Looking forward to Dune: part two, but are you having trouble remembering certain character names? Not sure what differentiates a Kwisatz Haderach from a gom jabbar? We know that for sure Dune: part two isn’t going to help you. But we can!
Read on for a quick summary of Denis Villeneuve’s Duneand you are all set to go when you go to the cinema.
Image: Warner Bros.
The most important planet in Dune is Arrakis, ruled by the noble House Harkonnen in the realm of Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV (Christopher Walken). Arrakis is a phenomenally inhospitable desert world, whose inhabitants actively resist Imperial rule, but it is also the only source of the spice blend without which interstellar space travel is impossible.
While the spice flows, the Spacing Guild handles travel and trade, the noble houses manage their fiefs, the Emperor keeps the peace with his fanatical army, and the mysterious but ubiquitous Bene Gesserit order of mystical women facilitates political alliances and negotiations.
In Dune: part one, we met Duke Leto of House Atreides (Oscar Isaac) and his concubine, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson). Jessica would use her Bene Gesserit powers to father a daughter with Leto, as part of the organization’s secret, 10,000-year plan to eugenically produce a puppet messiah, the Kwisatz Haderach, and seize control of the Galaxy. Instead, she and Leto fell in love, and she chose to have a son, Paul (Timothée Chalamet).
The film’s story begins when Emperor Corrino takes the notoriously difficult task of mining spices on Arrakis from House Harkonnen and gives it to their mortal enemies, House Atreides. This gesture is a cover for the Emperor’s real plan, which is to secretly lend his mighty Sardaukar army to House Harkonnen so that they can kill the Duke and his family and crush House Atreides and take back Arrakis. Duke Leto has become so respected among his peers that his popularity has become a threat to the Imperial dynasty, but this way it will appear as if his line was ended through infighting, rather than by Imperial command.
The most of Dune: part one involved the Atreides and their followers, including swordsmen Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa) and Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin), who packed up their rainy home on the ocean planet and moved to Arrakis’ fortress capital, Arrakeen. Once there, they experience Arrakis’ unique environmental hazards (giants, mining machine-eating sandworms, sandstorms, and a general lack of water), and seek alliances with the Fremen natives, especially a tribal leader named Stilgar (Javier Bardem). Paul has always had psychic abilities, but when exposed to the surrounding herbs in the atmosphere of Arrakis, he experiences visions of a galactic holy war and a young Fremen woman.
Finally, House Harkonnen’s trap falls and Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård) sends his brutal cousin Glossu Rabban (Dave Bautista) to Arrakis with an Imperial Sardaukar army. The Atreides are unprepared and their troops are slaughtered. The only characters who seem to survive the massacre are Paul and Jessica, thanks to Duncan Idaho, who sacrifices his life for them.
They escape to the desert and contact Stilgar, who agrees to offer them his protection after Paul defeats one of his warriors in ritual combat – and because he believes Paul could be the Mahdi, the long-prophesied messiah of the Fremen (an idea that was planted in their culture centuries ago by the Bene Gesserit in support of their own goals). Stilgar’s niece, Chani (Zendaya), turns out to be the woman from Paul’s visions, and Jessica turns out to be pregnant with the late Leto’s second child.
There’s 2021 Dune ends abruptly. In the short term, Paul and Jessica must find their way among the Fremen. But if they can make contact with the wider galaxy, their story – of secret Imperial conspiracy with one noble house to wipe out another – could destroy Corrino’s rule and plunge the galaxy into civil war.
But thanks to Paul’s visions, he also knows that they are heading to a turning point in galactic history. Can Paul prevent the war in his dreams? Is he the Mahdi? Is he the Kwisatz Haderach? Is he just a young man in a position to leverage both millennial legends?
Those are the questions Dune: part two is able to answer.