I don’t think i really understood time implications of Bene Gesserit’s Missionaria Protectiva until many years after I had read the books for the first time.
This is all spoilers…
But there @Petrichor_Soliloquy’s link points out, there is a complex story about race, colonialism, and power that is at the heart of the book. Paul is only able to lead the Fremen because the Bene Gesserit had manipulated the Fremen into looking for a messianic figure to lead them from subjugation. Paul than uses his leadership of the not free the Fremen, but lead them in a universe spanning genocide. No one is freed. Paul only brings chaos and destruction and death.
Iconic 1960s sf texts, such as Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965), and Arthur C. Clarke’s novelization of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) offer striking variations on Zieger’s model; each novel centers upon a hallucinogenic exploration of inner space, but these narratives, written within a historical context framed by Western European decolonization and an ascendant Cold War American neo-imperialism, explicitly criticize territorial colonialism and posit inner space as a landscape colonized by social norms and unconscious psychological urges. Rather than projecting outward to explore “the Orient” or “the West,” these narratives suggest that altered states of consciousness offer inward voyages to master and liberate the hidden power of one’s own unconscious. If nineteenth-century drug autobiogra- phies frame hallucination as the outward conquest of an imperial frontier, some sf novels in the 1960s reverse this imaginary direction and frame psychedelic experiences as inward missions to decolonize subjectivity.
And more annoyingly for me and the other handful of people with ultrawide (21:9) monitors, it’s encoded in 16:9 with black bars top and bottom, instead of uploading a native 21:9 file and letting Youtube fit it to different shaped screens automatically.
So I get to see this in full screen:
I didn’t see all his filmes, but to me (as an arthouse film lover) there’s a slight downward trend.
Incendies was brilliant.
Arrival was OK
Dune II (I don’t remember the date) was imho a let-down. The atmosphere was nice, but the story was meh…
Visually I have no doubts it will be a nice film, hence I will probably go and see it. Philosofically it looks to me like Villeneuve is eaten by the hollywood monster and making a thought provoking movie is not really hollywoods forte.
Edit: I meant ‘bladerunner II’. Sorry for the confusing list.
I’ve only seen three of his films and I’d rank them:
Arrival was brilliant and had wonderfully different flaws and bright spots from the story.
August 32nd on earth was good.
Blade Runner looked good. Might have sounded good too if Scott hadn fucked over Johann Johansson to replace his score. Was horribly rapey and misogynistic.
Maybe his version of Lawrence of Arakis will be good?
