1. notleia says:

    But did Paul really follow his dad’s example when he became the titular Dune Messiah? (Granted, I haven’t read beyond the first book because it didn’t hold that much interest for me.)

    The worldbuilding of Dune? S-tier, which is why it’s survived so long. The characters of Dune? Mostly one-note pieces of blah moved around to suit the plot. Leto isn’t a character, he’s a SYMBOLISM, unfortunately.

    • The book is more complicated than the film on this front (which is part of what I’ll be getting into in my next article), but a major part of Paul’s struggle in the book /is/ that he wants to win /without/ initiating a universe-wide jihad. So I would argue that his character does retain a lot of this nobility in the original Dune. My understanding is that he might lose some of this in the sequel, but I haven’t had the time to read that either. Either way, though, I’m not trying to argue in this article that Herbert was necessarily intending these themes as he wrote or that these are necessarily the primary thematic points that Dune makes–simply that this is one relevant application we can make when focusing on the example of Leto.

  2. Brie Donning says:

    Yes, we need a sequel. Also I need to read the book. I just came back from watching Dune today (it’s finally out in Australia). I loved it and I’m going into what various people are saying about the themes. Very glad to see that you’re talking about it.

What say you?