Doing Dune: Part 2
Dan and Jordan wrap up their trek through Dune by discussing the second of the modern films, attempting to really get to the bottom of what the Bene Gesserit is up to.
May 17, 2024 - Knowledge Fight
01:17:30
Participants
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys saying we are the bad guys. | |
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| Dan and George. | ||
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| Rattler. | ||
| I need. | ||
| I need. | ||
| Spice. | ||
| Rattler. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Stop it. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| That's how it rock. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Andy in Kansas. | |
| Andy in Arrakis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ha ha ha. | |
| I love you. | ||
| Hey! | ||
| Hey everybody, welcome back to doing Dune with Dan. | ||
| Dune being done. | ||
| We're doing part two. | ||
| Part two. | ||
| Part two of Dennisville and Nueve's Dune. | ||
| 2024. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| New shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Very good. | |
| I love that we don't really notice how long our theme song is until we start doing a remix in the middle of it and then we're like... | ||
| I've run out of ideas. | ||
| Run out of steam? | ||
| I had some other ideas, but I ran out of steam. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Yeah, there was a good 10-second lull in there, probably. | ||
| Where both of us are like, oh boy, there's still quite a ways to go. | ||
| We've made it different enough to call it a remix. | ||
| Let's pack it in. | ||
| We should have emailed DJ Dan. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| What are you going to do? | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
| So, Jordan, we finished. | ||
| We finished it. | ||
| Sort of. | ||
| I mean, there's still other Dune content out there, certainly, but we've seen the three major movies now. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| It is fun that the part two ends almost exactly the same way that part one does, with, ah, this movie's just about to start, buddy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Any moment now. | ||
| That was a little annoying, because I did think that... | ||
| There would be more of a finality to this. | ||
| I understood that there was more story to tell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| But the way that the first one ended with Desert Power, this is just the beginning. | ||
| This is just the beginning. | ||
| And then the way that this ended with this is just the beginning. | ||
| This is just the beginning, even more so. | ||
| I think it wasn't the line. | ||
| They didn't say that line, but it did feel that way. | ||
| It was a little annoying. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And... | ||
| Hey, look, I don't want to give away my feelings, but the fact that there isn't another one I can just watch now is a little frustrating. | ||
| It's not too dissimilar from having a Finn card that's like, the end, dot, dot, dot, or is it? | ||
| Well, it's obviously not. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, it is. | ||
| No. | ||
| Everything ends in chaos. | ||
| What's he going to do? | ||
| Nothing is resolved. | ||
| There's nothing much to do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Come on. | |
| There's everything to do. | ||
| No, there's a whole galactic empire or whatever. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So it starts exactly where the part one left off, which I really like. | ||
| I like if you're going to cut a movie in half, fucking at the end of the intermission, I want to be right back where I started. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Paul hanging out with the Fremen. | ||
| Being cool in the desert. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Doing steel suit shit. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| How do you like him? | ||
| I liked it fine. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| I thought they had a lovely terrorist romance that was well told. | ||
| Paul and Johnny's terrorist romance? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I thought they actually felt like they cared about each other, which was different than the 84 version. | ||
| It is nice. | ||
| It is nice to see her be a character. | ||
| Yeah, I thought Zendaya was great. | ||
| I think she does a great job with that character. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| Where are we at the beginning? | ||
| Are they taking out the Harkonnen walker? | ||
| Right at the beginning is we're in the desert. | ||
| They gotta try and hang out with the cool people. | ||
| Oh, that's right. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| He has to... | ||
| They're like... | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They go meet Stilgar. | ||
| Yeah, they have to prove themselves before they're allowed to be terrorist. | ||
| Right, and it's like the scene that you liked in the 84 version where she was given the opportunity to, like, grab Stilgar real quick, and they were like, whoa, she's super powerful! | ||
| Right? | ||
| And this one, it's way better. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| As opposed to just a weird random, like, aha, I caught ya! | ||
| But I think that was in part one. | ||
| Oh yeah, you're right, that was in part one. | ||
| That was in part one, but in part two, we have the conflict of whether or not they will be accepted into the Fremen community. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so Paul has to take his little walk across the desert, or whatever, and then Stilgar tells Jessica... | ||
| She's got to take the water. | ||
| You should just be water. | ||
| We could kill you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Unless you do the thing that I want you to do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Now, this was fascinating to me. | ||
| That move on Stilgar's part. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So, Stilgar is a zealot in some ways. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| He believes in the prophecy of the... | ||
| What is it? | ||
| Kwisatz Haderach. | ||
| What's the other one? | ||
| The Lisan Al-Gaib. | ||
| The Lisan Al-Gaib. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's definitely... | ||
| Lisan Al-Gaib! | ||
| He is a believer. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But at the same time, there's part of the prophecy that the Lisan al-Gaib has to be the child of the mother. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| What's it called? | ||
| In the Fremen, it's the Sayedina. | ||
| In the Bene Gesserit, it's a reverend mother. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It has to be a reverend mother as the mother of the Lisan al-Gaib. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So he's forcing this prophecy. | ||
| He goes to Jessica. | ||
| And he's like, we could kill you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Unless you do this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| We have to make this prophecy come true that I believe in. | ||
| There's faith, but there's also a cynicism that he's expressing. | ||
| I found that to be very interesting. | ||
| Because Javier Bardem's a great actor. | ||
| He is. | ||
| And I think he was able to embody some of that, like, I believe in this prophecy. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| You doing this will work with that prophecy. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| You not doing this means that... | ||
| It's not you, and I could just kill you. | ||
| He knows he's strong-arming her. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| But we also find out later on that this is not the first time he believes he's seen the Lisan Al-Ghi. | ||
| We've seen some signs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| So people are kind of wary of him just throwing out, oh, great, it's another messiah from Stilgar again. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| So I'm sure he has that. | ||
| And you're right. | ||
| I think he plays that really well of being like, hey, listen. | ||
| I believe in this stuff, but at the end of the day, I am a politician, and if I go back to them and I say, she doesn't want to be part of anything, they're going to be like, well, then put her in the lake. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're not useful to us. | ||
| You're an outsider. | ||
| If you want to save your life, you will help me bring about this prophecy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That is such an interesting line of faith, because it is well presented. | ||
| I think because of the quality of acting. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And because the story has so much time to breathe. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But that, like, tension of, I don't doubt that he believes he's a true believer, but he's also acting incredibly cynically in order to force things that would reinforce and prop up the belief. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I think that's an interesting point. | ||
| Because that's a major theme. | ||
| The idea of... | ||
| How much is it faith, and how much is it, like, you've got no choice but to do this to live? | ||
| You know, all of the Bene Gesserit, these are signs, these are things that are happening, are also places where it eventually points down to, like, either you do this or you die. | ||
| So is it faith, or is it that if you don't fulfill this prophecy, you're just going to die anyways? | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then eventually someone will come along who takes the choice of not dying, and that will be fulfillment. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So the question then is, like, how much agency even does the person who has the ultimate agency have? | ||
| None. | ||
| In a way. | ||
| In a way. | ||
| And I would believe that if there weren't magic powers. | ||
| There is that problem. | ||
| That is a part that, like, the fact that everyone, like, not everyone, but a lot of people could do some really magical shit. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| If that didn't exist, and this was just a very human story, but on another planet. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, like... | ||
| Then the cynicism of, like, no one really has free will would make more sense. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| But there's, I mean, free will is already a completely fucked up conversation with the existence of the voice. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Without magic powers, period. | ||
| Well, if the Bene Gesserit can just force you to do something by speaking, then what existence is there of free will? | ||
| Right. | ||
| And how can you ever be sure anyone is doing anything? | ||
| If they're around a Bene Gesserit and you know they can do that, then you can never trust anything that that person around them is doing. | ||
