doubtful until I went into part two—he's still able to deliver that more serious, awakened Paul, that dangerous Paul, that

that we get in the second half of, of DV's version of Dune. I totally agree. I, I think Chalamet is great in his role in the new movies and he gets both sides of it. Just like you say, he's, you know, he has that youthful spirit of adventure. You're so on his side in the first movie. And then that, that awakening to the terrible purpose, the sort of arc toward tyranny and the, and the coldness and abuse of power. You see that come on,

with, with such convincing intensity in the second film. And he, I think he, he does a really, really commendable job. And I just want to say again, I'm, I, I'm not generally knocking Kyle McLaughlin. I love Kyle. I think he's great. I just think it's like, he maybe didn't get something about this character.

Yeah. You know, despite the fact that, you know, I remember, I think I've read in places that he was like a real student of the book, you know, and like came in and was, you know, done his homework. And certainly, you know, like you said, he'd go on to have a very accomplished career. He is a two-time Emmy Award winner for his work on Lynch's Twin Peaks.

Uh, this was his film debut, which he followed up with, um, with Lynch's Dune follow-up, the Neo-Noir Blue Velvet. And I, I, I, this is not a surprise for anyone, but because he's probably seen him in something. He's a terrific comedic actor as well. He has great comedic timing. I really enjoyed him on Portlandia, for example. Yes. And he played the mayor, I think. Yeah, he did. All right. Well, what's, what's Paul doing? What's Paul up to this early in the film?

Well, we meet him in a room that looks kind of like the officer's cabin in a British Manowar. It's this big, like, stately wooden room with ornate molding and flourishes.

And what basically what we're going to get in this scene is yet another sizable exposition dump serving to fill in more information about the setting, characters and politics. So at the beginning of the scene, Paul is messing around with something that looks suspiciously like a computer. I don't think they have computers in this world. They should have that. What are the little like magnified scrolls or something? Yeah, yeah. They better not have computers because that's, of course, the whole thing.

Whole big deal in the Dune universe that we have the Butlerian jihad that eradicated thinking machines. And we have this strong dictate, you know, religious and cultural that thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of the human mind. Right. Which is why in this world they have the mentats. These are humans who are essentially trained to be computers while remaining human. Right.

But whatever this object is he's messing with, it's displaying encyclopedic information on screen about different planets. We see information on Caladan, Benitalilax, and Arrakis.

We learn about the Mintats, the human computers with their red-stained lips. We learn about how the Spice Melange is mined from the surface of Dune. We learn about the worms of Arrakis, which attack all rhythmic vibrations. And we learn that the Harkonnens are the sworn enemy of House Atreides, and their homeworld, Gidi Prime, is close, is close to Arrakis.

It is interesting that this film decides to go ahead and lay out stuff, you know, information concerning the Tleilaxu who are not going to be important in this film at all. Like they were clearly thinking ahead to subsequent films. I mean, they're part of it. Like their their work is present here, but you don't actually need to bring them up. Likewise, later, we're going to get a mention. And then, you know, previously we had a mention of Ix.

And Ix is not really important to this film either. So it seems like if you wanted to cut down on the amount of information you're hitting the viewer with, these would have been things you could have left on the cutting room floor. Yeah, yeah. Interesting choice. We have just folded space from Ix. Yes. Anyway, so...

So Paul is approached in his state room here by three characters who are servants of House Atreides. There is Thufir Hawat, the Mentat, and his eyebrows would function as arrow foils, essentially. He's got like gigantic wing-like eyebrows and he seems to be, he's wearing like a fur fringed coat. Strange choice, but I like it. Yeah. Yeah.

We also meet in the scene, Gurney Halleck, the mass, the war master who trains Paul in the, the martial virtues. And we meet Dr. Wellington UA, the physician of house Atreides, the he's a called a souk doctor. And the souk school of medicine is, uh, I think like the, it's like the main sort of way medicine is done in the world of Dune. All right, let's go ahead and lay out these three actors then, because they come in like next to each other. It's almost kind of comedic the way they come out. Um,

But, you know, and so first of all, we have we have Howitt played by Freddie Jones, who lived 1927 through 2019. British character actor who we talked about in our episode on 83's Krull. He had previously been in Lynch's The Elephant Man and he has a slew of other credits, including 1969's Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed. Though that is generally, I think, one that a lot of people choose to skip in the Hammer of Frankenstein. Yeah.

But at any rate, he's perfectly fine in this. If a bit doddering for my taste, I always picture how it is being a little more

I don't know. He's more aloof here, which isn't fitting with a mint hat. But I tend to imagine him always as being a bit more assertive. I mean, he's the master of spies for House Atreides. Simultaneously serene but sharp. And I think Stephen McKinley Henderson gets that in Dune Part One. Absolutely. Yeah.

And I do love the eyebrows. Like, this is a film that does commit to helping the viewer out by having a lot of visual cues regarding factions, houses, and...

and different types of psychically enhanced people. And so the mint hats all have just out of control eyebrows and, and I'll allow it. It's going to be. Okay. And he's got the, the red stained lips from the, the juice that the mint hats drink. Yes. Yes. More on that in a minute. Uh, but okay. So that's through fear. How about the mint hat? But we also have Gurney Halleck, uh, and, uh, and Dr. UA. Yeah. Um, Halleck, uh, is of course, Gurney here is played by Patrick Stewart, born 1940. Uh, so, uh,

You know who Patrick Stewart is. We're talking about Captain Jean-Luc Picard. We're talking about Charles Xavier. His pre-Trek films also include 1985's Life Force. He was born in 1940. We talked about him briefly in our episode on Miyazaki's Nausicaa because he did one of the voices, one of the key voices for that and did an excellent job. But yeah, he is our troubadour warrior in Lynch's Dune. There's something about the way this character is realized in the movie that makes him...

less exciting than he could have been. Patrick Stewart in the role of Gurney Halleck, sign me up. That sounds amazing. A lot of his scenes are kind of underwhelming and it feels like it's not necessarily Patrick Stewart's fault. It's something about the way it's that they're written and edited together. Like he's very abrupt to when he starts that we're about to get into this like sparring fight training scene. It's just like very abrupt and he is not given a lot of room to express the character. It seems to me.

Yeah, yeah. Well, meanwhile, in the recent Dune films, Josh Brolin really had more of an opportunity, I think, to inhabit this role and ultimately is just tremendous in it. So Josh Brolin, easily my favorite Gurney that we've seen on film.

However, Patrick Stewart does serve as the human vehicle for my favorite character in this whole movie, which is Pug Atreides. We'll get to that in a little bit. Yeah. Anytime he's on camera bravely defending the Atreides strategic stockpile of Pugs, he's a joy.

All right. And then we have, yeah, we have Dr. Wellington Yue, played by Dean Stockwell, who lived 1936 through 2021. A wonderful American actor that we discussed in depth for our episode on the Dunwich Horror, in which he starred as the warlock Wilbur Whatley. Definitely go back and listen to that episode if you want to hear us talk more about Dean Stockwell. But I think he does a fine job here and makes for a very sympathetic Yue. Cheng Chen is also great in the 2021 adaptation.

I agree. I feel like Dr. Yue is one of those characters that is hard to realize on screen because so much of his drama is internal. Like we were talking about that, you know, like he has sort of the reader in the book is given access to some of his internal thoughts that give a lot of meaning to his activity, to his sort of tragic character arc. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But if you're going into it cold, you really only, you're still only encountering him for a short amount of time. So there's a lot of emotion and turmoil to pack into that performance in a very short time. I think both of these two gentlemen do a great job with it in their own way. And clearly, this is something we'll touch on later, but clearly they shot more scenes with Dean Stockwell.

Because at times they'll just like, they'll like zoom, they'll like fade into a scene where he's having like a really emotional moment about what he's about to do. And then we fade back out of that. Like clearly this was a longer scene that was going to be in the intended longer cut.

Yeah, yeah. And I can imagine that being a particular sore spot if like the producers were saying, we got to cut all this Dr. Yue stuff from the first third of the movie. Anyway, so these three men have all sort of been involved in training Paul to become a superhuman of sorts. He, for example, when they walk into the room, he grins very pleased with himself and claims that he could tell who was approaching him from behind without looking. Yeah.

You know, he seems almost giddy with how powerful his ears are. And Gurney engages, Gurney comes up and he's like, okay, time to knife fight Paul. So they're going to have a knife sparring match.

Paul is trained to fight with the blade using energy shields. And at first Paul says, you know, we already did our knife training this morning. I'm not in the mood for more. And Gurney Halleck says, mood's a thing for cattle and love play, not fighting. So that's a pretty good moment for Patrick Stewart. But anyway, so they go into this fight and the way the energy shields are represented in this movie is,

Kind of makes it so you can't really see the actors anymore. They're represented as these animated prisms that extend over the body from a device on the belt. And they make the characters look like sort of blocky early CGI characters, like in the Money for Nothing video. Yeah, this was disappointing for me rewatching the movie because these effects were much better in my memory. I like the concept of

of the shield technology being kind of blocky. I like the idea of it being this kind of brownish color. The color scheme's good. And interestingly enough, I'd recently watched an extra about the excellent Loki series

Um, miniseries that came out, well, I guess it's more than miniseries went two seasons, but, uh, they were inspired by these effects to create their portal doors, um, which, um, which are important to the plot of Loki. So clearly it resonated with other people, but yeah, rewatching it, they just ended up hiding almost all of the action.

