Movie Review • “DUNE: It's Got a Lot of Problems..." by Ray Daley

 

WARNING: HERE BE SPOILERS!

So I recently got to see the new version of Dune. I'd seen all the trailers. I was looking forward to it but had a few reservations.

Reservation 1 - The Star

Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides. He looks about fourteen and is so skinny it appears he’d probably snap in half in a brisk breeze. He does not look like the saviour of a planet, not by a country mile.

Reservation 2 - The Length

It was fairly widely known we weren’t getting the entire first book of Frank Herbert's Dune in this movie, despite the fact it's longer than the 1984 version, which managed to do that.

So, with a couple of reservations, I watched the film. And it's got problems. Well, if you're watching with a critical eye, it certainly has.

I'll go ahead and hope you're already vaguely familiar with either the book or the 1984 movie. The 2000's miniseries is actually Children Of Dune, so can be ignored. Dune is essentially the story of a white saviour coming to free indigenous people. It's also a serious case of cultural appropriation, which everyone seems to gloss over as well.

So what are these problems?

Dune falls down hard in a couple of fairly important places.

The most important is a basic lack of knowledge regarding military strategy. I did my research, Frank Herbert has no excuses. He served in the Seabees during WW2 as a photographer. Don't let that job description fool you for one second. He would have done similar training as the US Marines. Which meant fitness, fighting, rifle skills, and some military strategy.

Admittedly, Frank only served for six months before he got medically discharged, but that was more than long enough to learn the basics of military life.

One of the biggest plot-holes in Dune is that House Atreides are all caught sleeping in their beds when House Harkonnen decide to attack Arrakis. This is where things start to fall apart.

Arrakis is the most important planet in the known universe. It's the only place where the spice melange exists. It was previously occupied and operated by the Harkonnens until the Emperor ordered them out due to their brutal treatment of the Fremen on Arrakis. As they went, a few surprises were also left behind for their most hated enemies, House Atreides.

So we know this basic fact: Harkonnens have already tried to murder members of House Atreides.

Enter Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin) and Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa). Swordmasters to Duke Leto and considered his right-hand men, along with Thufir Hawat (Stephen McKinley Henderson). I'm going to apportion the large majority of blame onto Gurney and Duncan; I'll explain why later.

Fact:Arrakis is massively important. 

Fact:House Atreides has been attacked already whilst on Arrakis.

These should already be throwing up HUGE red flags to even a casual viewer.

Then comes some incredibly lazy, or badly researched writing.

There are no guards other than the three seen when Doctor Yueh murders them. There are no guards outside the palace. No guards are patrolling the planet from the air. There is no form of space-borne over-watch, guarding the planet from orbit.

If Arrakis is so important, why have its military protectors not seen to these aspects of its safety and theirs? Especially when the Harkonnens have already presented themselves as a threat.

I spotted this massive flaw because I'm a military veteran. I served 6 years in the Royal Air Force. You do guard duty, regardless of your trade on the station. Cooks, suppliers, clerks, drivers: everyone who isn't in the RAF Police or RAF Regiment does guard duty. You protect the station and everyone on it, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year. There's never a day or time when there aren't people doing guard duty.

And Frank Herbert should have known this, because he would have done it too.

For those who've seen the movie Full Metal Jacket, in the final scene on Parris Island, Joker is doing Fire Watch. That's guard duty. As a SeaBee, Herbert might have been patrolling the wire, watching the fuel or ammo dumps, or just protecting his campmates in general. I can tell you this, if he was serving during WW2 out in the field, he'd have done guard duty somewhere, at least a few times. Even a humble photographer knows which end of a rifle is the dangerous bit. Heck, we even see Joker take part in several combat actions during Full Metal Jacket.

Yet Frank Herbert chose to either forget or completely ignore this part of military service. So where are all his god-damn guards? Gurney and Duncan should be ensuring guards are literally crawling all over Arrakis. Hell, Duncan even went to the planet first as an advance scout, to meet the Fremen.

Duke Leto moves pretty much everyone to Arrakis, lock, stock and barrel. So there should be plenty of bodies to patrol the planet at night on their lovely cool ornithopters.

Likewise, there should be men in space, doing over-watch. Keeping a weather eye out for any fool coming through the jump gate they use to navigate interstellar space.