| But if you see them doing it, they do seem to walk like robots whenever they're doing something that the voice told them to. | ||
| It does feel that way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There is an aesthetic doot, doot, doot, doot, doot to... | ||
| I do. | ||
| To how they act. | ||
| That was a big failing the Bene Gesserit had whenever they created the voice. | ||
| They forgot to do the thing where people didn't act. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Act natural! | |
| Act natural! | ||
| Act like you didn't get the voice! | ||
| You can tweak that over time. | ||
| But yeah, that is a really challenging question. | ||
| And I think on some levels, I'm not really prepared to answer a lot of it because the story still isn't fucking told. | ||
| I thought by the end of this, I would have a much clearer picture of a lot of stuff. | ||
| And to some extent, I think I do. | ||
| I think the political intrigue in a lot of it makes a lot more sense. | ||
| A lot of that stuff is, well, one stage of it makes more sense. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But then we're revealed that there's a whole other level on top of it. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| But you got the idea that whenever Harkonnen was like, the emperor's coming, you got the idea that he sent that message to all the other great houses like, If he's coming for us, then we have to get them to fight on our side against the Emperor, right? | ||
| Like, there was that little moment of kind of trying to explain the political balance. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I still don't fully understand it, but I understand that that layer exists. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| That there is some sort of check on power of the Emperor that is the alliance of these great houses. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But at the same time, the Emperor... | ||
| Ostensibly rules over the great houses and everything. | ||
| But ultimately, that is a trump card that Harkonnen is trying to pull out. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I mean, it's part of the political intrigue behind that is from actual, like, what would I say? | ||
| Any dictator doesn't lead as a dictator. | ||
| You know, there is a certain amount of... | ||
| Aristocracy. | ||
| Yeah, just a fewer number of people you have to try and convince to do shit. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| They're oligarchs. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| You're going to have to get this person who has enough power to cause at least a problem for you to work with you without being like, if you don't, I'll kill your family. | ||
| Now, what I want to understand, maybe I don't, maybe it's too complicated, but what is that for each of these houses? | ||
| Like, I get that one of them, whether it's Harkonnen or Atreides, well, I guess Atreides, they can fight really well. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Because of the weirding way. | ||
| And then also, both of them are involved with Arrakis and The Spice. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But there are other houses, and I don't know what they do. | ||
| I mean, unfortunately, I would say this is where we get into kind of the big problem with sci-fi during this time period. | ||
| You're paid by the word? | ||
| Well, that is a huge problem. | ||
| But second... | ||
| Second only to the harsh eugenicism and fascism that runs through the core of most of this. | ||
| But, you know, this is where we get the, this is the planet that does this. | ||
| This is the planet that does this. | ||
| This planet is where we get gemstones from. | ||
| This planet is where we get our stuff from. | ||
| So every great house has essentially a monopoly on like one kind of trade group thing. | ||
| And then if you're an economic group that has a monopoly on that. | ||
| So essentially every... | ||
| Every aspect of the political sphere is like this idea of if you have an economic monopoly on one thing that everybody wants, then you have enough power to influence everything. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| I mean, it doesn't make sense. | ||
| It wouldn't work, but it makes sense. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| It's not like a... | ||
| It makes enough sense for sci-fi. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That was a great way of putting it. | ||
| Close enough for jazz. | ||
| Sensible enough for sci-fi. | ||
| Good enough. | ||
| Good enough. | ||
| So, I... | ||
| Overall, I'll just give you, I guess, a broad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Tell me how you liked the movie. | ||
| I thought it was good in the same way that I thought the first one was good, but it did in a way that the first one didn't. | ||
| I felt the length more. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I will say that for sure. | ||
| All right, all right. | ||
| And maybe it's just that 15-minute difference, but whatever it was, it was like, this is long. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| What dragged for you? | ||
| I don't know if anything really dragged, but it just... | ||
| You could feel that it was two hours and 45 minutes. | ||
| This is a very long time. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Which, I don't know if it's a failing of the movie, because it's not like at any point I wanted to turn it off or anything. | ||
| It was just... | ||
| And, you know, I think that that is a dynamic that is underappreciated for me, because I don't watch a lot of movies, is that, like, the context that you're watching it in... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, like, maybe you're a little more tired that day, and that's gonna affect how you see the movie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And maybe that's all it was. | ||
| Maybe I was just more tired, and boy, you could feel that length. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I was... | ||
| When I watched it again, let's see, it was my third time watching part two, and I don't think I... | ||
| I think I was at the point where I was like, this is now something that's on while I'm working. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Because you've seen it enough. | ||
| The first couple of times, and I know the story, you know, I do that. | ||
| And so the first couple of times, I'm watching the movie, looking for stuff, and then after that, it's like, this is an enjoyable thing, and I know where I'm going to jump in and where I'm jumping out and where I have to focus and not. | ||
| So, yeah, I guess I think that's the same feeling in a way, except... | ||
| Without the obligation to, like, stay through it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| If you were watching it and it was feeling long, you would instinctively have been like, okay, well, I'll just go over here for a second and then go back to it. | ||
| Right? | ||
| That's how I tend to watch a lot of TV, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think that we have a pretty clear, like... | ||
| Layers of onion thing going on. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| With the first movie, you get a broad introduction to the Harkonnens and the Atreides and Arrakis. | ||
| Then there's teasing of the Fremen. | ||
| There's teasing of other things that exist in the world. | ||
| And then in the second movie, you get the next layer of the onion, where you get the emperor comes in, you get more of the Fremen are fleshed out, and it becomes more like, these are the characters, this is the cast of this movie, as opposed to the cast of the first one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And then you know, watching this, it's like you set it up for the exact same thing. | ||
| Like, the great houses are going to be the cast of the next movie. | ||
| And not to say it's formulaic, but it's infuriating because you didn't let me know anything about those things that are going to be in the next movie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And apparently that's now more important because the war that was in this movie is done. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But the bigger war that is to come apparently involves players that I don't even know. | ||
| Oh, so many. | ||
| That's kind of frustrating. | ||
| Yeah, it's going to last a long time, too. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Oh, so long. | ||
| And then that guy's going to turn into a worm, apparently. | ||
| Yeah, that's three books away. | ||
| Yeah, you've got a ways to go before you get there. | ||
| First, that's our main guy's son. | ||
| We're not even there yet. | ||
| I get that. | ||
| I will say that I'm invested enough that when the next one comes out, I'll see it. | ||
| I'm interested to see if they'll make a next one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They have to! | |
| Well, okay. | ||
| She made a lot of money. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| Now, but here's where we get into the problems of Dune. | ||
| Dune the book, the first book, is a movie book. | ||
| It's a very, stuff happens. | ||
| What's the end of the first book? | ||
| The end of the first book is what you saw. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| This is all just the first book? | ||
| It is the returning of water. | ||
| But the water doesn't come back at the end of Villanueva 1. In the Villanueva 1, it doesn't come back, but it's not really important to the story. | ||
| Honestly, and it's really kind of changed. | ||
| It's important, but also it's thrown away as something that matters. | ||
| It's very important in the 84 one. | ||
| Super important in the 84 one. | ||
| Super important in the first book. | ||
| But then as the story goes on, it's kind of like, oh, this was a bad idea, actually. | ||
| This kind of destroys the whole point of the planet. | ||
| It's all about spice. | ||
| And then later, so now that it's... | ||
| You can't have liquid spice? | ||
| You can't have liquid spice because the spice is the worms. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So the worms need the desert. | ||
| And if you remove the desert, then you don't have the spice. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Kind of wrote yourself into a corner on that one. | ||
| But that is what the Fremen want. | ||
| They want a green world that they used to have. | ||
| They don't want the spice. | ||
| They aren't particularly interested in the spice. | ||
| No, it's ruined their lives. | ||
| It's made all these weirdo white people come from outer space to fucking murder them all day. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So in their interest, fucking let it rain. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| But everybody else can't have that rain. | ||
| No, absolutely not. | ||
| Okay, so. | ||
| As far as the, what would I say? | ||
