Tell me—what did you dream of last night?
For Paul, the answer never changes: a face bathed in warm light and swimming sands, whispering. Of what, we don’t know. But the dreams seem meaningful all the same.
Perhaps they’re just the byproduct of a little excitement; the Emperor has chosen Paul’s family to take over the desert planet called Arrakis, after all.
You’ll find out soon enough. And long before that, you’ll realize that this movie is magnificent. The worldbuilding is heart-stoppingly beautiful; the story, spicy. Polticial, religious, and romantic intrigue swirl around everything from persons to planets.
But brining things back down to Arrakis for a second, it’s quite popular. Scorching sun and monstrous sandworms won’t stop an endless caravan of colonizers; the sand here has spice, and spice fuels interstellar travel. Arrakis’s natives, the Fremen, are therefore forever subject to the whims of power-hungry outsiders looking to profit.
Paul’s Atreides family (from their own lush and oceanic planet) might be different. They sympathize with the plight of the Fremen and value their ways. But even so, when the Emperor asks you to do something, you do it.
So we follow the family’s journey in governing a new world—and we do so from Paul’s perspective. The smart young man with the dreams has a special aura about him. Likely inherited and cultivated by his mother, Jessica, who is as quiet as she is cunning. When the two spend time together speaking in all sorts of languages, it’s clear that in this universe of different things, they are yet still different . . .
The introduction to Paul’s life and home—like the introduction to Arrakis, the other power players and their home planets—is a feast for the eyes. The moviemakers give us breathtakingly realistic and impressive vistas. Everything from the haze over an alien city down to the woodworking detail in a living room adds to the gravity of what we’re witnessing. This feels real. Real culture; real history; real lives at stake.
When the Atreides meet the Fremen, things do not go as smoothly as anyone would like. And complicating this is the Harkonnen, who the Emperor has chosen the Atreides to replace—and who are desperate to have their position back.
Dune is not action-packed, but boy is it an adventure. Rather like a dream that moves you, it is so real, so filled with things you recognize, and yet so very different from what you’ve experienced before.