‘Ibsen in space' meets Hitler: Why Dune Messiah will be the bleakest blockbuster ever made

Telegraph

13-03-2025

Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part Two had it all: psychic space nuns, giant worms and a confused-looking Christopher Walken as ruler of the known universe. But 12 months on from its release, it is undeniable that this bursting-at-the-seams epic is lacking in one significant aspect. Villeneuve's adaptation of Frank Herbert's cult desert saga has proved a complete wash-out at awards season, picking up a mere two Oscars in the anorak-y Best Sound and Best Visual Effects categories. Villeneuve wasn't even nominated for Best Director, much less considered a frontrunner for the accolade.
Given that the movie was clearly primed for the Academy Awards podium – as was 2021's Dune: Part 1– that might be considered a disappointment. Which may explain why Villeneuve and stars Timothée Chalamet and Zendyaya are so keen to crack on with the final chapter in their trilogy. It's sand and deliver time all over again.
This summer – a full 12 months ahead of schedule – cameras will roll on Villeneuve's take on the third chapter of Hebert's Dune series, Dune Messiah. Villeneuve has let it be known that this would be his final Dune film (Herbert wrote six novels in all). In other words, Messiah is being lined up to become the sci-fi equivalent of Peter Jackson's The Return of the King – the closing instalment of the Lord of the Rings and an awards blockbuster, which swept the boards by winning Best Picture and Best Director among its record-equalling 11 Oscars.
But if Warners Bros executives are banking on Messiah serving as a glorious, Oscar-bagging full stop to the industry's grandest feat of speculative storytelling since Jackson's LotR, they might want to actually dust down their faded copies of the book. Instead of the whizz-bang space adventure they no doubt anticipated, they will be surprised to discover a slow-paced, small-scale tale, short on action and featuring a memorable passage where Chalamet's hero, Paul Atreides, sings the praises of another charismatic leader: Hitler.
If anything, Messiah is Lord of the Rings in reverse. Where Tolkien's Return of the King novel was a triumphant conclusion to a grand romp, Messiah is the precise opposite. Herbert published it in 1969 as a calculated riposte to those who enjoyed the original Dune (1965) a little too much and mistook the all-conquering Atreides as its hero.
Dune ends with Paul fulfilling the ancient prophecy that a blue-eyed stranger would lead the Fremen natives of the Planet Arrakis (aka Dune) in a war of universal conquest. Herbert had intended it as a warning against Messiah figures – but many readers saw Paul as the charismatic good guy and cheered him on as his followers slaughtered billions and enslaved many more. As Villeneuve put it in a recent interview, people regarded Paul as Luke Skywalker, when Herbert intended him to be a Darth Vader – someone who starts with good intentions but is corrupted by their absolute power.
Dune Messiah was his attempt at setting the record straight. For that reason, it is everything Dune is not. It is a political drama rather than a grand adventure and most of the text consists of unlikeable people conspiring in darkened rooms. Think Game of Thrones without the sex, the dragons or the shocking violence. 'Heroes are painful, superheroes are a catastrophe. The mistakes of superheroes involve too many of us in disaster,' the author would explain. 'Dune Messiah performs a classic inversion of the theme.'
The story begins 12 years after Dune. Paul is Emperor, having ascended to power on the back of a holy conquest by the Fremen (body count: 61 billion). His followers are fanatical while Paul, who is cursed to see the future with near-total clarity, believes he must continue waging war to stop humanity from stagnation. At the same time, he feels powerless in the face of the religious fervour he has awakened in the Fremen. He is both a reluctant prophet and a king stooped low beneath the heaviest crown in history.
He has also attracted some notable enemies. A conspiracy, including a member of the powerful Spacing Guild and a shape-shifter named Scytale, believes Paul has gone too far and must be cast down. With that goal in mind, they resurrect his old bodyguard, Duncan Idaho – Jason Momoa in the movies – and programme him to kill Paul when the Emperor is at an emotionally vulnerable moment.
But when that plan doesn't work, they turn to a tactical nuclear strike to blind Paul – who, it transpires, has burnt out on absolute power and decides to follow the old Fremen tradition of wandering off into the desert to die. Not that he's actually blind – because of his psychic abilities, he can 'see' the future, a bit like Keanu Reeves in the Matrix sequels. The book ends with Paul vanishing into the wilderness while his lover Chani perishes in childbirth, having given birth to their twins. There are no glorious victories, no sweeping montages– nothing to send audiences home feeling happy. Will the Academy be wooed by what is essentially an Ibsen play in space?
Asked about the challenges of adapting Dune Messiah, Villeneuve points out that he had already made significant changes to Herbert's work. In the Dune novel, Chani is a fanatical follower of Paul. On the screen, she becomes a sceptical surrogate for the audience as we see Paul ascend to dictatorial grandeur and lose the run of himself.
'The character of Chani is different from the book. She is someone who doesn't believe what Paul represents, which is very different from the book,' said the director. 'That's why we made those changes in Chani. The idea was to create the distance with Paul, to understand that he took the wrong door. To ensure the movie would be a cautionary tale against messianic figures and not a celebration of Paul.'
Having laid that groundwork, the idea is to build on those themes in Dune Messiah – so that it does not jar with the previous movies in the way that the novel did with Dune. Villeneuve has also stated that many of the stunning action scenes we see on in the film were extrapolations from the novel. He argues that the critique that Dune Messiah talks about world-changing events rather than showing them applies equally to Dune.
'If I go back to the first novel, Dune…very often you have to two characters saying, 'wow that was a battle'. All the Dune books are written like that. The idea, as screenwriter is to go into them and bring them up to the surface. There is a lot of rich cinematic material – they are in the descriptions, it's very vague. Dune Messiah follows the same writing technique. We have the same approach to bringing it to the screen.'
But while Villeneuve will no doubt add a great deal to the story, he will want to expunge a few elements too. Such as the scene in which Paul, talking to his Fremen henchman Stilgar (Javier Bardem in the movies), expresses his admiration of figures from 'Old Terra' – in the Dune universe long ago nuked into oblivion. 'There's another emperor I want you to note in passing – a Hitler. He killed more than six million. Pretty good for those days,' says Paul.
In the novel, the line, while striking, nonetheless makes sense. Paul is under no illusions that he is a monster and following the tradition of Genghis Khan, Stalin and Hitler. But it is unthinkable that Timothée Chalamet, still eying that first Oscar, is going to be seen praising Hitler on screen. It would become the meme that would follow him to his grave.
Then there is the question of where to stop. Dune Messiah concludes with Herbert's saga about to become properly wacky. In the next novel, 1976's Children of Dune, Paul's son Leto II turns into a hybrid of a human and one of the giant Sandworms (rumours that Paul himself would become a worm are believed to have turned Val Kilmer off the part when offered it by David Lynch, director of the original 1984 Dune adaptation).
Herbert barely gets away with this on the page – on screen, it would surely be impossible to pull off. And yet, it is with Children of Dune that Paul's story ends. In Dune Messiah, he disappears into the desert – a blind wanderer fleeing his destiny.
He returns in Children of Dune as a mysterious preacher, speaking out against the religion he himself helped establish. He then comes to a sticky end when one of his followers kills him – a bittersweet conclusion that Villeneuve will need to include if he is to do justice to the story. The question is whether he can do so while avoiding the Leto II Worm-man problem. Villeneuve has achieved a great deal in his career – but making us believe a man can burrow may be beyond even his capabilities.