| As far as like this section of the book, this is where we get into kind of Paul wrestling with the idea of being the Messiah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So he's both, you know. | ||
| He's all over the place. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, he's both the manufactured Messiah that the Bene Gesserit have lied to everybody about, but also he's the real one that they've genetically created through lying to everybody about. | ||
| But also, can he choose not to be one? | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right? | |
| He tries hard not to. | ||
| See, that's something that I have mixed feelings about as far as the presentation of the movie goes. | ||
| Because at the beginning, there is a very real cynicism that he is coming with. | ||
| That is, I need to convince the non-believers. | ||
| And then he gives up on that almost immediately after Jessica drinks the water. | ||
| And he's like, she's pulling a Bene Gesserit trick, they know how to suppress poison, fuck this, this is all nonsense. | ||
| He works against his own interests, and then comes around to being like, fuck it, I'll be the Messiah. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| Eh, you gotta do what you gotta do. | ||
| It's very, I don't know, that path seemed very strange to me. | ||
| There is some of that. | ||
| It's struggle, but it wasn't... | ||
| It wasn't as coherent, maybe, as I wanted it to be. | ||
| See, this is where... | ||
| And you're right about that. | ||
| This would make more sense. | ||
| In the length of time of the book, this period of time is like five years. | ||
| So, you know the voice that Jessica's hearing, the unborn baby? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's St. Alia of the Knife, which is a great name. | ||
| No reason for that name, but I love that name. | ||
| Now, let me say this about that. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I appreciated that... | ||
| She didn't turn into a child that knew everything. | ||
| That is true. | ||
| Because in hindsight, an 84 version, that's silly. | ||
| That is silly. | ||
| Visually on screen, that is a bit silly. | ||
| And so having it be an embodied voice from the womb, and then the person that... | ||
| Paul can see in his dreams. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Makes more sense. | ||
| Way more sense. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Much better. | ||
| But I'm sorry. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Five years. | ||
| No, in the book, you're like, oh, it's a child and it's just really, really smart. | ||
| Or has the memories of blah, blah, blah, or whatever. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But in the movie, it's like, oh, you guys really shouldn't have done that. | ||
| The 84 one. | ||
| It's strange. | ||
| You shouldn't have done that. | ||
| No. | ||
| So. | ||
| Jordan was just gesticulating and he threw his pen across the room. | ||
| Good thing there's another one to spin around with. | ||
| No, so over that length of time, like four or five years, Jessica is becoming part of the siege. | ||
| They're just part of the community. | ||
| And during this time period, you know... | ||
| Paul's having a pretty good time, all things considered. | ||
| Hanging out with Chani? | ||
| Yeah, he's living a life... | ||
| Fighting around with Stilgar? | ||
| Yeah, that he wants to live. | ||
| Before his entire life, he's been growing up in this sheltered bullshit, trained in a weird way, stuck with doing everything that all these rules are supposed to do, and now he's finally free. | ||
| He's got borderline infinite power. | ||
| He's an unstoppable fighter. | ||
| All this cool stuff. | ||
| So, at this point in time... | ||
| He's kind of living his best life. | ||
| Why would you want to go south? | ||
| Why would you want to become the Messiah? | ||
| You're having a grand old time. | ||
| As far as the hero's journey, this is the like, I don't want to become an adult. | ||
| Fuck that! | ||
| But that's something that is interesting because the I don't want to be an adult is not at all how it feels. | ||
| It feels like I'm going to kill a ton of people if I end up doing this. | ||
| And I can't do it. | ||
| But then he gives up on that not doing it and deciding to go south pretty quickly. | ||
| Well, there is the other element that we brought up earlier. | ||
| If he doesn't, when he does, then he'll die. | ||
| But why? | ||
| What do you mean, why? | ||
| Well, he's already being hunted. | ||
| The Harkonnens want him dead. | ||
| Because regardless of whether or not he's... | ||
| Known as Paul Atreides yet. | ||
| He's Muad'Dib. | ||
| He's Muad'Dib and he's in the Fidekin. | ||
| So they're going around fucking everybody up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Harkonnen's getting wrecked. | ||
| Yeah, and they destroy the town. | ||
| They blow up the... | ||
| Well, the Harkonnens, then, after Fade Ratha is given control of Arrakis, boy, this scene was stupid. | ||
| Scorched earth. | ||
| Yeah, he's like, oh, you fired a bunch of missiles. | ||
| Brilliant. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like, oh my god. | ||
| That was a strange, like, oh, we didn't think of that before. | ||
| We hadn't thought of blowing them up with all of our power. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I guess that is, you're trying to make him look more bloodthirsty and ruthless, and I think that succeeds, but that was kind of a silly... | ||
| Wait, Batista never thought of this? | ||
| The guy who was famous for wanting to murder guys all the time didn't think, let's blow it up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Now, that being said, Austin Butler... | ||
| So much scarier than Sting. | ||
| What? | ||
| How? | ||
| How so? | ||
| What in the lack of at all hair, the black and white aspects, the whole thing? | ||
| Quite a better version of that character, I would say. | ||
| He seems menacing, seems scary. | ||
| Seems like when the whole thing ultimately comes down to a knife fight between him and Paul. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When it's Sting, I don't buy it. | ||
| In this case, he's a credible threat. | ||
| He's a credible opponent. | ||
| And so I think that was an upgrade. | ||
| And they did a great job of establishing that in the arena fight. | ||
| Which is one of the more important scenes from the book. | ||
| Wherein you've got... | ||
| This idea that the movie kind of makes ambiguous, like, oh, he was trying to kill him. | ||
| And then in Skarsgård's performance, you kind of get the idea that, no, this was supposed to be a test. | ||
| Yeah, I took that similarly to the Stilgar, like, you can rise to this occasion or you'll die and either way it'll be fine. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| You can either fight this person who's not drugged and succeed. | ||
| And you'll become a hero and it'll be great. | ||
| Or you'll die and then you're not my problem anymore. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And then it's like, why would I give Arrakis to somebody who can't even win a fight against a guy who's not drugged? | ||
| Right. | ||
| There's definitely that. | ||
| But by doing this, by putting this whole thing, and then you have Princess Fenring, who is the woman who seduces Fade Ratha after the fight. | ||
| Puts his hand in the pain box. | ||
| You got it. | ||
| Then they, she's, I guess, Part of the Bene Gesser breathing program. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So she's actually related to Paul also. | ||
| She has to be. | ||
| They're all inbred by like one generation. | ||
| And that's how you get a messiah. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because of the magic powers or something. | ||
| People didn't think about that. | ||
| They were like, oh, there's a lot of downsides. | ||
| Agreed. | ||
| But you forgot about magic powers. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So what happens now with that... | ||
| Princess or whoever who has gotten pregnant by Faye Ratha. | ||
| So she has... | ||
| Because he's dead at the end. | ||
| Right. | ||
| There's no use for that child. | ||
| No, no, no, no. | ||
| It's a potential Quizals Hodorak. | ||
| But we already have him. | ||
| Ah, but we don't have the right one. | ||
| Ah, shit. | ||
| We don't have the good one. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| The good one was next generation's Quizals Hodorak. | ||
| The good one was the one that they could control. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Or at least the one that was supposed to be there. | ||
| The one that wasn't a shock. | ||
| You know, maybe the real problem the whole time is Gaius Mohaim was like, this wasn't what I was expecting! | ||
| Who's that? | ||
| That's the lady who's, that's the highest reverend mother. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That's the lady who puts Paul's hand in the box. | ||
| I see, I see. | ||
| So, that's another thing. | ||
| She is trying to kill Paul from the moment Paul is born. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| But, because she's a Bene Gesserit. | ||
| She's terrible at it. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because they're infinitely powerful and they're always so easy to beat. | ||
| The Reverend Mothers, every single scheme they ever do is successful, except for the ones that happen in the plot of every book. | ||
| It's so wild. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Well, now you've opened this can of worms up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And this is where we will need to probably spend the rest of the time we're talking. | ||
| I expected it to be. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So, as the plot goes on... | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I understand what the Emperor wants. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| He has an investment in controlling spice because interplanetary travel requires it and there's an economy and all that stuff. | ||
| He could not control House Atreides, so he betrayed them with House Harkonnen and did this conspiracy, and now he knows that Paul is alive and is Muad'Dib and has to come try and solve this fucking problem on his own because the Harkonnens can't take care of it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So this all makes sense. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| What the Harkonnens want makes sense. | ||
| What the Atreides' house makes... | ||
| What they want makes sense. | ||
| In theory, I assume, but I don't know these characters, what the other great houses want makes sense. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I don't get what the Bene Gesserit are up to. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I don't know what their endgame is. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Everyone else's endgame makes sense. | ||
| There's like these... | ||
| Pieces and chess pieces that are being put in play. | ||
| And I understand that the Bene Gesserit are behind everything and influencing everybody. | ||
