Transcript: Culture chat — Dune: Part Two, directed by Denis Villeneuve 

This is an audio transcript of the Life and Art from FT Weekend podcast episode: Culture chat — Dune: Part Two, directed by Denis Villeneuve 

Katya Kumkova
Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I’m Katya Kumkova, I’m in for Lilah Raptopoulos, and this is our Friday chat show. Today we’re talking about Dune: Part Two, the second instalment in the sci-fi franchise by Denis Villeneuve. The movie stars Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya alongside a slew of other big names including Javier Bardem, Christopher Walken, Florence Pugh, Rebecca Ferguson. Dune: Part Two continues the story of intergalactic imperialism that started in Dune: Part One. Imperial forces are still out to conquer the desert planet of Arrakis, which is the source of the world’s most precious material, which is known as spice. But the planet’s indigenous people, known as the Fremen, are doing their best to fight back. On their side is the hero Paul Atreides, played by Timothée Chalamet.

[DUNE: PART TWO TRAILER PLAYING]

I should say that the plot of the Dune series is notoriously complicated. Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides may or may not be a messiah who is called on to start an enormous war. There is also a mysterious lodge that might be running the entire universe. Let’s get into it. I am Katya, and I’m just a humble desert mouse. (Laughter)

Rana Foroohar
Not so humble. If you knew your lore, my friend.

Katya Kumkova
With me in New York is FT’s global business columnist, Rana Foroohar. And Rana is a huge fan of Dune. She’s read all the books, which makes her the Reverend Mother of this episode. (Laughter)

Rana Foroohar
My gosh, I’m so excited to have been referred to as a Reverend Mother. I don’t know whether this is gonna increase or lower my core readership, but we’ll just leave it at that.

Katya Kumkova
Oh, it’s going through the roof. So Rana is here in New York and in London we have political columnist and film expert Stephen Bush. He is here because he knows where the family nukes are. Hi, Stephen.

Stephen Bush
Hi. Thanks very much for having me.

Katya Kumkova
I am very, very excited to have you both. I do have a confession to make, though, which is that I went into this movie totally blind — didn’t see Dune: Part One, didn’t read the books, didn’t see any of the previous adaptations. So I am definitely gonna let you guys lead on this. Starting with, top line, what did you think? Stephen, let’s start with you.

Stephen Bush
Yeah. So I actually, despite not being the biggest Dune-head in this week’s episode, I did for some reason choose to watch it in actually an oddly punishing way. And then I didn’t get around to watching the first part when it came out in cinemas for a variety of reasons. So I ended up going to the double header. So I saw Dune: Part One at about 20 to 10, then it stopped. Then they let us out of the screening. You know, we all bought some more popcorn, went back into the cinema for Part Two.

Katya Kumkova
Stephen, how many hours is that? Six hours?

Stephen Bush
Six. Yeah, it’s six hours. But it was fine. It coincided with me having to cover a by-election. (Laughter) So I arrived, the result came out. It was, you know, it was actually very efficient. (Laughter)

Katya Kumkova
Great.

Stephen Bush
Now. I loved it, but I . . . the thing I think is interesting is I feel I’ve dealt with the struggle to make Dune as a three-hour film by just not trying. I think it’s really good. You went into it completely cold, because the question I had at the end of Part Two was: if I hadn’t watched these back to back, and if I had known nothing about what happened in Part One, this new film doesn’t really handhold you at all. It’s essentially a six-part movie. That is, I think, the best way to enjoy it. I’m really glad that I did go to the double header. And I think it’s a six-hour piece of cinema, I think it is his best work. I think it’s a terrific, terrific bit of cinema. It’s a fantastic bit of visual storytelling. But in terms of the depth of what is going on in Dune, there’s a lot of bits where it’s essentially kind of, yeah, I guess, look, just roll with it. Rather than it actually giving you the full understanding of why characters are doing and saying the things they’re doing and saying.

Rana Foroohar
Yeah.

Katya Kumkova
Yeah. I just kind of felt like I didn’t know the stakes. I didn’t mind some of the particular, you know, missing the particular connections between things. That’s fine. I think that happens in a way, actually. I read one review where somebody was saying, this movie is too literal. It’s trying to give us too many connections. 

