S01E18 — Dune: Part Two

SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for Dune.

Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.

Get ready for a sandstorm of opinions! In this episode, we unpack Dune Part 2 — from Paul’s rise to power to Chani’s no-nonsense attitude and some serious Harkonnen creepiness. We break down the biggest plot twists, timeline changes, and epic showdowns, all while debating spice, sandworms, and whether prophecy is destiny or just bad luck.

(We suggest you listen to our episode on Dune: Part One before starting this one!)

Final Verdicts

If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)

The Dune Part 2 movie cranks up the drama with tighter timelines, epic battles, and a fiercer Chani, while the book takes its time unraveling the politics, prophecies, and Paul’s transformation. The film keeps things moving, but the book dives deeper into the gritty details of destiny and betrayal.

Tim: The movie was better

Donna: The movie was better

Rebekah: The movie was better

Josiah: The movie was better

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Full Episode Transcript

Prefer reading? Check out the full episode transcript below. It’s AI-generated from our audio, and if we’re being honest… no one sat to read the entire thing for accuracy. (After all, we were there the whole time.) 😉 We’re sorry in advance for any typos or transcription errors.

[00:00:00] Josiah : But I had an idea for a little song, a jingle for Dune 2. Oh, joy. 

[00:00:06] Rebekah: Welcome to the book is betterpodcast. We are a family of four. reviewing book to film adaptations. This is a clean podcast, but we talk about some pretty mature themes from time to time. So it’s probably not the best for little, little viewers, especially listeners, I suppose, especially for some of the interesting things that we’re going to talk about today.

Uh, spoiler alert. We are going to spoil and discuss the book by Frank Herbert, by the name of Dune, the 2024 movie, Dune Part 2. We will also probably talk about Dune Part 1 and maybe a little bit about some of the subsequent novels that I think only Josiah of our cast has, has read or is familiar with at all.

So we like to start every episode with a little fun fact, uh, to let you get to know us just a little better. So today’s fun fact What aroma sparks the most pleasant 

[00:01:10] Donna: I like those pleasant emotions, personally, 

[00:01:13] Rebekah: but I mean What aroma sparks the most pleasant emotion or happy thought for you? Is there an aroma that generates a very negative emotion or memory?

So, I’m Rebecca. I am the daughter slash sister of the podcast. And I would say, um, you guys are probably gonna judge me, but The smell of Axe body spray makes me want to faint with joy. I don’t know why, it’s like the best smell that I think has ever existed, and everyone I’ve ever told that to judges me and thinks that I’m a horrible person.

You should go on the commercials. You know, I probably 

[00:01:49] Josiah: should be on commercials, um, for Axe Body Spray. But yeah, I really, 

[00:01:54] Rebekah: I really like the scent of Axe. I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of like, oh, I hate this smell of this that or the other. So, I don’t even know if I have a really negative smell, but I’d say that’s one for me.

[00:02:07] Tim: Well, uh, for me, the pleasant emotion or happy thought is the smell of post soap. I remember that from college and it just. It’s a long, long memory. If I understand correctly, our old factory memories are the ones that, uh, that are the longest lasting. The, the negative emotion, I’m not sure that I have one other than the smell of tomato soup, which, um, I had a lot of tomato soup when I was in nursery school.

I went. nursery school and had a lot of tomato soup and now I can’t stand it and I can’t stand the smell of it. So that’s my negative. 

[00:02:55] Josiah: Well, you know what they say about Coast Soap? 

[00:02:57] Donna: You know what they say about Coast Soap? What do they say about Coast Soap? It’s the 

[00:03:02] Josiah: Axe of the 80s. It was. Well, I’m Josiah.

I’m the brother and the son of this podcast group. And, you know, I don’t know if this is disgusting, but I used to get really sick a lot. Well, you know, I don’t think it’s an inordinate amount, but We’ve talked about my vagal response in the past. And so whenever I would, uh, do number three, as I say, out of my mouth,

um, I would often faint as a child 

[00:03:46] Donna: and so on the floor maybe, 

[00:03:48] Josiah: and is terrifying and I don’t like it, and so I have trained myself over the decades to not puke. And one of the things that helps me not to do that is to blow into a toilet and smell the wet porcelain. And it’s a very relaxing scent for me because it means I’m safe.

And so. Oh, that rocks. 

[00:04:17] Donna: All the other synths. I think that we should 

[00:04:19] Josiah: probably stop doing this podcast forever. I think I’m that was it. That 

[00:04:24] Josiah: was my line. People know too much about us. And I guess I don’t like caramel or anise. As in licorice. 

[00:04:33] Rebekah: You don’t like caramel? Blech. Oh my gosh. Who are you? You might like caramel.

[00:04:40] Josiah: It’s burnt sugar. I don’t like the smell of char in my sugar.

[00:04:48] Donna: Oh. Oh no. I’ve never heard somebody be so 

[00:04:50] Josiah: hateful about friggin caramel. Which is like 

[00:04:53] Donna: char. Well known as 

[00:04:54] Josiah: like one of the best ingredients in sweet things ever. Never. Never will 

[00:04:59] Josiah: I eat caramel. 

[00:05:01] Donna: So my name’s Donna. I am the wife and mom of this pod. And, um, thoroughly enjoy and love all of my children. Both of them are amazing and quirky and weird.

And it’s, 

[00:05:17] Josiah: where’s this going? And I like the smell of their hair. Wait, just one 

[00:05:21] Donna: of us smell? You both have interesting, quirky things about your answers. And I was just saying, and I love both of you for who you are. Oh, thank you. So a pleasant emotion or happy thought. Honestly, Rebecca, I thought about what similar to what you said in college, there was a guy and, oh, I don’t know.

I might have somebody that will know this, uh, that wore, um, Polo by Ralph Lauren. Why did you know that? It wasn’t you. He had, uh, Polo is very 

[00:06:03] Tim: strong. You can’t wear it and people not know it. 

[00:06:06] Donna: He wore it in such a way though that it was not like so overbearing. But if he walked past you, you definitely got that scent of of polo.

But I’ve had some people, I’ve had, I’ve smelled it on other people that they like, it just seems like they poured it on themselves. It’s not like that at all. Uh, really nice dude. I mean, he’s a nice guy. He was a good guy. Anyway, um, though I never had dramatic feelings for the guy, that scent of polo was just great.

I thought it was amazing. Cinnamon and apple both give me very pleasant emotions. 

[00:06:42] Josiah: Well, do you guys want to hear a plot summary for Dune Park? Let’s hear the plot of Dune 

[00:06:47] Josiah: Park. 

[00:06:48] Josiah: Paul Atreides? I’m gonna try that again. Paul Atreides unites the Fremen while on the warpath of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family.

House Harkonnen destroyed his family. And he is of House Atreides, all’s journey to becoming the fabled Kwisatz Haderach, the Lisan al Gayyib, and the one who will lead the Fremen to freedom, tests his character, and imperils his life. Meanwhile, the Atreides family expands. Paul and Shani, a Fremen Fideikin, become romantically entwined, and Lady Jessica is pregnant with her daughter, Paul’s sister, Aaliyah, who communicates far beyond her years, displaying her outstanding Bene Gesserit abilities even in the womb.

Paul tries to prevent the terrible future, seen in his prescient visions, and rises to power, controlling not only the planet of Arrakis, but perhaps the entire known universe. 

[00:07:56] Rebekah: All right, so as we do, let’s talk about changes. We’ve got our three little categories. Changes to the plot and timeline, changes to the scene.

setting and then changes to characterization. And I will say we might need to bounce around, um, into characterization a little bit as we’re like talking about some of these. So feel free, my fellow podcasters. 

[00:08:16] Tim: All right, well, let’s get started on the changes in the plot and timeline. Uh, Dune part two timeline was crunched.

Into less than nine months, Lady Jessica was pregnant at the end of part one and remains pregnant at the end of part two. In the novel, there’s at least a two year time jump during the last third of the novel in which both Jessica and Chani have children. Jessica’s child is Aaliyah and Chani’s child is Leto, named after Paul’s father.

But those are not in the 2024 film. 

[00:08:53] Donna: In the 2024 film, Paul is the one who kills Baron Harkonnen, rather than in the book where his young sister, Aaliyah, 

[00:09:03] Rebekah: kills him. Comment on the timeline crunch. I understand why they did it. I think I, I think I liked it. I think it was just a little difficult because having read the book and I think so many people having read the book and seeing the original film, I was like not totally in it.