| They were responsible for advising the Emperor to abandon or betray House Atreides. | ||
| I get that they're the puppet masters and everything, but I don't get what they want. | ||
| Well... | ||
| I get what the Fremen want. | ||
| I get what all sides want except this group. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's made clear, maybe, in Chapter House, dude, which is like book six. | ||
| Or five, I can't even remember anymore. | ||
| But the god-emperor, who is Declado II, Paul Latreides' son, he's two books from now. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| He's the one who becomes a worm. | ||
| He's the one who becomes a worm. | ||
| He essentially is god. | ||
| So he lives forever, can see the future and the past, etc., etc. | ||
| But so can Paul, right? | ||
| He can see the future and the past. | ||
| Paul can see the future and the past. | ||
| The idea being this, unfortunately. | ||
| If we get this guy, then... | ||
| And then we'll stop conflict forever. | ||
| There will be no more war. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| A war to end wars. | ||
| Well, more like if we genetically engineer God, then God will take care of it. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| I guess? | ||
| So this is what they're after... | ||
| Nominally, yes. | ||
| I think what's going on with the Bene Gesserit is unfortunate, because if you have a super powerful, magic-powered syndicate that controls everything from behind the shadows, right? | ||
| Sooner or later, you're going to have to explain why it is everything's not going the exact same way since one of them is at everybody's house. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And they have the ability to override your free will. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally. | |
| And they can talk to each other. | ||
| They can just send each other. | ||
| They can talk. | ||
| They can send a phone message. | ||
| They seem to be able to also telepathically connect. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| All kinds of magic powers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| So there are factions, of course, within the deep state. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yep. | ||
| And this is another one of those great sci-fi writers in this time period thing. | ||
| This is a man who really wants to compliment women by letting you know that all women are conniving liars who are controlling you from behind the scenes and the only way to be free is to throw off their shackles. | ||
| Not at all something that Frank Herbert thought a lot. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I could definitely... | ||
| You know, say that's of the time and unfortunate. | ||
| But I'm trying to tease out the thread here. | ||
| So you have this entire world that is all political. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, this is all about economies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally. | |
| And the spice. | ||
| People are not important. | ||
| If you're not a main character, you don't exist. | ||
| But they also have, like, really concrete motives and motivations. | ||
| There is abstract power, and then there is resources that they are all interested in. | ||
| The Bene Gesserit are actually mystical motivated, like they are actually trying to bring in a messiah to end all war. | ||
| So on some level, they have what they believe to be a benevolent. | ||
| End goal. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That they are working towards. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I don't... | ||
| The thing that happens... | ||
| But here's the problem. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Aha! | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Aha! | |
| What do we got? | ||
| What do we got here? | ||
| Is this a moral question? | ||
| The means by which the Bene Gesserit are trying to bring about this messiah is by implanting false stories of a messiah in other people. | ||
| Except... | ||
| Ultimately, it will lead to a real messiah. | ||
| Well, okay. | ||
| So there's two parts of this. | ||
| The first part is the Missionaria Protectiva is the Bene Gesserit arm that seeds the general messiah kind of religion, which is less about the messiah and more about if a Bene Gesserit shows up, you should treat her like she's a witch that's got superpowers. | ||
| But she is. | ||
| Well, exactly. | ||
| I mean, you know, witch language aside, they do have superpowers. | ||
| But at the same time, if you find a witch with superpowers, there's a good chance that thousands of people will probably murder that witch unless there's a religion in place to protect them in advance. | ||
| True. | ||
| It's a risky run. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| That's the idea. | ||
| So they created this whole propaganda program, and throughout all of the galaxy, there are... | ||
| Variations on the exact same thing. | ||
| But they have a lot of the same themes, I imagine. | ||
| They have the exact same kind of general. | ||
| That the Lisan al-Gaib will come because that's what the Bene Gesserit will send somebody to the planet who will fulfill the prophecy of the voice from outside. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Or whatever. | ||
| Which is a really good twin theme. | ||
| The theme of if something is a prophecy, then it will happen. | ||
| But it hasn't happened yet, so it has to happen somehow. | ||
| But it's only going to happen because people are making it happen. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Which I think is great until there's magic powers. | ||
| Yeah, that is the issue. | ||
| Because the magic powers kind of indicate that all this is true. | ||
| It is true. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Well, I mean, but that's the thing. | ||
| Like, okay, so what they're not really wrestling with, or what isn't really wrestled with, is if Paul Atreides... | ||
| If the Kwisatz Haderach, the idea is they can see into the future, and they can see into the past, and any action or motion they take or any thought they have will lead them to whichever one they choose. | ||
| So the idea is we have now removed all agency from the entire human race and given it to this guy. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Which is a weird way of looking at God. | ||
| And also, I think the correct one. | ||
| As a way of absolving all of us of our responsibility for anything, if we create God, then God is the one who is responsible for everything. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Now, hold on. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because I don't understand exactly what's so different between the understanding of the past that Jessica gets and what Paul gets. | ||
| So... | ||
| I know that no man has ever gotten it before. | ||
| I understand that. | ||
| Well, this is... | ||
| I mean, it's kind of funny that we heard... | ||
| Comes back to chauvinism? | ||
| We heard, well... | ||
| It comes back to... | ||
| Not to date this, but there was the episode where we were talking about the doula. | ||
| And they were like, you know, because they were one body. | ||
| Because they were one body at one point. | ||
| And it's essentially that. | ||
| It's like, because women are all one body... | ||
| Every woman is born with every egg she's ever going to have. | ||
| So there's three generations, you know, whatever, inside the same body at one point in time. | ||
| So a reverend mother can connect to every woman dating back all the way to Primordial Eve. | ||
| That's the power of the Bene Gesserit. | ||
| Well, in that line? | ||
| In that line. | ||
| Not branching off that line. | ||
| Not branching off that line. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But the Kwisatz Haderach can do that for dudes. | ||
| And dudes can't do that because dudes aren't related to anybody. | ||
| They're just dicks. | ||
| So that goes all over the place. | ||
| That goes all over the place. | ||
| That goes to women. | ||
| That goes to men. | ||
| That goes to everybody everywhere. | ||
| He can see every future. | ||
| He can see every past. | ||
| He can do it all. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I can see how that gives a little bit of a different vision-ish. | ||
| It is tough because... | ||
| If you've not fully fleshed out the idea of becoming God, then you're kind of working on the level of becoming Jesus and not becoming God. | ||
| So whenever you're reading the Messiah story of Dune, people kind of associate it with the Messiah story of Jesus, where you're like, this is the good guy. | ||
| This is the guy who is going to free us, who's going to save us, who's going to do all kinds of stuff. | ||
| People aren't thinking about God, God. | ||
| The guy who's like, yeah, there's a fucking hurricane thrown around. | ||
| It's not you. | ||
| You didn't do anything wrong. | ||
| I'm just God. | ||
| I just make hurricanes sometimes, right? | ||
| So, naturally, if you're looking at that, if you're staring down the barrel of being Jesus, you're thinking, ah, this might be pretty cool. | ||
| And then you realize that, nope. | ||
| It's going to be everything is my fault from then on forever. | ||
| And in fact, it was always my fault in the past. | ||
| Because that's how time works. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ew. | |
| Yeah, space time is one thing. | ||
| It's not like a thing that keeps getting made. | ||
| That is a tough pill to swallow. | ||
| Yeah, it's tough. | ||
| Tough worm piss to swallow. | ||
| It is tough. | ||
| That's why the next movie might be a little bit harder to film. | ||
| Because what happens at the end of this book, and at the end of this movie, is we go, okay, because Paul has to essentially take over the entire Imperium in order to live, if he doesn't, then somebody's going to kill him. | ||
| The Bene Gesserit are going to kill him. | ||
| The Tylaxo are going to kill him. | ||
| The other houses are going to kill him. | ||
| He can only live longer if he is in charge of everything. | ||
| Right? | ||
| I guess. | ||
| You know, like, that's his only path. | ||
| There's no way for him to be like, okay, I'm going to move to a small city. | ||
| I could see a possibility of Obi-Wan Kenobying. | ||
| Maybe just associate that because of deserts. | ||
| I mean, I think the difference there is that Obi-Wan Kenobi was just a guy in the knighthood as opposed to being a former duke. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Somebody who is of the royal lineage, who is supposed to be the king, and who was raised since he was born with, like, maybe you're the Messiah. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I feel like he could fight people off. | ||
| He could. | ||
| He's a good fighter. | ||
| He's a very good fighter. | ||
| He seems to be able to overcome every odd. | ||
| He can yell at people and make them do whatever he wants. | ||
| Yeah, so he doesn't really have to take power. | ||
| At no point in time. | ||
| He'd have a tough road and people probably trying constantly to kill him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But he would probably kill all of them. | ||
