Prescient Memories OR STAR WARS FOR ADULTS
The long-awaited trailer for Denis Villeneuve’s much-anticipated attempted adaptation of the sci-fi epic novel Dune, has finally dropped. Reading that sentence took almost as long as the development hell in which Frank Herbert’s best-selling, generation-spanning, mind-expanding series has spent.
And. It. Looks. Fucking. Great.
Which is to say, if you’ve read Dune, if you love Dune, if you have an unhealthy, indefensible connection to Lynch’s attempt and gave the TV mini-series a real try, this looks undeniably like the actual thing you imagined it could be. The unfilmable, filmed. The depth of the cast is a once-in-a-generation miracle. And now, perhaps prematurely, but in the era of hot takes getting incandescent, here’s mine:
this shit is better, bigger, bolder and smarter than anything Star Wars has done.
Not just the new trilogy, and certainly the prequels but even the holy trilogy. The unassailable originals. Dune kicks sand in all of their spiceless eyes. Here is the epic, cosmic story that we have been waiting to adore and worship at the feet of. Only to have it slap that adulation back in our funny faces, sternly reminding us that messiahs are merely the products of prophecies meticulously crafted by insidious groups looking to profit off the “coming of The One.”
Dune is the tale of the Arrival of the Chosen One..but made for grown-ups. Adults with the cognitive ability to move beyond Rebel black and Imperial white depictions of morality, who have the wherewithal to not shy away from tales, not so dissimilar to our own reality, that refuse to conform to fairy tale satisfactions and giant explosions paradoxically causing both closure and liberation. Throughout humanity’s history the destruction of any Empire was never the end of the story. And it never, ever made things demonstrably better for the people fleeing its shattered columns.
Dune has the temerity to ask its audience to interrogate, embrace and accept the notion that Good and Bad are fluid constructs depending on who is controlling the press releases. And even the righteous are flawed and prone to corruption when they ascend to the echelons of absolute power. Johnson dared to imagine a Luke Skywalker that rejected his birthright, fearing the damage he could unintentionally cause, and was raked over the twitter coals for it. Well, that and for codifying “your mother” into Star Wars canon. Dune posits a borderline perfect being who rightly questions his every move, motivation and “prescient memory.” He is all too aware that the very notion of messianic salvation is a plant by cynically self-serving bad actors. There is no opportunity to bring balance to the universe and then walk away with the thankful disciples living forever in harmony. There is only struggle. To achieve power, to wield power and to keep it. No triumphant bonfires, fireworks or load-bearing villains. It’s messy, it’s unfair, it’s endless but it’s entirely human. Even if it takes place a long, long time in the future, in galaxies far, far away.
