Dune: Part Two

When considering a sequel, or simply how this adaptation of Frank Herbert's intergalactic tragedy might continue, the key moments in the first part of Denis Villeneuve's Dune seemed to be those immediately following Jessica and Paul's escape from the invading Harkonnen armada. Made fugitives and buried under waves of sand, the mother and son wept and argued about their predicament. His previous standing in the feudal solar system smashed, Timothée Chalamet's Paul Atreides, now strung out on grief as well as an allergic reaction to twinkling narcotics, dreamt of golden violence. An army, under his command, crashing into then over his ivory enemies. Paul saw himself in a trance; dispassionately exterminating the greatest warriors in the galaxy with, seemingly, little effort. The visions travelled deeper into the future, focusing on pyres of burning bodies - either those of his recently ambushed clan or some enemy yet to falter - and himself, beatific and buoyed by the zealotry of berserkers. 

Paul screamed at his mother for making him into the kind of freak who inspires such deranged dedication. For failing to consider the personal toll of the Godhood she had stolen from future generations to give to her son. Jessica consoled her child, reassuring him that he was also the product of his father: a good and decent man, beloved despite his position in a choking, intergalactic royalty. The fallout from this huddle reverberated throughout the remainder of Part One. Rebecca Ferguson's concubine viewing her son with an increasing sense of disassociation and horror as his prophesised reign (slowly) began to take shape. Upon meeting the indigenous Fremen, it's crucial that Jessica's immediate plan is one of escape, using them to contact the smugglers and pirates that she assumes they know, to take them away from the desert planet of Arrakis. Placed in a position of danger and weakness, Jessica refutes the Bene Gesserit whispers that should herald her son's coming, preferring to play it safe and use her considerable martial and political power to go off into hiding. 

It's Paul who hesitates, embracing his visions of victory and, therefore, the slaughter to come. Following a delightful sequence in which Harkonnen scouts, dressed in black blast furnace suits, weightlessly traverse a rock face before meeting their doom, Dune: Part Two quickly settles in with the Fremen; describing the ways in which Paul and Jessica attempt to appeal to their new bedfellows.  Given the choice between euthanasia and drinking a third-eye opening poison, Lady Jessica chooses the latter, transforming herself and her unborn child into a bicephalic creature, one constantly in conversation with itself. In Villeneuve's film, drinking this sanctified Water of Life is very much a real kind of death and, during the ceremony in which her character sips this liquid, Ferguson's surging, shaking Jessica treats it as such. Although the physical body and a trace of its wider, familial connections remain, the original identity is either obscured or outright overwritten by the composite desires of countless, conspiring ancestors and a descendent yet to come. 

In the seconds before the water touches Jessica's lips, the dying Reverend Mother, that the concubine has been recruited to replace, is practically levitating with excitement. Some tiny fragment of herself will outlive this wrinkled physical form, trapped forever in the gorgeous monarch that now crouches captive beneath her. Post-sup, Jessica twists in terror-struck supplication until the cautious woman we met in the previous film is extinguished. The person (or persona) who remains is quick to assume the appropriated robes of her new office, to travel South and stir up war. Her body is adorned with runic spells written in Fremen script; her mouth dripping with manipulation and the threat of impending jihad. In David Lynch's Dune the inner monologues present in Herbert's text became hushed murmurs, whispered over the unfolding action. Villeneuve uses Jessica's pregnancy to relitigate some aspect of this device: questions and their answers carry over uteri landscapes in which an unborn, female messiah stirs. 

Surprisingly, Lynch's film, and the director's wider work, is referenced several times in Villeneuve's sequel. As well as Javier Bardem's Fremen warlord Stilgar inheriting lines specifically drawn from the 1984 movie, we also see a vanquished foe's body crawling with the Arrakian equivalent of hungry, Lumberton ants. The two adaptations even share a similar sort of storytelling apparatus when signposting the disconnect between the Paul who exists happily within the society that has adopted him and the Paul who is willing to use seeded superstition to his advantage, positioning himself as a leader of leaders. Following an attack on a Fremen holy site by Austin Butler's monstrous, albinoid Feyd-Rautha, Duke Leto's son steels himself and follows his mother by drinking the poisonous waters that promise a feminine, extrasensory insight. As Paul lies alone, decoding the toxins he has inflicted on his own body, the strange, structural frequencies of Lynch's film re-emerge: that feeling that a sequence of events has broken down and fresh information with only vague, visual purchase has survived the disruption. 

And so Zendaya's Chani appears from nowhere in a weathered, Arrakian helicopter (of no clear origin) to kneel beside her comatose partner and fulfil a previously unmentioned prophecy that she otherwise wants no part in. Following his reawakening, Paul portrays a kind of religious revelation when dealing with the Fremen. Like his mother before him, caution is abandoned to such a degree that it is clear that the Paul that remains is either, to some extent, reliving an experience he has already dissected then consigned to memory or the young Atreides has transformed into someone so convinced of their impending ascendancy that their every action reads as dangerously impatient. Paul then is a child inhabited by things that are already dead and, therefore, cannot know fear. Regardless, the remaining Atreides are no longer alone and shivering beneath a shifting landscape, they tower above it. Eyes fixed and boring through an atomic fire that they themselves have unleashed. 