Cause I was kind of waiting for Aaliyah to be born and like Chani to say she was pregnant and like all of this. And so it did, it did throw me a little bit, take me out of it just a tad, like, which I didn’t love. Also, I will say that that change, you mentioned it pretty quickly, but like Paul killing Baron Harkonnen, that was a huge change because I don’t know that it was an intended, like he, I don’t think Paul in the book intended for Baron, the Baron to be killed or hadn’t, I don’t know if he’d planned on it because like, there’s kind of this weird sense of like, um, they find the Baron killed and realize that, you know, Sister Aaliyah has done it, Like almost there’s this sense of Paul being like, Oh, great.

Of course she did. Like, it was just, I don’t know. It was very interesting to me, but I understood, like, I understood it. I thought that it was, it was powerful. It felt like there was, everything was still very fast moving, even when you saw time passing. But also related to that, um, Aaliyah and Jessica communicate, like, throughout the film in the womb.

And Jessica, like, talks to Paul several times, like, about, well, kind of talks through Jessica, Aaliyah talks to Paul. And so, um, in the book, for those of you who haven’t read, it’s very interesting, but like, Aaliyah is a very, very small, like baby and toddler. And there’s this repeated thing about like people being freaked out by her being kind of an abomination because she’s speaking like an adult and someone who obviously is not, it’s not just that she’s not a child, she’s literally a baby.

And so, even the 1984 Dune movie, like portrayed her as like a, yeah, which was not the case. So I thought, I 

[00:10:59] Donna: thought that was really interesting. But how would you compare Aaliyah to Renesmee? 

[00:11:05] Donna: I knew that you were 

[00:11:06] Rebekah: going to ask that 

[00:11:07] Josiah: question. Oh my gosh. If I’m being totally 

[00:11:10] Rebekah: honest, I think that 

[00:11:11] Josiah: Aaliyah from the 1984 book, Dune was less creepy than Renesmee and her weirdness in the last few Twilight books, if I have to be, or in the last few Twilight movies.

Oh yes, 

[00:11:24] Josiah: baby, baby Aaliyah. My prediction, I have no evidence for this, it just feels right to me. Is that they screen tested or, or did some sort of test to see if they could make a born baby Aaliyah work with her adult speech and thought and maturity? And I assume Without making it 

[00:11:48] Tim: look just creepy like it did in all the other adaptations?

[00:11:52] Josiah: Yeah, and Renesmee, and how, how do you make it not like a CGI mouth on a real dog? Like in animal movies where dogs talk and they move the mouth? Yeah. How do you make it not look like a comedy? So, 

[00:12:08] Rebekah: yeah, 

[00:12:09] Josiah: I don’t think 

[00:12:10] Rebekah: Honestly, I think that’s a really good theory because that was What 

[00:12:16] Donna: are 

[00:12:16] Josiah: you actually talking about?

The baby in the dog’s mouth. 

[00:12:21] Donna: He said, how do you make it not a CGI mouth on a dog? And I thought we were talking about a baby. I was like, what, you mean a dog? Or 

[00:12:32] Rebekah: a So sorry, go on. I think that that’s a very good theory, because it makes sense to me. That was one of the biggest, like, critical things that people hated about Twilight.

Was like they tried to make Renesmee look real and like age her in a way that looked real But it just looked weird and creepy and very what’s the word uncanny valley like there it just wasn’t quite right yeah, I think that the idea of her being in the womb and like using kind of the really stylized shots of her like In that way, I thought was also really a way to kind of set her apart and make her seem very strange and otherworldly.

Whereas in the 1984 film, Aaliyah was just like a creepy baby or creepy child. You know what I mean? So I think that I thought that it was an effective choice. 

[00:13:21] Tim: In the, in the miniseries from the sci fi channel, it is, it is still creepy and by the time she kills the Baron, uh, Aaliyah is in size about, about five years old, uh, looks like, but it’s still very, very creepy when they change that part of the timeline.

Uh, probably the, if they do a part three, it will skip over that and she’ll be old enough that it won’t have to look creepy. 

[00:13:50] Rebekah: Well, and they had the actor who plays her in this movie in like a flash forward in one of his prescient visions. 

[00:13:57] Josiah: Yeah, Anya Taylor Joy, she was Princess Peach in the Super Mario movie.

She was in the menu, I think. She was the main character. 

[00:14:05] Rebekah: The menu was so creepy. I think it’d be really interesting if they, you know. Did a time jump and just totally changed it up and made her an adult. I think that could be really powerful. I think you create a little more difficulty for everybody else because then you have to age up everyone else, um, makeup wise.

[00:14:22] Josiah: Anya Taylor Joy could probably play a really mature 15 year old that was magically made into an adult in the womb. 

[00:14:31] Rebekah: I don’t know. I think the whole thing is interesting. And I will say even I was rereading the last two chapters. of the book last night after watching the new movie. And I think that it reminded me again that Frank Herbert really created a society that is so different and everything about it is completely not normal to us.

But I think it’s interesting because Jessica asks where Aaliyah is when Paul’s like wrapping things up at the end of the book. I think his statement is that she’s doing what any good Fremen child should do. She’s killing the wounded on the battlefield and marking them for water collection. And so it’s like, I don’t know.

I know that that’s not, has nothing to do with her, the timeline or whatever, but I just remembered being struck again by like, I think part of the reason I had trouble connecting with at first and honestly still have kind of had to wrap my head around it. is because there’s very little to latch on to in terms of relationships and the way that people are that’s, like, familiar.

[00:15:26] Josiah: Right. Oh, I think you hit the nail on the head. Frank Herbert does not understand how humans work or interact with one another. And so he created this fascinating world for people to engross themselves in. But the film, what Denis Villeneuve does, is takes his ideas and then adds human characters. I remember he specifically in an interview said, that he loves the humanity that Timothee Chalamet brings to Paul.

I was like, Frank Herbert did not care about that at all. 

[00:16:00] Josiah: Yeah, that’s true. I’m so glad that 

[00:16:03] Josiah: the new director cares about that sort of thing successfully. 

[00:16:07] Rebekah: So related to that big time jump and, and this, the other big, like huge change was that Paul and Chani’s relationship is It’s 10, 000 percent different from book to film, including the fact that Shani herself.

is not the same person. Like the character in the films, Dune part one and part two, they use Chani as the name and she’s in love with Paul. And I think, was she a Fideikin in the book? Like, so she had some, I don’t remember, but I think like, other than her name and the fact that they were in love, Like, there’s very little that stays the same about her or their relationship.

The 

[00:16:44] Donna: dad had an interesting comment about that. I said, you know, Chani, definitely, man, she, she changed. And he said, yeah, it, it seems like it’s a little more overarching theme that the woman needs to be strong and independent. Where in the book, she was still a fighter. It didn’t change, her role didn’t change.

She was still a strong person. But in the book, she accepted the fact of who she would be in Paul’s life. 

[00:17:12] Tim: Less personal agency and more willingness to subvert herself to him and his cause. 

[00:17:21] Donna: There were less times when she would look at him and go, no. Where in the movie, it was like, what she was like challenging him.

[00:17:29] Josiah: Well, Chani of the book. She is being trained in the weirding way, and there is some tension between her and Jessica, but she generally goes along with Paul’s Rise to power. In the film, they cut the weird word weirding. I wrote that. 

[00:17:47] Josiah: Which I was glad about because it was so strange in the movies. 

[00:17:50] Josiah: And you saw the 1984 movie where they changed weirding from Uh, special version of martial arts into a big gun.

It’s a 

[00:17:59] weird sound weapon thing that’s like, what is this? The weirding weapon or the weirding devices or whatever. That’s what happens when you double down 

[00:18:08] Josiah: on a dumb idea. Paul’s strengthening of the, Paul was strengthening the Fremen in the 2024 film. Through his inspired zealotry and his knowledge of the Harkonnens.

Yeah. Because his family had been fighting them for hundreds of years. Instead of decades like the Fremen. So, um, Chani is not all for Paul’s zealotry although, you know, she wants to fight Harkonnens because she is specifically fighting for her people and not, as everyone else by the end of the movie does.

Everyone else is fighting for Paul. 

[00:18:48] Rebekah: Mom, you mentioned that she does have some power in the book and she’s like a little bit of a fighter, but in general, the film gives her a ton of military agency. So like she and Paul do this scene that’s like movie only where they destroy spice mining operation and she’s the one shooting at the Thopter.

And, um, in general, like her strength comes from a different place. Like in the, in 20, 24 film, she seems like a military. fighter with a lot of, like, passion, like you said, Josiah, to, like, defend her people. Whereas in the book, she is not that kind of a fighter. She’s more of a, you know, Benny Jester it trainee.