Rana Foroohar
You know, I think there’s something too, that actually, on the other hand, I agree with you. It doesn’t get to the depth of what the big questions are here. And to me, the big questions are, they’re the big questions of history. Do you buy into the great man theory? How much do you think things sort of take off on their own track and snowball and kind of create, you know, their own pathways through history? You know, it’s about culture. It’s about ideology. It’s . . . I think the thing that, one of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot, because the AI story is so big right now in the news, is the fact that this is a feudal society that is mistrustful, distrustful and in some cases actually has outright laws, which we may learn about in future episodes against the use of things like computers, bioengineering, et cetera. And so these characters have had to develop their minds. And that also starts to dovetail with things like, you know, the way in which the west is sort of fascinated by eastern thought and yoga and meditation and, you know, it puts all of that stuff on steroids in really interesting ways.

Katya Kumkova
Yeah. I am not sure how much of that I got. (Laughter)

Rana Foroohar
Well, there you go. (Laughter)

Katya Kumkova
But the things that I found the most interesting about it are these questions about power and sort of like, do you know when you’re the messiah? Do you know when you’re the great leader? And you know that none of the power is really straightforward, right? Everyone is making alliances. Everyone is, in a way, a double agent of some kind, even to themselves. And I . . . 

Rana Foroohar
That’s true.

Katya Kumkova
That seemed really, not like Star Wars. Not . . . 

Rana Foroohar
Not like Star Wars, which actually, that’s a very good point, too. It makes it difficult to make it into a mass-market film that you’re like, yay, here’s the good guy. I’m curious actually, and I’d be curious what Stephen would say to this. If Paul landed as a hero, as somebody that you guys could believe in, I would . . . I have my thoughts, but . . . 

Katya Kumkova
I mean, I thought he did. The short answer on my end is I thought he did, and I thought the fact that he was a complicated hero was a good thing. What did you think, Stephen?

Stephen Bush
Yes. I mean, I think Paul’s the hardest role to cast because the actor has to both convince, OK, let’s own this half, but in the first part, as the young, quite cosseted prince, has to convince then as a popular but not lead freedom fighter, and then to convince as a messiah and then convince as someone who will go on to commit huge atrocities. And I think, and I’m worried this is gonna be the opinion which gets me cancelled. I think Timothée Chalamet is an actor who has benefited from being very well cast but I don’t think has the presence for that final leg of the role, right? It’s the problem he has in Wonka. It’s the probably, this is a problem he has in the cannibal thing, isn’t it? You know, he doesn’t have that leading man presence that I think Paul does need to have in the film’s last 40 minutes. I think he otherwise works really well.

Rana Foroohar
You know, that’s interesting because, as you speak, I’m thinking about, in the first film, Oscar Isaac who played Paul’s dad, the Duke Atreides, actually in some ways he has more of that sort of great man gravitas that one might want. At that, at this moment, I would agree with you.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Katya Kumkova
OK. Before we move on, are there any particular scenes that stood out to you that we should mention?

Rana Foroohar
Two scenes that I would call out that I’m still thinking about are: this is Paul’s first sandworm ride, which was fabulous. You felt that you were in an IndyCar watching that, you know, with a little camera on your helmet. Just for folks who haven’t seen the film, the way that you get around the desert, as one does, is you take these hooks and you can ride these giant sandworms that would otherwise eat you because they’re the size of a city block, their mounds are. You are able to jump on to them, pull up one of their segments, and then you’re able to ride them using these little hatchets that you have in their skin. And the film is really, really able to capture what it would be like to be in a wind dust tunnel, going 200 miles an hour on a giant sandworm. That was great modern filmmaking. I don’t know how much of it was CGI and how much of it was, you know, some giant wind tunnel in the valley somewhere. But that was great. I also thought that the envisioning of the Harkonnen home planet, with its black sun and its stark white individuals that are dressed all in black and the fireworks are black, and it’s almost as though when you go to the Harkonnen homeworld, you are going literally into a different universe. It is monochromatic. It is deeply evil. And you feel it and it’s frightening. And by the way, was it, is it Austin Butler, who was Elvis, is the successor to Baron Harkonnen, his successor, who was one of the most evil guys in the entire series. And, boy, to see him go from Elvis to playing this sort of bloodthirsty cannibal, near head of the Harkonnen family was kind of amazing.

Katya Kumkova
Yeah, and he’s got weird goo on his teeth for some reason.

Rana Foroohar
Yeah.

Katya Kumkova
We probably don’t need to get into the goo. (Laughter) Stephen, what . . . were there any kind of moments that really stood out?