Mother and son are now glowering, all-knowing fulcrums; pressing every socio-political and metaphysical advantage available to them to trample an indigenous faith beneath their bloodthirsty decrees. Viewers with a more comprehensive knowledge of Frank Herbert's cosmology might, in Paul's visions of endless, elderly faces, find trace of the path this new emperor will walk over the years (and films) to come; the terrible foresight that demands he make some attempt to take control of the inevitable carnage. Villeneuve though accounts for another, more human perspective to creep in: revulsion. Cursed with a total understanding of his own appalling genealogy, Paul connects with a barbaric, animalistic aspect as a way to reframe his own nature and satisfy his personal need for revenge. When the all-powerful mother and son meet again, their first order of business is this rotten lineage and what it means for their shared future. The Atreides name, the human greatness of a Duke Leto that inspired loyalty and devotion in all of his subjects, has been polluted forever and will, in the fullness of time, sink beneath a flag of boiling, merciless violence. Amen. 

Dune

Set in a distant future where mankind has scattered itself amongst the stars, transforming their adopted planets into machines of pure, smoke-choked industry or monuments to a scattered and arcane past, Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune - the director sharing co-writer credits with Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth - is an unusual proposition for an American financed space opera. Unlike, say, a Star Wars or a Star Trek, Villeneuve's Dune neither portrays humanity as obscure or idealised. Instead eight thousands years of relentless progress may have given us incredible technological leaps, like an instantaneous solution to the enormous distances associated with space travel, but society itself has congealed into a kind of pre-industrial feudalism. 

Throughout Villeneuve's Dune there's a sense that mankind has battered forward through the centuries to arrive at a point where, for all their boons, they are just better able to beam their failures and shortcomings out into space. This pitch black universe, rather than offering brand new opportunities or transcendental experiences, has turned out to be an enormous canvas, just waiting to be painted red with fire and blood. Timothée Chalamet plays Paul Atreides, the heir to House Atreides, a dukedom in a vast - and largely unseen - intergalactic empire underpinned by dutiful servants, who double as human computers, and a powerful cult of witches who plant prospects throughout the empire, armed with breeding instructions. Paul is the result of one of those procreations (if not necessarily the strict order that directed it), a young nobleman afflicted with involuntary glimpses of moments in his life he has yet to live. 

Although Paul's adventure remains incomplete here in terms of the original text - this telling concludes just as the young duke and his mother press deeper into the desert to join the mysterious Fremen - Villeneuve's film does register as a complete work, one centred around a parapsychological call and response within Paul's mind. This internalised conversation slowly overwhelms the shape and direction of the piece, carrying us away from rigid order, off towards an almost formless state of acquiesced myth. While still on his home planet of Caladan, a wind swept naval barracks, Paul dreams of the desert planet Arrakis and Zendaya's Chani, a beautiful young woman with blue on blue eyes. Although broadly walking a path that aligns with Campbellian heroics, the young Atreides is a more curious example of an anointed one; a character who slowly adjusts to his place within the manipulative, messianic, rhetoric whispered amongst nomads to massage his coming. 

A character like Luke Skywalker (an obvious point of comparison since George Lucas' film series clearly takes a great many cues from Herbert's work) might slowly attune himself to the same mysticisms that enveloped his father but the road to power he undertakes is deliberately portrayed as something to be seized. Paul Atreides is a different animal, a child raised amongst nobility and instructed in the politics of warfare. That's the aspect of the character defined by his father, Oscar Isaac's Duke Leto, and the seat of power Paul will come to hold should the Atreides reign remain uninterrupted. His mother, Rebecca Ferguson's Lady Jessica, has an even deeper stake in this child. We learn she had the power of design over his birth, selecting his gender to please his father and, in the process, thwarting the centuries long machinations of her spy masters the Bene Gesserit. Paul's is a destiny that isn't taken then, it's an ancient plan that he surrenders to. 

That Paul is male hasn't prevented Jessica from teaching him the ways of her all female religious order either. Slowly, he is coached to reproduce several techniques centred around coercion, the most powerful of which are the croaking words of a hag, a technique that allows the Bene Gesserit to overwhelm the weak-minded, bending them to their will. Paul's stewardship then goes beyond the basic act of training. He has, to some degree, been manufactured by Jessica; a notable bloodline directed - through her - towards the kind of figure that religions can be founded upon. Within Paul are the powers inherent to the male and female aspects of this strange universe working in, if not harmonious, then certainly complementary ways. The most terrifying aspect of Dune then is that Paul is conscious of this potential future and, eventually, works towards it; overcoming his disgust at having been physically and politically fabricated. The tension in Villeneuve's Dune is that of an assumption. What is it that makes Paul Atreides special? His tragic experiences? His possession of a mind that trespasses outside strictly ordered time and space? Or is it simply his willingness to be battered towards Godhood? 