[00:19:30] Tim: Well, she is in love with Paul, and even ready to step aside when he expresses his need to wed Princess Irulan. In the novel, however, uh, Paul in the novel assures her that she will always be by his side and that this will be a marriage for political gain only in the film, all says he will love her as long as he breathes on.

So they they really agree. move away from a lot of the things from the novel in that. It’s 

[00:20:00] Rebekah: suggested that she’s like, like, it’s suggested, I will love you, but I know you’re about to leave me. Like, I feel like that was the other half of the sentence that was unsaid. Perhaps. Certainly 

[00:20:09] Josiah: half of the interpretation.

[00:20:11] Donna: But when he said it to her in the movie, and it was a beautiful scene, because I felt like up to that point, he continued to say to her, I am with you. You, you are mine. I will never. Be away from you. I’ll, you will always have my love, my allegiance. But at that point he said it, she still had no idea that he was getting ready to say, Oh, by the way, I’ll take your daughter to marry me.

Are you talking about in the book? In the movie? No, in the movie. I don’t remember any thing to lead, uh, to lead Chani to know what was getting ready to happen. ’cause Paul didn’t share those things. No, but I think Paul knew. Paul knew, but she didn’t. And so I knew from his perspective when he said, I will love you as long as I breathe.

The unwritten part, the the unfinished part was because what’s getting ready to happen is gonna be confusing in the, the film. She doesn’t, I don’t feel, I didn’t feel like this. Uh, either. She does not embrace her role as concubine. When it’s her and him, 

[00:21:15] Rebekah: she’s there. In the book and 1984 film, she, she defers to Paul.

Like, it’s not that she’s controlled by him. Right. But she kind of just defers to whatever he wants or needs. 

[00:21:25] Donna: And I think that, that’s probably a good way to say it. Um, she’s against the use of atomics on her home world. Again, she’s, her consideration is the Fremen, and I think they did a great job, especially in the beginning of the meeting, where there was an immediate connection.

But she, she never strayed from her allegiance to the Fremen. 

[00:21:49] Josiah: In the film, Chani doesn’t believe in the role of Messiah that Paul is embracing. After helping Paul awaken from his poison induced coma with the, the water of life scene, she slaps him across the face in front. My best friend that I saw this movie with leaned to me after the slap and then the big musical cue happens aaaahhhh bwaaah and kind of the famous dune music cue that he loves.

He loves it. And he mentioned before the movie, he’s waiting, he’s waiting to see when those music cues come in. And he leaned to me after the slap and he was like, nah, they didn’t earn that music cue. 

[00:22:41] Tim: I get that the film is trying to give her more personal agency, but I’m not sure it fills in the gaps of what are her thoughts.

Uh, we don’t get quite as much of 

[00:22:53] Josiah: that, I think. I mean, I think I got that she does not want him to be Lisan Al Gaib. And he took the poison in order to become the Lisan Al Gaib. So she’s probably infuriated by his choices. 

[00:23:07] Tim: She and the group of Fremen at the beginning are making, are making fun of that, and of those that are in there.

That religious mindset, but then later it seems like she’s embracing it a little bit more and then it seems like she’s not, I don’t think so. No, I saw it a little differently. 

[00:23:25] Josiah: I thought it was more confusing. No, Paul convinces Chani to befriend him, to even follow him a little bit because he says, I don’t believe in this prophecy stuff.

I’m not going to be some religious figure. And in fact, I have seen the future and I’m not going to start a holy war. I don’t want to do any of this stuff. And she’s like, oh, okay, well then I trust you. And then as soon as he gets to the South, he takes the water of life. The thing that the only purpose of which is showing that he is the Messiah.

Because it would kill a man otherwise. 

[00:24:04] Donna: But did she know it would kill a man? 

[00:24:07] Josiah: I think it’s famous common knowledge. Yes. 

[00:24:09] Donna: Okay. 

[00:24:10] Josiah: I think part of the prophecy seems to be that the Lisan al Gaib will go where no man has gone before. Yes. So I think Stilgar knew it. That it would kill a man. Yeah, in that scene, it was like, uh, Chani gave him the Desert Spring tear.

[00:24:29] Rebekah: There is no reference to the Desert Spring in the Dune book, I believe. Okay. So I think that that is specifically something the movie added. I think, I understand the confusion of like, what is her, like, the point of Chani. 

[00:24:43] Tim: Another difference in the film is, There’s no mention of Chani being pregnant, uh, of giving birth to Paul’s first child, Leto the second, or the child’s death when the Sardaukar raid, uh, the siege just before the final battle.

So all of those motivations are taken out. But as I saw online, it said that change in the timeline forced a lot of other changes, and this is one of them. You know, it’s too tight a timeline for them to fall in love, have a child, begin to raise it. 

[00:25:19] Donna: I did love the Very brief scene of them being together, but it wasn’t like that through the whole thing.

I was really wondering what, how much sensualness or sensual nature that they would have between them as the movie went along, but I was thankful he kept it to a very short scene. You saw from their shoulders up, it was, so you knew they were together, but, but he didn’t, uh, he didn’t carry it out, where every time they had to be together, they had their hands all over each other, and that, so I thought that was a good way to satisfy, this is where they’re going, but not, Just be in your face with it all the time.

[00:26:04] Josiah: Chani does not have a character in the book. She is a prop for Paul. One of my other friends I went to see the movie with last night. She likes to recall, maybe I, maybe I said this in last episode as well, but Chani quote unquote falls in love with Paul in the book, Paul, and she touch hands right after he killed Paul.

Janus, and Paul says, I just had a vision that we will be in love and you have my babies. And she says, okay, we’re in love. That’s not a character. That’s not a character. And so instead of that, they took Zendaya who They really hyped up in the first movie, and it’s like, oh, wow, she was, she was not in that movie as much as we thought it would.

And then they, they take that character and be like, okay, we’re gonna do something brand new. And it’s really interesting. She’s the only one of the Fremen who doesn’t believe in the prophecy. And that is extra dramatic and fun because she loves Paul. More than any other Fremen. 

[00:27:21] Rebekah: My feelings about it, I would say, are probably similar.

My biggest struggle is that I, I really struggle with the idea that, like, you have to change characters. from a book to a film just for the sake of making them more like powerful women or making them more whatever. I don’t like things that feel like motivated by like, well, we need her to be a strong woman character just for the sake of her being one.

Well, in this case, as much as, you know, to me, it’s like book feels like canon and all that stuff. I struggle with that. But I do think that Denny making this a. Like, character that’s actually interesting, someone that you actually understand. She feels like one of the most human characters in the entire thing, because as Paul becomes a little less human, he’s not as deeply conflicted as I feel like he probably should be still.

Zendaya, as Chani, feels like a lot more of an interesting character. Whereas a lot of times I feel like sometimes they just make characters, they make them female or they make a female character that was kind of quiet and reserved be more like forceful or whatever, you know, hashtag feminism. But I don’t even feel like it was like, Oh, this was motivated by anything other than what you said, Josiah, which is like, she was not interesting in the book.

She was boring. She was dry. Like she was just kind of this different woman who was there to be whatever Paul needed her to be. Whereas in this case, I like that she’s strong. I like that. Like, She is powerful too, and I hope that, especially if they get to do a third movie, I hope that she gets to be a character who brings some reality check maybe.

In the books, Paul becomes less and less human as time goes on, and I don’t know what Chani and his relationship is like as that happens, but I do hope that she continues to be a voice of like Hey, maybe like you shouldn’t just barrel forward doing these, this and this and this and this, like even the fact that she was against the use of atomics, it’s like, yeah, it’s like maybe Holy War is like not necessarily the thing, like it’s not where it’s at, maybe consider this a little bit more.

[00:29:25] Josiah: Yeah, I mean, ultimately, I think they did a really fun job of making Chani and Paul fall in love. And I think that that was their justification for taking a lot more time. Adding scenes that were not in the book so that they could, I mean, I think fulfill on the promise of the premise of the first book of the first movie part one that said Timothee are going to fall in love and then they took that premise and went okay but here’s how specifically here’s the motivations here’s the things that bring them closer together And here’s the conflict between them.

And all of that combining in part two to mean that Chani is not her book character at all, and I think that she is better in basically every way. Although I do, uh, I have heard talk from people who have read the future books that them having a child together and it dying in the first book, which is not at all in the movie, not even close.

