Dune: Prophecy Premiere Recap: 10,000 Years Before Chalamet

Dune: Prophecy

The hidden hand

Season 1

Section 1

Editor’s assessment

3 stars

***

Photo: Attila Szvacsek/HBO

Until Denis Villeneuve came along and adapted Frank Herbert’s novel Dune into a viable film seemed like an impossible dream, nobly attempted once by David Lynch under the supervision of producers Dino and Raffaella De Laurentiis, but to little critical or commercial success. If anything, the idea to adapt Dune was always more convincing than actually doing it, which is why Alejandro Jodorowsky’s extraordinary vision for the film, preserved in the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dunestands as its greatest incarnation, a theoretical mind trip with music by Pink Floyd, visual effects by Dan O’Bannon and HR Giger and a proposed cast that included Salvador Dalí, Orson Welles, Mick Jagger and Udo Kier in major roles. (Jodorowsky was set on casting his own son as Paul Atreides, which is just one of the thousand hubristic reasons why funding was pulled).

The trouble with Dune as a film, Herbert’s book is both a thrilling space adventure, full of palace intrigue and giant sandworms, and a hallucinatory freakout on a galactic scale, and it’s rare that a director has the capacity to do both at once. (Lynch wasn’t a bad choice, honestly. With greater resources and control, his Dune could have been a masterpiece.) Villeneuve solved the problem Dune problem of mastering the “space adventure” side of the equation, replacing the book’s more mystical aspects with impressive, thunderous world-building that overwhelmed you with scale. To some extent, you don’t love the Villeneuve films so much as you feel defeated by them, as if the freaks from House Harkonnen had landed their ship in your backyard.

Inspired by Herbert’s book and Sisterhood of Dunea prequel novel by Herbert’s eldest son Brian and Kevin J. Anderson, Dune: Prophecy burned through several creative teams – that drama is vividly detailed in Noel Murray’s curtain lifter in New York Times — before they settled with showrunner Alison Schapker. Despite the many hands involved, this is the first episode of Dune: Prophecy makes the conservative choice to follow Villeneuve’s visual template (if not the sound) and build it out into a Game of Thrones-style series of warring houses and interstellar political intrigue. It is creepily terribly far from the soul dune – having not read any of Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson’s prequel novels, perhaps the creeping begins there – and it is so far hard to see evidence of the allegorical weight of Herbert’s original novel with its veiled references to the struggle for oil and jihadists in the Middle East. Perhaps some notable themes will emerge as the show unfolds, but getting it going is such a heavy lift that some patience may be required.

At the same time, mission operations are baked in Dune: Prophecywhich is about the best laid plans of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood 10,000 years before they engineered the birth of Paul Atreides. (It’s basically like Charlie Day Conspiracy meme from It’s always sunny in Philadelphia if the scoreboard was the size of the Green Monster at Fenway Park.) In connection with Herbert’s Dunethe multi-millenia conspiracy of human engineering necessary to provide a messianic hero with overwhelming apocalyptic power sounds super cool, giving Paul a select stature of virtually unmatched size. But Dune: Prophecy reveals the obvious, which is that humans are imperfect and often cross, and it’s a miracle that we can come together to make a club sandwich, much less create the defining force of the universe.

To her credit, however, Valya Harkonnen (Emily Watson) has a strong, clear vision and refuses to let anyone shake her from it—which, given her family’s reputation, casts a dark shadow over the Bene Gesserit plot. In her opening narrative, Valya seethes over the historical accounts of recent history, where House Atreides was credited with leading humanity’s successful rebellion against the “thinking machines” that enslaved them, while her great-grandfather supposedly gave up the fight. Valya sees the Bene Gesserit’s mission as a means to redeem the Harkonnen name—spoiler alert: It doesn’t—but the whole idea of ​​the Sisterhood is that its members have no greater allegiance to any group outside their own. The relationships they foster and the alliances they form are always in line with the overall plan.

In “The Hidden Hand,” the plan is to have a genetic stake in a royal bloodline, specifically Princess Ynez (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina), heir to the Golden Lion Throne, currently held by Emperor Javicco Corrino (Mark Strong). , who is responsible for managing the spice harvest on the planet Arrakis. Against his better judgement, Corrino has made a deal with House Richese to marry off Ynez to the very young Prince Pruwet, which would help secure a fleet of fighters to hold off the attacks that have stopped the harvesters on Arrakis. Although Ynez goes through the extremely awkward ceremony, it will take some time for Purwet to grow into marriage itself, and in the meantime she intends to join the Bene Gesserit as an acolyte, adding its mystical and philosophical teachings to the martial skills she has. have polished on their own. Valya and her sister Tula (Olivia Williams) have high hopes for their new recruit, who Valya is convinced is part of the prophecy, but sister Kasha, who has mentored Ynez under Corrino, has been gripped by disturbing portents of things, to come.

The episode sets up a lot of drama to come, including the introduction of Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel), the unlikely survivor of a devastating attack on Corrino’s soldiers on Arrakis. Desmond returns from the desert planet and insists that the ambush was not from the native Fremon, but from rebels from allied houses. (For what it’s worth, Kasha, a trained TruthSayer for Emperor Corrino, senses that Desmond isn’t lying.) In the hour’s most dramatic moment — a sequence that replays the midnight attack that wipes out House Atreides Dune: Part One – Desmond breaks up the new marriage by burning young Purwet to death with his mind, while Kasha suffers a similar fate at the same time.

“There’s a war lurking in the open,” he tells the poor boy before killing him. “Winning a war requires great sacrifice. And yours will not be in vain.” With this, Desmond appears to set himself in opposition to the Sisterhood, and his psychic powers, confirmed in footage Corrino sees of him summoning a sandworm, make him formidable. But even as Kasha dies right in front of her, Valya seems more enlightened than despondent, as if the path the Bene Gesserit founder set her on had been clarified rather than established. Such is the power of faith that Valya has in abundance – almost as much as her ruthlessness.

It remains to be seen Dune: Prophecy will gather momentum from the shocking deaths that close this debut episode, which often labors under the weight of all its character introductions and piles of exposition. That’s part of it Dune trap — moviegoers to the 1984 version were met with a glossary of terminology — but so far the show doesn’t have the magisterial wonder of the Villeneuve films to give it a lift. Like Desmond Hart, it will have to crawl out of the sand.

• Mirroring the jihadist carnage that haunts Paul Atreides, the series features the threat of the “Tyrant-Arafel,” a destructive force that lends some urgency to the technology the Bene Gesserit are working on. Ten thousand years is a bit too long to wait for payment.

• »Humility is the foundation of our virtues. The human mind is sacred. You must not disfigure the soul.” These are the words of Dorotea, who does not share Valya’s interpretation of Bene Gesserit founder Raquella Berto-Anirul’s wishes and, shall we say, loses in this powerful exchange of ideals. Young Valya’s use of the voice to get Dorotea sticking a dagger in the throat signals that violence and megalomania will play more of a role than humility in the group in the future.

• The acolytes who will welcome Ynez into the fold all get a brief introduction here, but of the group, only Sister Jen (Faoileann Cunningham) tells a wild story about killing a captor and both her parents as a child , that stands out. A love triangle between Ynez and two handsome young men is also touched on too lightly to make much of an impression.

• “May the Richese seed find purchase in royal wombs.” As wedding toasts go, this gets a zero out of ten.

• “I see, mother. I see.” It is the mark of a true cult that when reality does not match the vision they offer, they simply switch to another vision.