[COLUMN] On the Thundering Literalism of Dune: Prophecy | by Darren Mooney

Note: This article contains spoilers through the fifth episode of Dune: Prophecy.

If nothing else, Dune: Prophecy invites the audience to appreciate the restraint and the efficiency of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune and Dune: Part Two.

Frank Herbert’s Dune is a notoriously dense tome. Although obviously the number of pages vary from one edition to another, Goodreads has the novel clocking in at 658 pages. This includes detailed appendices and glossaries. The world of Dune is so elaborate and so complicated that David Lynch’s adaptation of the work famously came with a glossary that Universal provided in the hope that it might help viewers to follow the plot.

There are a lot of things to love about Denis Villeneuve’s theatrical adaptations of Dune, but perhaps the most impressive aspect of those films is the way that the director has crafted movies that retain most of the themes and ideas of the original work while also making the story accessible to casual audiences. Dune grossed $407m worldwide in the middle of a global pandemic and won more Oscars than any other film at that year’s Academy Awards. Dune: Part Two grossed over $700m to date.

In the modern era, the cultural cachet of such a franchise made a streaming spin-off inevitable, and the changes to the streaming market made it inevitable that this streaming spin-off would be rebranded as a cable television series. To be fair, this is the approach that produced The Penguin, comfortably one of the best live action comic book shows ever produced and one of the shows of the year. There is no reason why Dune: Prophecy couldn’t work in a similar register.

Of course, it is worth acknowledging that Dune: Prophecy was beset by difficulties behind the scenes. The show was originally meant to be overseen by Dune screenwriter Jon Spaihts, but he departed the project early in development. Last year, director Johan Renck and lead actor Shirley Henderson left the project, with production placed on hold. Co-showrunner Diane Ademu-John stepped down as the show began filming. Dune: Prophecy had a bumpy path to the screen.

It doesn’t necessarily help that Prophecy has clearly been built around a familiar HBO template. Even from the show’s opening credits, it is very obvious that Prophecy is intended to be Game of Thrones… in space! This is not necessarily a problem. At the most basic level, The Penguin is The Batman meets The Sopranos. However, while HBO stopped airing The Sopranos over a decade ago, the cable network has a plethora of Game of Thrones spin-offs in production and on the cards.

Prophecy is also less an adaptation of or extrapolation from Frank Herbert’s original Dune novels than it is influenced by the work of the myriad Dune tie-in novels written by Herbert’s son Brian Herbert and pulp science-fiction institution Kevin J. Anderson. Anderson and Herbert have spent decades fleshing out Herbert’s world through prequels, interquels and sequels. It is based on the pair’s prequel novel Sisterhood of Dune, and their larger Great Schools of Dune trilogy.

Prophecy is certainly true to the spirit of Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson’s work. It is a thunderingly literal take on the larger mythology of the Dune franchise, in which any of the novel’s big literary ideas are expressed in the most obvious and direct manner imaginable. It is a version of Dune with no poetry and grace, with no room for interpretation or ambiguity. At its best, Dune feels like an epic folk tale, a legend iterated over generations. In contrast, Prophecy is a Wikipedia article.

This is apparent from the opening minutes of the show, which depict the Butlerian Jihad. The Butlerian Jihad is an essential part of Dune mythology, a rebellion in which mankind rose up against “thinking machines” that had enslaved them. Ignoring any thematic resonance to the larger text’s meditation on the great and terrible power of belief, this piece of lore explains the feudal aesthetic of this science-fiction universe, as mankind turned their back on computers and artificial intelligence in favor of swords and explosives.

Villeneuve’s Dune films make the adaptational choice to largely ignore the Butlerian Jihad, likely as a result of his decision to focus them on the Bene Gesserit over the Mentats – the human computers who emerged to replace machines. To be clear, it’s not that Villeneuve pretends the Butlerian Jihad never happened, as savvy audience members will notice the lack of computers in this world. His films simply make the wise decision not to burden the audience with unnecessary exposition.

In contrast, Prophecy’s opening moments establish that it will be nothing but exposition. It opens with a flashback to the closing days of the Butlerian Jihad, now (understandably) rebranded as “the Machine War.” Frank Herbert’s original Dune novels were set millennia after the Butlerian Jihad, treating the conflict as an ideological rejection of artificial intelligence. In the words of God Emperor Leto II in God Emperor of Dune, it was a war against “a machine attitude as much as the machines.”

This concept of an ideological war against the existential threat posed by machines’ potential “to usurp our sense of beauty” was always too abstract for Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. So Prophecy presents a much more straightforward interpretation of “the Machine War.” The opening sequence of Prophecy feels like it has been lifted directly from some late Terminator sequel, set against expository voiceover from Valya Harkonnen (Emily Watson).