The new films do a much better job, not only just effects wise, but also creating a complex shield tech on the screen that makes instant visual sense because there are a lot of ins and outs to the way they work. And it's pivotal for understanding various things about combat in the Dune universe. Yeah, it's a difficult thing to represent, but they do a good job in the new movie. So the idea is that

the these personal energy shields deflect fast moving incoming objects so if you try to stab somebody or shoot them the shield will deflect that so the way to harm someone with wearing one of these shields is quote the slow blade you have to slowly move the knife through the shield so it's counterintuitive to normal you know fighting instincts and the way it's represented in the new movies is that

Something that comes in fast and is deflected by the shield, the shield glows blue. But when something slowly is able to move through the shield, it turns red. Yeah, which is a great visual system for the viewer. You know, let us understand what's happening on the screen in the same way that mint hats have giant eyebrows in this movie. Right.

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So after the fight, Paul and Dr. Yue trade information about Arrakis. Paul is extremely interested in the worms. And we also learn about the people called the Fremen who live on Dune and have extreme blue eyes from their use of the spice melange.

Also in this scene, Paul reveals that he suspects the emperor is supporting the Harkonnens against them. Again, revealing a lot right at the beginning. So not only does the emperor explain his whole plot at the beginning of this movie, Paul says, like, I've just figured it out. I know it before it happens. So the Atreides like know Arrakis is a trap, but they're going to go anyway. Yep.

And, you know, that alone, that statement alone is perhaps not completely out of keeping. Like there are people in House Atreides that realize that this is a trap. But key is that they think it is a

trap that they can turn to their advantage. Right. Oh, and then we get even more fight training. This one is a real upgrade, I think, from the Energy Shield scene. Now we're going to get the weirding module with the stabbing robot. So they say, Dr. Yue, put the weirding module on him. Rob, how would you describe what the weirding module is and what it does? I mean, it looks like an underwater camera housing is what it looks like. And

I guess this is not in the book.

But it is supposedly some sort of thing that turns your voice into a weapon. The weirding way is a movement technique, martial arts of the Bene Gesserit that is in the books. But if memory serves, the filmmakers here, and I think maybe Lynch in particular, wanted to avoid putting martial arts in their film. I think there's something about like Lynch didn't want to see karate on the dunes of Arrakis or...

This might also be classified as something you could consider like the fear of looking silly in cinematic adaptations of Dune, which is something you see in at least this and the more recent adaptations. There seem to be some choices that were made where they're like, OK, we can't do that. That might look too silly. Or at least that's the way I read into some of those changes. So, you know, fair enough.

But the device and the concept here are kind of clunky, and it forces us to have to figure out another strange technology after just having experienced the shields. That's right. But the weirding module is silly. I'm sorry. I mean, I like it. I wouldn't want it removed from the movie, but it's funny because, as you said, it translates like sounds or voices into lethal energy attacks. So it's like a blaster that you operate by saying, zap! Zap!

Yeah. Zap, zonk, et cetera. You can use it. Et cetera can be a killing word. That's right. I think I read somewhere that, um,

As you said, you know, so the weirding module is original to Lynch's movie. It's not in the book. And I read somewhere that this might be like a strange literalization of a line in the novel about the name of Muad'Dib, the name later taken by Paul when he joins the Fremen. That name being a, quote, killing word, which I think may have been a metaphor in the original context, but then literalized into this piece of sci-fi technology. Mm-hmm.

And so they run with it. It is, it's, it's weird. It's fun, but it is clunky and, uh, um, it's, it's not something I'm super attached to. Yeah. So he fights the stabbing robot and Paul is shown to be very powerful at the weirding way. Yeah. Nice Toto track during this. I like it. Oh, that's right. Yeah. The percussion. Yeah.

So later we see Paul meeting other characters. He meets Duncan Idaho, who must go ahead of them to Arrakis. He is the sword master of House Atreides, and I think he's going to go ahead to sort of meet with the Fremen and try to interface with them.

Yeah, played here by Richard Jordan, who lived 1937 through 1993. Emmy-nominated actor whose credits include 76's Logan's Run, 1990's The Hunt for Red October, and 1993's Gettysburg. Not much really to say about him here, though, because he has almost no screen time, and it's just quickly forgotten.

He's an important character in the novel Dune and moving forward in the Dune series, but he's treated like a red shirt here, at least in this cut. The 2021 film with Jason Momoa in the role is, I think, the best version of the character we've seen so far in an adaptation. And we'll just see where it goes from there in the future.

Ah, yeah, I didn't put it together yet, but we make a Jason Momoa Gola. A Momola, if you will. So we also meet here Duke Leto, the head of House Atreides, who meets with his son Paul, and we learn Duke Leto is very proud of his son. Duke Leto is shown to be...

Within the context of the story, a very kind, fair, and, you know, stern but just kind of ruler. And he, you know, he encourages his son Paul and tells him he's proud of him. He says, without change, something sleeps inside us and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.

Yeah, this is a great bit, a recurring bit in this film. I like it. The Duke here is played by German actor Jürgen Prochnow, born 1941. His big breakout role was, of course, playing the captain in 1981's The Boat or Das Boot, if you will. See previous discussions on the title for this film. But actor with a tremendous face and a great presence for playing stern, serious characters.

distant and sometimes threatening characters. His filmography is all over the place, but a few notable points include Michael Mann's The Keep from 83, Twin Peaks Firewalk with me in 92, kind of continuing this trend of Lynch often bringing back actors that he worked with.

on Dune for other projects. He, of course, plays the author Sutter Cain in John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness. He has a role in the Judge Dredd film from 95, and he pops up in The English Patient in 96. But lots of other credits. I think he even plays an older Arnold Schwarzenegger in a TV bio movie about Arnold Schwarzenegger. What? Yeah, it was like an A&E movie or something. I remember it did not look good.

Like a movie about an existing actor projecting that actor actor into the future. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know. But at any rate, you know, it ends up being a more distant feeling, Duke, here. And I think I think it works, you know, concerning his relationship with Paul. And there are these moments of warmth, like the sleeper awakened speech. But I would say he's my third favorite Duke Leto, the first behind Oscar Isaac and William Hurt.

I also really like Oscar Isaac's performance in the new film. So, yeah, that's Paul's father. We also meet Paul's mother, Lady Jessica, whom we meet walking through the rain in the courtyard of the palace, hidden under this voluminous hood. And she seems...

Very interesting and mysterious when we first meet her because we hear her inner voice worrying about Paul and saying that he must face the box. No man has ever faced it before. And tonight she may lose her son. So when we meet her, she's already worrying that she may have committed her son to a lethal challenge. Yeah, and she is played here by Francesca Anise.

Born 1945. English actor who also played the Witch of the Web in 1983's Krull. So another Krull connection. Extensive stage screen and TV credits. She played Lady Macbeth in that excellent 1972 film adaptation.

I like her in this role and she plays it with this interesting mix of deference and defiance. These two elements come out in different moments. She's like a character pulled back and forth between duty to authority and following her own heart and her love for her family. And, uh, and so I really like her in this role. I feel like she kind of gets, her character gets downplayed in the second half of the story, uh, here in, in the 84 adaptation. And I, I,

I like more, I think what is done, uh, with, with Rebecca Ferguson's role in the newer adaptations. Agreed. Yeah. I think, uh, Rebecca Ferguson just gets more to do with the character. We get a stronger portrayal of lady Jessica, uh, both before and after the initial fall of house of treaties. Oh, but all of this is leading up to the return of a character we've already met. We talked about in the last episode, the Reverend mother, Gaius, Helen Mohiam, uh,

and we met her with the emperor because she is the emperor's truth-sayer. You know, she was supposed to try to listen in on the meeting between the emperor and the guild navigator, and as she learns from that meeting that there is some significance to Paul Atreides, the young heir of House Atreides, and that she and the Bene Gesserit sisters must learn more about Paul to find out what his significance is, so here she is. Yeah, and this is where we get our Gamja Bar scene.

Which is, I think, pretty effective here. I like it in both this adaptation and the recent adaptation. You know, it's one of the most famous scenes in the whole novel. And it's also one of the first big scenes in the novel, as I think we've discussed before. Like it happens almost immediately in your reading of the book.

That's right. So the premise of the scene is that the Reverend Mother arrives. She speaks with Lady Jessica and Paul sort of awakes and overhears them speaking a little bit about something about his purpose and that he must be tested. So Paul is woken in the night and taken before the Reverend Mother.

We do get some chewing out of Lady Jessica by the Reverend Mother because of her hubris, disobeying orders and having a son. She's like, you're trying to create the Kwisatz Haderach. You're not supposed to do that. That is the super being of the universe. That's a violation of orders, so forth.

Now, somewhere before we actually get the hand in the box, there's a moment here where we see Duke Leto alone in his office, apparently maybe aware of what's going on, but not intervening. I don't recall if in the book he was aware or not. But anyway, we see him sitting alone in his office, and this is the first time we see the House Atreides pug. Can we set off a pug alarm? Pug alert! Pug alert!

