The spice is nice, and so, as it turns out, is the cast of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, which has been a real cavalcade of “Yeah, that makes sense” picks from the Arrival director. Now, Deadline is reporting that Javier Bardem is signing on for a job on the arid hell-world of Arrakis, joining a cast that includes Timothée Chalamet, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, and (reportedly) Oscar Isaac.
Bardem will apparently be playing Stilgar, one of like eight fatherly mentor figures who help young Paul Atreides on his way to becoming the galactically powerful Muad’Dib. Stilgar is the leader of a community of the Fremen, the nomadic natives of Dune, who survive on the desert planet through a mixture of hardiness, sandworm skills, and a practical attitude toward drinking their own recycled piss. Everett McGill played the part in David Lynch’s adaptation of the Frank Herbert novel, but we can totally see Bardem, stoned-faced, taking on the role, watching as Chalamet’s Paul takes his first sip from his stillsuit’s water reclamation tube. Is there a slight twinkle in his eyes, the merest twitch of a smile as his future messiah takes his first swig?
Damn, we’re excited for these movies.
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Has Feyd been cast? Wouldn’t it be great if they made Feyd a woman?
Hoping its someone who could rock these.
Gives new meaning to the phrase “don’t stand so close to me.”
Yes, I think the right woman could pull this off.Edit: Damn you Lola, you beat me by seconds.
I’m sure there are a lot of women (and men) who’d like to pull that off.
paging Tilda Swinton
You picked the better pose. 🙃
Feyd can’t be a woman if they stick at all to the story of the books. It’s a key aspect of the character for his role in the Bene Gesserit plan and how Jessica/Paul mess with it.
Even better is that to make Feyd a woman, you’d have to make Paul one too.
Which completely ruins the point of Paul being the Kwiddich Hazmat…or whatever, I never said it same way twice anyway.
Fuck, you’re right. The whole spacing guild would need to be female and the Bene Gesserit all-male as well.
Part of Jessica’s betrayal in having a son over a daughter was Jessica’s daughter was supposed to be the Kwisatz Haderach (sorry if I butchered that) and marry Feyd to produce an alliance between the Harkonans, Atreides and the Bene Gesserit. Making Feyd a woman would mess that plot piece up. I might be wrong about that.
“Jessica’s daughter was supposed to be the Kwisatz Haderach”No, they were hoping to mate that daughter to Feyd and then get the Chosen One as their offspring.
That’s right. I’m honestly surprised I remembered as much as I did. It’s been almost a decade since I read Dune exactly one time.
Close. Jessica’s daughter was supposed to be paired off with Feyd and their son would be the Kwisatz Haderach. A millenia long breeding program (and the whole known universe), undone by Lady Jessica because she wanted to give Duke Leto a son. You’d almost have to gender switch every single role in the show.
Yes. Ultimately, you can’t really gender switch in Dune very easily because gender plays a really important role.
“undone”To be fair, she did end up producing the Kwisatz Haderachach by accident anyway, just not one the Bene Gesserit could control.
But the whole point of the breeding program was to have a messiah the sisterhood could control. The last thing they wanted was some random messiah wandering around, especially not one with access to an elite, disenfranchised, fighting force and a grudge against the emperor and the BG themselves.
Sister Mohiam probably should have gone down in the sisterhood’s history as the nurse who didn’t smother Hitler. A little Gom Jabbar, yank Jessica back into line, get the daughter they wanted (Alia, but minus the whole “abomination” thing), and they are back in business. Instead they find themselves backing the Harkonnen’s on Arrakis to try to undo their error, but it is too late and it only makes everything worse.
“But the whole point of the breeding program was to have
a messiah the sisterhood could control. The last thing they wanted was
some random messiah wandering around, especially not one with access to an elite, disenfranchised, fighting force and a grudge against the emperor and the BG themselves”Then the BG should have done a better job of recongnizing that he’d showed up a generation early, don’t you think?“Gom Jabbar”Never really understood that part. Duke Leto’s not going to go on a BG-hunting pogrom, starting with his wife, if Mohiam decides to put Paul down?
I think Mohiam did not know that he could be the KH. She just administered the test and Paul passed. They are probably planning on breeding him with someone and see this as a minor delay. They are plenty patient enough for that. That’s the only explanation I can come up with because the sisterhood is more than ruthless enough to kill him if they have any inkling that Lady Jessica gave birth to the KH a generation early.
She did know he might be the KH:She stared at him. He senses truth! Could he be the one? Could he truly be the one? She extinguished the excitement, reminding herself: “Hope clouds observation.” And as she later tells him, “I seek the Kwisatz Haderach, the male who truly can become one of us. Your mother sees this possibility in you, but she sees with the eyes of a mother. Possibility I see, too, but no more.”You also have to wonder why, after Jessica had a son, the Sisterhood did absolutely nothing about it for fifteen years, never even sent anyone to scold her for it before Mohiam’s visit.
All in all, the actions of the Bene Gesserit throughout the book make so little sense that Frank Herbert wrote a whole Appendix lampshading it, essentially admitting that it’s all a big plot contrivance:In the face of these facts, one is led to the inescapable conclusion that the inefficient Bene Gesserit behavior in this affair was a product of an even higher plan of which they were completely unaware!If I was inclined towards writing fan fiction, this is one of those big gaps in the story I think it would be interesting to try to fill.
I love the book, but ah, the leaden prose.
I’m reading this entire thread in Crow and Tom Servo’s voices when they pretended to be nerds arguing about Star Trek.
The Atreides daughter was supposed to breed with Feyd to create the KH. I don’t think the BG cared about the Houses.
They cared insofar as their breeding program needed to produce the correct son at the correct time so their “messiah” could be in a position of power to be manipulated by the BG. However, I have been wrong this thread quite a bit, so maybe I misunderstood this too.
So perfect. So awesome. Even better than Bautista as Rabban.
For what it’s worth I think the casting is really encouraging. Not only do these actors have the chops but their agreeing to star speaks to the confidence they have in the director. And in that regard, Denis Villeneuve’s production style in previous films certainly meshes with the the tone of the original novel. I’m really looking forward to this.
This is so confusing, I can’t keep up with who’s been cast in Dune and who’s launching a Presidential bid.
And where does Tiffany Haddish figure in this?!
Nobody will defeat Harkonnen 2020
More like Yueh 2020. Baron Vladimir is the one pulling his strings from Kremlin Prime. (That was unfair of me – unlike Trump, Dr. Yueh is a sympathetic character.)
For the record, I’m good with this one. Just in case anyone is keeping track.
All we need now is Tom Hanks as Count Fenring and Amy Adams as his wife. Or the other way ‘round.
It sucks that the only part of the entire Dune story adapted into movies is the first book. It’s only the beginning of such an epic tale and yet is always presented as a neatly beribboned stand-alone package. I love the names and talent apparently attached to it, but I would really like to see the whole messy thing portayed someday. Honored Matres and sandworm hybrid gods plz.
I’m not sure if this is related, but McCormicksstock took a big hit just as this was announced. Just saying…
I just finished the book, and I hadn’t quite realized that was what the water reclamation tube was for.
kwisatz haderach give your dog a bone
If I have a crush on both Timothee Chalamet and Javier Bardem, that averages out to make them both age-appropriate, right? It’s simple math.
He’s too big for a Fremen role. The face especially is all wrong. This is a people that has spent millennia on a planet where not one drop of water can be wasted, and their bodies should reflect that. Something like the San of southern Africa, but with more of a Mediterranean skin tone to reflect their Egyptian origins.