Even before Denis Villeneuve's big-screen two-part 2021 film introduced it to moviegoers who'd missed David Lynch's fun, wacky 1984 adaptation, Frank Herbert's “Dune” had become an intellectual property exploited.
Herbert completed six novels before his death in 1986; 17 more have been written by his son Brian and Kevin Anderson. But it was Villeneuve's film that launched the brand into the franchise-crazed universe of 21st-century showbiz, where any well-performing work of science fiction or fantasy (and “Dune” is both) is practically necessary to generate a network of spin-off sequels and products (Lego Atreides Royal Ornithopter, $164.99; Funko Pop! Paul Atreides, $11.99).
If you're not familiar with the movies or books, HBO's new series, which premieres Sunday, won't do you the favor of providing much context. It takes place 10,000 years earlier, but in most respects, life on this vast network of planets appears to have changed little in 100 centuries. On either side of that temporal divide, we are in an essentially feudal society of royal houses and hereditary emperors, dressed in the medieval trappings that have governed sci-fi fantasy from “Flash Gordon” to “Star Wars” and beyond.
Spice, a special super-duper element that has mind-altering and mind-enhancing powers and is the key to space travel, is already the most valued substance in the universe and is at the bottom of what drives antagonisms, trickery, and power of history. play. It's “Game of Thrones,” with spaceships and sandworms.
The Brotherhood, later known as Bene Gesserit in the “Dune” universe.
(Attila Szvacsek / HBO)
The main characters, and most interesting, if not star power, of this space opera are Valya Harkonnen, played by Emily Watson, and her sister Tula, played by Olivia Williams. The Harkonnens (the bad guys from “Dune,” or maybe just the worst) are, in this era, a disgraced house, banished to a distant, snowy planet because their great-grandfather deserted in the war against the “thinking machines.” “(I appreciate the anti-AI stance.)
In what counts as the present (there is an earlier timeline in which Jessica Barden plays young Valya and Emma Canning plays Tula), the sisters have risen to positions of influence through the new Brotherhood, later Bene Gesserit; They are nuns, basically, who have learned to manipulate minds. Such supernatural activity is accompanied by extreme close-ups of an eye, provoking thoughts of Sauron, and sometimes an unintelligible voice provoking thoughts of the Beastie Boys' “Intergalactic.”
Valya has become Mother Superior, Tula has become Reverend Mother. The two do not agree on everything or many things. Valya, a person who is always needed and pushes forward, continues the late founder's plan to use a “genetic archive” to implement a long-term plan to generate “better leaders”, that is, “leaders we can control.” (The name for this is eugenics, and it is bad to imagine that it is good.) Tula, the more sensitive sister, calculates the human cost of her many machinations.
The Brotherhood's little sisters (the novices are an attractive, motley bunch when they have a little screen time) are being trained as “truthers,” given to the heads of different houses to act as human lie detectors. There is also, according to the title, a prophecy, a deathbed vision from Valya's predecessor of an apocalyptic “red dust” storm that will wipe out… something. The order, or maybe everything? Prophecies, of course, are endemic to these types of stories, but they are a poor basis for governance and rarely benefit anyone. Ask Oedipus or Macbeth.
Mark Strong plays Emperor Javicco Corrino, ruler of the “known universe,” who is busy completing the arranged marriage of his daughter, Princess Ynez (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina), to a 9-year-old little prince from another house, allowing him to earn life. a rocket feat that he can use to destroy the Fremen. (Ynez is also, confusingly, going to train with the Brotherhood.) The Fremen, whose home planet of Arrakis, where Spice is mined, torment the miners and the troops who protect them, and as an indigenous population fighting against Imperial usurpers, they are the faction you should support. I can't say if they will actually appear in “Prophecy” (only four episodes out of six were made available for review), but they will still be fighting this fight 10,000 years from now, when it becomes the main business of the series. original “Dune” and you can see them there.
Empress Natalya (Jodhi May) and Emperor Javicco Corrino (Mark Strong) in “Dune: Prophecy.”
(Attila Szvacsek / HBO)
Joining Corrino is Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel), the miraculous sole survivor of a campaign on Arrakis (Dune's Iraq War), who has gained special powers that make him dangerous to cross, like Billy Mumy sending people to the cornfield in that “Twilight Zone” episode. He is one of those science fiction characters whose normal Earth name distinguishes him as a commoner among the patricians. Which doesn't mean he's not a horrible, bigoted person. Other male characters include Ynez's half-brother Constantine (Josh Heuston), with whom he uses drugs the night before their wedding; the Harkonnens' cousin Harrow (Edward Davis), who has whale skins and would like to sell you; and Corrino's “sword master,” Keiran Atreidas (Chris Mason), who fences and flirts with Ynez. Ten thousand years later, Paul Atreides will become the messianic hero of “Dune.”
Brotherhood is powerful. In a nice change from recent Earth history, women are the defining force of the series, before and behind the camera. Diane Ademu-John developed the series; Alison Schapker is its showrunner, Anna Foerster the main director. Its numerous female characters (so many, good, bad, and mostly in-between) not only demonstrate power, but, so the point is not lost, talk about it. Joining the Harkonnen sisters and their young apprentices, who are not shy about expressing an opinion, are Ynez, who is no pushover, and her mother, Empress Natalya (Jodhi May), who tells her emperor husband: “ There was a time. when you took my views seriously and the Empire was stronger for it. She seems ready to make herself heard again.
The television series is made in the image of Villeneuve's film, with downward adjustments for budget and so on. In the episodes I've seen, the action mostly takes place indoors; It's less “Lawrence of Arrakis” than, you know, a premium cable show. Like the film, whose commercial and critical success suggests that people approve of it, it is tiny, serious and almost entirely devoid of humor. There are some shallower sequences with mood-changing bars and some trademark HBO sex scenes that seem imported from a completely different known universe. But since they involve characters talking about revolution (again, it's the rebels against the Empire), they don't exactly lighten it up.
As is the case with many films in which classically trained actors are asked to elevate genre material, “Prophecy” feels simultaneously grandiose and silly, which, after all, didn't stop “Star Wars” from would take over the world. (It probably helped.) Watson and Williams, respectively aggressive and deceptively passive, attack their roles with commitment. It's not Shakespeare, but they play it like it is.