Sidebar on the pug. So we're going to see this pug pop up a number of times, like when they arrive on the planet, they've got the pug with them. And then also later when the Harkonnens attack the House Atreides, we see Gurney Halleck, Patrick Stewart running into battle with like this science fiction rifle clutching the pug to his chest. Yeah.

I have always loved this detail. It seems so characteristically Lynchian. The warriors of this feudal house have toy breed dogs that they carry around with them from planet to planet, even taking them into battle as if they are tokens of good fortune or provide magical protection. There is it. It's like a lot of images in David Lynch movies. And I think part of what makes him a really great filmmaker is

and artist is he puts in these weird images that on one hand feel kind of off, but on the other hand, you think about them and they just feel right. Something about the pug works. I don't know what it means, but it feels like, yeah, they would have a pug like this.

Yeah, well, we saw the emperor had his own dog breeds running around. So it's weird, but it feels it's also kind of fitting that a great house would have its signature dog breed. The pug is also the closest thing that we get to a chair dog, which we get much later in the book series. I think the pug is not mistreated. We see the pug treated very lovingly and respectfully.

Well, chair dogs are not mistreated either. They just do. They were they they have a function. You sit on them and that you're not mistreating a chair dog to sit on a chair dog, surely. Oh, OK. I misunderstood. Yeah. Chair dog doesn't have a face or presumably a butt, I guess. It's I don't know. There's probably some inherent cruelty in the creation of a chair dog, but.

it's never really explored. Not to get too dark. I guess you could say there's some cruelty in the creation of a pug as well, but that's, yeah, don't have to, but these, these pugs are treated. These are beloved pugs. The Atreides love their pugs. Pugs are cuties. No doubt about it. We have made a dog in the semblance of a human baby. So we were told we shall not, but you just can't follow those rules.

Okay. So we, sorry, we're coming back to the Gamja bar scene. So this is where the Reverend mother confronts Paul alone in the study and, and the house on Caledon here.

And she starts to command him using the voice. This is one of the many Bene Gesserit arts, having a way of manipulating their voice so as to sort of hypnotize and command people even against their will. The Reverend Mother tries to use the voice to command Paul, but he's somewhat resistant at first. When she talks in this movie, it's kind of a lizard queen speaking through a fan voice. Yeah.

Yeah, it sounds really good, in my opinion. I also really like the way that it's brought to life in the new film adaptations. And they feel similar. They're probably not...

not that similar if you line them up one to one, but, um, they're both effective for me. Yeah, I agree. Uh, so Paul is given this trial, the trial of the box where, uh, the Reverend, so he puts his hand in a box that the Reverend mother offers him. And then she puts a sort of poison thimble with a needle on it, uh, against his neck and,

and tells him there's going to be pain in the box. He will want to remove his hand, but if he removes his hand, she will stab him with the Gamjabar, the poison needle, and he will die. He's suffering. It's burning. The fire is consuming the flesh down to the bone, he thinks, or at least it feels that way. And the whole point is that

Someone of inferior will would remove their hand from the box in response to the pain, but there's something she's testing for, a kind of will in Paul to face the pain and keep his hand inside.

And in this scene, when trying to get through the pain, we hear Paul's inner voice reciting the litany against fear. One of the great things from the novel and the version of it used in the movie is that he says, I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will face it.

I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain. And I really like his reading of this with the inner voice. It's kind of...

There's an urgency to it because he is in pain. I heard this sampled in a mix once before. I believe it was an Autechre mix. It was very well utilized. I think there are slight changes to the litany against fear here from in the book. I don't remember what the changes are, but I like this version of it. Yeah, yeah. It still keeps most of the words and definitely keeps the spirit of the thing. Mm-hmm.

And Kol Wahad, he's okay. He passed the test. The Reverend Mother says Kol Wahad, which is a phrase meaning I am profoundly stirred. And she explains the prophecy of the Kwisatz Haderach to Paul. But Paul fears for his father and the Reverend Mother tells him what can be done to protect his father has been done. So, you know, there's a kind of fatalism going on here. Yeah.

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All right, it's time to planet hop again. Oh boy. And now we're getting really depraved. So let's go to Geedy prime home of house Harkonnen and Lord, the way the Harkonnens are realized in this movie, there is a level of weirdness that again goes beyond the books is purely David Lynch. I think, uh,

Uh, so first of all, I just wanted to focus. They give us a brief look at the exterior of GD prime before we meet the characters. And it appears to be a kind of, uh,

urban landscape of shadows and green light with these unbroken walls of industrial looking buildings stretching up until they vanish into a dark sky. There's black smoke pouring out of a hidden orifice in the city walls, towers of metal struts in the foreground, almost like watchtowers or guard stations with some kind of tortured sculpture looming between buildings. And we see the sculpture many times, but

It is like a giant porcelain face on which the eyes and nose are hidden behind a shadow.

And all that's visible is a giant gaping mouth over a plump chin, almost like the mouth of a fish, but on the head of a human baby. So is this sculpture opening its mouth to devour food, to scream in pain, or to gasp for breath? All seem to be implied. I love this design for the homeworld of the Harkonnens because it's like this...

Little sculpture with the eyes hidden is like greed, pain, fear and desperation luxuriating in the ambiguity between them all. And is it also piping out smoke or some sort of vapor? Because the planet itself is supposed to be heavily polluted. So, yes, I kind of like see it as that as well, like everything you said. But on top of that, it's spouting pollution.

There you see smoke coming out. I interpreted it as the smoke coming out from behind the sculpture, but I don't know. It could be. It could be. But yeah, the planet has a very, I think, a lot with the green designs that

is to suggest not a natural green like plants, but like a poisonous green, a kind of industrial green ooze. Absolutely, yeah. I love this look. We only see like really a glimpse of it here, but it's reminiscent of H.R. Giger's original biomechanical designs for the planet from, I believe, the Jodorowsky adaptation that never came to fruition.

But little bits like that have kind of been passed down and become part of the tradition of portraying Dune on film. Even in the recent DV adaptations, we see a lot more of this planet in part two, of course. And they have their own wonderful and inventive way of envisioning it. But there's still that biomechanical, gothic aspect to everything. Yeah, yeah. In the new movie, I love that they do it as a very...

Yeah, yeah. I think that's supposed to be the reason for it. And give them an excuse to shoot it in infrared, apparently. Hmm.

So we meet here the Harkonnen Mintat, Piter DeVries, who is the equivalent of Thufir Hawat to House Atreides. This is played by... Oh, well, this, of course, is Brad Dourif.

Born 1950. Yes, one of American cinema's finest weird actors. We've talked about him on the show before in our episode on Toby Hooper's Spontaneous Combustion from 1989. And he's one of these actors that's enjoyable in pretty much anything, regardless of overall film quality, you know.

He's probably best known for his performances in such films as 1979's Wise Blood, which is generally excellent, 1988's Child's Play, and 2002's Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers. In which he plays Grima Wormtongue. Yeah, great performance there. In which he has no eyebrows.

But in this, in Lynch's Dune, he of course has mintat eyebrows. And I do love him in this. He captures the viciousness of Piter. But at the same time, this is a Dune character that I dearly love. And there's never enough time in any adaptation to explore him and his delicious, dangerous relationship with the Baron, where they both

expect and know that the other will try and kill them at one point or the other. It's like a delicate balance. Yeah, he is an evil, vicious character, but also for some reason I find him pitiable. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he is a twisted mentat. He is the product of some sort of either bizarre corruption of a normal mentat or some corruption of the mentat process. And

And with all these things, you have to sort of pick and choose how are you going to present him. I do quite love David Dotsmachian's performance in the recent adaptation as well. But it's just a different slice of the same character. He's more cerebral and withdrawn in that performance. And it still works. It still captures a part of what is ultimately a brief but complex character.

Right. So Piter, he's speaking to himself. He says, it is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

So he's reciting a kind of mintat litany here, sort of equivalent to the litany against fear, except instead of about avoiding fear, this is about like, you know, realizing your potential with the help of drugs. Because it goes on to say, it is by the juice of Sappho that thoughts acquire speed, that lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. Then he says that a bunch of times.

Yeah, this mintat mantra is not from the books, but it is one of those additions that feels perfectly at home in the Dune universe. It works. It absolutely works. And the whole thing about the juice of the Sappho is very much in the text. Yeah. So this is a nervous and unhappy mintat in a dangerous situation. Yeah. Nervous, angry, scheming, all those things. And yeah, we get it in this performance.

So there are more visions of Geedy Prime. People in pure white clothing walking through industrial mazes illuminated by green light. It's a very striking vision. Again, I love the designs of the planet here. I think they really work. We see Harkonnen soldiers standing lined up with multiple-barreled firearms in hand. Then finally, we go to meet the Harkonnen royalty in a room that is almost like it's green like a bar of soap.

And the Harkonnens are being attended by servants with almost Clive Barker-style body modifications. Ears clipped and sewn folded in on themselves. Eyelids sewn shut with threads and tacks driven into the eyes. Also, everybody that has hair has red hair. Yeah, and the red hair touch is nice and helps us identify Harkonnens. But already this scene is too much. Like, the eyes and...

