Dune: Part 2 (2024) is in theaters now and I made sure to see it in IMAX opening weekend. It was great fun to attend an event movie with a full house for the first time in years. As a big fan of the series (see my original Dune post) I was impressed, and somewhat can't believe they pulled it off.
Dennis Villenueve, the director, did a ton extremely well. The visuals were stunning as expected and the plot drove relentlessly forward like the book. He clearly cared most about the political, economic and religious machinations, the most grounded aspects of the narrative that can be wacky at times. Much of weirder stuff was left out or unexplained, like in Part One. Villenueve's decisions are sensible but a fair amount of the how or why won't be picked up by anyone unfamiliar with the source material.
I want to elaborate on something that deserves it, the transformation of the Water of Life. Heavy spoilers to come, stop here if you plan to see this movie and care about such things.
As part of their acceptance with the Fremen, Stilgar asks Lady Jessica to be their new Reverend Mother, to them a religious leader. She's already Bene Gesserit trained (though still a novice) and would otherwise have no function among the group, so she doesn't really have a choice if she wants to live and continue to serve her son. To become a Reverend Mother involves an ordeal, ingesting a poison called the Water of Life and finding a way to survive. In the movie this takes place in a cave separate from the lay Fremen. The previous Reverend Mother is there and remarks 'What have we done?' or something like that, but that's all we see of their interaction. We do get hallucinogenic imagery representing the exhausting experience and her rendering of the poison inert. And the end effect is clear, Jessica is permanently transformed. She's more powerful and more determined, plus she then regularly talks with the baby inside her womb (more on that in a bit). But we have no idea what actually happened or why she's now this way.
Here's what Villenueve left out.
The primary goal of the Spicy Agony, what this process is called, is unlocking 'genetic memory.' It's one of the more interesting ideas from author Frank Herbert and something foundational to the rest of the series. Someone with access to their genetic memory has the memories, even the personalities, of their ancestors in their head. The Bene Gesserit are all women and they only have access to the memories of their female ancestors. Even with just the female side a Reverend Mother gains a vast wealth of information, history and power through the transformation. It makes them take a longer view of their circumstances and it gives them a strange, withdrawn, all-knowing aura, as they can learn and see more through the congregation inside them than any ordinary person can.
A Reverend Mother is not meant to undergo this trial alone. Jessica does this with a very old Fremen Reverend Mother in her final days. Part of what happens is a mental communion, where their spirits become one, and the old Reverend Mother pours all of herself into Jessica, her life, her memories, her knowledge. Afterward Jessica, for one, is way more familiar with the Fremen and their ways. In doing this the Bene Gesserit can have perfect continuity in what they know (no 'tribal knowledge' is getting lost), as long as they have a new person to transfer it all into. The movie does show Jessica changed, but just how much and what she's become is not apparent at all. She's now a combination of her own life, her various female ancestors and a line of native Fremen Reverend Mothers bequeathed to her. This gives her more purpose than ever and she will push Paul toward his destiny.
We're told it's forbidden for a man to undergo the Spice Agony. Never before had one successfully completed, i.e. survived, it. Paul is the first, and it's not only about fulfilling a Fremen prophesy. He's the Kwisatz Haderach, the Bene Gesserit messianic figure, who unlocks the genetic memory of both his female and male ancestors (though they can't control him so this is a total disaster from their standpoint). It also takes his powers of prescience (seeing the future) far beyond what they were before, as what they're using here is basically hyper-concentrated Spice. Afterward he sees past, present and future with clarity and, though he still fears his terrible purpose, he knows what he must do. In both the movie and book Paul faces this alone and comes out of it after the arrival of Chani. In the book Paul then forcibly communes with his mother to discover where it is she cannot go, the male side of her genetic memory. By this point he's more sinister than heroic, though it's hard to avoid getting wrapped up in his rise.
'I did it, my poor, unformed, dear little daughter, I brought you into this universe and exposed your awareness to all its varieties without any defenses.'
Only one piece remains, Alia. Jessica is pregnant and both of them (her and the baby) undergo the change together. Even if she didn't know exactly what it meant to become a Reverend Mother, Jessica had been preparing her whole life for the trial. She was an adult with a fully developed personality and the full array of Bene Gesserit mental and physical abilities. Her fetus had none of that. Alia is born a full Reverend Mother, can speak, knows many many things, and is extremely weird (and violent). She's wholly bought into the messianic complex of Paul, like Jessica but more so. Considering what's been in her head from before birth she's also susceptible to Abomination, becoming possessed by one of her ancestors. In the book Alia is born before the Paul claims the throne and even takes part in the big attack as a toddler. She finishes off soldiers lying on the battlefield, is the one who kills the Baron Harkonnen and gets nicknamed St. Alia of the Knife. This is one of the bigger changes made by Villenueve and, yeah, I get it. I was looking forward to seeing the reaction to all this though, gah. Instead we just get Jessica talking to her unborn baby.
Okay. That's plenty to digest. The problem, as I see it, is that the 'Other Memory' only gets more important as the story continues and it sounds like Villenueve plans to do the next book, Dune: Messiah. In order to understand Alia, central to that one, at all, he'll need to doing some more explaining.
Luckily you'll already know.
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