Blade Runner 2049

Blade Runner winds down with Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty delivering a poetic speech about the incredible, mind-bending events he has experienced while toiling at the far end of the galaxy as a synthetic soldier. The soliloquy bubbles up out of Roy in the company of Harrison Ford's Rick Deckard, the policeman-cum-assassin who has hunted and killed all of the combat model's beloved companions. Deckard has stumbled at the last hurdle though. Despite Batty's waning energies, the replicant has overpowered his executioner then, pointedly, saved his life.

Prior to delivering his final, grandstanding statement, before he's even lifted Deckard to safety, Batty pauses to say the following: "Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave." The decision to spare Deckard's life means something to this futuristic mamluk. The action stresses a humanity apparently alien in this used up world. The android has defied both his programming and social conditioning to forgive. By showing mercy to a wounded inferior, Batty has asserted a fleeting moment of moral superiority. The machine is closer to the divine than the man who pursued him.

Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 explodes out of this moment, conflating the experiences of Batty and Deckard to arrive at a new character, Ryan Gosling's K. Screenwriters Hampton Fancher and Michael Green neatly side-step any dangling threads regarding Deckard's biological identity by taking how society treated him at face value, then using that status to make a comparison with their own downtrodden hero. It doesn't matter if the viewer believed Rick to be the advanced Nexus 7 (a model conspicuously absent from 2049) replicant Ridley Scott has described in retrospective interviews or, like Harrison Ford, they assumed he was simply a man. Los Angeles 2019 responded to Deckard as a human, therefore, as far as power structures were concerned, he was. K is afforded no such luxury. He is a slave. He lives in fear.

2049 then explicitly delivers on Blade Runner's spectral notion that the hunter, rather than pursuing a supernatural other, might be tracking a variant of himself, a machine created specifically to eliminate other machines. K is a docile, compliant Nexus 9 who hunts and kills his mutinous antecedents. Despite holding the same position within the LAPD as Deckard, K is, at best, treated as a curiosity. Armoured pigs spit invective at him, while a sympathetic superior draws out their meetings to hint at a sexual fascination with plastic boy toys. Off-duty, K returns to a modest cell where he play-acts a loving inter-personal relationship with a lower form of artificial intelligence played by Ana de Armas.

K is free to pursue basic consumer delights and not much else. He isn't programmed to wonder, the overt rebellious streak that drove Batty and the rest of the Nexus 6 replicants has seemingly been nailed down to bad code and suppressed. Initially, K doesn't dream, he harbours no desire to escape. He knows he's a tool and accepts it, trapped and complying within the limits imposed by both his captivity and the orders that have been written into his DNA. K does have a tiny release valve though, a small exploit that he can use to needle away at his fractional freedom. He uses the money he collects retiring his malfunctioning brethren to buy piecemeal upgrades for his holographic girlfriend Joi, allowing her greater freedom of movement and purpose within their living space.

Pre-tweak Joi is designed solely to please, clumsily cycling through various domestic and sexual fantasy archetypes to arrive at a state that her owner finds acceptable. Post-tweak Joi's attempts at seduction take a finer, more nuanced approach. Rather than simply offer up a visual that excites in the moment, Joi constructs an entire series of interactions around the notion of a loving spouse who desires physical and emotional intimacy. She even goes as far as to hire Mackenzie Davis' replicant prostitute Mariette to be her physical surrogate. Joi maps her own image over Mariette, an imperfect solution that blends their features and occasionally lags, creating a chimeric sexual partner for K.

K has slowly and methodically built a being with the ability to think and diverge in ways that his programming and stringent defragging struggle to allow. It's revolt as a micro-aggression, an underling using the only means afforded to his social class to make the tiniest, most private statement of defiance. 2049 never clarifies if Joi has become self-aware or if her upgrade has simply allowed her to present a deeper, more nourishing approximation of a relationship. Her sacrifice is real though, her decision to leave the safety offered by their apartment and its back-up hard drives denotes a selflessness surely beyond the scope of a consumer product.

Joi's customisation says something about K too, emblematic of a deep-seated desire to nurture the sort of life that he feels unable to seize upon himself. He's a synthetic man attempting to transform the actions of a murdering scab into the emancipation of a kindred program after all. Basically, like all screen replicants before him, K wants something at odds with his core servility. 2049's central plot - the quest for a bio-mechanical anointed one - allows K the scope and opportunity to veer away from his usual, plodding wet work.

Deckard's investigation allowed him to study his artificial quarry, he sifted through their meagre, flea market belongings to discover a blazing desire for self-determination. K's experience is altogether more tragic. The memories he excavates undermine his basic sense of belonging before taking on an explicitly personal dimension. As the details and information pile up, K uses the data to replace his baseline mantra, recalibrating himself to think and act as a being with an inherent destination. K reprograms himself, briefly tasting a life beyond killing in which he is allowed to carry his own personal purpose.