Ears sewn up is just too much. And also that green, that green is too much. Like from a modern perspective, I'll occasionally see stills from this and I'll initially think, oh, this is an unfinished sequence. That's green screen. You know, like that's where my mind goes. Like that's how alarming that green color is. So we finally meet the patriarch of the villainous House Harkonnen here, the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.

being attended by doctors. So when we first see him, his face is covered in boils of some kind, and the doctors are doing something grotesque with them with a needle. Yeah. Now, this Baron Vladimir Harkonnen is played by Kenneth McMillan,

who lived 1932 through 1989, American character actor who often played heavies, and a reminder that by heavies I mean like threatening or dominant antagonists. He also played a lot of gruff authority figures. He apparently didn't pursue an acting career until he was in his 30s, and he was 40 before his first screen and TV credits appear, showing up in a couple episodes of Dark Shadows, as well as an uncredited role in 1973's Serpico.

He followed this up with small roles in The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3, The Stepford Wives, and Dog Day Afternoon. A fair amount of TV followed, including a role on the series Rhoda. He played a cop in the 1979 Salem's Lot miniseries from Tobey Hooper. And he'd follow up Dune with a role in 1985's Runaway Train, and then mostly TV work. So this version of Baron Harkonnen likes to scream and fly around in the air while screaming. Yeah.

Yeah, this character, this characterization of the Baron is a lot. In the text, we are privy to his inner thoughts and there are various dimensions to the character of the Baron, all of them evil. He is a man of vast greed and ambition, of appetite, brutality, fear, and endless plotting. And you can't possibly capture all of that on screen. So you pick and choose what you can.

The recent adaptations do a great job of focusing mostly on the brutal plotting aspect of the character, while this version of the Baron is a wild, gross demon of consumption, cackling, floating around, spitting, oozing, and so forth. It's just too much. But to Macmillan's credit...

He rolls with it and delivers some some nice menace. I'd say ultimately he's my third favorite Baron behind Stellan Skarsgård in the more recent adaptations, who's more of like the threatening and cerebral Baron. And then I have to say that Ian McNeese did a great job with it in the miniseries, the sci-fi miniseries as well.

yeah, this is a less serious portrayal of the Baron than we get like with the scars guard. Obviously that is a very deep, dark, scary Baron. This Baron is a lot funnier. Um,

And that kind of continues with how the rest of House Harkonnen is portrayed. We meet the Baron's two nephews, Fade Rautha and the beast Rabban. I think they're called the beast by the people of Arrakis. Rabban, what's his first name? Glossu or something? I believe so, yeah.

So the beast here is played by Paul L. Smith, who lived 1936 through 2012. Um, so this is another over the top performance just by another noted gruff character actor. Uh, so he's, he's an American actor who played, uh,

Bluto in the 1980 Popeye movie. Other credits include Sam Raimi's Coen Brothers scripted film Crime Wave from 85, Red Sonja from 85, Gore from 87, and the 1982 Spanish horror movie Pieces, which is on our potential to-do list.

But yeah, basically, this beast is just a grotesque cartoon character. Dave Bautista does a solid job as the character in the recent films, and they really expand the role to make the role more meaningful and give Bautista much more to do. Like we were saying with Piter earlier, this is another character who is totally, completely evil, but also ends up being rather pitiable in the story. Yeah.

And now the other son is, of course, the golden child of Hal Sarkonnen. This is Fade Roth, though, like you said, played by Sting in 1951. I believe this was only his fourth acting role following 1982's Brimstone and Treacle. And he'd follow this up by playing Frankenstein in 1985's The Bride. That's The Doctor, by the way. The true Frankenstein, not Frankenstein as shorthand for the monster.

He's continued to act on and off over the years, often, you know, really good, especially in small doses here and there. He is an Oscar winner, but in the original song category. Okay.

I'm trying to think what other movies is he, he was in that, uh, he was in the who's other rock opera, not Tommy, but quadrophenia. He, he was, yeah, he was, I think he had a small role in lock stock and two smoking barrels, uh, much later. And like, that was one where it's a very small role, but he's, he's really good in it. You know, what do I think of Sting's performance in this movie? You know, it's absolutely memorable. I'm never going to not be thinking about him in this role.

especially his line delivery during the final fight scene. We'll get to later with, I will kill him. I will kill you. Yeah. It, it's a, it's a lot to figure out because he is, he is over the top and it's weird. It's a weird performance. He looks amazing. He,

And Fade Roth on top of that is a strange character. Like, and no film adaptation, in my opinion, has really done him complete justice. Like, we don't know a lot about him ultimately, but we know and we know enough about him in the book that he's he's brash. He's not the plotter and the planner that his uncle is. His uncle is doing a lot to try and ensure that he moves up in the world and becomes the new face of House Harkonnen.

But there seems to be a lot of frustration with his maturity level and his appreciation for all of this. And, you know, we just we we tend to see less of that in the film adaptations. Yeah, the new movie does a good job of setting him up as a foil to Paul that there is sort of two sides of the same coin.

Yeah, yeah. Austin Butler does a great job in Dune Part 2 as this character. But it's a rather different read on him. Like, on one hand, he's still supposed to be a kind of hot and supposed to be a definite threat to Paul. Though...

perplexingly, the new adaptations portray him as an honorable fighter, which I'm still trying to figure that out. I need a view part two again in order to figure out how I really feel about all this because I think one of the appeals of the character in the book and in

in this adaptation is that he will absolutely cheat to win. And I feel like that actually makes him more of a threat to Paul because this is a guy that will win at any cost and is used to winning at any cost and feels no shame about it. Yeah, originally the Harkonnens are not like worthy opponents or honorable villains. They're absolute liars and cheaters and dirty tricksters and they'll do whatever they can.

Yeah, though I'm sure DV has his reasons. And like I say, I need to watch...

doing part two again to sort of figure out exactly how I feel about that performance. Now, I do love the book, but I think there is a new, there's a change made in the new movie that I appreciate, which is that it excises from the Harkonnen plotline and characterization. Some elements that I think you could fairly argue are homophobic in the original portrayal, where like these, like the Harkonnen characters, especially the Baron, are homophobic

portrayed as having same-sex attraction. And I think you can say fairly it is not incidental to the fact that they're villains, but more sort of portrayed as part of their deviousness.

Yeah, I think that was a solid cut for the new adaptations, for sure. And it's something that is handled in this adaptation, in Lynch's adaptation, in a way that has attracted a fair amount of criticism over the years. Yeah, from what I can tell, it seems more implicit in Lynch's movie and a little more explicit in the book. But still, I think it's somewhat there in the movie. Yeah.

But let's not detract from the utter weirdness of this absolute Lynchian circus of a scene. Yes, because the setting, we haven't even finished describing the room they're in yet. Oh, no. Okay, so interesting things about this scene. There is boiling acid under the floor, and it just seems to be part of the culture of Geedy Prime.

That when you're done with things, like the way we might throw something in the garbage can, they can throw things through a hole in the floor grate into the boiling acid below. So they use the boiling acid as the dumpster and it's just there underneath the floor at all times. And I guess they're presumably breathing the fumes from it constantly. It's world building, baby. I like the detail. It's good. I don't recall if there's anything like that in the book, but it makes sense in this in this movie.

The doctors attending the Baron also have a very David Lynch quality to them. This seems like purely Lynchian flourish. One of them is like saying a little sort of nursery rhyme to the boils as he is picking at them. So he says, like, put the pick in there, Pete. Turn it round. Real neat. Yeah.

That kind of cutesy rhyming in this grotesque context is an extremely David Lynch kind of thing to do. Yeah, I'll just mention briefly that that's Leonardo Cimino playing the Baron's doctor who lived 1917 through 2012. You probably saw him in Waterworld or in 1987's The Monster Squad when he played where he plays the old German guy. But yeah, this is weird and not in the books and just just strange, just strange.

and grotesque. Speaking of strange and grotesque, what is the thing that Rabban like crushes and then drinks the juice of here? Is this in some way a spice based cocktail? I don't think...

As far as I know, Rabban is not consuming spice because do we see him with blue eyes at all? He crushes something in a glass box and then sucks up its juice. I don't think this is spice, though, to be sure. In the book, they mentioned that, you know, a lot of royal houses use spice because spice extends your human life. And so, I mean, it's maybe they're using spice and they just don't use it at the levels that

that Fremen use it to gain their eyes. This, I don't know, I always kind of read this as some other kind of strange space drug in this universe of weird space drugs. It's like a mummified frog juice box. It's like you auto-crush a petrified creature and then you inhale it and then, of course, you chunk the juice box across the room. I'm not sure what this is all about. I don't think it's anything from the book or the books, but it is marvelously strange. I like it.

So anyway, they're talking about their plots against House Atreides. And the Baron, just a note generally, he often starts levitating up in the air when he gets really excited. Again, the difference, I think, from the book that like in the book, they say the Baron has like suspensors that help him like stay aloft, like help him stand up or something like that. But this he's just flying all the time here.

Yeah, yeah. This movie made the choice that he was going to fly around and float around. And all subsequent adaptations have gone on that route as well, though it's more comical in this version and it's more threatening and ominous in DV's adaptations.

But we're still not out of all the weird creations and recreations for this scene. Oh, no. There's also like, oh, this grotesque thing where like many of the servants and people like the people who work for the Atreides or not the Atreides. Sorry, the Harkonnens have this like plug that's like a valve in their heart that

that the Harkonnens can just like pull out the plug and like all their blood runs out of their chest and they die. And it seems that the Baron just sometimes removes people's plugs for fun. Yeah, this is not in the books, but it is kind of a fitting invention for the Harkonnens on a whole. Because, yeah, so the Baron apparently likes to level the playing field with his servants and his underlings so that he can kill them at will by simply pulling this thing out.

