My good mate Victor invited me on his new podcast, Let’s Talk About It, where he reviews films and TV shows!
We discuss one of Victor’s favourite TV series, POWER. Later, we turn to Denis Villeneuve’s film adaptions of one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time, DUNE by Frank Herbert.
There will be spoilers. …
I thoroughly enjoyed my experience (thank you Victor for the opportunity!), and am looking forward to our next podcast, where we will discuss the remaining episodes of season 1 of the POWER TV series.
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By the way, if you were interested in what I thought about the first DUNE novel, I reviewed them in Delinquent Links #1 and Delinquent Links #2.
To make it easier for you, I’ve copied and pasted my review from Delinquent Links #2 (it’s at the end).
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Anyway, thank you all for reading (well, I guess this time, watching).
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Chur, and have a good day and night,
The Delinquent Academic
DUNE by Frank Herbert Review (taken from Delinquent Links #2)
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Last month, I reviewed the first half of [Dune] … that encapsulates the treacherous scheme of the Emperor and Baron Vladimir Harkonnen to assassinate the Duke Leto Atreides and take control of the desert world Arrakis.
Briefly, I loved the political thriller feel to it; that despite knowing the plot (as I had watched both recently made films), Frank Herbert was enticing me to turn pages. The characters were all multi-dimensional and fascinating; I found Duke Leto to be an inspiring manifestation of noble power, and Baron Harkonnen a brilliantly well-rounded villain who had his weaknesses. The prose was … far from beautiful, but it served it’s function. My main character/story criticism was the ‘seeing into the future’ power of Paul and his mother, Jessica, the Bene Gesserit. To me, it was overused, and I became bored of their interactions with others simply because it reduced the magic of human interaction - the uncertainty - to something akin to a mechanical prediction software. I said I was keen to see how this developed as a story mechanism later in the novel … so let’s start there.
The ‘seeing into the future’ power of Paul, an ability first bred in him, and later trained in him by his mother, strangely seemed to recede in the second ‘book’, or second act. After escaping assassination themselves, Paul and Jessica flee into the desert, and encounter the Fremen - a wonderfully written native population. Here, Paul had visions, dreams, and nightmares, but - at least to me - he seemed to intuit others intentions less than the first book. In that regard, I was relieved.
However, Paul and Jessica’s journey, meeting the Fremen, learning their ways, was the most boring part of the whole novel. Beside from a couple of cool fight scenes, I did not feel invested at all, perhaps because it felt like young adult fiction, following a teenage boy along in his adventures …
But by the end of the second ‘book’, and definitely, by the start of the third, Paul had developed. He had matured into a delicious anti-hero. Sometimes his words were streaked with wisdom, sometimes with arrogance; he was a character the worst parts of your soul desired to be.
Though there were weaknesses about the third act - like not developing Feyd-Rautha enough as an antagonist for Paul so their final knife fight carried enough emotional and dramatic weight (something Villeneuve rectifies in the films) - I loved it overall.
I was denied an epic war scene, but the final battle of wits between Paul, his mother, and his aide-de-camps on one side; and the Emperor, his daughter, the Harkonnens and the Space Guild on the other, was incredibly satisfying - even more so than the films. Herbert, certainly, is a master of political intrigue and the dueling of words with multiple characters (another example of this is the dinner scene in the first ‘book’).
I could go on and on; and may do at some later time (there’s much to discuss about Chani, and they way she was changed in the films). By the end of the novel, I was fiercely hungry for more of the Dune narrative, and ordered myself DUNE MESSIAH - which I will review probably next month.
My main philosophical takeaway from the character of Paul, personally, was not simply the folly of the cult of personality - something I have heard others say - but how, in order to subdue and the incite a populace and become a tyrannical dictator or cult leader, one needs to master and integrate both his shadow masculinity (force, domination, ruthlessness), and his shadow femininity (coercion, manipulation, sabotage).
Think of the history of one man rule - some of the most powerful tyrants and cult leaders used their shadow feminine as much as their shadow masculine to get and maintain power.
Anyway, it’s a great novel.
I recommend.