Forum Overview :: Peter Molyneux's The Movies :: No it isn't, and you've proved my point.

[quote name="Mischief Maker"]The Fremen <I>are</I> the most boring part of the book. The highlight of the second book is watching the Harkonnens going through a similar crisis to the Atreides in the first half in their own twisted funhouse mirror kind of way. And arguably for all the nobility of the Atreides and sleaziness of the Harkonnens on the surface, the Atreides prove to be the greater evil in the long run. But if the movie Harkonnens are just a bunch of torture monsters who live in a sewer and look like aliens, that whole theme is lost. Where the Atreides depended on propaganda and bravado to draw the best and brightest to their cause, Baron Harkonnen appeals to their baser instincts with drugs and prostitution, but it's in service to the same goals. Just as Duke Leto refused to let Thufir Hawat resign in shame, Baron Harkonnen defied an Imperial order to kill him, both because Hawat was too valuable an asset to waste. Like Paul, Feyd Rautha was a future heir trained from birth to rule, but kept in the dark about the purpose of their training until near adulthood, the difference was Feyd was raised to uphold the status quo and Paul was raised to destroy it violently. The Baron's plan with Feyd was to have his twisted mentat Pieter rule Arrakis viciously for a few years (replacing him with the beast Raban after Pieter died) then have Feyd Rautha supplant them and become a hero to the Arrakeen people by ruling with a comparatively soft touch. And in fact Feyd was allowed to go among the common Harkonnen people, while Paul was keep cloistered and trained to command with Bene Gesserit mind-control techniques. But Leto's plan was always to take the reclusive Fremen, who were content to spend the next several generations slowly terraforming Arrakis, and turn them into a super-Sardaukar and seize the throne by force. Paul did that, <I>and</I> sent them on a bloodly Galaxy-wide crusade that turned him into mega-Hitler. And that's one of the great things about Dune, the Harkonnens being ultimately the lesser evil. But that falls apart if you turn them into inhuman cenobites. Fucking Jodorowsky's Dune, that stoner never even read the novel![/quote]