Welcome to a bite sized episode of x ray Vision of the podcast, where we dive deep into your favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture. Today, we're hopping into the time capsule to revisit one of the biggest hits of twenty twenty four, June Part two. Here's a quick recap of Dune Part two, which blew me back in my seat when I watched
it in the theater, not even the Imax version. This picks up on the events of Dune Part one pretty much right minutes after the end of Dune Part one, Paul and his mother, the Lady Jessica, traveled to switch Tabor with Stilgar. The Fremen slowly grow to accept Paul. His relationship with Channi is deepening, as are the rumors that he is the Lisa al Gabe, the Fremen Messiah come from the outer world. Paul proves himself as an able warrior. He takes part in frem And raids, bringing
Harcne and Spice operations to a standstill. And guess what that makes the Baron mad. He didn't like that because the whole reason that he connived with the Emperor to kill off the a Tredees and get Dune back. Is because he wants that. He wants that spice money.
He needs that spice baby. He wants to be in charge of needs that.
It's got a flow. So he fires his nephew, the beast Rebond, who had been managing spice productions. Nephew, he was incompetent. Okay, he installs his absolutely terrifying but very competent nephew, the I mean the serial killer Fade. Ralpha and the Benajeseritz. They love this because fate is kind of like their genetic backup plan to Paula trades back on Dune. Jessica drinks the water of life aka worm piss, and she survives her unborn child that Leah becomes a
fully sentient human being inside of her womb. Jessica then replaces one of the Fremens dying reverend mother becomes their reverend mother. Now paul is now a full fledged Fremen. He also drinks worm piss, becoming the only man in history to survive this ordeal. And after that, the Fremen are like, yeah, one hundred percent, you are the Lisa and I'll give you you are him. That's the guy.
Yes it's you, no question ten out of ten no questions.
Paul is reunited with his old friend Gurney Halleck, who survived the Hardcone and Mascre and has been working as a smuggler and also busking on the side. Paul gets his family atomic bombs back now and then with the Fremen lure the Emperor to Aracus. It's a trap. The Fremn wipe out the Sartokar. They take the Emperor hostage, also Princess Irlam Baron Fade, other notables taken hostage, and
Paul makes his big offer. Hey, resign as emperor. I will marry your daughter and then I will rule the galaxy. And if you say no, I destroy all spice production on Aracus, which would cause, you know, the mother of all supply chain problems and bring the galactic economy to its knees, not to mention all the millions, if not billions, of spice addicts across the galaxy who would just like drop dead painfully at times withdrawal. It would be bad.
The Emperor is like, I'll think about it, but you got to fight my guy Fade, and Paul is like, fine, lots of trash talking, but Paul of course wins, and it's a wonderful like mirror image of his duel with Gurney from June one. Deal is on. Unfortunately the houses of the lands Rad, who have just arrived in orbit above Dune or like, we don't agree, and so Paul is like, guess what. I didn't want to do the jihad, but now we're doing it. Let's ride, Let's go up
there and let's kill everybody. And and they go up to take out the forces of the lands Rad. Meanwhile Channie goes off into the desert to think about everything that's just happened. Your reactions, Yeah, so I mean too.
I watched You in two in the front of the IMAX because I got to the screening too late, and.
I was that was your neck?
It was well, you know what it was. It was I I kind of tried to lay back as much as I could on the recliner and then I just felt like I was in the movie. Like I wrote an article for Igan about it because it was just so outrageous, Like when the sand whims, it was like Shihalud was coming to eat me, and I was like, ah, the Grandfather wha like. It was extremely viby, the sound was great. I was a huge fan of the first
Dune movie. I was lucky enough to see it at the Imax headquarters where they edit all the Imax movies and stuff, and I just thought it was so good. It had this kind of slowburn British four part miniseries like on a Sunday afternoon drama vibe, so I wasn't fully surprised when most people I told to watch it were like, this is boring. So I've been incredibly happy to see how much people love this movie, because it is like a wild feat of filmmaking and it is
very beautiful. And I love Charnie and I love the way that they changed her character in this. She gets to have way more agency in the book. She in the book, she's more of just like his supplicant lover, like, no matter what happens, she stands by him, and yeah, and the prince, you know, and obviously and he's and she's like, oh, you got to marry this woman for
some other reason. Cool, Like, I don't mind whatever. So I've seen some really interesting kind of theories in the Dune Pod discord and online about the idea that Channie maybe is gonna become like a resistance leader against Paul and the war, which I think would be so interesting. And there are a lot of changes actually from the book. I mean even the Alia stuff in the book. You know, she's already born at this point. And but I think the way they did it was really interesting and works
for the movie. And there's only so much suspension of this belief you can do, and the Aalia character from the book would have really pushed that for people. I think. So I thought, yeah, I thought it was great.
