Dune 2’s Fatal Flaw and Its Repercussions.

 by Thomas K

While the first Denis Villeneuve film stays mostly faithful to the original Frank Herbert novel, the sequel has received some adaptations. These changes, although seemingly minor, affected the whole ambience of the film, turning it from something with the potential to be an epic, to something that falls short, whilst still surpassing all expectations. Luckily, the rest of the film was very good so, although this change grated on me, it did not ruin the movie by any means. 

The change comes with how in the book, during Paul’s time in the desert, Lady Jessica gives birth to his sister who reaches two years of age by the time Paul becomes Emperor, whereas in the movie, Lady Jessica is pregnant at the beginning of the film and is still pregnant at the end of the film. This means that the whole story happened within less than nine months. This severely decreases the scale of the work as instead of it being a multi-year epic and comeback story, it’s a couple-month blip that makes it look like Paul’s time in the desert wasn’t that bad. It also severely decreases the emotional value of the ending, again, instead of there being years in between when the Barron kills Paul’s family and when Paul kills the Barron, it’s a few weeks. There’s no time for emotional turmoil as the situation seems to fix itself just as quickly as it was caused. In reality, the situation wouldn’t have had time to settle by that point and it’s because of this that there’s a lack of resolution and closure.

I do not fully know or understand why these changes were made. Perhaps it was to save time and be able to condense the sheer scale of the tale to a nice and short two and three-quarter hours. Perhaps it was to make the final scene more palatable for the modern audience as in the original novel, it is Paul’s two-year-old sister that kills the Barron. Perhaps it was something else that is beyond my comprehension. Whatever the reason, it made the ending of the first book significantly less impactful.

As a whole, I do not care when film adaptations vary from their written original since, after all, it is a different art form in which not everything is always possible. Likewise, I think it is trivial if a film about a historical character has inaccuracies as it is still a film and not a documentary. Upon Napleon’s release, there were criticisms that some of the figures that exchange dialogue in the film never actually met each other in real life. The point of a movie is entertainment, if one wishes to learn about Naploen one should watch a documentary on his topic. I do care when film adaptations either lessen the impact that the original material has through the changes that were made or impose new themes and morals not intended by the original maker of said material. In the case of Dune 2, I do not think that these changes were done maliciously, and perhaps its effects on the impact of the film were not noticed until after the fact. 

However, almost contradicting myself, I do think that people should be able to do what they want with art, no matter what the audience thinks of it. Any kind of development in any kind of art form always derives from someone breaking the rules and taking something well-known and disassembling it. A quasi-rebellion in search of new rules to follow. Then the cycle repeats. Although the ending to Dune 2 was less impactful than the ending to the original novel, the movie was still incredibly good, which just goes to show that something is always as good as the bit the audience remembers most.