But this sequence in particular that follows, because basically, I think he's credited as a flower boy, like a servant comes in and the baron approaches him rather lustily and then pulls out his heart plug and blood goes everywhere. And this sequence has generated a fair amount of criticism over the years due to not only its grotesque qualities,

but also questionable implications during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, given that in quick succession we see same-sex desire, physical illness on the part of the baron, and also blood spraying everywhere. I don't think any of that was actually intentional, and Lynch is drawing directly on elements from the book here in many cases, but

There's longstanding social criticism of this sequence. Yeah, I can see maybe an isolation, some of these weird elements working better individually, but put together like this, I can absolutely see what the critics are saying there. And again, I think it was a good choice in the newer movies to remove the same-sex attraction element from the Harkonnens because it's just not really necessary and it avoids this kind of implication. Yeah.

the implication that like that in itself is part of their deviousness or is evil in some way. Okay. So I think we're done with Gidi prime for now, right? Can we onto Arrakis? No, no, no, no, not onto Arrakis. We're going to go back to Caladan first. Okay.

So we see, you know, the Atreides leaving the planet with their pug, Jessica, Leto, and Paul. So they get on board the spaceship and blast off for Dune. And the spaceships, we see them approaching the Guild Highliner, which is like an object, sort of like a city-sized baton floating in the void. And these are the ships that can travel through folded space. So you take a spaceship up to the Guild Highliner. I think you get on board it, and then it takes you between the different stars in the galaxy. Yeah.

And so their ship enters the Guild Highliner through a huge opening framed by ornate gold decorations, like the frame of a Renaissance painting. I like that detail. And I really like this sequence because...

Here, space travel is treated with apprehension and reverence as a mystical, almost magical event. It's so far from the kind of casual jet fighter pilots in space themes that we would get in so many other sci-fi movies of the time. I love the feeling created here that...

To travel on a Guild Highliner is to participate in a profound and unsettling mystery. Yeah, absolutely. And one that is managed by a reclusive cult that has a complete monopoly on space travel. A reminder that no one is moving star to star in the Dune universe except for the Guild. So there are no space battles because there's nobody to engage in those space battles. The Guild controls everything.

Yeah, that's a really good point. But so I think this is something that the Lynch movie does especially well is create this sense of awe and mystery and and trepidation and danger about interstellar travel. Yeah, you're at the mercy of this this reclusive cult, as you said.

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There are places on Earth where science and mystery collide, and Skinwalker Ranch is one of the most fascinating examples. In the newest season of the History Channel's The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, the

The team, made up of experienced scientists and engineers, is literally digging into the unknown to get to the bottom of a mysterious material discovered inside the mesa. This goes far beyond folklore. We're talking actual physical evidence that defies everything we know about geology, physics, maybe even reality itself.

If you're drawn to the edges of scientific discovery beyond the world of what we think we know, this season is going to fascinate you. Just how deep does the truth lie? Find out on The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch. New episode Tuesday at 8, 7 central. Only on the History Channel. Today's episode is brought to you by USPS.

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I was expanding and growing at a really fast pace. And yes, you could throw motherhood and the postpartum thing, learning about myself. There were a lot of like identity crises going on, but I realized like I can't look back and slow down for people. I want to set my own pace and

And I will sacrifice my comfort to move at the pace that I have worked really hard to move at. Literally everything that could change in your life happened in like five years for me. And, you know, it was a slow burn. Listen to Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right. So we board up the Highliner and then we set off onward to Arrakis. That's right. Finally, we're at Dune. So the planet appears as a reverse setting sun and they go down to the surface. Jessica, Leto and Paul arrive and set foot on the planet. And then Princess Irulan resumes the narration. Got to get more, more voiceover narration.

She says that House Atreides took control of Arrakis 63 standard days into the year 10,191. It was known that the Harkonnens, the former rulers of Arrakis, would leave many suicide troops behind. Atreides' patrols were doubled. And we learn in the following scenes that the Harkonnens have sabotaged machinery and defenses on the planet.

We, of course, meet Duncan Idaho yet again. He comes to Duke Leto. He's dressed in a still suit. This is the first glimpse we get, I think, of what the still suit looks like here, which it looks just kind of like a padded full body suit, but it's got the hose that connects to the nose. This is the local Fremen attire, which allows one to survive in the desert without losing water. It recycles your sweat, the vapor in your breath, your urine, your feces, everything. All the water comes back.

Yeah, yeah. And the suits look pretty darn good in this film. In fact, I know people who prefer these suits to the new adaptations, but I like them in both. Yeah, I do too. So Duncan reports to the Duke that he's made contact with the Fremen and they could be powerful allies, especially since he believes there are many, many more of them than the Emperor realizes. They exist in vast numbers hidden from the Imperial census. So that's kind of threatening. Yeah.

So we watch the Atreides troops being trained to preserve water and we meet a new character. We meet Liet Kynes, the judge of change, which means he's supposed to

oversee the change between Harkonnen control of Arrakis to Atreides control of Arrakis and then report to the Landsrad, which is like the parliament of this universe, and make sure that everything has been done fairly. But he's also an ecologist. He's an imperial ecologist, and he's been on the planet a long time. He might have even been born here. He's sort of adapted to Fremen ways, and he has blue eyes from the spice. Yeah.

Yeah, and this is, of course, Max Fonsito in the role who lived 1929 through 2020. See our recent episode on Flash Gordon for a longer discussion on Max here. But he is, as always, a fine presence in a film, but he is barely in this. This character's presence is much reduced. We see a lot more of Kynes in the recent films, played by Sharon Duncan Brewster, who is also great. Yeah, she is. I wonder why they use so little of Dr. Kynes in movies.

in this movie. It makes you wonder if stuff got cut. Oh yeah. I get the feeling it's just like the economy of the cut here. And, you know, I should throw in, I probably mentioned this in the last episode. There are those longer, uh, unauthorized, uh, cuts of 1984's Dune that, that Lynch, uh, totally disowns. Those are like, you know, uh, Smithy directed, uh, productions. Uh,

And I really haven't seen those in full. So maybe we can have some listeners write in with their thoughts on deleted scenes that pop up again in that longer cut. But certainly in this, the only official cut of David Lynch's Dune, this character is barely present. He is present long enough to observe that Paul wears a still suit as if he was born to it because the Atreides are putting on still suits to go out and survey Spice production. Yeah.

Uh, Paul is wearing his like a pro. So, uh, that that's part of a prophecy actually. Oh, how do we even, this is actually a good point to, uh, discuss the way that I think the Lynch movie, one way it sort of fails is it, um, it, uh,

plays up a lot about the spacing guild that is not really in the original dune novel but it really undersells the role of the benny jesser it i think it does like their whole plot to like establish like seed these prophecies uh throughout the cultures of the galaxy that would later connect to the the figure that they're going to use to attain power the quiz at satirac

And so they put all of these prophecies out among the people. And Paul arrives on this planet and is immediately observed by people who are familiar with these prophecies to fulfill them. Yeah, like the ground has been prepared for one such as he.

And that's an important factor, yeah, that is just not as present in this adaptation. And that's something, again, I really appreciate about the new movies is they sort of downplay the role of the Spacing Guild and play, though, I mean, I don't know, the Spacing Guild is cool, too. So it's not like I don't want to see them, but they focus more on the plots and politics of the Bene Gesserit, which I think is a smart move. Yeah.

Anyway, this is the scene where Leto, Paul, and Kynes go out in a flying machine to observe spice harvesters at work. They're seeing, you know, the machines out in the desert getting the spice from the sand, but uh-oh, there is worm sign. This apparently is a common thing about how spice production takes place. The harvesters will work up until the last minute when a worm is about to arrive and eat them, and then they will be lifted away by a flying vehicle called a carry-all and taken to safety. Anyway,

But, uh-oh, they're observing here that a spice harvester is working, a worm is on the way, and the carryall that is supposed to rescue it has been sabotaged. So Duke Leto leads a rescue of the men working the spice harvesters, leaving the spice behind, rescuing the workers and bringing them onto his ornithopter.

And then we see a worm eat the harvester as they take off. And we hear Kine's inner voice saying, oh, I like this Duke. He left the spice behind and saved the men. I talked a lot about ornithopters in Wednesday's short form episode. But briefly, I'll just say, yeah, the ornithopters in the recent adaptations are amazing. They're like Apache helicopters combined with a dragonfly in a way that is terrifying and majestic on the screen.

In this adaptation, especially the Atreides ornithopter is like a big metal burb. You know, it's clunky, it's chonky. It's got these little wings that seem decorative and not functional. The Harkonnen ornithopters, which I don't even know if we really get to see them all that much, but the design for those is a lot more interesting, but also still doesn't fully embrace the whole flapping of wings. Yeah.

