‘Dune: Prophecy’ Stuck In Prequel Quicksand: HBO Review

The problem with prequels, the mode du jour in Hollywood’s grab-all-the-IP age, is that they make the mistake of thinking that our appreciation of something equates to curiosity about its provenance. IN Solo: A Star Wars Storywhere he learns how the rogue smuggler Han got his last name punctures the illusion of his devil-may-care aura, a deflating answer to a question that didn’t need to be asked in the first place. Dune: Prophecy is the latest franchise to prove that approach wrong. When a character complains, “We’re all just pieces on the board,” the realization that all their moves are predetermined applies to the entire show. Dune: Prophecys derivativeness is both its greatest flaw and its most defining characteristic.

An adaptation of the 2012 novel Sisterhood of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, Dune: Prophecy takes place more than 10,000 years before the events of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic Dune. That novel and Denis Villeneuve’s two blockbusters Dune and Dune: Part Twofollowed the ascension of Paul Atreides, who avenges his family’s destruction at the hands of rival House Harkonnen by accepting his role as the might-messiah of the Fremen, the indigenous people of the desert planet of Arrakis. In doing so, Paul seizes control of the spice of Arrakis (the most prized resource in the universe) and rejects the influence of the Bene Gesserit space witches. The religious order had spent millennia of matchmaking to create the Kwisatz Haderach, a figure they wish to crown as emperor and then control, and with their long black robes and inscrutable plans for Paul, these women serve as secondary villains in Dune film. IN Prophecyassuming the role of anti-heroic protagonists, the series outlines their beginnings and first maneuvers to gain power in the Empire.

Dune: Prophecy is set at a pivotal moment in the franchise’s history, when humans rose up against the thinking machines that enslaved them and established various orders to specialize in the tasks that computers once handled. The Bene Gesserit become pivotal to the universe in the shadow of this rebellion, but rather than portraying how thoroughly this revolution changed reality for the remaining humans, Dune: Prophecy settle for one more Game of Thrones-lite approach, where all the strife is really about politics on the surface (with some supernatural sandworm-related stuff like window dressing), and every so often there’s a sex scene to spice things up. (Literally, there is a lot of casual use of spices in this series.)

The series is primarily a portrait of the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother Valya Harkonnen (played by Jessica Barden as a teenager and Emily Watson as an adult) as she eliminates competition within the order and rises to rule. Her endgame motives are shadowy and unclear in the show’s first four episodes, but each episode hints at her reasons for undermining Emperor Corrino (Mark Strong, mostly just looking confused) through conversations with her biological sister Tula (Olivia Williams), as well a venerable mother. who is more directly involved in teaching the Bene Gesserit acolytes than Valya—and more soft-hearted, too. When Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel), a veteran of 12 “tours” on Arrakis, begins to undermine Valya’s authority with his own shocking powers, the series splits its attention between Valya’s quest to find out what Desmond is up to and Tula’s mentoring of Bene Gesserit sisters-in-training, teenage girls who begin to display a kind of hysteria reminiscent of the girls of Le Roy.

Watson and Williams are the show’s biggest assets, performers who approach each scene with shadowy nuance and steely gravitas (sometimes more than the writing deserves), and who demonstrate a clear bond between the sisters even as they fall into a hierarchy. Tula’s concern for her young charges allows it Dune: Prophecy to sprinkle in flashbacks to the Harkonnen sisters’ upbringing and explain how they both ended up in the ranks (with a number of e.g. Solo-like details about the mysterious ways of the Bene Gesserit, including information about their vocal power and their talent for lying, which the series didn’t need to explain). Cast out of her family as a teenager, Valya reluctantly found a home in the Sisterhood, where she made enemies with her ambition and insistence that the Empire was wrong to banish the Harkonnens after the Great Machine Wars. As an adult, Valya has consolidated power to such an extent that she has no qualms telling Tula that she expects “blind obedience” and no fear when she tells Desmond, “I would advise against playing games with me. I will win.” Through split timelines, this series tries to do a misguided feminism thing, with Valya and Tula’s youth defined by the burden of being members of the hated House Harkonnen, and their adulthood spent in an offensive stance against the people (mostly men) who despise but need them.

Like both Villeneuves Dune adaptations, Prophecy continues to discount the religious and cultural elements of Herbert’s novel, particularly those relating to Islam and the Middle East, and so central frictions between characters from different factions are hinted at but never explored. A group of Bene Gesserit sisters are called “zealots”, while Desmond is positioned as a convert whose newfound faith in Shai-Hulud is a threat to Valya’s worldview. But without the context of how these perspectives contradict or diverge from one another, the characters’ conflicts feel weightless, and dialogue that leads them to state their goals becomes empty. “The Great Houses are hoarding spice and forcing people to turn to violence to get what they need to survive. The only way to stop this is to spill blood, and don’t doubt for a second my allegiance to the cause ,” is poundingly didactic.

That “here’s a character, here’s a few lines about their ethos, that’s all the development you get” approach means Dune: Prophecy often evokes the rhythms of second-rate YA. The Bene Gesserit students are defined only by their bickering, and Sarah-Sofie Boussnina, who plays the Emperor’s rebellious daughter Princess Ynez, is a particular victim of the show’s simplistic dialogue. When she finds her father dining with Desmond and snotty complains, “So we’re having breakfast with murderers now?”, as if her family’s rule over the Empire hasn’t resulted in the deaths of countless people, it’s impossible to tell whether Ynez is supposed to resemble a , who dares to speak truth to power or a delusional hypocrite. She may have the hardest time with it, but too many of it Dune: Prophecy‘s characters feel equally thin, their motivations and backstories never fleshed out.

The series is most exciting when it offers new glimpses of this world, even if the execution doesn’t always feel right. A shocking double murder at the end of the first episode puts the violence on screen that the series otherwise only gestures towards. There seems to be only one nightclub on House Corrino’s home planet of Kaitain, but the alternately flirtatious and paranoid scenes in the dingy-lit bar offer something other than palace intrigue. Extended depictions of “Agony,” the process by which a Bene Gesserit sister becomes a venerable mother by merging her consciousness with that of her ancestors, are visually horrifying and account for the wonderfully eerie sound design of overlapping whispers and murmurs that stir during scenes with the leaders of the order. In those moments, Dune: Prophecy feels like it stretches to be something other than what we expect.

But too much else Dune: Prophecy follows Villeneuve’s vision so closely that the series feels like an act of cowardice and abdication of creativity. The ominous quote and opening exposition dump, the Bene Gesserit costumes and technology like vibrating defensive shields all evoke the films so strongly that they seem desperate to promise fans that Dune: Prophecy will not be so different from the blockbusters. But why care about all the characters’ politics, their worries about where their culture will end up, when the world they’re in now looks so much like the world 10,000 years from now? By hewing so closely to its predecessors, Dune: Prophecy undermines its own central tension, implicitly signaling to us that for a very long time everything in this universe will be pretty much fine. The tread-water quality of the series feels like a sign warning us that Hollywood’s prequel formula will never dare to change.