Uh, does affect their relationship in future books in a very major way. So we’ll see if that will change things going forward 

[00:30:43] Tim: for me. I saw with Johnny and Paul, I saw their conflict, how she didn’t agree with this and she didn’t agree with that. I guess for me, it was just difficult because I didn’t see.

I didn’t see their commonality, their, their love growing. Um, it was just, it was just different for me. And I guess that’s why I, why I didn’t see, I didn’t see the same kind of development. I’ll watch it again and, and look at stuff. So 

[00:31:11] Rebekah: I missed one of the montages where they were like falling in love and I was a little disconnected from it.

[00:31:16] Tim: I’m not sure. I might’ve, I might’ve missed some things just because I was thinking, expecting something that 

[00:31:23] Josiah: I didn’t see. 

[00:31:24] Speaker 7: Mm. Yeah. I mean, 

[00:31:26] Josiah: what, what is, what does Shawnee care about more than anything? Her planet in the movie? What’s her? Her planet. And so I think that that Paul comes in as a foreigner and it’s like, I don’t trust him at all.

And then when he starts to show that he cares about the remen and araki in ways that. You know, in on two different spectrums, Chaney and peop and other people. But Chaney expects him to care about ar arki because it’s his right to, to rule as Duke. And he is like, no, actually that’s not what I’m doing.

And then it’s like, it’s ’cause it’s my right as the Lisa on algae. And he is like, no, that’s not what I’m doing. So he keeps subverting the expecta, the negative expectations that she has of him to the point where, you know. Of course, there’s physical attraction there, but, uh, as far as Chani’s character motivation, her falling in love with him, you know, works completely within her character motivation.

Uh, you know, maybe Paul’s character motivation for falling in love with her is weaker than her motivation for falling in love with him. 

[00:32:34] Donna: But at the same time, the decisions he made, I felt like were decisions he had to make. Was there revenge going on? Yes, and they addressed that in part of it. Was it with his mother?

Was he talking to his mother and, and said, when somebody was saying, you know, don’t, don’t focus on revenge because that blah, blah, blah. But, and he’s like, but I’m going to, because he destroyed my 

[00:32:57] Josiah: Gurney wanted him to focus on revenge. Right. He had, 

[00:33:01] Donna: he had people kind of coming at him from different directions and he made his choices.

And so I think it worked that she opposed some of those things. Another very significant, if not for everyone, for me, a very significant change was that the film adds this conflict in the Fremen between northern cultures that weren’t as religious, that were a little more, they didn’t go with all the different rituals they went through, weren’t as religious as the southern cultures.

And, and this plays out in a, in several ways. Um, the northerners, Doubt Stilgar’s constant pushing for Paul to show himself as the Lisan Al Gaib. And I, I thought it was interesting how even sitting around at the camp there, there were back and forth between them and he would say, look, it’s a sign and they would go, quit with the signs.

This is, don’t, no, that’s, you know, don’t, we don’t, that’s crazy. We don’t believe that. And so the Northerners basically came across as seeing the Southerners as just fanatics. Um, whereas the book shows all the Fremen accepting Paul’s besting of Jameis in ritual combat. The Northern Fremen were angry with Paul and, and like, tried to reject him and Jessica in the beginning.

[00:34:26] Josiah: Yeah, that, that was an interesting change. I think that I like it in the book as world building that Paul expects people to reject him for killing Jameis. But everyone’s like, No, that was ritual combat. You do have to take care of his kids and wife. But, but, yeah, yeah, that’s just part of our culture. We don’t, we’re not angry at you for that.

Um, but also, I think that the northerners doubt. I think it mainly played out as like Chani being the being a vocal person, but she kind of liked Paul while her friend, I want to say Shishakli. 

[00:35:10] Josiah: Shishakli, yeah. 

[00:35:10] Shishakli, she. I’m pretty sure is completely different from the person in the book who shares that name.

Completely, there’s no comparison. Shashakli is kind of a minor Fremen who lends Paul his hooks for the Worm ride in the book and so it was interesting that they took the name of a character In the book and just ascribed it to a person of a different gender Completely different character notable character, you know, she’s one of the yeah, there’s not many Like speaking characters in this movie.

There’s, 

[00:35:50] yeah, 

[00:35:51] Josiah: there’s a solid 12 people in this movie and she’s Shockley is one of them. I do think it was important to show that the Northerners weren’t as religious as the Southerners. And I don’t think it would have worked if it was just Shawnee. And so I think she Shockley was a good addition in that case, although I am confused.

Do you guys know why she stayed behind and Rebond’s people found her and, and of course they killed her right away, but do we know why she stayed behind or anything? No 

[00:36:18] Tim: clue. Okay. I think part of it is the change from 1965 when the book was written in 2024. The Western world kind of looked at the Middle East as one fundamentalist place.

Uh, and as we’ve moved into the 2020s, we realized that, uh, there’s a lot of different monolith. Yeah, it’s not a monolithic religion or a monolithic thought process that there are lots of different views. And so I think this kind of played into. That was then when we didn’t realize this is now, and we’re a little more intelligent and understanding of what’s going on there.

That makes a lot of sense. I think that’s a good point. Yeah. 

[00:36:59] Rebekah: Another thing that changes a lot because of this whole, like, religious, like, difference and the, the conflict between the Northern and Southern tribes is that in the film, Once Paul kills Jameis in ritual combat, they, like, take Jameis body back, they take his water out, and they put it in the water reserves, which I’ll talk about in just a second.

But, in the book, his water’s actually given to Paul, as are his two sons and his wife, who had already lost another husband before Jameis to ritual combat to Jameis. And so, their religion in the book allows for her, who, I believe her name is Hara, or Hera. Hera is supposed to be Paul’s new something? Like, member of his house, basically.

And in the book, they never have a relationship, like, sexually or romantically, because he falls in love with Chani. But, um, Hera’s actually a fairly important character. serving his family. She’s the nurse to Aaliyah as she’s young. She’s like with Jessica. There’s all sorts of stuff going on. So in addition to the fact that Hera is not in the movie, which I really actually wanted to see, I also thought it was interesting, uh, that when they introduced the reserves, similar to the 1984 film, I feel like they didn’t give it a lot of like explanation or weight.

So the backstory to that, just as somebody, if you’re like me, that likes to know this kind of stuff from the books, uh, leet Kinds, who in the 21 film was a female, uh, she was a plantologist or whatever they called her in the film. The judge of the change in the ni the judge of the change. 

[00:38:36] Josiah: I think she was also a plantologist.

[00:38:37] Rebekah: Um, yeah. And so in the 1984 film and in the book, leet Kinds was a, a male, but also in the same position. Uh, he. was the son, or she, was the daughter of a planetologist as well. And Liet Kynes father had devised the plan, according to the book, for the Fremen to collect all of this water in their thousand of wa thousand water reserves.

The reason that they controlled their water use so specifically was because they were saving all of this water in order to reshape the face of the planet Arrakis, and to make it a place that wasn’t a desert anymore. In the movie, I feel like they just, like, introduce the water and they say like something about making Arrakis different, but I feel like it was very skated over.

In the book it’s like there was this plan that had been going on for many decades. Felt very much less weighty to me. Uh, in the 24 film, the way that they, like, introduced the water. 

[00:39:35] Josiah: Yeah, I think that you talking about Liet Kynes father’s water plan makes me think multiple times in this film, part of the prophecy, part of the Lisan al Gaib is that Paul will lead the Fremen to a green paradise.

With no mention of how on earth are you gonna terraform a planet? I guess you’ll figure out the science fiction gobbledygook later, but nevertheless It was a big part of the prophecy that I feel like Paul has no stated plan of how to achieve it Yeah Well, you know that the film cuts the subplot of Gurney being suspicious of Jessica as the traitor.

In the book Gurney attempts to kill her and to avenge Duke Leto’s death being stopped by Paul just in time they cut that completely from the movie which I think made sense in the context of the movie but I do think it was a really cool plot point in the book that added a little bit of I wish it amounted to more in the book, because it was, uh, it was the Baron, I think it was Peter Vries, who’s Mentat, who planted the seeds for Gurney Halleck to think that Jessica was the traitor.

[00:40:51] Josiah: Right, it all came through the Harkonnens. 

[00:40:53] Josiah: Exactly. So, you, you cut that from the movie, and I thought it was unfortunate, but The movie was almost three hours long, and honestly, honestly, the Battle of Arrakeen, Duke Leto’s death, it being two different movies, it’s three years apart. And so it’s hard to directly follow up on things that happened three years ago, from an audience perspective, whereas in a book, it’s all the same book.