Stephen Bush
I think to me, the moment when he kind of decides that he is the messiah and they all . . . and he comes out immediately after his first worm ride, which is basically when they all start to believe. What I think is brilliant about it is it works both as a clever commentary on the ability to use religion for social control, but at the same time it actually also just works. You just believe it. Right? In that moment you don’t go like, oh, those poor Fremen are being manipulated. You believe it. It’s a moment of triumph. You’re excited and taken away from it. I just think it works so well. So yeah, I think is a, it is a brilliantly constructed (inaudible) . . . 

Rana Foroohar
That might have been the best thing. Also, can we just say a word about Javier Bardem, who plays the Stilgar, who is the sort of, you know, lead Fremen tribesman, who is . . . That was a masterful, masterful play on his part. So on the one hand, he has to be very serious, and yes, Paul is the messiah, believe in him. But then he starts to actually kind of bring humour to the whole thing and have fun with it. And when Paul does something totally screwed up or says, well, actually, flat out, I’m actually not the messiah, he’s like, that’s exactly what a messiah would say, you know? And he’s just having so much fun and is able to to straddle that divide between drama and humour. That was awesome.

Katya Kumkova
Yeah, I thought all of that stuff worked super well. I think people who aren’t religious tend to treat religion as like something very serious. And this was like a very everyday messiah, right? Like it’s not like you’re, they’re worshipping him every day. You’re teaching him to ride worms and potentially making out with him if you’re Zendaya. But yeah, it kind of was a religion of the everyday. And I found that worked really well. 

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Let’s get into the back-story of Dune as a phenomenon. The series, the books, were originally written by Frank Herbert in the 1960s and ‘70s. I’ve already mentioned that Rana has read all of these books. Is that like 7,000 pages?

Rana Foroohar
You know, we don’t need to count that. (Laughter)

Katya Kumkova
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So . . . And Stephen, you’ve read the books too, right?

Stephen Bush
I’ve read some of the books. So you know, I mean, I say this safe in the knowledge that Rana’s an ocean away from me, so can’t reached over to strangle me . . . 

Rana Foroohar
A desert, Stephen. A desert.

Stephen Bush
I think I would say is . . . I would say it is generally agreed that the books slightly go off the rails, or as they go on, you know, they become more and more sort of far out, and I kind of, I don’t think I did finish God Emperor of Dune, which is the fourth book.

Rana Foroohar
And there’s also, you know, beyond the first six that Frank Herbert wrote, his son and a ghostwriter then made a, you know, an industry basically, writing, I think it was another 27, which I . . . Even I did not go all the way there. But I agree with Stephen that the first three are kind of where the action is. Four trails off. By five and six, you’re only hanging in there if, like me, you’re a sci-fi geek and we’re trying to procrastinate on one of your high school term papers.

Katya Kumkova
Right. And then there are the TV and film adaptations. One came out in the 1980s. It was by David Lynch, although he’s since disavowed it. There was one in the early aughts, but these they didn’t really hit. So the question for me, I guess, is: given that Dune hasn’t had a cultural moment before this, how has it endured or why has it endured?

Stephen Bush
So I think it’s because fantasy is the most enduring form of literature. Now I’m gonna plagiarise something. Terry Pratchett, the author of the Discworld novels, said in an interview with The Onion a very long time ago. He said, look, the first stories that prehistoric humans told each other around the fire were fantasy stories. Yeah, they were about, you know, who created the lightning, but they weren’t, to be blunt about it, about a lecturer at Northwestern going through the male menopause. (Laughter) So it’s . . . 

Rana Foroohar
That’s right.

Stephen Bush
It’s kind of unsurprising that these stories are enduring, particularly when you take something like Dune, which, yes, in some ways is as far out as sci-fi goes. Right? It gets really kooky.

Rana Foroohar
Literary, yeah.

Stephen Bush
But it also speaks to the most fundamental conflicts and historical and present-day atrocities of our world, right? You know, the use of religion and control and the way that empires have used proxy rulers to extract oil from the Middle East. Right? All of that stuff is in Dune. And I think that’s one of the reasons why it’s so enduring. It’s enduring because fantasy is the oldest literary genre, and it’s enduring because this is the oldest literary genre — really engaging, thinking about and riffing off the thing which does, you know, cause wars and conflicts and empires to rise and to fall.

