Warning -- long post. But not apologizing for this one.
REAL WORLD ANSWER:
Any science fiction and/or action epic like this is going to trade some level of realism for visual flair. Is this really the problem you want to point out and not, say, the 400-meter long sandworms?
Villeneuve has been quite explicit the magic of cinema is communicating information about the characters and plot in a visual fashion and showing us things we didn't even know we needed to see.
My wife made me watch the first two episodes of True Detective: Night Country with her earlier this weekend, and it just bored me to tears (though I'm not trying to trash it). It's all just verbose exposition and unnecessary backstory about unnecessary characters shot in a very boring shot/counter-shot single-camera fashion. I know you do things like that with television for efficiency reasons, but it's just not as visually gripping and able to help you lose yourself in the world of the film as something like Dune was able to do for me.
This is going to sound pretentious and is something of an aside, but I've never really enjoyed the recent spat of prestige television no matter how good the reviews. I agree with Aristotle on this one -- there's nothing quite like the unity of action of being able to tell a fully-realized, complete, and tight story in the amount of time one human can take comfortably sitting (2-3 hours). Anything beyond that is just bloat.
WITHIN UNIVERSE ANSWER:
I thought it was the case they were intentionally giving the ornithopter gunship a target so it would lower its shields and thus become a target itself for the manpads. I would imagine such craft and the skilled crews that pilot them would be quite powerful in a counterinsurgency campaign over a vast desert where there's no way that infantry on foot (outside the Fremen) or ground vehicles could go anywhere useful.
Therefore, whittling down the size of the Harkonnen air force is inherently valuable to the Fremen even if they have to take risks to achieve this goal (though if one falls, then two take their place).
The scene also has a strong character development angle: Chani is a badass, Paul is a brave warrior who puts himself at risk just like the Fremen, and the two of them are coming to trust each other.
When Napoleon crowned himself emperor, he went and had a replica of the Crown of Charlemagne made (most historians agree the original was destroyed during the Revolution). That crown had been supposedly worn by the kings of France for around 1,200 years when Napoleon took the throne.
Who cares, though, right? Who cares about dusty memorabilia from an obliterated regime?
Ceremony and tradition are important to our species. The Corrinos are still the imperial family. The Great Houses might resist Paul and the Fremen. He's a weird desert warlord and an utter madman. He's killed off the Sarduakar and Harkonnen and humiliated the Emperor. He's threatening to halt spice production. The Great Houses will surely reject this to start, but the Jihad will beat them into submission and Paul's choice of an Atreides/Corrino marriage will add legitimacy to his reign. Plus, leaving Irulan unmarried carries its own risks. Better to take her "off the board" by marrying her himself instead of leaving an opening for a potential rival.
I think it was because it sounded cool.
I don't think the means of destruction matters, though. The film makes the essential point that Paul and the Fremen now control Arrakis and the spice. They can "nuke" the fields in either the literal sense or in the metaphorical sense whenever they want to, which means they now control the economy.
The Weirding Way isn't in the Villeneuve like it was the Lynch version (and its inclusion in the Lynch version is one of its main weaknesses). I think it was for the best it was cut this time.
The rise of Muad'Dib was influenced by great conquerors from real history (e.g., Alexander the Great, Muhammad and the early conquests of Islam, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, etc.). Take a hardy but fractious people known for squabbling between one another, unite them around a common enemy under your Cult of Personality, and turn them loose and watch them go out and conquer most of the world.
Strap a couple of ropes to a couple of Fremen. They're strong. Rebecca Ferguson ain't that heavy.
One, visual flair. Two, the Fremen defeating the Sarduakar is an important plot point.
Three, the Fremen did run some Sarduakar over with the worms (and destroyed much of their heavy equipment). But what did you expect? The Fremen were going to drive the worms back and forth like they were "mowing the lawn" while the Sarduakar stood there dumb and took it? Is that what you would like?
That would have been 100x sillier than, say, Legolas soloing a CGI oliphaunt that one time.