Right. So, I think you can do that sort of thing more easily. Also, I wanted to mention, the movie shows Fade Rautha. Going through the hand in the box and the gum. What was that? And the gaja bar experience. I was so confused. What in the world was that? That is not in the book. That was a very strange, I’m like strange.

I’m sitting strange detour. I’m, what the 

[00:41:41] Donna: heck? And then show the box. But you don’t see the rest of it. You don’t see if he goes through it. Yeah. 

[00:41:47] Josiah: But she talks about it and in the next scene she says, yeah, he passed or something like that. I’m like, is he the ot? Cataract . 

[00:41:55] Donna: Okay. And if he passed. He is a total mad, psychotic dude, show it, show, show his hand in that box as a comparison to what Paul went through 

[00:42:06] Josiah: or something.

That’s actually a good, I didn’t think about that. She said he 

[00:42:09] Tim: loves pain. 

[00:42:10] Josiah: Yeah, so I liked that, that it showed the difference of how he passed the test, is that he loved pain as opposed to Paul, who I guess in a very esoteric way, uh, Paul was able to Endure He, he endured the pain because he knew that the Goem Jabar was at his neck and, and his brain was special, is a Kwisatz Haderach special brain that is able to endure pain because he, he is able to see the full picture and not just act in the moment.

He’s not a masochist. He’s not a masochist. But Fade Rautha also passing the Goem Jabar experiment, but because he loves pain, I was like, okay, movie, that’s crazy. Go for it, but tell me, like, what does it mean? Can you 

[00:42:59] Rebekah: please explain more? Okay, I think that it was very interesting that when Fade Rotha was being pursued by Lady Fenring, who was also in the book, like, I think it’s also interesting the way that they cut Her husband from the book in the movies, like Count Fenring is an important character in the book.

I thought it was interesting that Count Fenring was cut because part of what made it really significant that Margot Fenring as Lady Fenring, um, has a child developing with, uh, 

[00:43:35] Rebekah: that her husband, Count Fenring. is basically an unintentional eunuch Benny Jezret man, like that they were trying to make the Kwisatz Haderach.

He was born a eunuch. And so I think it’s interesting that like, I don’t know, I just thought all of that was an interesting connection. Totally a hundred percent understand why it was changed. 

[00:43:57] Tim: Yeah. Apparently the, the actor that was going to play the part actually did film scenes, but they decided to cut those out.

I thought that’s that part of the storyline with, Lighty, Finring, and And Maid Ralpha was, was strange and the, all of that was in my, in my mind is kind of an unnecessary thing unless they’re planning to change something else in a part three. Yeah. 

[00:44:25] Donna: What, what, what, what? Fade’s gone. 

[00:44:28] Tim: But his child is not. 

[00:44:31] Donna: His child is not.

Who would have a child with that mad guy? 

[00:44:34] Tim: How could you look at him while you’re reading? Lady 

[00:44:36] Rebekah: Fenring’s 

[00:44:37] Donna: pregnant! She’s already having a child! No, no, I know it is that way. I’m saying, how could you even think about that awful eyebrow? No eyebrow. Just that big brow bone. 

[00:44:48] Josiah: Well, I remember we had to never be able to watch Elvis.

[00:44:55] Rebekah: I also thought, Like, I hope that that becomes an important plot point, because if I’m being honest, the actress who played Margot Benring and the actress who played Princess Irulan, to me, look very similar, and so I literally, especially with all this stuff covering their faces a lot of the time, I literally thought it was Or it was Princess Irulan, and I’m like, what is happening?

And then I realized it wasn’t, and I just, I got a little confused. Um, and so I, I hope that that comes a little more to bear, because in the context of everything else, it felt a little out of place to me. Yeah. 

[00:45:35] Josiah: The part about Lady Fenring seducing Feydraltha, I thought it contributed well to the Bene Gesserit’s, the Bene Gesserit’s.

interfering in the great houses. I do think it’s a set up without a payoff, which is a problem, but I do think it is an interesting piece of world building that furthers. An interesting piece of world building that furthers the Bene Gesserit world building and similar to the, you know, because the Bene Gesserits are, are interfering with the bloodlines and everything.

I also wanted to mention that the reveal of Atreides and Harkonnen bloodlines already being combined. Because Jessica is a child to Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. It’s a very late reveal in the film. In the book, Paul learns of Jessica’s parentage shortly after the death of Duke Leto. Before they connect with the Fremen.

Because he has that Spice Vision. But in the movie, It is the water of life that opens his eye to it. And then Jessica says, Yeah, I didn’t know either until I took the water of life. So I thought that that was fine. I thought that that made sense. And they and he literally instead of in the book where it’s like, yeah, it’s just something that happened, whatever.

In the movie, they make it. A part of his motivation to say, oh, I’m part harkening. Okay, I’m gonna start dealing with problems like kind of more like a harkening would. 

[00:47:09] Rebekah: I also thought similarly to that, I really liked the way that they did this in the film better because if I’m being honest in the book, he like, Paul gets so mad at Jessica.

Because does he think, does he know that she knew? Like, I don’t remember if she remember, he thinks she knew, like knew her parentage or whatever, but like Paul is super mad at Jessica. He has this prescience that like she is his enemy or something, but then it doesn’t really affect the way that he treats her.

I don’t know. The whole thing felt really weird to me in the book. Like I didn’t. follow motivation wise what was going on. Whereas in the movie, it’s like he and his mom are connected and committed to each other, but they kind of grow apart as time goes on. And part of why they grow apart is that Jessica, like becomes, she’s like trying to like push the whole profit thing, even before he is comfortable with her doing so.

And I thought that it was a little more, it was a lot more actually effective in the movie that like, that’s how they grew apart. He gave it like It felt like it made sense versus the book did not make sense to me. 

[00:48:14] Josiah: I can see that. 

[00:48:15] Rebekah: Okay, so another Harkonnen related thing that we noticed changed was that Beast, Glossu Rebon, was killed by Gurney in the 2024 film and it was like during the whole takeover scene where Paul is coming back into um, Arakeen.

And so, In the book, he’s killed and you know that he’s killed and it’s part of like Paul’s final plot, but it’s not really stated explicitly where he’s killed, by whom, why, etc. Or where, how. It’s just 

[00:48:44] the Fremen. Right, 

[00:48:45] Rebekah: it’s just the Fremen kind of in general. Um, I liked that, that Beast was more present through the end of the plot of the movie.

I thought it was really good because he was an important character and in the book it just kind of felt like you find out part way through that. Um, the Baron had just kind of decided to set him up as a scapegoat, and then he just kind of, it, uh, it disappears, like he’s just not important anymore, but in the movie it felt very powerful that Gurney, like, gets to have revenge, which he’d been really wanting.

Yeah, 

[00:49:20] Tim: in the, in the book he’s upset with Paul because he doesn’t get that payoff. And so I thought it was a good change to give him that opportunity to have the payoff. Um, another change was the, the, the spacing guild. They are, they’re such a vital part of the final scenes in the book. Uh, because of their influence, um, it’s, Paul is able to secure the office of emperor because he said, you know, we’ll do the water of life over, um, One of those fields and I can’t remember what they’re called now, um, where the spice could explode, uh, and it will kill all the, all the worms and, and there will be no more spice.

So this spacing guild stops all of the other houses from being there. They send them back. That’s part of the book. But in the film. They totally cut that part of the 

[00:50:13] Josiah: plot. 

[00:50:14] Rebekah: I thought that was so weird. 

[00:50:15] Josiah: I think that Frank Herbert made mistakes in writing the book. 

[00:50:23] Josiah: How many mistakes? And one of 

[00:50:25] Josiah: them is that the Spacing Guild is called the Spacing Guild.

And their number one motivation is spice. Yes, you can’t do that. It’s confusing. Make it the Spicing Guild or the Interstellar Guild. Something completely different. And along that line, Rebecca, I whatever everyone, but Rebecca, you were just talking about Bistro Ban at Bistro Bong. And I do not think that Beast Reborn and Fade Rautha should both exist, or I have never seen an adaptation, and it wasn’t in the original book, that both of them were narratively necessary, and, yeah, in the film.

It’s nice that Gurney got that revenge, and then you also have Fade Rautha for Timothee Shalamay to fight at the end, but narratively speaking, other than so that you get two different fights and deaths, I don’t see how that would work. They were proven to be narratively necessary. Especially when Bistro Bon was so quickly dispatched in the film.

Why wasn’t there more of a hand fight with Gurney? 

[00:51:40] Rebekah: Probably just so that it wouldn’t take away from his fight, from Paul’s fight with Faye de Rotha. 