Okay, so we're getting into the plots here, the plots against House Atreides. So first of all, Lady Jessica determines that Dr. Yue has a secret concerning his wife and his hatred of the Harkonnens, but that is not fully fleshed out yet. We get to meet the housekeeper on Arrakeen here, the capital of Arrakis. This is shout-out Mapes. Paul tries Spice for the first time, and he has visions. The second moon, the sleeper must awaken. And then he has a secret

And we also get the hunter-seeker attack on Paul, which is something that's realized in both movie adaptations, where there's like this little needle-like mosquito-type creature that's trying to assassinate Paul, and he manages to avoid it. Yeah, great sequence in both films. And Mapes, by the way, is played by Linda Hunt, born 1945, Academy Award-winning actor. She played Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously from 82. So you have to single her out.

Yeah. So but here we were getting to the Harkonnen attack. The double cross is in motion now. So there has we've we've received word that there was a traitor among House Atreides and we finally learn it is Dr. Yue here. And there are reasons. So Dr. Yue ambushes Duke Leto in the night with a with a drugged dart that kind of paralyzes him. And then Dr. Yue explains his plot.

He has sabotaged the shields of the city, destroyed the weirding modules, and the Harkonnen troops are on the way. But he's like, OK, it's not over. Duke Leto, you can still kill Baron Harkonnen. And he gives Leto the poison gas tooth. He tells him, when you see the Baron, remember the tooth. And this is a great plot point.

Yeah. The tooth stain is, of course, fittingly grosser in this adaptation. Like even when UA is like getting it out of its box to implant it, like it just like this is going to hurt. This is going to be a little gross. The idea is he'll bite down on it when the Baron leans over him and that'll spit the poison gas in the Baron's face and kill him.

And we learn, of course, Dr. Yue is not doing this out of maliciousness toward House Atreides, but he wants revenge against the Baron because the Harkonnens have for many years captured his wife and have probably murdered her. But he has to know for sure. And this is how he's going to get to know for sure. But he's also going to plot the destruction of the architect of his wife's probable death. Right.

So the attack begins. The Harkonnen troops here look so creepy. They look like welders with these black full hood masks with a little green square window in the front. And so that looks really creepy. However, the actual violence in this battle scene is not very cool. It is mostly, I think, unintentionally funny. Yeah, it's a little hokey.

Baron Harkonnen leaves Paul and Jessica with piter de vries, with instructions to kill them. They are sent off to the desert to be left there to be eaten by worms, so there will be no evidence. This was Dr. Yue's idea. But actually, it turns out Dr. Yue has been trying to protect them. He has packed still suits for them. And Paul and Jessica use the Bene Gesserit voice to command the Harkonnen troops and escape into the desert.

Meanwhile, Duke Leto's tooth strike against the Baron is about to unfold. The Baron's there gloating over him, but it fails to get the Baron. Instead, it kills Piter DeVries. It kills the House Harkonnen Mintat, played by Brad Dourif. And the Baron, we get his reaction where he's like, I'm alive! I'm alive! Floating in the air, screaming. So inspiring. Yeah.

The the poison tooth sequence, at least when they have when they refer back to it visually, it is, as you might expect, far more grotesque in this adaptation because we see that like it's like an explosion of gas. Caustic gas has gone off in the Duke's mouth and is like eaten through his cheek even. So it's it's grim stuff.

No, I know we've been dwelling on a lot of detail in the plot. So I think maybe we should shift into moving a little more quickly through the movie. And this is a good place to do it because this is also where the movie starts moving much more quickly through the plot. And this, I think, is a is a fair major criticism of the 84 Dune is that somewhere around right here, things start happening way too fast. Right.

Yeah, it becomes fragmentary and kind of feels like Dune, the scrapbook, leading up to the final confrontation. Yes, yes. Okay, so Paul and Jessica escape into the desert. They go to the forbidden south polar regions. They're trying to avoid being eaten by a worm. And this is where Paul really gets deep spice, exposure to spice in the desert. He sees the second moon.

He hears the voice saying the sleeper must awaken. He sees a hand reaching from space. He knows the Emperor and the Guild want him destroyed. And finally, he hears that they will call him Muad'Dib. So that's a premonition of everything to come. And he realizes that the spice is in everything on the planet, and the spice is changing him. It's causing him to reach his potential as the Chosen One.

And he knows the future and his own terrible destiny. Also revealed here is that Jessica, Lady Jessica, is pregnant with Paul's sister, who is also fated for greatness in some way. And there's adventure in the desert as Paul and Jessica travel across the sand trying to avoid worms. They have to, of course, do the Fremen walk to walk without rhythm on the sand.

And here we do see the worm in its full glory while it's chasing them. We see its trifold maw leaping out from the sand. Its design is almost like a flower with, like, petals opening around this toothy mouth. I really do like the design of the worms in this movie. I think they look great. They're scary and menacing. Some of the worm riding scenes, however, are quite funny and don't really have the same grandeur as when you're just seeing the worm and its opening mouth. Yeah.

Agreed. Yeah. Yeah. Also somewhere in the sequence, we first see the use, I think, of the thumper, a very important technology in this movie. Thumpers are huge in this movie. And it works. You'll often see on the poster there's Paul Atreides with something slung across his back in the desert. That's the thumper. So, yeah, it's big. No criticism. It's just a big idea of what these things look like.

So Paul and Jessica come across a Fremen siege, a Fremen encampment in the rocks. So they find manned car steps and they go into the rocks. And they find a manned car

And they just kind of walk up on it and all of the Fremen are there like assembled waiting for them, eyes glowing blue. It's almost like they're standing at attention for their arrival. And here we meet Stilgar, the leader of the Fremen group. And we're also going to meet Chani of the Fremen. Yeah. So Stilgar is played by Everett McGill, born 1945, accomplished American character actor with a very signature look.

His other credits include 81's Quest for Fire, 85's Silver Bullet, the Stephen King werewolf movie, 86's Heartbreak Ridge, 1987's Werewolf, 89's License to Kill, Twin Peaks, 1991's The People Under the Stairs, Under Siege 2, and Lynch's The Straight Story.

Again, not really fair to compare this performance to Javier Bardem's Stilgar in the new movies because he, again, like a lot of these characters, he had a lot more room to breathe and there's a lot more space for that character to come alive. Yeah, this is Speed Stilgar. Yeah. I guess we should go ahead and introduce Chani as well.

Yeah, Chani is played by Sean Young, born 1959, American actress who had previously appeared in 1981's Stripes and, more importantly, 82's Blade Runner as the replicant Rachel. Subsequent roles included 87's No Way Out and Wall Street, 91's A Kiss Before Dying, 94's Ace Ventura Pet Detective, and more recently, Blade Runner 2049.

In another case, hard to compare this Chani to the recent film where Zendaya does a great job playing a more complex and I think arguably stronger vision of this character. Chani is a strong character in this 1965 novel, but I think some of her strengths had to be updated for like a modern audience. Well, also in the new movie,

I think you could argue in some ways part two is is you get a lot of the story from Chani's perspective, which makes a lot of sense. That's a good way to frame it to see like the way Paul changes. Yeah. So I think that that was a really strong choice.

And like you said, Zendaya is great in the new one. I don't want to, as is Javier Bardem also, they're both fantastic in the new movie. I don't want to blame Sean Young and Everett McGill for the shortcomings of these characters in this version. I think it is not the fault of the actors. I think it is the fault of the script and the editing. These actors are just not given time to portray these characters in the movie. It's just lightning speed editing from now on.

So like what happens when they arrive at the siege is that, you know, Stilgar, he's like, oh, hi, I'm Stilgar. You know, I'm the leader of the Fremen group. The boy man will be taken into the tribe. And then Lady Jessica like grabs him by the throat. Paul scrambles. He says, oh, she has the weirding way. If you can do this to the strongest of us, you're worth 10 times your weight in water.

And then Stilgar says, teach us the weirding way and you shall have sanctuary. And Jessica accepts. And Paul meets Chani. Chani is the daughter of Liet Kynes. She's a member of the Fremen tribe here. And, you know, he has seen her before in dreams and premonitions, like a warrior of great bravery and great beauty. Kyle, of course, is smitten here.

They introduced to Stilgar, you know, it's all going to be you're welcomed by the people. Oh, you need a new name. Your name will be Usul. That is the pillar of strength. Oh, but what else can be your name? Your name will be Muad'Dib. Paul picks that because it's the name of the desert mouse whose figure is seen on the second moon of the planet.

And so they're brought into these subterranean caverns where the Fremen live. They discovered that the Fremen have huge caches of water they are collecting from the atmosphere via wind traps, these vast pools in the dark. And this whole sequence where Jessica and Paul are welcomed into the Fremen world is

You know, the cast is doing the best they can. The sets are cool and stuff, but it is so rushed. The introductions are not given a chance to breathe. It's just like, hi. Oh, wow. You were really strong. Now you're one of us. Here are all our secrets. I love you. And it comes so fast.

Yeah, Venu has a lot more time to work with this part of the story, with Paul and Jessica gradually changing from, you know, endangered outsiders to tentative allies to the Fremen, to valued members of a movement, to members of its people, to leaders, and eventually, in Paul's case, to Messiah. What is at least half the runtime of this recent movie is like, I don't know, five minutes in this movie. Yeah.

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In the newest season of the History Channel's The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, the team, made up of experienced scientists and engineers, is literally digging into the unknown to get to the bottom of a mysterious material discovered inside the mesa. This goes far beyond folklore. We're talking actual physical evidence that defies everything we know about geology, physics, maybe even reality itself.