YET NONE OF THIS IS HAPPENING. Because of bad writing. Frank Herbert can't explain his reasons, he's dead. I'll give him a pass. Gurney And Duncan should have been on top of that omission. As for Thufir? He's an assassin and Mentat. His Mentat aspect should have caught it too, but the whole assassin aspect counters it. He gets the smallest of passes. Mostly because I liked Freddie Jackson.

So who can we blame?

Director and co-writer Denis Villeneuve has not served in any branch of the military. His writing for Dune is based on what he already read or watched. If he'd bothered to speak to anyone who'd served for longer than a few months, they'd have explained this massive problem to him. His co-writer Eric R. Roth has also never served in the military. Nor has third co-writer Jon Spaihts. So these are the people you must blame. They should have done their research and seen that Dune is based on an incorrect premise.

I'll briefly mention the other stupid issue I noticed with the movie.

The fighting styles of the various armies are mostly based around hand to hand combat. One of the single most important things about fighting this way is being able to see your opponent.

Enter Timothée Chalamet's stupid floppy fringe.

As Paul Atreides, son of Duke Leto, heir to the throne, he's being taught to fight all the time by Gurney. Sometimes Duncan too.

The one thing you'll notice about their characters? Both have very short hair.

Paul does end up in a hand to hand fight, late into the movie, acting as his mother's champion. The main thing I noticed about that fight? His hair's in his eyes for over 90% of the time. Sure, he's being taught to fight, but would loyal soldier Gurney allow that stupid floppy fringe?

NO SIR, HE WOULD NOT.

I'll harken back to my RAF days again. You're expected to have pride in your appearance. And be ready for war at short notice. This means doing respirator drills every few years. Hair is kept short, you're expected to remain clean-shaven (although these rules were recently relaxed since the new respirators have been introduced).

Men are expected to keep their hair smart and under control. If you were found with it in your eyes, you'd be up before the Station Warrant Officer before your feet had touched the ground and he'd order you directly to the station barber for a haircut, do not pass go, expect to be charged if you refuse.

So Paul's trainers, Gurney and Duncan would expect him to keep his hair out of his god-damn eyes.

I went away and checked the Internet Movie Database, purely out of curiosity. I wasn't remotely shocked to discover this movie had no-one acting as a military advisor. That's because they would have been shouting and making a lot of noise about such basic, easily researched bullshit.

The Harkonnen attack on Arrakis as the Atreides sleep is merely to forward the plot. It's 100% wrong, illogical and no-one in their right mind would allow it to happen. It's Frank Herbert saying, “This occurs because I say so.”

Yet it happens. There are better, far more logical ways the Harkonnens could attack Arrakis without this epic level of garbage being allowed, yet it appears Frank Herbert and by extension, the modern rewriters, were too lazy to think of. Villeneuve seems to have already taken many liberty's with the film, why not address this plot hole you could fly a spaceship through?

So what do you do?

Currently, you can't do a damn thing. The movie is out, it's filmed, live with it, despite the epic bullshit. Watch it with brain disengaged, try not to feel insulted as a viewer, even more so if you're a science fiction writer.

How would I have fixed it? The Harkonnens still need to attack Arrakis to forward the plot, so do it more logically. We had already seen one of them bricked up behind a wall. Surely we could have reworked that idea and had one of their men infiltrate the Atreides Operations Centre to disable their communications as the Harkonnen fleet attacked?

It's a much more likely course of events, based on things which had already happened, and not lazy writing for the sake of it. There are probably many other far better or cooler ways to get the Harkonnens onto Arrakis again. I just think the way it was done was wrong, and garbage. Hot, steaming garbage someone got paid a lot of money for.

The movie isn't ENTIRELY awful. It looks stunning. But you can't sell a movie based entire on its looks—it has to be interesting, too. It's slower than an ice age, the pacing isn't well thought out, and none of the new additions improves the story.

While I personally won't watch it again, I'm not saying you shouldn't, if you haven't already.

If you enjoyed it, more power to you. It seriously has some problems though.

Heck, you aren't even getting all of the first book in this version, despite the fact the 1984 movie managed it. Don't get me started on that issue!

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Ray Daley was born in Coventry and still lives there. He served six years in the RAF as a clerk and spent most of his time in a Hobbit hole in High Wycombe. He is a published poet and has been writing stories since he was ten. His current dream is to eventually finish the Hitchhiker’s Guide fanfic novel he’s been writing since 1986. Tweet him @RayDaleyWriter or check out his web site at https://raymondwriteswrongs.wordpress.com/