I think that would be Yeah. I loved it. I was blown away. I felt we're going to talk about is Paul the bad guy in a second. But you mentioned that the theory that Channie is going to be
a resistance leader potentially against Paul. I think the conversation around Paul being the bad guy is fascinating because I think what very clearly the Dune books want to do is show how a charismatic leader can rise to power and how it's not good m h. Because what happens after the first Dune book into Dune Messiah and elsewhere is basically Paul just falls on his face again and again and again, and a kind of splinter frem and cell of fighters who are like, God, is is this right?
Like is Paul the best thing for the galaxy and for us? Like that happens, and it would be very fascinating if Chohanny was the spearhead of that. I will say that. Listen, when I first read the Dune, the first Dune book, as a kid, I was like, holy cow, Paul is amazing, like a classic hero in the in the classic kind of fantasy, Like yeah, and it's only you know, as you get older it but surely you realize, Oh, there's actually like quite a lot of sign posting that
what Paul is doing is not right. And I think they even make it more explicit in the movie with the mentions of the billions of dead and how he himself is like I don't if I go out there, it's going to start a war and it's gonna be very very bad. But he's swept along.
Yeah, well I think that. Yeah. Frank Herber actually said, like in Dune Messiah, he tried to make it like really obvious because he was like upset that people didn't realize Paul was a bad guy and kind of this false prophet. So DENI was like, I'm gonna make it really obvious, Like, if you don't know that Paul is a bad guy by the end of this movie, you're in trouble.
I'm glad you mentioned that. So you know, there's a Frank Kerber quote that gets thrown around around a lot from my interview in sixty nine, which I think is the year that Dune Messiah the second book came out, and he basically says, the difference between a hero and an anti hero is where you stop the story, you know, the first version of live long enough to see yourself
become the villain exactly. I think that while I understand Frank's annoyance and confusion that people were like, oh, yeah, he's the hero, at the same time, I also kind of feel like, well, of course they were confused, because, like Frank very intentionally imbued Paul with all of the things that we associate with a classic, iconic, you know, grand adventure style hero. His father is killed by evil forces. The forces arrayed against him are unquestionably immoral and darkly,
darkly darkly evil. He survives death and comes back to life, you know, which is a thing that we associate with these kind of like grand messianic heroes. There is a prophecy about him and all that stuff. But wonderfully and again, as you mentioned, and as we've been talking about, like the thing that is like so overt in the movie is, yeah, there's a it's essentially like Bena Jeserit propaganda and planting in this society to keep power, to make these people more controllable.
Okay, Jason, let's take a quick break, but don't go anywhere day, Let's not more. Right after this, your boss come back.
And that leads us to a new segment, which is loop We're calling Loop me in, which is basically like there's a there's always these kind of like isolated, siloed conversations going around at different different corners of the Internet. Sometimes they bubble into the mainstream and it can be trying sometimes to try and figure out like what is
this about? Okay, So there was a conversation that bubbled up and that has been a boiling for as long as Dune has been out there, and consciousness, which is, yeah, is Dune a white savior story? Let's dive into that. The conversation around whether Dune is a white savior story.
Look, the truth is yeah, And this kind of goes back to kind of what you were saying that there can be as much well intentioned like slow Burn political
meaning as Frank Herbert wants there to be. But once you write a book or you put a film out into the world, it is for the people to read into it, right, And I don't I do not misunderstand or think that there's anything wrong with people who have read this and think, oh, it's a white savior story, or oh, they've watched the movie, because as you said, it follows the hero's journey. It does a lot of white savior stuff. He's a white guys, it's dancing with wolves.
