I really liked the first movie, but I’m conflicted about this one. I really liked the first half, how Paul was defiant of the whole Messiah thing and seemed to genuinely want to help the Fremen in their struggle against the empire for freedom. I was genuinely surprised because I didn’t expect that from the story.
Then he takes the baby worm juice, and now he’s fully embracing the whole religious figure thing, is taking center stage in the Fremen struggle and is even using his family/house colonialist crest as a flag.
I thought it was gonna deconstruct the whole white savior trope, but then it ends reinforcing it? That’s weird.
To be fair tho, he’s being pragmatic since he can now see whole timelines of possible futures and is doing what he needs to assure it reaches the timeline where they are successful.
Well, at least I’m interested to see where it goes. Showing them resisting against the Harkonnen colonizer fucks was great tho lol.
This will be more fully covered in Dune Messiah. I’m guessing that Villeneuve knew that Dune 3 was going to get greenlit, and so he made the decision to make Paul likeable as a hero in this movie, while also very explicitly presenting all of the evidence that this is going to end up as a galactic calamity. That way he can rub the audience’s face in Space Hitler for the next movie.