| He'd probably beat everyone. | ||
| It would get annoying. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's literally gone. | |
| It would get annoying. | ||
| It would get really annoying. | ||
| Right, but you could do it. | ||
| Theoretically, I suppose. | ||
| Yeah, that's all I'm saying. | ||
| Eh, there's that. | ||
| You know what's never addressed at any point, as far as I'm aware? | ||
| Despite the voice being as good as it is, and as powerful as it is, at no point in time does anybody get a bullhorn and just really see how we can do. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It always has to be one person. | ||
| It's always one-on-one. | ||
| It's never like, hey, I'm just going to stand up at this pulpit and we're going to see if everybody's going to remember fake shit today. | ||
| Nobody ever tries it. | ||
| Well, that's what Alex's innovation would be. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| If he had the voice. | ||
| Tyranny maker one. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That idea of ancestral memories and stuff definitely felt more Infowars connected or Alex's view of himself connected and prophetic dreams. | ||
| There is a lot of Paul Atreides in his self-conception. | ||
| I can see a bit of that now that I've seen both of these. | ||
| And I'm sure it would be almost embarrassing if I read the book. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| Thinking off the top of my head, yeah, probably. | ||
| There's not as much InfoWars straight stuff that I was expecting when I watched it the second time. | ||
| Because I was... | ||
| In my head, whenever I had the idea that maybe we should do this little thing, in my head you were going to be like, oh, here's some stuff that I haven't even told you that Alex does from parts of the show that I didn't even, you know, like you listen to the show, and there's stuff that you listen to like a thousand times that was from Dune. | ||
| But because you weren't inundated with Dune... | ||
| In Dune? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| That you wouldn't have been recognized. | ||
| I think it's honestly more just like, that is a huge thing. | ||
| The ancestral memory and stuff like that, and being able to tell the future. | ||
| It is very parallel. | ||
| And the fact that I didn't know that before is kind of like, oh, that's a huge blind spot. | ||
| And then Alex talks constantly about when he was a kid in Dallas, how he would ride worms. | ||
| And I never picked up that that was too much related. | ||
| It's tough. | ||
| It's tough to engage the text too much as looking for all of that while still trying to take it in. | ||
| Sure, sure, sure. | ||
| Because I wanted to understand what I was seeing, too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally, totally. | |
| I'm not admonishing you for not having a thousand examples of something that probably doesn't exist. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's a lot of thematic stuff, but it's not as... | ||
| Like, he legitimately, directly believes, like, childhood's end is real. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And stuff like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Or is this, he just sort of has given himself Paul's powers. | ||
| It does feel like he believes he is the quiz outside of Iraq. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| In a lot of ways, he feels like... | ||
| But I don't know how you could not. | ||
| If you're a narcissist, these books are for you, you know? | ||
| Like, regardless of... | ||
| And how do I put it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| It is viewed as a valor, as a positive for Paul to be like, I am not the Messiah. | ||
| It's not me. | ||
| No big deal. | ||
| You know, that's cool. | ||
| You shouldn't be the person who's like, I am the Messiah. | ||
| That's creepy. | ||
| You don't want to pay attention to that guy. | ||
| But then he does. | ||
| But if you are the Messiah, then everything is about you. | ||
| So, like, just... | ||
| The entire world is about you. | ||
| You're the most important person in the world. | ||
| And if you're a narcissist, that feels like, okay, sure, everybody always tells me that I'm not the most important person in the world, but they said that to Paul. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And the humility gets you nowhere when the world is actually about you. | ||
| You've just got to take control of things. | ||
| If I'm the Messiah, then I've got to walk into that room and I've got to be like... | ||
| And I've got to begrudgingly accept. | ||
| Yeah, you can't want it. | ||
| Wanting it makes you a bad person. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I was surprised at how good Shalomai did with the yelling scenes. | ||
| Whenever Stilgar is like, you gotta kill me, and then you can take my place and really talk. | ||
| These are our rules. | ||
| And he was like, ah, fuck you. | ||
| A bit of Nick Cage. | ||
| There was definitely that. | ||
| I noticed it in the first one, and there was a bit more. | ||
| There's some pretty cagey vibes out of that, Chalamet. | ||
| You gotta get big. | ||
| You gotta yell big. | ||
| That was tough to do, and I respect it. | ||
| Yeah, I thought he did fine. | ||
| I thought that his character felt more full in the first one. | ||
| And maybe, I would imagine the assignment on the second one is a lot harder. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The complexity of what you're probably trying to convey. | ||
| I might have missed a little bit of it, but I still think you did a great job. | ||
| Zendaya was great. | ||
| Javier Bardem was great. | ||
| I can't remember who played Jessica. | ||
| Rebecca Ferguson, is that right? | ||
| She was great. | ||
| Yeah, she was great. | ||
| Jessica was great. | ||
| Austin Butler was great. | ||
| He was great. | ||
| Skarsgård was great. | ||
| Batista. | ||
| Not that great. | ||
| I think he's fine. | ||
| James Brolin was great. | ||
| But whatever everyone's talking about Batista being the best actor that's come out of wrestling, I don't think it's based on Dune. | ||
| And I don't think that's his fault. | ||
| I think he's playing this role fine. | ||
| I just don't think that there's a lot in the role. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I'm going to throw it out to you. | ||
| Blade Runner 2049 is why. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| His whole... | ||
| If you put little tiny glasses on Dave Bautista, because I think M. Night Shyamalan did it too. | ||
| If you put little tiny glasses on him, you're like, holy shit, this guy might be amazing. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| You just put tiny glasses on him, Dave Bautista, and you're like, this man is an actor. | ||
| I will reserve judgment. | ||
| Just take a look at a picture of him with tiny glasses. | ||
| You're like, I bet this man is in love with peace. | ||
| Also, slight correction, he's not that old, but... | ||
| I always thought he was much older because he was a grandfather at 40. So he was a wrestling grandpa, and that made me think he was a bit older than he was, but he's not really old. | ||
| I may have overstated that on the last episode. | ||
| Gotcha. | ||
| Because I Googled it. | ||
| No, it's okay. | ||
| But yeah, one thing that I thought, okay. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The bagpipes took me out of the last one a tiny bit. | ||
| They did. | ||
| Not to the point where I think it's a bad movie or anything like that. | ||
| But there was another moment like that in this one. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And that was when Stilgar is talking about the dangers of the desert. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And he tells him to watch out for trapdoor spiders. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And to me, why are there trapdoor spiders there? | ||
| Because there's trapdoor spiders everywhere. | ||
| Why are they called that? | ||
| Because it's an Orna trapdoor spider, Thopter. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I feel like those exist on Earth. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And this would have to imply that they were somehow brought from Earth, or that they evolved organically on Arrakis, and they decided to call them trapdoor spiders as well. | ||
| Made me a little bit, come on, give it a different name. | ||
| That's one of my favorite, like... | ||
| Things about sci-fi, period. | ||
| It's just like half the time you're like, oh, it's a Jupiterian space spider. | ||
| And the other half the time it's, oh, it's a scorpion. | ||
| It's a Daddy Long Legs. | ||
| From Arizona. | ||
| Wait, you called them that? | ||
| I'm sorry, what now? | ||
| Why? | ||
| Listen, what do you want me to come up with a name for everything? | ||
| Yes! | ||
| It's your world! | ||
| In every universe, that is a Daddy Long Legs. | ||
| It's just a truth of... | ||
| I mean, that was a great Douglas Adams joke, is that every civilization has developed a drink called a gin and tonic. | ||
| It's spelled differently, but it's all pronounced gin and tonic for some reason. | ||
| All different drinks, but for whatever reason. | ||
| I guess if that is a joke in this, then I'll accept it. | ||
| It would be, but it's not. | ||
| I still don't think I understand what the Bene Gesserit want. | ||
| The Bene Gesserit... | ||
| So, what's actually interesting about this question is that this is maybe the moral question. | ||
| Of the entire series. | ||
| If you want a world without conflict, a world without war, if you want to end people fighting each other, what are you doing? | ||
| Are you domesticating people? | ||
| Are you removing their ability to fight? | ||
| Are you saying we shouldn't fight? | ||
| Are you convincing people not to fight? | ||
| Or are you forcing them not to fight? | ||
| And if you're forcing people not to fight, you're the bad guy! | ||
| You're creating something of such force that people are afraid to ever fight again lest you bring the ire of that thing. | ||
| And that's just peace by terror. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So then their idea is we're going to breed it out of people. | ||
| Except not really. | ||
| No. | ||
| Because that would be stupid. | ||
| They're going to breed the ultimate weapon. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then he's going to do it. | ||
| I mean, it's crazy. | ||
| Have a god as a weapon. | ||
| Yeah, essentially. | ||
| They're trying to make a god because their conception of god is similar to themselves. | ||
| Because we can see through the past, we kind of get the idea of what's going on. | ||
| We have the shape of the future. | ||
| What actually happens is if you have somebody... | ||
| Who is existing in all times, past, present, and future simultaneously, regardless of whether or not they are even alive, the universe is them. | ||
| It's their universe. | ||
| Even going backwards. | ||
| Because it had to be going backwards. | ||