[00:51:46] Tim: I think narratively speaking, the two were actually Uh, Baron Harkonnen’s plan within a plan. He had two opportunities. He was willing for Rabban to be set up as a scapegoat so that Feyd Rotha, who is more intelligent and cunning, would then become his heir.

[00:52:09] Rebekah: I’m grateful that the Spacing Guild Was cut in the way, I don’t, I thought it was weird that they were cut. I’m grateful that they were not portrayed the same as in the 1984 film. Okay, that was creepy. 

[00:52:22] Josiah: Which was weird and gross and disturbing. Yes. So, yeah. 

[00:52:27] Josiah: Definitely. Oh, and while we’re on it, just so I mention, The Baron’s death also a little underwhelming.

I liked that Paul got to do it instead of Aaliyah. I think that I liked that, but it was just one stab. Ah, you killed my father. And then we have another 45 minutes of movie. 

[00:52:47] Rebekah: That actually was one of my favorite things from the 1984 film was the way that they killed the Baron. 

[00:52:53] Tim: Hadn’t he already been Um, uh, incapacitated, incapacitated by the emperor.

Yeah, so that’s a, that’s a little different as well. Um, another thing that’s different in the book, the battle is over and the, how the great houses at least, you know, superficially accept that Paul is going to be emperor. Uh, but at the end of the 2024 film, the Great Houses have still not accepted him, his ascension as Emperor with this marriage.

And so there’s that conflict. That thing, as well as a couple of the other things that we’ve talked about so far, seem to 

[00:53:35] Rebekah: Yeah. I think that, that was, I was actually confused enough at the end of the film last night that I came home and read the last, I think two chapters of the book because I was like, wait, What happens and they act they do the the great houses their ships are above Arrakis And they leave.

We watched it on Thursday 

[00:53:55] Tim: night, and on Friday morning, I did the same thing. I went back and listened to the last four, 

[00:54:01] Josiah: three or four chapters. So I saw this movie with my best friend. He is currently reading Dune 7, so he’s far into the future. And he said one of the things the movie did a great job of was, in the book series, there I had, he had no idea, he never learned, he never understood what the jihad was.

What was the holy war that Paul was trying, was trying to avert and then trying to cause? I have no idea what exactly Frank Herbert was meaning, but in the movie, You end with the beginning of the Holy War. 

[00:54:37] Rebekah: Yeah, I, so that, when I came and read it when I got home and discovered in the book the Spacing Guild’s presence is, as you said, dad, like, it’s how Paul is able to secure the office of emperor and that the great houses leave because the spacing guild basically says, yes, you can have all of the emperor’s chum contracts and like, please just don’t destroy the spice.

Cause they need the spice. They need the spice. But they finish that up and the book ends with Jessica and Chani discussing the spoils of war that they’ll get and like they’re talking about like even Jessica says something about like what she wants. I don’t know and Jessica ends the book by assuring Chani that although the two of them are both concubines, two men of power, history will remember them as the real wives.

[00:55:28] Josiah: Hilarious. Whereas in the movie, Yeah, it was 

[00:55:31] Rebekah: so interesting. Like, what a weird way to end. Is that what 

[00:55:33] Josiah: the book is about? 

[00:55:34] Rebekah: Well, so, whereas in the 2024 film, ending, it definitely leaves you with, oh, there’s gonna be a third movie. Because it ends with, okay, there’s a, there’s a holy war coming, all of the great houses refuse to accept Paul, because you take out the space and guild, and like, the emperor kisses the ring, but it, you know, it’s not completely settled.

It’s settled that he’s now in charge and you also, obviously as Chani’s character changes so much, you have her, you know, going on a worm and leaving. And so you create this entirely new conflict. Um, I am so interested to see what happens with it because Denny has said, we’re not officially planning an additional movie until I, until we see how this movie does.

So it’s possible that Dune Part Two is the end of Dune. Of his Dune series. However, I doubt it. Yeah, but I’m just saying like, I think that it’s interesting that he did not wrap it at all. It feels like, oh, it’s gonna continue. Period. That is the only option. So, 

[00:56:35] Donna: in an article in February, he said I’ve always thought of it as three movies.

It was always going to be three for me, but I can’t, I couldn’t really make that a thing because Warner Brothers has to sign off on it. And so four days after the opening in 2021, four days into the opening weekend of the opening weekend, Warner Brothers goes, Oh, okay, we’re doing part two. I thought they were waiting 

[00:57:06] Rebekah: to see what happened.

We’ve got a couple of setting and characterization changes, and then can talk about some of the fun stuff we learned about, uh, the making of the movie. 

[00:57:16] Josiah: Yeah, I think this is a good change in my opinion, but I don’t know how you guys will feel about Siege Tabor. Tabr, the primary settlement of the Northern Fremen, led by Stilgar, it was destroyed by Bisraban.

Oh my gosh, yes. In 24 Hours, Dune Part 2. That took me 

[00:57:35] Rebekah: totally by surprise. 

[00:57:37] Josiah: In the book, the Harkonnens wreak havoc on the planet, but, uh, Sietch Tabor is never fully destroyed like that. And so, I do think it’s raided. What really stuck the landing for me, was that in the movie water goes into that pit of water, and Stilgar explains the world building of water.

And although the water doesn’t go to Paul, which was a cool piece of worldbuilding in the book, you establish this beautiful pit of water that is filling up and it’s, it’s sacred, it’s a sacred pool and stuff like that. And so just that one second clip, when Siege Tabor was being destroyed, of the pool, Rocks falling into it in the pool, the sacred water being disturbed and destroyed.

I was like, Oh no, that matters to the Fremen more than I probably would have if it was just like, Oh yeah, that’s just their home. You know, they established that ritualistic setting that was religiously important to them. It was really effective for me. 

[00:58:48] Rebekah: I thought it was very powerful. It just completely threw me off.

[00:58:52] Donna: So, um, I will go on and open up our characterizations section. Baron Vladimir Harkonnen was portrayed in the film as straight ish, where he would gleefully cut up females, which was, that was brutal. But then he kissed his nephew. Beast looked like so 

[00:59:12] Rebekah: shocked. I thought that was so funny. Sorry. When, when Beast Robon was standing outside of the chamber and you hear the screaming and the thuds and stuff, like before you realize that, The baron had killed these women.

Like, his face was like, what is happening? And I’m like, dude, you grew up with this guy. Isn’t this like normal to you? Anyway, sorry. I just thought that was a weird moment. In 

[00:59:32] Donna: the book, he practiced. Heteroste, you guys remind me what that is. 

[00:59:37] Tim: That’s preying on children, right? 

[00:59:38] Rebekah: Specifically children of your same gender 

[00:59:41] Donna: as 

[00:59:41] Rebekah: well.

[00:59:42] Donna: So the reason I said Ancient 

[00:59:44] Josiah: Greek practice. 

[00:59:45] Donna: So when we get to this thing, and he’s just in there slaughtering women, and, and they’re all standing around whatever, like they have to be there. It was very, it was a shocking to just show ways that you could show their madness without going to such a brutal extent.

[01:00:04] Rebekah: He really drove home the grossness 

[01:00:07] Josiah: of the whole Harkonnen family. Yeah, he looked gross in the 1984 film. Lord, stop that. Couldn’t 

[01:00:11] Josiah: even look at him. Puss man. Puss man? Okay. Blah, blah, blah. Back to the focus here. 

[01:00:21] Rebekah: Uh, another major character change that I thought was interesting, and I, I understand it, I don’t know if I like it, is that the book still gar.

He’s a friend to Paul. He’s a mentor to him. And even when Paul kind of realizes that he’s going to have to. overtake, I don’t know if that’s the right word, but overtake Stilgar in some way, like they genuinely like cared for each other and Stilgar seemed more like a mentor figure. At the end of the book becomes like a worshipper, which I think is something that maybe Chani or one of the ladies at the end of the book kind of notes and they’re like, Oh, I don’t know how I feel about that.

In the movie, Stilgar basically is a devout follower and worships Paul in one way or another. Right after he enters Siege Tiber, which I think it’s, I thought, I thought it was a weird choice. Um, in some ways, like I, I think I understand it because it’s a little easier to make a character like that one note in a film so that the audience understands like who this person is, why they matter, and so on and so forth.

But in the, in the book, it just felt like he was a much more well developed character in the movie. He just kind of ended up seeming like, like a crazy person, a little bit like, like his zealotry was a little over the top for me to take him seriously as like a serious leader. 

[01:01:39] Tim: The whole concept to me of the, um, the Messiah complex, the, the worshiping of Paul and all of that, uh, that’s.

