Here's my one-phone-screen review of Dune*

[cimorene]

* This is nothing original. In fact, this is highly influenced by a bunch of stuff I read about it from several writers of color, mostly before the movie even came out. However, this is shorter. And our interest in several of the stars and enthusiasm for great cinematography prompted me to spend some time mulling over it.

Dune Checklist

✅ Grasped that jihad isn't a good thing

✅ Grasped that Paul Atreides isn't a hero or white savior

✅ Captured the mood and conveyed the themes of the novel

✅ Everyone wasn't white, at least

🔲 Understood that the Arabic and North African racial and cultural identities and contexts in the real history that the story explores are an integral part of the story, carefully and deliberately constructed that way and signaled with unmistakable signs throughout by Herbert

Comments

[stranger]

I suspect you're completely right, although I haven't seen the movie as yet. I did re and re-read the book when I was younger, and in retrospect the Arabic etc. aspects of the setting were absolutely basic and integral.

Remembering the book, I'd call Paul Atreides a white savior figure there -- the book certainly showed him as a member of the dominant, colonialist culture, coming into a local culture and making himself a leader to transform it for political purposes. It's possible Herbert put more nuance into the progression than I realized as a (whitebread, middle-class) teenager, or that Villeneuve develops it differently.

[cimorene]

It examines the white savior narrative, I'd say, because what he does isn't portrayed as an uncomplicated and good thing. Or necessarily as saving.

[msilverstar]

Agree with all those points, including that brown people aren't all the same brown (looking at Javier Bardem in particular)