| Because the only way this universe could exist is if they already existed to make this universe exist. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yep. | ||
| Worm. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I... | ||
| I can agree with and get that. | ||
| And then I just want to retreat back to Worm. | ||
| Man, you want to go back to Worm. | ||
| That's why Dune Messiah will be a much more interesting book to see filmed, because it is not a fight. | ||
| There is not a big worm showing up. | ||
| Is there not a fight with the great houses? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, my dude, skip it. | |
| Oh. | ||
| Don't need it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Next movie, Emperor. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Boom! | |
| So... | ||
| Yep. | ||
| I guess, I mean, I kind of am interested in spoilers. | ||
| So what happens? | ||
| You've got the emperor. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| He comes down. | ||
| He's like, alright, you're cool. | ||
| You can marry my daughter. | ||
| This is fucking crazy. | ||
| This sucks. | ||
| You just killed that bald dude. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I fucked up. | ||
| I had a plan. | ||
| It didn't work out. | ||
| He did. | ||
| Now the great houses are there. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And they put out the call that Paul is ascending. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And they're like, nah. | ||
| Don't like it. | ||
| So then what? | ||
| So then, and this is... | ||
| Then Paul's got to wipe out the great houses, right? | ||
| You got it. | ||
| This is the part that I think is both the ultimate expression of the theme and also the one that's wrong about everything. | ||
| Or that's been interpreted wrong. | ||
| I don't know how it would be. | ||
| That humans are wrong about everything. | ||
| So at the end of this, in order for Paul to survive, he's like, we gotta do it. | ||
| We gotta take over everybody. | ||
| So all of the Fremen, the millions and millions of Fremen... | ||
| Who have only ever lived in the desert their entire lives, only ever fought the Harkonnen their entire lives, suddenly get on spaceships, travel all throughout the galaxy, murdering people left and right, conquering every fucking planet they can, and killing everybody who gets in their way. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That's the holy war. | ||
| That's the holy war. | ||
| That was sort of implied in the... | ||
| Because that's the only way... | ||
| Because Paul is... | ||
| The only way for Paul to survive is if he becomes emperor. | ||
| Otherwise, the other great houses are going to kill him. | ||
| Or even the people who work with him are going to kill him. | ||
| Right. | ||
| The only way for him to become emperor is if he takes over the other great houses. | ||
| And the only people who can do it for him are the Fremen. | ||
| Now, the Fremen don't know anybody. | ||
| They don't know anybody. | ||
| They don't know about these great houses. | ||
| They don't know about any of this shit. | ||
| They were living there, and then these people showed up and started murdering them. | ||
| And then Paul, their messiah, is suddenly like, hey, let's leave this planet and murder everybody else! | ||
| So I cannot die. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Because I'm God! | ||
| I do appreciate that at least, you know, Paul is not presented, like, altruistically. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They do a better job of that, yeah. | ||
| There isn't a feeling that, like, granted, he's like, yeah, I'd like you guys to be able to live on your planet, but that's a side thing to the larger goal that I have. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I appreciate that. | ||
| You know, you're not left feeling like... | ||
| Yeah, Paul. | ||
| No, no, that's good. | ||
| And you don't feel that throughout, too. | ||
| You know, there's a menace to him and to Jessica, both of them, throughout the movie. | ||
| And I think that's probably a positive way to present what they're all about. | ||
| Yeah, they did. | ||
| I mean, you know, the criticism for so many of these stories is usually correct of, like, this is the colonizer narrative. | ||
| And you're, yeah. | ||
| But it is. | ||
| It is the colonizer narrative, but Frank is kind of pointing out, like... | ||
| You're on first name basis with him? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, it's better than his son. | ||
| Because I was going to say Herbert, but then it might be referenced. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Don't worry about it. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| It's a colonizer narrative turned on its head, but also made worse. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| This is the bad guy. | ||
| The main character that you are watching gets the entirety of Dune for you to feel justified in what he's doing. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Barely. | ||
| Sort of. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| No, because that's the layers of the onion. | ||
| He's justified in this one layer, which is his fight against the Harkonnens. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Like, in that sense... | ||
| There's a justification of taking out the Harkonnens and what have you. | ||
| But once we get past that layer, nothing is justified. | ||
| Everything is a complete mess. | ||
| And because magic powers exist, I don't even know what to think. | ||
| Yeah, that's kind of the interesting question of... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, religion. | |
| When magic powers are real, that changes the conception of morality. | ||
| I think for anybody who is really going to wrestle with magic and the powers they're in, your conception of what is and is good and good-bad have to be different, just in subjection to there being a god. | ||
| But there's also, like, okay, so in this universe, there's magic that's a trick. | ||
| Like, Jessica surviving the poison is a trick. | ||
| Kind of. | ||
| And the voice is a trick. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It's something that you learn and you can, like, it's her training. | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| Right, that's not really magic. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Necessarily. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| There's something that's being done, whether it's like, you know, those people who can modulate their body temperature so they can survive in really cold places. | ||
| Sure, sure, sure. | ||
| You know, like, that's kind of what the poison thing is. | ||
| Yes, yeah, yeah. | ||
| The spice gives you the ability to do that, yeah. | ||
| But there's also magic that's magic. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I feel like there's a distinction between the two. | ||
| Like, if we live in a universe where someone can survive this poison because they did a trick, then I'm not like... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It doesn't... | ||
| It's not magic. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There is magic, though. | ||
| Well, if we live in a universe where somebody can manipulate their genetic code to... | ||
| We would now make an enzyme that processes the poison in your liver or whatever. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That is magic, right? | ||
| I guess if that's the mechanics of it, then it is magic. | ||
| But it's also slightly not... | ||
| I mean, it's different. | ||
| I agree with you from, like, I can talk to my ancestors from hundreds of thousands of years ago and really actually talk to them. | ||
| It's not a thought. | ||
| It's never like, is this all in their head? | ||
| No, no, no, no, no. | ||
| This is 100% factual. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's difficult. | ||
| Yeah, and at points, Paul is able to, like, as far as the voice goes, one of the things that Paul does is he just becomes Leto in front of... | ||
| James Brolin's character. | ||
| He's like, how do I trust you and all this stuff? | ||
| And then he just adopts all of this stuff because he can actually speak to his dad now. | ||
| And once you become the Quizás Hot Rack, you have the voice of your dad there who's real, who's a not-dead version of your dad. | ||
| And you can just embody them. | ||
| At all times. | ||
| This is a mess. | ||
| Oh, it's a real mess. | ||
| And it gets even messier in Children of Dude, the third book, whenever we see what St. Talia of the Knife can really... | ||
| Because if you call something a combination, usually there's a reason for it. | ||
| And we find out what that reason is. | ||
| Because she's a child that knows everything. | ||
| Well, there is... | ||
| See, but that on its face isn't terrible. | ||
| Yes, it is. | ||
| Well, I mean, it's terrible. | ||
| Because you don't have the maturity, and you know, you're not an adult, and maybe you make capricious child decisions. | ||
| I think it's actually the opposite is the problem, is that you're trapped in a baby. | ||
| You're an infinite being with knowledge of... | ||
| Centuries upon millennia of experience in life that we could never even process. | ||
| And you go... | ||
| She seems to be able to communicate pretty well, though. | ||
| She does pretty good. | ||
| Psychic powers of being what they are. | ||
| Again, magic helps. | ||
| So, I am infuriated that this story isn't fully told. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I think it's a good movie. | ||
| I think it was well done. | ||
| But it does drive me crazy, like, the way the first one ended with, like, tune in next time. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I felt okay about that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because I understood there's a part two. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm kind of livid that there's a part three, or a part three that may never exist, because it's not done. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What if I told you? | |
| It's not done. | ||
| What if I told you? | ||
| But I think Dune is never done, which is the fucking problem with it. | ||
| There's a hundred fucking books. | ||
| All this nonsense you tell me about the plot. | ||
| What if I told you that that is not true? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| There's only like six books or whatever. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I can't remember. | |
| Because Frank Herbert died. | ||
| And the story was never finished. | ||
| Right, that's the problem. | ||
| Not once. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| This doesn't end. | ||
| His kid, quote-unquote, found his notes or whatever and decided to finish the story, only it happened to be very, very bad. | ||
| So, was it the end of the story? | ||
| Well, I mean, I think that's probably, you know, what happens with these kinds of epic, grand stories. | ||
| Yeah, tough. | ||
| Game of Thrones could never end satisfactorily. | ||