Honestly, this whole, the book and the films are a little uncomfortable to me in, in those things. There’s, there’s something very sad about it. One of the things that we didn’t mention, and I won’t take a whole lot of time on it, but the film seemed to push the thought that Jessica, made sure that everyone was thinking of Paul as this, the one, he was this messiah character, and she said we would, we would begin to prey on the weakest minds first, and we would spread this so that everybody saw him that way.

I felt like it, in the book, that was more a natural response that they had to the things that he did as opposed to something that she was Maneuvering behind, behind the 

[01:02:41] Rebekah: A manipulated response? I get that. The religion part was definitely interesting in terms of like, it’s so, it’s a little unclear, is the only thing that created their whole belief system, a lie from the Bene Gesserit to further their own political practices.

[01:03:01] Donna: This was just an aesthetic thing. When Jessica, when she drank the juice and whatever, all the stuff that happened. They realize she’s pregnant. Blah, blah, blah. They go through all that. Then you, next time you see her, she’s got writing all over her face. Man, that bugged me. 

[01:03:15] Rebekah: Oh my gosh, I loved it. I thought it was such a powerful, like It was done well.

I’m not gonna It made her transition into the person that they were trying to make her be. I thought the visual of it was so good. 

[01:03:27] Donna: It’s also never mentioned that Chani’s mother or father in the book was Liet Kynes. who died in the 2021 film. They don’t, they don’t bring that, they don’t bring that connection up.

[01:03:39] Rebekah: Um, I think that they took that out of canon that like, she is Leah Kynes daughter, in my opinion, based on everything that we’ve seen. I think they would have mentioned it if it was going to happen. 

[01:03:49] Donna: Yeah. And you know what? I think that was interesting too. So that, so you’re saying that was some forethought into, to a next movie and all that.

[01:03:57] Rebekah:

[01:03:57] Donna: thought 

[01:03:57] Rebekah: they were going to mention it in the second film. Oh. Because it wasn’t mentioned in the first film and it came up in the book. So now that that has happened, I think that they’re just going to not make her daughter of that person because Liet Kynes was not in any way mentioned or featured.

Whereas like Jameis, you had a flashback and like Aaliyah, you had a flash forward. Like you see little things about people that I think they’re going to continue to weave in maybe. Um, but in terms of Liet Kynes, I don’t, I just think that they just cut that completely. Um, another person, and this kind of, this goes back to something I mentioned in the last episode.

I thought that Thufir Hawat’s plotline would be featured in this film. And again, for time purposes, I get why it wasn’t. But to remind you, if you haven’t seen the first one in a little while, or didn’t listen to our last episode, for some reason, um, Thufir Hawat was Duke Leto’s mentat, and in the book, there’s this, like, complex plot that after Duke Leto’s killed, he ends up with the Harkonnens.

I don’t remember all of the exact specifics, which are not important. But he ends up with the Harkonnens, and Thufir Hawat ends up, like, being poisoned, and they tell him, like, they have the antidote, and they have to keep giving it to him, so if he doesn’t do what they say, they’ll stop giving it, and he’ll die.

And so, there’s even, like, at the end of the book, he comes back into it, and, like, kind of, I think there’s a scene where he says something about Paul maybe killing him for his, um, For his treachery or something. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, but he, he ends up, Paul doesn’t kill him. He’s, you know, he’s gracious or whatever, but Thufir Hawat was not brought back into the film at all, and again, I think that the fact that he was never shown in On screen in any way means he’s not going to come back up, even in a third film.

[01:05:49] Tim: Well, at the end of, at the end of the book, he, he died because, uh, the baron, the baron gave him, in the book, the baron set him up to kill Paul, but instead he takes the needle that he has in his hand. to kill Paul, and he stabs himself and dies in the book. 

[01:06:08] Rebekah: Yeah, because they weren’t going to continue to give him the antidote if he didn’t do it.

And they 

[01:06:12] Tim: didn’t tell him about the poison. He discovered it and knew that he was going to die anyway, because they would stop giving him the antidote. 

[01:06:22] Josiah: And did you mention it was confirmed that Thufir Hawat filmed scenes for the part two? 

[01:06:30] Rebekah: So, IMDb says Denny Villa’s decision to cut through fierce scenes.

I let the shift, blah, blah, blah. Steven McKinley Henderson’s filmed scenes with Fade raha were ultimately left out, so it does say like he did film scenes. This is from IMTV. Okay, 

[01:06:47] Donna: so we’re gonna look at some trivia. Book rating was 4.3 out of five. The Rotten Tomatoes rating for, again, we’re at Dune two now is 95%, which is fresh.

Production cost, which we know is static now because it’s out, 190 million. The opening weekend their projections I read a couple of different things on this their projections Initially, a few in the last few months as they began to market heavily were like 70 to 75 million, but their hope or their real thought looking at everything together was that they’re going to get up to maybe 85 or 86 million.

The only other piece of trivia I had down there was just that the movie rating was PG 13 and going back to a comment I made earlier about the love scene, the one significant love scene with Paul and Chani. I felt like there were several areas of the movie, not just that scene, where he could have, with just a little bit of tweaking, been securely into R rating, and so I felt like some of the, some of the anger, some of the, the violence scenes, and so I, I appreciated the fact that he dialed back enough, it’s still going to be disturbing to some people, to a lot of people, regardless of, of what your, your tolerances are for, for those things.

in film. Um, but I felt like he handled them well so that you felt the emotion you were supposed to feel, but it didn’t go over some edge that was, that’s really unnecessary in a, in a lot of situations. Yeah. Yeah. 

[01:08:32] Rebekah: All right. Well, let’s talk about some of the interesting things that we found, preferably not spending too much time on each of them, but there were a lot of really fascinating things you found that happened during filming and.

[01:08:44] Josiah: We’re so excited. Denny Villeneuve told the LA times in February that a third Dune was always part of his plan for the film series. And I just think, I just wanted to mention, I think it’s funny that he didn’t really mention that until the second film was being released. 

[01:09:01] Rebekah: Yeah, I mean, I get that. Also, I read that the possibility is that it will come out sometime between 2028 and 2030, which is why I’m very glad that I didn’t say, Hey, why don’t we cover Dune after the third movie?

Cause you know, that’s pretty far in the future. I did get confused because they delayed part two’s release. Um, I had Dune on our schedule for last fall and we started getting close to it. And I thought, wait. That doesn’t, that doesn’t sound right, and I looked it up and the release date was moved from November 3rd, um, settled on eventually to March 1st, 2024.

Yeah. But it was supposed to come out last November originally, so. 

[01:09:41] Tim: Stellan SkarsgÃ¥rd’s body makeup? for the Baron Harkonnen. Took eight hours to put on and two to take off every day. That’s ten hours just doing makeup. It’s reported that because of all that he didn’t drink all through the days and he took Imodium to keep from going to the bathroom when he was filming.

So that’s dedication and a little crazy. 

[01:10:10] Donna: It really is. So Austin Butler, who played Faye Drotha, said he toned down his method acting for playing Faye. And this is a quote from him. I’ve definitely in the past, like with Elvis in 2022, explored living within that world for three years. And that being the only thing I think about day and night.

In other words, he, he, he wanted to embody what Elvis lived and tried to put himself in that place. With Fade, back to the quote, I knew that that would be unhealthy for my family and friends, and I almost laughed, I was reading that going, yeah, yeah, it might be. Yeah, yeah. So I made a conscious decision to have a boundary.

It allowed for more freedom between action and cut. Because I knew I was going to protect everybody else out of the context of what we were doing. That’s not to say it doesn’t bleed into your life, but I knew that I wasn’t going to do anything dangerous outside of that boundary and in a way that allowed me to go deeper.

So that’s the end of his quote, and then Denny said, In another quote, when the camera was on, it was like you were possessed. When the camera was off, you were still maybe 25 or 30 percent fade, which is crazy to me. Just enough to still be present and focus, but removed enough that you didn’t kill anybody on set.

[01:11:40] Tim: I find, I find this fascinating, especially considering one of the films we saw the trailer for just before Dune, which stars, one of the stars is Austin Butler. Uh, they’re a motorcycle gang that, what’s a motorcycle club to start with, that he becomes a part of. It’s based on a true story. And he is, uh, the other, uh, primary actor and it is the one that played.

Um, Venom, uh, 

[01:12:12] Donna: Oh, Tom Hardy. 