If you're drawn to the edges of scientific discovery beyond the world of what we think we know, this season is going to fascinate you. Just how deep does the truth lie? Find out on The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch. New episode Tuesday at 8, 7 central. Only on the History Channel. Today's episode is brought to you by USPS.

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This week on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler. Maren Morris is here. You came out of a marriage. You came out of, quote unquote, country music. And you had a huge growth spurt from what I can tell. I realized...

I was expanding and growing at a really fast pace. And yes, you could throw motherhood and the postpartum thing, learning about myself. There were a lot of like identity crises going on, but I realized like I can't look back and slow down for people. I want to set my own pace.

And I will sacrifice my comfort to move at the pace that I have worked really hard to move at. Literally everything that could change in your life happened in like five years for me. And, you know, it was a slow burn. Listen to Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Okay, let's check in on the Harkonnens because they're doing some really good stuff here. So we come into them on, they're on Arrakeen, I think, and Vladimir Harkonnen is laughing crazily as he flies around a big machine in his levitation suit. Mm-hmm.

Uh, Rabban, who is supposed to be running spice production on the planet, he walks up to, this is what happens. There's like a dead cow hanging from the ceiling and Rabban walks up to the dead cow, peels off part of its face, starts eating the cow face raw. Then the Baron tells Rabban to be harsh and brutal in ruling Arrakis, uh,

And while he's saying this, he's like reaching his fingers into Rabban's mouth to like play with the chewed up cow face as he explains this. Yeah, I have no words.

Then Rabban leaves. Then out comes Fade wearing like this Wings of Victory Speedo that's amazing. All-time top five movie Speedo. And the Baron reveals that after Rabban has become despised by the people of Dune, he's going to give the planet to Fade so that he can be loved by contrast. Yeah.

Yep, yep, that's the whole plan. I mean, that's part of the plan. It is legitimately part of the plan. Rabban's going to crush the planet, get the spice levels up, the spice production levels up. Everyone's going to hate him, and then Fade's going to come in as the savior and will be, at least to some degree, beloved by the people, or as much as you can love a Harkonnen despot. Yeah, and the Baron's face boils just keep looking worse and worse. Mm-hmm.

We also see here the captured Thufir Hawat, the mintad of House Atreides. They explained to him that he must milk a hairless cat that has a rat taped to it every day in order to acquire the antidote to a poison that the Harkes have given him.

Yeah, this is also unnecessary and so weird, especially the cat rat thing. It almost feels like Lynch is trolling us a little bit. In the book, this basic situation exists, but it's essentially just a poison anecdote conversation.

Like, hey, loyal Atreides, Mintat, you have to work for us now. Isn't that delightful? And if you don't, you're going to die because of this poison in your system. And they apparently filmed sequences of this plot line for Dune Part 2 and just had to cut it for time, which is a shame, but I guess understandable given all that's going on in the movie. Yeah.

So back at the siege of the Fremen, Lady Jessica is offered a chance to become the reverend mother of the siege. But to do so, she has to drink the poisonous water of life and survive. And this calls back to a prophecy about the Kwisatz Haderach that young Paul would drink the water of life and survive. Other men who have tried have died, but maybe Paul could survive it as well. But before that, Lady Jessica has to drink it.

She does. And this causes her later to give birth to when she gives birth to her daughter named Alia. Alia is like born with all the knowledge and power of a reverend mother and like matures very rapidly. So we've got like a super genius Benny Jesser at baby. And that's just that's just not what you want. Abomination.

She's scary as heck. When we see her later in the finale, it's one of the creepiest things ever committed to film. Yeah, yeah. She is super creepy. Herbert in general likes creepy super babies and creepy super children. They pop up elsewhere in the Dune novels. Yeah.

Obviously, DV went in a slightly different direction with the way this is portrayed in the film. And again, interesting. I think it's interesting what they did. It'll be also interesting to see how this is incorporated into subsequent adaptations of especially Dune Messiah. Yeah.

Also here we see more of Paul and Chani falling in love. But also we get Paul addressing the assembled Fremen fighters and he's like, hey, look, we got a common enemy, the Harkonnens. We've got to destroy them. My mom and I are going to teach you the weirding way. We've got to attack and destroy the spice trade.

So we see a lot of weirding way training sessions with the weirding module where they're saying like, and it makes it shoot a little blast out that they say will paralyze nerves, shatter bones, set fires, suffocate an enemy or burst his organs. And they're just going to keep on attacking the Harkonnens until they have victory. This is also the my name is a killing word scene where he discovers that the name Muad'Dib will make things break and shatter.

All right. We're getting the troops together. We're going to bring spice production to its knees and eventually take out the Harkonnens. Okay. Now, we also get the worm taming scene here where Paul has to go learn to ride a worm because you can't be a true Fremen unless you can ride a worm.

And so he goes out with his worm riding materials, the thumper, the hooks, which are a gift from the siege. And the Fremen are gathered on the sand dune looking on. Stilgar has a very cold look. But Paul, like he sets the thumper going. He does the litany against fear. They realize he is called a very big worm. And this is, again, along with the prophecies of what the Fremen call the Lisan al-Gaib, the voice from the outer world, the Messiah figure they're waiting for.

Um, so we get some shots of Paul getting onto the worm, like using the hooks and rolling over on the top, not the best looking shots in the movie. A couple of these do look kind of, kind of cheap, but then when we see the worm by itself, it looks awesome. And the flower petals open and we see the big mouth heavy dune theme playing on the soundtrack as like still Gar comes to climb the trailing rope behind Paul and join him on the worm.

But Rob, I think we may have alluded to this earlier. There is a very funny soundtrack moment here where like the heavy horns of the Dune theme give way to rock and distorted guitars. Yeah.

And I enjoy this because it's funny, but I don't think it quite has the intended effect. Yeah, it's a little goofy. In general, I have to reiterate, love the Toto score. I have listened to it all the way through a couple of times since we recorded part one of this weird house. But yeah, it's a little comical here with the guitar. Oh man, that desert. I mean, it's right on the edge, like that desert theme.

It is pure Velveeta. Like it is so smooth and cheesy and rock yacht rock sounding, but it's also great. And it fills me with feelings. I can't deny it. Yeah. So a bunch of time passes. We see Paul and still guard leading from an attacks on the Harkonnen spice mining operations. You know, they're using the weirding modules to say boom and zap and make things explode. Um,

Um, uh, and then, uh, of course, Paul thinks he is going to be able to get his revenge because when the spice flow stops, that's going to summon the Baron and the emperor to the planet because they're going to come there and be forced to deal with us. Yeah. Of course, the Baron and the emperor become aware of this figure called Muad'Dib that like their, their wounded fighters come back to them and, and they're muttering Muad'Dib, Muad'Dib. So they're like, who is this guy? And, you know, they're like, we've got to destroy him. Um,

Uh, we, we get some more voiceover from Virginia Madsen telling us that, um, Wadib and the Fremen pretty much completely shut down spice production and, uh, that Rabban is trying to hide this from his uncle, but apparently not succeeding and things are getting really dire. So soon, I think the emperor is going to have to come. Oh, but before that we get Paul's reunion with Gurney Halleck with Patrick Stewart. They like run into each other, I guess,

Gurney Halleck is now working for the Harkonnens or working maybe independently as like a spice harvester protector here in the desert. And Paul and Gurney run into one another and reunite. Of course, Gurney thought Paul was dead this whole time. By the way, there is Maximum Toto all over the soundtrack in the background of this section. Overdriven guitars wailing the whole thing.

And eventually we see the circumstances that are going to drive us toward the terrible conclusion. So back at the Imperial Palace, the spacing guild shows back up once again to harass the Emperor some more. No guild navigator this time. It's only like the Holy Brotherhood of Hazmat in their industrial religious looking robes.

Once again, they speak a foreign language that is like automatically translated by this weird microphone and the language itself. I was listening to it. It sounds like kind of feral. So there's kind of grunts and snarling like a wild animal, but also notes of Igor in the monster mash. Yeah.

And so they speak to him and the conversation very much has the effect of, wait, who's the emperor here? Because the spacing guild is really browbeating him. They're like, look, if you don't get the spice mining back under control immediately, you are going to live out the rest of your life in a pain amplifier. I don't know what a pain amplifier is, but I get the idea. Yeah, I feel like this is a moment where they kind of overplay the power of the guild here. Because ultimately, the guild is very powerful.

in the Dune universe, but so is the Bene Gesserit. So is House Carino. So everything is in kind of like a precarious balance of power. And here we're just kind of like, yeah, the guild pushes everybody around, which is not really the flavor of the guild in the actual source material.

I totally agree. But I also do like that the emperor is not portrayed as just all powerful, that he he has factions that he must appease. And, you know, if like if the Landsraad and the Spacing Guild and people are turning against him, that is a threat to him. And it's not like he can just crush them all. That's true.

Anyway, so the emperor is going to take Sardaukar to the planet Arrakis. And he's like, I know how we're going to deal with this complete destruction of every life on the planet. We're just going to just destroy them all.

