Arrakis. Dune. Desert planet.
Today I was excited to see the trailer for the upcoming Dune film adaptation.
Dune is a classic sci-fi novel set in the distant future, but its themes resonate in our own times.
It’s about a desert planet that contains the most valuable commodity in the universe. Powerful forces vie for control of this resource. Meanwhile, the indigenous people of the planet suffer the consequence of this colonialism and extraction.
Is it about capitalism? Colonialism? When I first read the novel, which was published in 1965, I thought it was about the struggle for oil in the Middle East.
But it’s also about spirituality, philosophy, and other cool stuff.
I’m reminded of a video I made a while back with my friend Mike Magoski called Book Talk: Dune. The idea was to both read the novel and then film our conversation about it. So I read the novel and Mike said he did too. We started filming and it soon became clear that Mike had not read the book. But this actually made the video better. You can watch it HERE.
Ultimately, Mike went on to read Dune. He loved it so much that, over the course of the next year, he read all six books in the Dune Chronicles—an impressive feat. Mike’s Dune obsession really influenced his art and poetry that year.
Inspired by the new Dune trailer “drop” I started reading book two in the Dune Chronicles, Dune Messiah.
It’s fascinating in a totally different way. The hero in Dune is young Paul Atreides, who becomes a kind of spiritual and military leader to the oppressed indigenous people on Dune.
Dune Messiah is about what happens after a formerly oppressed people gains power and uses that power to become the same kind of oppressor that they lived under for centuries. Sort of like how, after the conversion of Constantine, the Roman Empire went from oppressing Christians to oppressing others in the name of Christianity.
It makes me think about America. After winning a revolutionary war and throwing off the power of our colonial oppressors (the British), American proceeded to inflict genocidal oppression on Native Americans.
Is the saying true about power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely? If America’s current president is correct about us being the greatest country in the world, I suppose this statement should give us pause.
What is the antidote to corrupt power? I think it is humility and the giving up of power.
To round out my Dune-centric day, I finally watched a documentary I’ve been meaning to watch for the past few years—Jodorowsky’s Dune.
It’s about a film adaptation of Dune that (tragically) never got made by visionary director Alejandro Jodorowsky.
You may know Jodorowsky from his mind-bending 1970s films like El Topo and especially The Holy Mountain—a true cinematic masterpiece.
Jodorowsky gathered a veritable dream team of artists for his proposed adaptation in the mid-70s—Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, H.R. Giger, etc. Every Hollywood studio said “no.”
Imagine if, instead of Star Wars, it was Jodorowsky’s Dune that was the blockbuster of 1977—a film made by and for artists. I’m not throwing shade on Star Wars, but it was no Jodorowsky’s Dune. Maybe “blockbuster” cinema would have taken a different direction.
Jodorowsky saw cinema not as a business but as pure art—like painting and poetry. What if Hollywood’s most lavish films today were not made for maximum business returns, but for pure artistic expression? What a world that would be.
Which brings me to David Lynch’s Dune, the film adaptation that was actually made in 1984. It was a commercial and a critical flop.
This is a tragedy on many levels. Prior to Dune, David Lynch had made a genuine masterpiece (Eraserhead) and a pretty decent film (The Elephant Man). He was somehow hired to direct Dune. Based on interviews with Lynch, I learned that the main problem was that he did not have “final cut” privileges. The business folks and producers apparently took what could have been a decent film and turned it into a mess.
If I’m being honest, I actually like Lynch’s Dune. I could extrapolate more on how certain themes and imagery from this film are actually signature Lynch (and can even be seen in his more recent high concept sci-fi Twin Peaks: The Return), but the main point I want to make is that the commercial failure of Lynch’s Dune inspired him to return to his indie roots, to smaller productions. His next film was Blue Velvet—an absolute American masterpiece.