| Dune will never end satisfactorily. | ||
| Like, the 84 movie tried to end satisfactorily. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| As a contained story, and it felt fucking silly. | ||
| And then they went to the waves and the title cards of people, and it looked ridiculous. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I get that, but it sucks. | ||
| It sucks. | ||
| I mean, the problem is, it is a story about religion. | ||
| And religions can only... | ||
| A religious story only ends one way. | ||
| With... | ||
| Everyone dying and the rapture or whatever it is. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like, you can't end the Bible with Jesus being like, and I'll be back in a few days. | ||
| Bam! | ||
| That's what they're trying to do with the movie. | ||
| It has to be the seventh seal will open and then there's a big battle and then there's a showdown. | ||
| But each movie ends with that guitar lick. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| That's frustrating. | ||
| But that's what you're going to get. | ||
| Forever. | ||
| Forever. | ||
| It's what we're going to get in our human lives. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Because we don't have magic. | ||
| I guess I would have a criticism that it felt artificially completed for the sake of a movie's sake if it did that. | ||
| But then I have the alternate complaint that it's just left open-ended and it's like an episode of TV. | ||
| It is. | ||
| Because it didn't do that. | ||
| So there's a way they could have forced it and it would have felt cheap. | ||
| Whereas, I guess this is what they probably should have done, but it also feels unsatisfying and, like, the door isn't closed. | ||
| This is where we get back to postmodern critical theory. | ||
| Because when you read Dune, when Dune exists before other Dunes exist, alright, it is a lot less muddled. | ||
| The story that you can read from Dune can be far more straightforward, because Dune could probably, possibly, have been only one book, right? | ||
| So when he's writing it, he's writing it that way. | ||
| Now, as time goes on, now he's got more stuff that he's adding, which changes the original meaning of the book, which means that if you're going to adapt it, then you have to make your own choice as to whether or not you're going to engage with just the text of Dune, just the text of his work, just the text of all of the Dune text, or you're just going to go, fuck it. | ||
| It's mine. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Yeah, and I think that if you only engage with the text, you'll get a lot of blowback. | ||
| From people like you. | ||
| Or book fans. | ||
| But I think that's why I like Dune more than I like some other stuff. | ||
| I wouldn't get mad at somebody about Star Wars or something like that. | ||
| But whenever there's a conversation about The Last Jedi, I'm going to get into it. | ||
| Whatever you feel about Dune, I'm cool with that. | ||
| Go to town, buddy. | ||
| You know, like, there's so many ways. | ||
| But I don't know if that's indicative of all the fan base. | ||
| I think there's some people who get a lot of very strong feelings. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| I'm sure there are. | ||
| Which seems strange to me, because... | ||
| But, you know, whatever. | ||
| I'm not a big fan of religion. | ||
| Fair enough. | ||
| And Dune is a book, I would say, almost entirely about religion and God. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, yeah, and that's the part that's really difficult, because it's also, like, a political story, and it's also, like... | ||
| hero's journey type story. | ||
| But it is just so complicated that multiple people know that what they're doing is bullshit. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Or kind of know that what they're doing is bullshit. | |
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And still do it. | |
| But also what they're doing isn't bullshit. | ||
| So... | ||
| That is the problem with making time a character in your story. | ||
| Because if time is a character, then that means people's decisions can then be evaluated on results. | ||
| Later on. | ||
| Upon later on. | ||
| Upon later on. | ||
| So if you're going to live with time as a character, then here's what you can run up against while you're writing. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| So say I've got a character named Itler. | ||
| All right? | ||
| And he has a vision. | ||
| This is while, you know, his terrible country, Erminy, is under horrible oppression. | ||
| All these people are pissed off. | ||
| Everybody's miserable. | ||
| He has this vision from real-ass God. | ||
| Real-ass God. | ||
| The real one. | ||
| Right? | ||
| That says, if you don't do this, then Germany will go away forever and ever. | ||
| But if you do this, you will be a monster. | ||
| But eventually, you'll be part of the world leadership. | ||
| Eventually your country will be part of the nation of nations. | ||
| Eventually you'll be a leader economically, even despite all that horrifying shit you did. | ||
| But you will live forever as a monster. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| So now you have that question. | ||
| You don't have, am I a good person if I commit a genocide? | ||
| You have a, am I a good person if I commit a smaller genocide? | ||
| There will always, if time is a character, then your problem is always going to be the trolley problem for every decision you make. | ||
| If you're Paul Atreides, okay, so I go on a tear and kill everybody in the universe and become the emperor. | ||
| I don't kill everybody. | ||
| There's plenty of people left. | ||
| I just killed a bunch of people who would have lived if I hadn't. | ||
| But if he doesn't exist, then a bunch of people are going to kill a bunch of people anyways. | ||
| The only difference is agency. | ||
| The only difference is... | ||
| In this story, it is definitively Paul's fault. | ||
| And Paul could choose to keep all of those people alive. | ||
| But here's the thing. | ||
| Okay, so if Paul just died in the sword fight with Bald Guy, how does everyone end up dying then? | ||
| Well, that's the problem there. | ||
| If he dies in a sword fight with Bald Guy, Bald Guy's kid is going to become the Kwisatz Hot Rock. | ||
| The Bene Gesserit are probably going to be able to control that kid. | ||
| That kid will also become the emperor, and so we'll have the Kwisatz Haderach being the emperor anyways. | ||
| Only it won't be Jessica's son, it'll be Fade Roth's son. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Seems arbitrary. | ||
| It's very arbitrary. | ||
| That's also the problem with religion, but man! | ||
| Paul, he has the agency, and he has the choice. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| The end result is bad for everyone, no matter what. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's really just selfishness. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| He is, because in this universe... | ||
| It's only self-interest. | ||
| In this universe, he is the only person who can make a decision. | ||
| For now. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like, if he punted, and he just said, okay, I'm gonna go and fight off everyone who comes to attack me, or whatever, and I'm not gonna do any of this bullshit, then Fade Ratha's son would come around, and then become the Kitsat Soderak, or whatever, and then that... | ||
| That kid would have agency. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Probably. | |
| That kid would have ultimate agency. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And so... | ||
| I mean, that kid's probably going to have to kill you, though. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| So, you know, I mean, it is that kind of thing where... | ||
| What do you do with two beings who are ultimate on the same planet? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Well, but I mean, what's so fun about that is, to me, that's an infinitely more interesting story. | ||
| Because, to me, we live like that. | ||
| Everybody has agency. | ||
| If everybody has agency, then you have to respect everybody else's agency when you're shitting on other people and taking it away from them. | ||
| But then what if only two people have agency? | ||
| Well, but I mean, in this universe, only one person has agency. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So the conflict is between does this person make the right choice of the trolley problem? | ||
| Always. | ||
| The conflict is what is justifiable if the end result is known? | ||
| If I know that me being a good person now will cause extinction for humanity in a thousand years, then is it not my responsibility to do the thing that will keep humanity alive for 10,000 years? | ||
| Is that my responsibility? | ||
| Am I being altruistic by being a monster in order to keep humanity? | ||
| It's cruel to be kind. | ||
| Right? | ||
| But the reality of that is that's dumb. | ||
| That is a dumb way of viewing things, and it's a dumb way of looking at life. | ||
| Because you don't know the outcome of things. | ||
| Except they do. | ||
| Exactly! | ||
| In a situation where you do know the outcome, where you have a concrete awareness of what the future will be, and you can choose a bespoke one, specifically the one you want. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Your actions are... | ||
| That's the problem with presenting the hypothetical in the context that it does in this story. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It's like the magic powers existing kind of... | ||
| Undercuts the whole idea. | ||
| A little bit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it still provokes a lot of interesting questions. | ||
| I mean, the trolley problem is always interesting because you don't know, you know, what if whatever happens, whatever unknown ramifications of your actions spiral out, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But if the trolley problem is, not only do I know what's going to happen, am I a bad person if I say saving this one guy is more important? | ||
| Because that guy eventually becomes a doctor that saved me. | ||
| Am I a bad person? | ||
| Because I have to make the choice. | ||
| And I think the conclusion is, anyone with agency is making both the right and wrong choice at all times. | ||
| Because you're either going to live or die. | ||
| And so if you're alive, then you've made the right choice, and if you're dead... | ||
| Then you've probably also made the right choice. | ||
| It doesn't matter. | ||
| Unless you're God, in which case, you fucked up. | ||
| That's the ultimate conclusion. | ||
| I think that might be the ultimate conclusion, but again, it was an unfinished series. | ||
| Only six books. | ||
| He had so little time to get his point out. | ||
| Oh my god, so many words. | ||
| So many words. | ||
| I can't begin to describe how long some of those are. | ||
| I have a couple of stray thoughts. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| The first is that I thought it was bullshit. | ||
