Can’t remember what happened in the first Dune movie? We got you
Looking forward to Dune: Part Two, but having trouble remembering some character names? Not sure what separates a Kwisatz Haderach from a gom jabbar? We know for a fact that Dune: Part Two is not going to help you out. But we can!
Read on for a succinct recap of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, and you’ll be all ready to go when you hit the theater.
The single most important planet in Dune is Arrakis, ruled by the Harkonnen noble House in the empire of Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV (Christopher Walken). Arrakis is a phenomenally inhospitable desert world, whose natives actively resist imperial rule — but it’s also the only source of the spice melange, without which interstellar space travel is impossible.
While the spice flows, the Spacing Guild provides for travel and commerce, the noble houses manage their fiefdoms, the emperor keeps the peace with his fanatical army, and the mysterious yet ubiquitous Bene Gesserit order of mystic women facilitates political alliances and negotiations.
In Dune: Part One, we met Duke Leto of House Atreides (Oscar Isaac) and his concubine, the Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson). Jessica was supposed to use her Bene Gesserit powers to conceive a daughter with Leto, as part of the organization’s secret, 10,000-year plan to eugenically produce a puppet messiah, the Kwisatz Haderach, and seize control of the galaxy. Instead, she and Leto fell in love, and she chose to have a son, Paul (Timothée Chalamet).
The movie’s story begins when Emperor Corrino strips the notoriously difficult job of mining spice on Arrakis from House Harkonnen and gives it to their mortal enemies, House Atreides. This gesture is a cover for the emperor’s real plan, which is to secretly loan out his powerful Sardaukar army to House Harkonnen, so that they can assassinate the Duke and his family and crush House Atreides, taking back Arrakis. Duke Leto has grown so respected among his peers that his popularity has become a threat to the Emperor’s dynasty, but in this way, it
Read more on polygon.com