[01:12:13] Tim: Yeah, Tom Hardy, and It’s a motorcycle gang that begins to get into selling drugs and, uh, being the heavy for lots of other people because they realize that they can walk over whoever they want to and so it’s a very violent thing. I mentioned to her, to your mom, this was one of those movies that I looked at and said, there’s nothing about that movie that causes me to want to see it.

Um, but Austin Butler is one of the characters and I thought if this is the You mean 

[01:12:42] Rebekah: the bike riders? It 

[01:12:43] Tim: could be. If this is the way that he acts, here’s another role that isn’t a lot different than Fade, Rautha, in the fact that he has to be psychotic. 

[01:12:55] Josiah: Yeah, you see, uh, Jared Leto, who played Joker, He went method and he was sending like dead animals to his fellow actors.

They really appreciated that. I’m 

[01:13:07] Josiah: sure. Oh my gosh. 

[01:13:11] There are actually going to be no deleted scenes released for either Dune film. Director Villeneuve is quoted saying, I am a strong believer that when it’s not in the movie, it’s dead. I kill darlings and it’s painful for me. Sometimes I remove shots and I say, I can’t believe I’m cutting this.

When it’s dead, it’s dead, and it’s dead for a reason. And in those deleted scenes, there are some sources that say Stephen McKinley Henderson filmed scenes reprising his role as Thufir Hawat, the fella who’s the mentat in the first movie. Tim Blake Nelson filmed scenes as an undisclosed character. The name might not sound as familiar as his face looks, but I think you’d recognize his face.

Many speculate that Tim Blake Nelson was Count Fenring. 

[01:14:00] Donna: Oh, 

[01:14:01] Josiah: Lady Fenring’s husband. But scenes featuring both those actors were not in the final film. However, they did get a special thanks credit inserted by Villeneuve. 

[01:14:12] Donna: Well, the last little bit of trivia before we wrap up our podcast, Uh, the Dune 2 was filmed in multiple locations, they used Jordan because of the rocky terrain, and something I didn’t really know, but there aren’t really any sweeping dunes in Jordan like the sand dunes.

In the opposite, in Abu Dhabi, which has these beautiful sweeping sand dunes, they don’t have as much rocky terrain, so they, they had a, you know, have another location. So, um, yeah. And on a 10 story high sand dune, they built a smuggler’s harvester. So when the scene is going inside the harvester, we are viewing from the cockpit the real sand dune that’s out there.

And I thought that was flippin awesome. 

[01:15:01] Rebekah: So mom had a fun idea for a minigame that’s specifically just for 

[01:15:05] Donna: Josiah. 

[01:15:06] Rebekah: Mom, 

[01:15:06] Donna: you want to give him your minigame? So I know he doesn’t cheat. So I, I trust that he hasn’t. Um, in the cast of Dune II, there are two Oscar winners. And five Oscar nominees. Can you name them all?

[01:15:21] Josiah: Mm hmm. Okay. I think Florence Pugh is an Oscar winner. 

[01:15:25] Donna: She is not an Oscar winner. 

[01:15:27] Josiah: Wow, is she an Oscar nominee? 

[01:15:30] Donna: She is. 

[01:15:31] Josiah: Gotcha. For little women, probably. What about Christopher Walken? 

[01:15:35] Donna: Yes. Uh, he is most definitely an Oscar winner, yes. 

[01:15:38] Josiah: Is it Josh Brolin? He’s 

[01:15:39] Donna: not a winner. 

[01:15:41] Josiah: OK, he’s a nominee. Um, Javier Bardem.

Yeah. And then the nominees are Josh Brolin and Florence Pugh. 

[01:15:53] Donna: Oh, 

[01:15:54] Josiah: gosh. Has Rebecca Fergus? No, no, Timothee Chalamet has been nominated. Yes. Oh, Austin Butler probably has a nom from Elvis. 

[01:16:03] Donna: You have one more and I’ll tell you gender female. 

[01:16:06] Josiah: Oh, is it the Reverend mother that we haven’t seen that we don’t really know what she looks like?

[01:16:12] Donna: Uh, yes. Charlotte. Wow. 

[01:16:13] Josiah: Okay. 

[01:16:16] Rebekah: So I guess that it’s time for us to give our final verdict as the predictable chick of the bunch. Um, I’ll go first. And be unpredictable! Woo! Um, the book was so I think I, okay, so for our last one, I think I said that Dune Part One, like, the book and movie were about the same for me because, like, I liked the context of the book but I really, really enjoyed the movie, et cetera, et cetera.

I had the hardest time finishing this book. Josiah’s pointed out was really difficult for me. Mm. It’s like being in a D& D campaign where the person running the game is only concerned about building a world that they find really interesting and odd and different without there being a lot of, like, care for the actual story.

I know the story was interesting, but I really struggled to connect with the characters because I didn’t understand their motivations, they didn’t feel human, and the longer it went on, the more I even didn’t like Paul, and I was like, I don’t know if there’s anybody I like. There was no character to be, like, rooting for.

Whereas in the films, I think that with Dune Part 2, Denny Villeneuve has really done a good job of making me believe in Paul. I believed his, like, struggles and all of the, like, tension within himself. I ended up really liking Zendaya’s character. Um, I started to dislike Jessica, like, a lot. And so I felt like there was somebody for me to root against.

I, I felt like the characters of the Harkonnen house were really compelling and, you know, anyway, so I didn’t love every single thing about it. There’s a few things that I preferred the book, you know, plot or whatever to the film, but overall, I think that the movies. are better. I think that this book is a classic.

I think it’s really interesting and nerdy and I might even read it again, but I think that it, it was a struggle for me to finish the books and I didn’t get tired during the movies. I was just interested in what was happening. I was like engaged the whole time. 

[01:18:22] Josiah: At what point does it become not unpredictable that you think the movie is better?

[01:18:29] Rebekah: I’m trying to hang on to the vestiges of who I once was. Okay, Josiah, stop trying to take this from me. 

[01:18:34] Josiah: Well, I also think the movie is better. I think that there were a lot more changes in the second part than there were in the first part. The first part is pretty close to a faithful adaptation, but the second part Really starts to change a lot of stuff.

And I think a lot of it’s for the better. I think the Chani characterization is a lot better. I kind of miss the timeline skip so that Chani can have a child so that Jessica’s baby Aaliyah can be born. But I think I also feel like everything happening within the span of under eight months. makes the story feel a little smaller for me, a little less grand.

But overall, most of the changes in the movie served to make the film more iconic visually, and more humanizing, interesting in so many different ways. And you don’t really lose much of the world building, you know, you lose What’s a chome contract, but was that really the best part of the book knowing what a chome contract was?

So I think Denny Villeneuve knew what he was doing and what to cut and he was it was pretty impressive How what he added and how it served the film there were there were probably more misses than in the first movie in my opinion. Yeah, but I think there were a lot more home runs in the second part. So it, it kind of runs the whole gamut, but I think overall it turns out to be not only better than the second half of the novel, really kind of the last third of the novel, but also I think it’s superior to the first film.

[01:20:27] Donna: I don’t know that I have always felt this way. Maybe I have, and I just never. I identified it. I’m very driven by how something evokes emotion. Even a story that maybe is not good. The movie experience, I would put this almost above the first one. I think they’re pretty even for me, but the sound editing in this movie and the visual effects in this movie were so overwhelming to me.

The, the start, you’d have the silences, the loud booming shock value of the deny moment were so large, it shook. And I think it would be amazing to see an IMAX. I don’t really think that about everything. So I was definitely more impressed with the movie. Um, I felt like the cast worked well together. I felt like their, their camaraderie, their differences, their conflicts, I thought all of it was believable.

I didn’t have trouble with the suspension of disbelief here. I felt like I was immersed in that world. And so for me, I’m going to definitely give the nod to the movie. 

[01:21:44] Tim: I was not a huge fan of the book. It does have a lot more detail, but I liked the movies, both of the movies better. There are a lot of things that, that I don’t care for about the movie, but it has more to do with the plot of the book.

than the making of the movie. So for me, the movie was better. 

[01:22:04] Rebekah: There you have it, all of our little baby listeners. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed our episode, leave us a five star rating. It helps us a lot and it’s really encouraging. You can find us most places online at bookisbetterpod. And if you have feedback, questions, or ideas for future episodes, you can email bookisbetterpod at gmail.

com. Until then, thanks everybody. 

[01:22:28] Josiah: Bye bye! Molly 

[01:22:29] Rebekah: says bye! 

[01:22:31] Josiah: A good a good a bye bye! Rebecca really is the worst Haynes child. 

[01:22:41] Rebekah: I hate you. I’m not the worst Haynes child.

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