Rana Foroohar
You know, I want to build on what you just . . . I think that is absolutely true and really well put what you just said. But there’s also a way, I think, in which sci-fi fantasy, it takes, just as you say, these kind of classic legends, stories, these kind of ur-themes, and it evokes them. I mean, if you think about any piece of sci-fi fantasy fiction, I’m thinking about Harry Potter, for example. You know, you’ve got a dab of Sir Gawain, you’ve got a little Shakespeare, you know, you’ve got . . . And the lay reader might not even realise that that’s being fed to them, but they kind of know it in their bones, because those are the legends that we grew up with. And we have an emotional connection and that’s deepened because of that.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Katya Kumkova
OK, final question to wrap up, it is looking like there’s going to be a Dune: Three. Villeneuve has said that he would like to make another one. So what do we want from a third one?

Rana Foroohar
Oh, man. OK, so we have not seen or heard anything from the Spacing Guild. There are these weirdo navigators who have ingested so much spice. Like, they literally have to be contained in tanks, rather like the size of this podcast studio that we’re in right now that are filled with spice gas. And they are ingesting large quantities of spice, so much so that they start to mutate and their heads become really large. We . . . This is one of the great, things that Herbert kind of dangles a few details about what these navigators are all about. Are they even human anymore? Can they even live outside their tanks? But to talk about something that’s difficult to capture without being ridiculous, I would like to see how they’re gonna handle that one.

Katya Kumkova
That sounds amazing. I’m all about overly psychedelicized fish people. (Laughter) Stephen, what do you think for Dune: Three?

Stephen Bush
The really exciting thing about Dune: Three is that an awful lot kind of happens off-screen between this film and the next book, and indeed this book and the next book, which they would have to dramatise in some way. So, you know, Paul — spoiler alert — does, is responsible for the deaths of 81bn people in the space war he’s about to unleash at the end of that film. At some point, you know, he has to have this weird sort of antagonistic relationship with his sister. And I think there’s loads of things which basically happen in the opening 10 pages of Dune Messiah that almost by necessity, have to take up quite a lot of film space. So I’m just kind of really intrigued to see how he does it and manages it and, you know, what he does with it. I think for me it’s the thing I’m really excited about. I’m hoping that I won’t have to sit for six hours (laughter) this next time. But you know, I’m really excited for it regardless.

Katya Kumkova
This was amazing. Rana and Stephen, thank you so much. Can’t think of better people to talk about Dune with. We will be back in a minute with More or Less.

[BEHIND THE MONEY TRAILER PLAYING]

Katya Kumkova
Welcome back to More or Less, the part of the show where each guest says something they want more or less of culturally. Rana, let’s start with you. What do you got?

Rana Foroohar
I’m gonna say more boutique hotels in the Catskills. This is my new sort of, you know, dead of winter in New York, feeling blue, got to get out of Dodge, but can’t stand Florida. So my husband and I have been driving up into the Catskills two hours north of New York. And it’s a wonderful place. If you want to get a good massage, pet some goats, and do crafts with other people from Park Slope.

Katya Kumkova
OK. Noted. So more boutique hotels, more leaning into winter instead of escaping to . . . 

Rana Foroohar
Red states. (Laughter)

Katya Kumkova
OK. Stephen, what do you got?

Stephen Bush
I would like less of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which I am currently playing. It is a remake of the 1990s classic Japanese RPG. And it looks beautiful. It’s great. It’s, if you played the original, it’s like, essentially what you kind of imagined the game looked like beyond the confines of ‘90s video game hardware, but there is so much additional padding in it. You know, it’s like your mission in the first game was to walk to one side of the room and that’s like, oh, but now you actually have to hop, skip and jump over. And it looks lovely but you just like, you know, guys, I just, could you just have kept this little bit . . . a little bit tighter. So I would just like less. For the third instalment, I would like less of it.

Katya Kumkova
OK. So less really slow-moving video games. I’m gonna go with more good sound systems in movies. This is definitely inspired by my trip to see Dune in the Imax theatre and having to bring earplugs that I would then put in and take out depending on which scene of the movie we were in. So guys, you got to figure out the sound design. I know this is a real audio-nerd-forward More or Less, but that’s where I’m at. Better sound in movie theatres. And on that note, thank you so much again, guys.

Rana Foroohar
Thanks for having us

Stephen Bush
Thanks for having me.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Katya Kumkova
That’s the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I’ve put some Dune-related links in the show notes, and those links will get you past the paywall in the FT. Also in the show notes are discounts for a subscription to the Financial Times.

I’m Katya Kumkova. I’m the senior producer of Life and Art, in for Lilah Raptopoulos. And here’s the amazing team I work with. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco, with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer, and Cheryl Brumley is the global head of audio at the FT. Have a lovely weekend. Lulu Smyth will be in on Monday.