#Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Dune (But Were Afraid To Ask) [TIFF 2021]

“Dune” is a massive story. So massive, in fact, that Denis Villeneuve’s has split it in half (more on that later). Ultimately, this is a big, epic sci-fi saga about empires, fate, destiny, legacy, spice, sand, giant worms, and mind-control. The principal characters are from House Atreides, a powerful royal family that wields power in the year 10191. Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac, sporting a really great beard) has just accepted stewardship of desert planet Arrakis, a dangerous world rich in a substance known as spice (it’s a vague thing, this spice; thematically, it’s meant as a stand-in for Middle-Eastern oil; but in the context of the film it looks like glitter and we’re told it has hallucinogenic properties). Previously, Arrakis was in the control of the House Harkonnen, whose members are monstrous and cruel. The Duke, meanwhile, wants to be a benevolent leader (although he also wants to make a profit off all that sweet, sweet spice, of course). 

The Duke heads to the planet along with his concubine, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), and their son Paul (Timothée Chalamet). Jessica is a member of a mysterious, powerful religious sect known as the Bene Gesserit. As a result of this, she has powers – the power to command people to do her bidding with her voice, for instance. She’s been training Paul in these methods as well, and there’s a big reason for that: there’s a prophecy about a chosen one, and Jessica thinks that chosen one just might be Paul (feel free to think of Millhouse on “The Simpsons” saying “But my mom thinks I’m cool!” right here). 

The Duke was handed Arrakis by an all-powerful emperor (who we never see in the movie), but as it turns out, this is all a big rouse; a double-cross to stamp out the Atreides bloodline. Meanwhile, the indigenous people of Arrakis, known as the Fremen, eye everyone and everything with understandable suspicion. They see all these outsiders coming to the planet as colonizers and oppressors, and they’re not exactly wrong there. And oh yeah, Arrakis is also home to giant, terrifying sandworms.