| That House Atreides happens to have their atomic stuff on Arrakis? | ||
| Shouldn't it be on their home planet? | ||
| I don't even want to... | ||
| That was a little bit convenient. | ||
| It was the most convenient. | ||
| I love a good... | ||
| Oh, by the way, we have infinite power over here. | ||
| Yeah, I thought that was a little bit... | ||
| I'm guessing that's in the books, too. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| We brought the One Ring from home just in case we needed it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Even though we got jumped and killed the day after we got here. | ||
| These are just here. | ||
| Well, we hid them in plain sight because we're geniuses. | ||
| I found that to be troubling. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| And then the other thing, sort of flip side of this, it's very difficult for Christopher Walken to exist in something and not be a distraction. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is. | |
| And I think he did okay. | ||
| I mean, it's weird because it's like, you're Christopher Walken. | ||
| Why aren't you Christopher Walkening right now? | ||
| But at the same time, it's like, you're doing a good job, Christopher Walken. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But you're Christopher Walken. | ||
| I think he's been Christopher Walken for so long. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And there's so many people who have done impressions of him and he's become a caricature that it is very difficult for him to exist in a role, like I said, that's not distracting. | ||
| And I think he's not distracting as the emperor, which is a testament. | ||
| It does seem weird. | ||
| It does seem weird for him to have a job. | ||
| Like, he's just Christopher Walken. | ||
| That's not just being wacky. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| You should just be you, right? | ||
| And instead he was doing, like, his acting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was good. | ||
| Well played, Chris. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well done. | |
| So anyway, I've seen Dune now. | ||
| You've seen Dune now. | ||
| How do you feel? | ||
| I feel better for it, I guess. | ||
| Do you? | ||
| I guess. | ||
| I have some context. | ||
| I have some references. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I have some thoughts. | ||
| It definitely... | ||
| It raised questions about obligation and prophecy and what have you, but... | ||
| It was a good movie. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The new ones are good. | ||
| First one, I don't even know what I think about it anymore. | ||
| The 84 one? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| The Lynch version? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I swear, if you watch it about 13, 14 more times, it's going to really open up for you. | ||
| See, that's the problem. | ||
| I get how it hooks people. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Having watched this, I understand people getting into it deep. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, I can understand, especially if it hits you at the right age, and, you know, I can see how this kind of a story, particularly how I'm imagining the books, because I haven't read them. | ||
| Oh, imagine you were, I don't know, probably somebody, like, imagine if you were prophesied. | ||
| Really hit you hard, this book. | ||
| Oh, shit. | ||
| I wasn't even, you know, I wasn't even taking into account that layer of it. | ||
| I didn't have much of a shot. | ||
| I was fucked. | ||
| Even if you are a non-heralded child, these are interesting questions. | ||
| And it raises a lot of interesting stuff, and the characters are compelling. | ||
| So I get it. | ||
| I get how someone could get hooked. | ||
| And I worry about myself a little bit, because there is a part of me that is now very curious. | ||
| Because this two-part... | ||
| Five and a half fucking hour movie or whatever ended with no satisfactory conclusion of anything. | ||
| I don't even know the worm kid. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nope. | |
| So there's a part of me that worries that it's like someone has given me a little bit of crack and I'm going to have to go look for a hit. | ||
| Yeah, I think for me it was kind of, you know, what am I going to do? | ||
| This is the only... | ||
| Maybe? | ||
| I think maybe I would go with Highlander as far as manufactured shit. | ||
| Coming into this from a point of view of this is both real and not real. | ||
| You know that this is not real. | ||
| But shit keeps happening, man. | ||
| It's fucking crazy. | ||
| So as somebody who was prophesied as a child, how does that affect your relationship with the material? | ||
| I find my relationship to it to be, I think, the opposite of what people would have expected. | ||
| Because I think that's probably a large part of how I wound up being who I am, is immediately rejecting the idea. | ||
| Whenever I read Dune at 8, of how silly this is, while embodying it. | ||
| There is a certain part of you that remembers, like, if you're a 12-year-old kid or something, you've got this fucking prophecy on your ass head, and then you're reading this book about how this guy who doesn't want to be the prophet is like, well, eventually I guess I'll just have to kill everybody. | ||
| It's the only way. | ||
| It's the only way to survive. | ||
| Then there's a part of you that is like, it has to be easy to get swept up in. | ||
| And there's a part of me that sees, like, when Alex starts doing some of that, like, megalomaniacal shit, there's a part of me that feels that it's a certain type. | ||
| And it's a type that I know because it's like, I could walk into it. | ||
| To a certain extent. | ||
| Like, I've got the... | ||
| You have that backstory that you can use incredibly well to your advantage if you wanted to weaponize it. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| But it's... | ||
| Yeah, so just that choice of not doing it ever and forever. | ||
| Like, it has to be a constant forever, you know? | ||
| I think part of that, and I'm not saying... | ||
| I'm not trying to diminish what you're saying. | ||
| Oh, no, please, please. | ||
| But magic isn't real. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So, if you actually had magic powers... | ||
| Right. | ||
| It would be much more difficult for you to deal with the fact that you were prophesied because you're like, oh wait, I also have magic fucking powers. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| The problem, though, is when you're in it, especially at religious level, magic is real. | ||
| And that means that there were a bunch of weird things that happened while I was growing up that weren't, not like, no. | ||
| Not miraculous weird. | ||
| Like weird, like some, like one of our neighbors who I'd never spoken to and never met before, just like one day walked in and was like... | ||
| I had a dream about your son and then gave me $500. | ||
| I'm not joking. | ||
| Well, that's just weird. | ||
| That's insane weird, right? | ||
| But if that hits you at the wrong time, when you're in the wrong headspace, you're like, holy shit, it's a sign, right? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, definitely. | ||
| And it goes along with that. | ||
| It's not just like a weird thing that happened to me. | ||
| It's a weird thing that happened to the guy with the fucking prophecy on his head, you know? | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| So there is that instinct of like it's possible if you've got more than one piece of evidence to convince yourself that something is true despite the fact that it is absolutely silly. | ||
| So do you think Paul just some of these things hit him at the wrong time? | ||
| I mean, what's interesting about Paul is the choice that he makes later on. | ||
| Which we don't have in this movie. | ||
| Time to understand that he takes out his eyes. | ||
| Yeah, well, his eyes are taken out, but he can see the future, so if something happens to him, he did it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So he chooses everything. | ||
| And so eventually you get to the point where there is that choice. | ||
| Live or die. | ||
| If I live, everybody dies. | ||
| If I die, everybody lives. | ||
| So that is the Jesus story. | ||
| And that's what I find interesting about it. | ||
| Is that in the first Dune, you have the manufactured Messiah. | ||
| And then in the third Dune, you have the conversation between what you would expect to kind of like... | ||
| Resurrected Jesus and God would have a conversation of being like, hey man, that didn't solve shit, did it? | ||
| Yeah, I don't think I'm going to come back. | ||
| You can handle this one. | ||
| Bounce. | ||
| And then worm. | ||
| And then worm. | ||
| Well, it'll be interesting to see if that movie ever comes out. | ||
| It'll be interesting. | ||
| But it's done now. | ||
| I still don't really fully understand what the Bene Gesserit are up to. | ||
| There's a miniseries where you can watch James McAvoy get eaten by a sand trout. | ||
| Well, I know what I'm doing tonight. | ||
| I know what I'm doing! | ||
| Dune! | ||
| Dune Messiah! | ||
| Is that what that's called? | ||
| I believe it's Children of Dune. | ||
| Or maybe the... | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| Anyway, I'm Dune-ed out. | ||
| It's time to be Dune with Dune. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That's the book closing. | ||
| But thank you. | ||
| Thank you for exposing me to this and taking me down this path and sharing your experience, too. | ||
| It helps, you know, just flesh out some of your sci-fi interests and weirdo shit. | ||
| No, it is like, it's kind of fascinating to have a weird connection with Alex. | ||
| Just that... | ||
| That, like, I know your thoughts sometimes. | ||
| Not because I'm smart, but because I am fighting them. | ||
| Or because I've read the same sci-fi as you, and it affected me similarly. | ||
| Yeah, it affected me similarly, and I could make your choice. | ||
| And that's, yeah, it's weird. | ||
| Well, good thing you didn't. | ||
| Yeah, it's nice. | ||
| Hooray. | ||
| Instead, I'm doing this, which is completely different. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| It's a little different. | ||
| Slightly. | ||
| So, um, we'll be back. | ||
| Indeed. | ||
| I guess. | ||
| Indeed we will. | ||
| But we have a website. | ||
| Knowledgefight.com. | ||
| We are not on social media. | ||
| That is true. | ||
| I'm neither Neo nor Leo nor DZX Clark. | ||
| I am not the mysterious professor. | ||
| Woo! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah! | |
| Woo! | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| Woo! | ||
| And now here comes the sex robot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Andy in Kansas. | |
| You're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Alex. | |
| I'm a first-time caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a huge fan. |
Export Selection