“When humans rose up against the thinking machines that had enslaved them, history says that it was an Atreides who led them to victory while my great-grandfather deserted the fight,” Valya narrates. “When war ended and all thinking machine technology was banned, history branded my family as cowards, and so we were banished to a desolate world. Other who shared my blood were resigned to living in shame. But the history the Atreides wrote was spun out of lies.”

One might assume that this level of literal-minded infodump is a necessary evil in the first episode of a six-part miniseries. Instead, it feels like a mission statement. Over the next five episodes, Prophecy quickly becomes a storing house for Dune continuity and mythology. It makes space for a lot of the clumsy heavy-handed world-building that Villeneuve’s duology wisely chose to brush aside, and in doing so it validates Villeneuve’s adaptational restraint.

As is the way in Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson’s Dune spin-off novels, everything is a reminder of something from an earlier Dune story. Character traits are not environmental or self-determined, but inherited and genetic. Harkonnens are untrustworthy schemers. Atreides are honorable to the point of foolishness. Corrinos are puppets who consider themselves kings. There are no surprises here, no reversals or subversions. As such, there is no meaningful tragedy, just familiarity.

Allowing for the notable exception of the Guild Navigators, Prophecy works hard to show fans what it assumes that they want to see but what the Dune films denied them. Fans have often joked that the spice in Dune is “space cocaine”, so Prophecy renders that metaphor as literally as possible by having characters snort it from vials. The show’s fifth episode features a depiction of a “face dancer”, a shape-shifting creature from Herbert’s later novels.

Prophecy invites the audience to live in the world of Dune. The fourth episode visits the Landsraad, the ruling council of Great Houses that oversees the Imperium, but which is largely an abstraction in the source novels. The fifth episode opens with the establishment of the Sardaukar, the brutal enforcers of House Corrino. The audience witnesses the development of key rituals and abilities, from the Bene Gesserit connection with their collective memory to the first use of “the Voice.”

Prophecy clearly wants to explain everything about the world of Dune. The Bene Gesserit have a mantra that begins with the line “I must not fear - fear is the mind killer.” So, naturally, a key plot point in Prophecy involves the young religious order finding itself literally besieged by fear, as young recruits are haunted by nightmares. Reverend Mother Kasha Jinjo (Jihae) spontaneously combusts. In case that is too abstract, the show renders the subtext of this plot point as clumsy exposition.

“During the Omnius Plague, the machines designed a pathogen that incubated in the human body, releasing an enzyme that infected the liver,” explains Sister Lila (Chloe Lea), channeling Mother Superior Raquella Berto-Anirul (Cathy Tyson). “This enzyme has similar properties, but it has concentrated itself in Kasha’s amygdala – the fear center.” She explains, “The nightmares, the deaths, they’re connected to a genetically-modified, airborne, RNA retrovirus.” Fear is the literal mind killer.

After all, Prophecy looks and feels like a lot of modern franchise media, engaging in what critic Siddhant Adlakha has described as “filmmaking by inference.” Prophecy is a collection of trivia, continuity and lore, often seeming to treat these things as an end unto themselves rather than building outward from the story that it wants to tell. It doesn’t matter whether these franchise properties tell their stories well, so long as they reference things that fans know and love.

The real problem is that none of these depictions are particularly interesting or clever enough to justify the indulgence. The Landsraad is just a boring room full of boring nobles. The Sardaukar are just a bunch of fascist thugs. The show’s depiction of Bene Gesserit abilities like “truthsaying” or “the Voice” feels more like the special effects from a mid-tier superhero show than the uncanny and unsettling depiction of Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) in Dune: Part Two. It’s all so dull.

There is an interesting story buried in Prophecy, a meditation on the difference between hard and soft power. Emperor Javicco Corrino (Mark Strong) technically rules the Imperium, but finds himself beholden to outside forces. Under Valya Harkonnen, the Bene Gesserit seek to expand their influence from the shadows. The mysterious Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel) exerts a more literal form of power. It’s a good hook for a miniseries, and connects to the larger themes of Dune.

Unfortunately, Prophecy is more interested in allusions and continuity nods. There is undeniably a perverse pleasure to be derived from these clumsy attempts to render the more abstract philosophical ideas of Frank Herbert’s Dune in the most obvious manner possible, to ignore the beauty of implication and inference in favor of blunt literalism. However, watching Prophecy, one comes to more fully appreciate the thoughtful consideration of Villeneuve’s two-part adaptation of the source novel.