Meanwhile, we get the sequence where Paul is finally going to fulfill the prophecy and drink the water of life. Of course, he tells Chani that he had a vision and he must do this. She doesn't like the idea, but he thinks he has no choice. He's got to do it. So Paul is led out into the desert. Chani pledges her love to him and they give him the water of life to drink.

and he has many more visions of water dripping in a cavern and the mouth of a worm opening. And I like how the mouth of the worm is intercut with an extreme close-up of a human eye, so the worm's mouth is like the pupil within the iris. I thought that was pretty cool. And here come the worm jets, because I think this is where we get the track that Eno collaborated on. Oh, interesting. With the visions here? Yeah, I think so. I think so.

But worms, worms gather from the desert around the Fremen to sort of keep a vigil beside Paul and they don't attack. It's almost if the worms are showing reverence from Wadib. And eventually he is awakened in Chani's arms with a new sense of determination and terrible purpose. He's ready to be the Messiah of the Fremen now. And he stands before them in this great underground hall and gives a speech that is in some ways kind of powerful, but unfortunately contains the sentence, a storm is coming.

Oh, man. If writers just skip over that one, you don't need the storm is coming. Yeah. But but his is kind of different. He's like, you know, when it arrives, it will shake the universe. He swears vengeance against the emperor and chance long live the fighters.

So the Fremen warriors stream out of their siege and prepare for war. And we also see the Emperor and his Sardaukar arriving on Arrakis from deep space with the help of the guild Highliners. And the final battle comes about. So the Fremen mount an assault on Arrakeen, led by Paul Stilgar and Gurney Halleck.

They will use the Atreides house atomics as well as the power of the worm. So they deploy all these thumpers and summon what Stilgar calls worm sign, the likes of which God has never seen.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm not going to geek out on a bunch of Dune stuff, but yeah, I don't like that line. I don't think a Fremen would say it quite like that. I don't think so either. Yeah, it's a little uncharacteristic. But the worms are cool here. I like the way the worms are depicted as coming into the battle. Oh, yeah. I love the addition of having these kind of like static electrical discharges in the air around them. Yeah. It looks really cool.

As the battle is going on, there's a confrontation between Baron Harkonnen and the Emperor. The Emperor has killed Rabban and stuck his head on a big spike. And then he's gathered people in his portable throne room. So they've got Princess Irulan there, the Reverend Mother, a bunch of Sardaukar, members of the Spacing Guild. The Emperor gives the Baron a very, I'm disappointed in you speech speech.

But before the Baron can suffer a similar fate to Rabban, they are interrupted by the arrival of someone in black robes. It is a child. Uh-oh, it's Paul's sister Alia, and she is instantly so, so unsettlingly creepy with this horrible voice, voiced by an adult, I think. We actually see her talk.

Her voice, I would describe it like putting on a shoe and then feeling something start moving under your toes. Yeah, this kid is perfectly unsettling in a way very similar to the accidental unsettling character of the kid in House by the Cemetery. Yeah.

Yeah, where Bob's voice was dubbed by an adult woman and he comes off as some sort of like a like a strange being. But it's intentional here and it absolutely works. This kid's creepy.

So Alia, the sort of reverend mother child, has a confrontation with the emperor and with the reverend mother guyess, Helen Mohiam. She's like, I am a messenger from Muad'Dib, poor emperor. I'm afraid my brother won't be very pleased with you.

I can't really do it justice. It's so creepy. And the Reverend Mother is like, she's an abomination. But, oh, she also screams, get out of my mind, exactly like David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth. Oh, yeah. Anyway, so Paul and the Fremen use the house atomics to blow up the mountains that are shielding the approach to Arkeen, and they mount their assault. They bring lots of loose worms alongside them.

Uh, and the Fremen and their worms clash with the emperor Sardaukar. Uh, at some point we see the emperor personally controlling a mounted gun to fire at the worms. Not sure about that choice. Like he doesn't seem like much of a hands-on warrior. Um,

But also the emperor tasks Baron Harkonnen with destroying Alia. But of course, Alia, I think she's going to get the better of this encounter. And she does. She like, what exactly does she do to the Baron? She jabs him with the Gamjabar, I believe. Oh, yeah. Okay. And kills him. Like, this is the death blow. She is Alia of the knife, after all.

Oh, okay. Yeah, we see her like, she's so happy about it. She's dancing around with her eyes closed, holding a knife. And we also see the Baron, he flies away as he is dying and then is chomped by a worm. That's a bit much. That's a bit much.

Okay, so the final confrontation, you know, the Fremen are victorious in the battle. They've taken the city. They gather everybody, all of the power players in like the big room in the palace at Arrakeen. And Paul goes up to the emperor in his retinue and demonstrates his power. He intimidates the emperor and silences the Reverend Mother with a powerful word. Also, she's like, ah, and she appears to have metal teeth now. Oh, wow. Maybe she has Ixian teeth. Hmm.

I don't know, maybe. So Paul is confronted by the remaining member of House Harkonnen, the young Feyd-Rautha. They're going to have to face one another, of course. And Feyd-Rautha takes the Emperor's Blade in his hand for the fight. This is going to be a knife fight to the death. There are things I really like about this fight. I like how there are people playing pyramid-shaped drums. Yeah, those are cool. Sting keeps yelling, I will kill you! Yeah.

I love that line. This has always been one of my favorite cheesy lines from this film and just in from film in general. We already talked about this difference, but I do like that this keeps Fade Rautha is a cheater. He's not the kind of honorable fighter in a way honorable fighter that they make Fade Rautha in the new movie.

Fade Routh, I hear, tries to cheat with a poisoned barb, but Paul gets around it by saying, I will bend like a reed in the wind. And he sort of like bends and lets Fade come around him and then stabs him in a very, very strange way. Yeah, this is a quality kill. And this is, I think, this falls in line with what you were talking about in the first episode we did about the Lynchian approach to portrayals of death.

because he drives his knife up through Fade's chin into his brain. And then after Fade has fallen dead onto the floor, he uses the weirding voice to shatter the stone floor beneath him. A moment that really feels like it resonates with a kind of biblical power, you know? It's a moment that I think really legitimately rules in this film and cements the ascendant might of Paul Atreides.

I agree. I think it's very cool. They also say, you know, Usul no longer needs a weirding module. He can just like speak a word without the module and make things shatter. And from here, we just sort of get a rather quick wrap up. Like the Princess Irulan narrates that Muad'Dib had become the hand of God fulfilling the Fremen prophecy. Where there was war, Muad'Dib would now bring peace. Where there was hatred, Muad'Dib would bring love, etc., etc.

Yeah, yeah. Is that what the story is? I don't think so. Not so much. Yeah. So in the end, yeah, we get this very heroic kind of conclusion. And in fact, it goes beyond heroic and becomes like transcendent, almost religious, where Paul literally causes a miracle. Yes. Paul makes it rain on Arrakis. It's a in a way, I have to be fair. It is a great visual capper for the film.

But it is one that makes zero sense within the context of the film and has no footing in the novel because Paul does not control the weather. And greening efforts on Arrakis, which I've been alluded to and are part of like the world of Dune. These are going to be gradual. These are going to be focused on particular parts of the planet. So this moment is all feels and no sense. Yeah, yeah.

So it's a very different kind of ending than we get from Dune Part 2, the new one, which does go a longer way to try to show Paul's change and change not for the better. His arc toward tyranny and his coldness, especially the most painful thing being at the end of the movie, the way he rejects Chani for his political alliance with House Corono by saying he's going to marry Princess Irulan in the new movie. Yeah.

Yeah, the movie does a great job of playing up the fact that this is leading into a massive holy war, interstellar holy war. It is not going to be peace and love across the universe. It is going to be pretty grim days ahead, and it is

because Paul has risen to such power. On the other hand, if you're just trying to make a standalone film, the Lynch movie has a much more feel-good ending. Yeah. I don't know if that's something, I don't know if that's good. It's not really what the story is, but it does

doesn't feel as sad as the ending of the new one. Yeah, the new film has a grimness and a sadness to it. My son has only seen the new adaptations. And when I was asking him about how he felt about the movies, he was like, oh, it's really cool, but it's kind of joyless. And that is true. I mean, the film is not a joyful experience, especially as it wraps up.

And I would say that Dune in general is a very joyful thing, and certainly in my own life. But a lot of that is in the details of everything, in the world building and the ecology and the philosophy and the use of religion and history. It's like the sum of the whole is joy. But the actual events that occur in the film here, especially towards the end, are not.

I feel like there's so much more I could say, but we've gone on way too long already. So I think we must wrap it up. Yeah. If there's any unfinished business and we can discuss it in future listener mail installments, that'll be a good place for that. And likewise, yeah, if you have thoughts on

the new Dune adaptations, 1984's Dune that we've been discussing in this episode, your history with the film, any of the merch, any of that weird merchandise they put out, like those strange action figures or these legitimately cool Ravel model kits that I don't think anybody bought initially, but now go for, you know, hundreds of dollars online. Write in. We would love to hear from you. We'll even hear thoughts about the

those um the the mini series the sci-fi mini series which again has a great cast but some cgi that has really not aged well

Just a reminder to everybody that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episode on Wednesdays. On Mondays, we do listener mail. And on Fridays, we just set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird movie on Weird House Cinema. If you want a complete list of all the movies we've covered so far and sometimes a peek ahead of the future, go to Letterboxd.com. That's L-E-T-T-E-R-B-O-X-D.com. We are Weird House on there and we've got a list for you to look at.

Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J. Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hi, you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

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