2024-03-16 21:41:26
An even more blatant departure is Chani, the female Fremen warrior who becomes Paul’s concubine. In the book, she’s fiercely loyal, not so much to her man as to the spiritual promise he represents. She stands there and watches, uneasily, as Paul makes plans to marry the daughter of another gilded imperial family in an attempt to stave off galactic war. But this is 2024, and no vision of female agency is permitted unless it goes full Beyonce and asserts its independence, repeatedly and in the most obvious, performative ways.
Portrayed by Zendaya, Villeneuve’s Chani may as well be wearing a “smash the patriarchy” T-shirt: She quarrels with Paul endlessly, doubts his religious revelations, and is generally a downer. In one notable but inevitable-seeming departure from the novel, she wastes not a second after his proposal to another woman before dashing off, hopping on a sandworm, and riding away to freedom and independence.
Who, after all, in 2024, can imagine a world in which anyone believes in any cause higher than girl power? Who can conceive of a moral order predicated on anything other than the dictates of intersectionality? Not Villeneuve, which means that his Dune: Part Two, as splendid as some of its details are to contemplate, is as completely and utterly sterile as any new luxury hotel in Dubai.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/the-dune-we-deserve
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