Here's the best version. He's the lassan al Gayebe. He's the one who can do it better than all the fremen. Which is the setup for a white savior story. But in the case of June, it is actually more complex because all of that is to actually critique that trope, because it then becomes about what would actually really happen if a white person went into this space and got this power as a kind of false idol and then
took it across the world, and what would happen. They would cause like a you know, a g had where eighty six million people died. And I think that the problem here is less about like a literacy around the book or the film, and more about do people want to wait three movies to get to the point of the twist.
Or do they want to become fift thousand.
Word books to get to the point of the trist. I will say the one critique that I think is very fair of the movies, and obviously the books have always been critiqued but also celebrated. There's like it's a very divided conversation about the Orientalism and the books and stuff like that. But I will say the films didn't do a great job of casting like Middle Eastern people at in the Fremen culture, which is obviously what it is inspired by. So I do think that that adds
to that conversation. But generally, Paul is not a white savior, and that's like that if you're really putting like it's a pin on it, he isn't, because the whole point is he's actually the villain. Spoilery la. If you didn't get it, he's already's.
That's right, it's not a white savior story, but I think to your point, it's complex. Here's here's Herbert on something of his intent behind writing the story from that same nineteen sixty nine interview, and he's basically talking about envisioning Doune as a critique of Lawrence of Arabia of
ten Lawrence. He says, quote, weave western man, set out our missionaries to do our dirty work for us, and then come along behind them with a certain belief that we're right in anything that we do because God has told us so, God and the person of the Avatar. Basically, what he's saying is, yes, Paul is a quote unquote white savior, but he's there because of this long running plot to place him in that position and manipulate the
indigenous people of this world. So it is, to your point, a critique of the entire dynamic, and unsurprisingly it's one that that eludes people because it is quite subtle, although less less subtle in June too. I hope they make a third movie and show and show Paul just tripping over Rakes.
Yeah.
Well, you know, in two hours.
The book the movie has Dune two has made almost six hundred million dollars, So I think Dune Messiah is coming. Uh.
Okay, every episode we're gonna close the show with a variety of fast moving segments. Today it's Who's Who, in which we talk about some of our favorite weird characters from a given universe. In this episode, we're doing our favorite weirdo from Dune, Rosie. Who is your favorite Dune weirdo?
This is very hard because Dune has so many good widows, but I am going there's so many you couldn't even believe it. Like when you were just doing the recap of the movie, I was like, we need to do recaps of the books because it's so funny when you just try and list out everything that happens. Okay, I'm going for Alia book version and this is no shade
on two. I understand why they needed to do this, but literally, she is a baby who is born with the full consciousness of like a thousand generations of Bena Jesuit who are witches. And when she's four years old, she's like running around with the knife. She's the one who kills the baron with the gomjabar. I mean, that's one of the most bonkers characters of all time, and I love the four year old murder baby.
She then has a romance with a clone of Dunkan Idaho. It gets crazy, folks. My favorite Dune weirdo is Edrick oh Spacing Guild, a navigator who is part of the plot against Paul and listen, Dune is not a story that has a lot of humor, but I find Edric, who is getting dunked on mercilessly when you first meet him in the book, is just getting absolutely pantsed as he's trying to like lay out this plot against Paul. I find it really funny. I find it hilarious. So
that's that's my favorite Edward. We didn't see a lot of like the classic book style Spacing Guild navigators, but maybe we will if we get a third book.
And I just need to say we picked those in a world where they are There's a character who's literally a giant human sand and there are witches with magical vaginas, so we were really like, we really it's from the widows, but Dune has a lot of widows.
Thanks to you. Next Show by x ray Vision is hosted by Jason Ncepcion and Rosie Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producers are Joelle Smith and Aaron Kaufman. Our supervising producer is a booz Afar. Our producers are Carmen Laurent and Mia Taylor. Our theme song is by Brian Basquez.
Special thanks to Soul Rubin and Chris Laude, Kenny Goodman and Heidi our discord moderator.