this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
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Dune 1 and 2.
Moral of story: beware blind loyalty to messianic figures
Audience reaction: Paul is so cool and admirable, I hope he wins!
the third movie will be based on Dune Messiah, which I believe is the book where Herbert finally understood that subtlety is for people who don't really care about their message :p
Also - the allegory for oil dependency and the Middle East?? Went right past so many people I talked to
It gets worse. Even Frank Herbert started having a cult, his answer was: "did you guys not read my book??"
I think he mentions it in one of the commentaries at the end of Dune Messiah.
In my experience, the fans of the Dune book series are pretty much always cultish.
More than any other book series, people think they’re special if they like Dune.
I'd put Enders Game as a contender, though the demographic obsessed with that book seems to be former gifted kids who somehow missed how screwed up Ender's life was.
Holy shit, that checks out. The two most Dune-obsessed people I know well are both born-again Christians (previously agnostic/atheist of Catholic upbringing) and both initially fell into the MAGAsphere.
I love Dune, but Herbert was all the way up his own ass by the time he got to God-Emperor. The books were still good, but his giant ego wasn't helping. I mean, he, and a bunch of his fans, thought, or still think in the case of the fandom, that Star Wars ripped off Dune when they only have some surface similarities at best. It's like claiming that Sonic the Hedgehog ripped off Mega Man on the basis that they're both sidescrollers that feature a blue protagonist. But he was really fucking adamant about it, so people still keep repeating it.
I agree to an extent. However, on the Star Wars thing, I'm pretty sure we have it on record that Lucas wanted to make a Dune adaptation first, but couldn't get the rights. This led to Star Wars.
It's not an exact copy, but it does share a lot of similarities. It also copies plenty of other sci-fi (and a lot from other storytelling, like it's an almost exact copy of the hero's journey) too though. Lucas was (maybe still is) a great artist, and, as the saying goes, great artists steal from other works.It's obvious to anyone paying attention that there is Dune DNA in Star Wars. It isn't a rip off, but it is taken to be used.
He wanted to make a Flash Gordon adaptation, not Dune. It shows, too, with Star Wars' aesthetic being heavily inspired by both Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.
Narratively, the original trilogy is heavily influenced by pulpy sword-and-sorcery books and comics and Kurosawa's films, but with the twist that it's in space.
Dune, meanwhile, is Hamlet crossed with Lawrence of Arabia in space.
Spice appears in both, except what spice actually does in Star Wars wasn't explored in anything Lucas made and Frank Herbert died before any of the expanded universe existed. There are only three mentions of spice in the entire original trilogy, all in ANH, and those are a bit about Luke believing his father was a navigator on a spice freighter, 3PO mentioning the spice mines of Kessel, and Han having to dump a load of smuggled spice. It's clearly just a shout-out; the spice is just a background reference and doesn't feature in the story. You could replace spice with beanie babies and nothing would change.
What parts of Star Wars do you feel originate from Dune? I've never actually gotten a straight answer and I'm genuinely curious.
It doesn't have the story of Dune, but it has elements inspired by it. As you mention, Spice. It's just an homage, but that's obvious.
It also has Luke starting on a desert planet, with an emphasis on gathering water. His family is killed, leading to the start of his journey (though this is common in storytelling in general, so it could be from a million other places).
The force has some similarities to the pseudo-magical aspects of Dune, with a heavy focus on meditation and understanding your body and the universe. (Both the Bene Gesserit and Mentats have forms of This. BG are more internal-focused and Mentats external.)
Im sure there's a lot more that could be pointed out. That's just a small list off the top of my head.
Any of it could be argued as coming from any number of sources. After all, Frank Herbert was inspired by other sources to create his world too. The desert planet was inspired by his experience with dunes. The religion and cultural stuff are all inspired by real life religions and cultures. None of it is from nothing.
No one has ever had an original idea. It all comes from other aspects that we absorb in our life. Lucas didn't "rip off" Dune. He certainly borrowed pieces from it though, along with a lot of other media, sci-fi and otherwise.
Ok, sure, uh... This sounds the equivalent of MAGA cope, to be honest.
Not to say that I disagree with the cultish behavior of the Dune Fandom in the general sense.
But your tirade is basically at the same level. So, like... Chill out?
Ah yes, the original Imperial Truth -> Imperial Creed pipeline.
It's even more broad. The lesson is to not blindly trust charismatic leaders. The longer Dune story is about teaching humanity to think for themselves. Most people are far too easy to control.
If you continue to Dune Messiah, Paul talks some about all the destruction that he causes putting humanity on the "golden path". This is referring to that. He needs to create so much suffering that humanity stops blindly obeying leaders. Paul actually is too good of a person to give up the last of his humanity and turn into the worm God Emperor, so his son ends up having to do this instead.
This is the correct take of the message. It also, given the universe the story is set in, is the only way towards success. Within the big picture, I have empathy for Paul, as he is put in a situation he cannot win and has to follow for the better outcome (for himself, family, humanity).
Wishing for omniscience is like wishing for immortality. Be careful, you might get it. I love the scene after the awakening. Seeing all paths, knowing the only one that will work, and seeing its horror.
One thing to note that I think we're supposed to question is that we mostly only have Paul's (and later Lato II's) perspective. In the version we hear, what they're doing seems evil but is the only path to a good outcome, where humans have free will. However, I think we're supposed to question if they're actually fully omniscient. I think we're supposed to consider that there's other ways to achieve the same goal. This is just the only path Paul and his descendants can see.
The books do a far better job portraying this. The characters tell the reader. The trilogy spends more time giving Momoa extra scenes than it does following the story. (Yeah, it could be worse, but they miss a lot of critical events).
As long as Denis doesn't wuss out and gives me at least some on screen God-worm, all is not lost.
well Paul does have powers that no one else has ...
No one else has -yet.