The sequel’s condemnation of colonialism rings false when it won’t acknowledge its own Middle Eastern and Muslim influences.
Photo: Warner Bros.
Spoilers follow for the novel Dune, by Frank Herbert, and the film adaptation Dune: Part Two, which opened on March 1.
In the opening lines of Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of the 1965 Frank Herbert novel, Zendaya’s Fremen warrior Chani tells us her home planet, Arrakis, “is so beautiful when the sun is low.” The desert world has been ravaged by outsiders who arrived long before she was born, she says in voiceover. Its last colonizers, the sadistic Harkonnens, became “obscenely rich” from harvesting Arrakis’s spice, a natural resource that facilitates…