Chani is from a society that has a strong sense of equality between men and women. Try telling your girlfriend from that society you can't be married because of political reasons. She's not going to be happy about it, and I doubt she's ever going to be happy about it. I like film Chani standing up for herself.
Paul could have disappeared into the desert with Chani and lived quietly and happily and been forgotten about. He could have said "Duke of Arrakis is enough" and married Chani and not Irulan. But no, he wanted it all -- the throne, humiliating the Emperor, destroyed the Harkonnen, vengeance for the murder of his father and Duncan, and he eventually won it all. But I also see why Chani is quite pissed about this outcome.
I thought the film was clear.
Muad'Dib is a prophet to the Fremen. He's sent by God to deliver them. The Great Houses are defying his authority. The Fremen are insulted that their prophet is not being given proper respect.
I think this is another instance where the film improves on the book. The book is somewhat vague on why the Jihad has to start after the Fremen conquer Arrakis. It implies a happy ending before Messiah. The film provides a reason: the Great Houses understandably will not submit to the tyranny of this madman, so Paul and the Fremen are going to beat them into submission with the Jihad. His power will be total when done.
Dune has all these great schools teaching people to do superhuman things to replace the computers banned by the Bulterian Jihad (e.g., mentats, swordsmasters like Duncan and Gurney, Suk doctors, etc.). The Bene Gessert are just another one of those. They can do all sorts of cool, superhuman things like ancestral memories, Truthsayers, martial arts, extreme control of their metabolism, control of the autonomic nervous system, The Voice, the advanced planning of human genetics, and controlling a baby's sex. What's one more thing?
Artillery is good at what it does.
For instance, we have this romantic notion of WWII being about tanks, aircraft, and squad-level infantry battles like Saving Private Ryan. However, roughly 75% of casualties in WWII were caused by artillery (a similar figure to that in WWI). The war in Ukraine now is fundamentally an artillery duel.
The Fremen don't use shields because they don't work well with sand futzing with them and they attract and piss off the worms. Artillery is a throwback technology, but its brutality still works.
Shields attract the worms. Again, there's a reason the Fremen don't like them.
Use shields, attract a worm, and now you're stuck there like the final scene from Tremors.
Antigravity technology in Dune is very power hungry. You can't constantly use it unless you're hooked up to some awkward equipment for a solider in the field (such as the Baron has with him).
12/10 ******* awesome film
REAL WORLD ANSWER:
Any science fiction and/or action epic like this is going to trade some level of realism for visual flair. Is this really the problem you want to point out and not, say, the 400-meter long sandworms?
Villeneuve has been quite explicit the magic of cinema is communicating information about the characters and plot in a visual fashion and showing us things we didn't even know we needed to see.
My wife made me watch the first two episodes of True Detective: Night Country with her earlier this weekend, and it just bored me to tears (though I'm not trying to trash it). It's all just verbose exposition and unnecessary backstory about unnecessary characters shot in a very boring shot/counter-shot single-camera fashion. I know you do things like that with television for efficiency reasons, but it's just not as visually gripping and able to help you lose yourself in the world of the film as something like Dune was able to do for me.
This is going to sound pretentious and is something of an aside, but I've never really enjoyed the recent spat of prestige television no matter how good the reviews. I agree with Aristotle on this one -- there's nothing quite like the unity of action of being able to tell a fully-realized, complete, and tight story in the amount of time one human can take comfortably sitting (2-3 hours). Anything beyond that is just bloat.
WITHIN UNIVERSE ANSWER:
I thought it was the case they were intentionally giving the ornithopter gunship a target so it would lower its shields and thus become a target itself for the manpads. I would imagine such craft and the skilled crews that pilot them would be quite powerful in a counterinsurgency campaign over a vast desert where there's no way that infantry on foot (outside the Fremen) or ground vehicles could go anywhere useful.
Therefore, whittling down the size of the Harkonnen air force is inherently valuable to the Fremen even if they have to take risks to achieve this goal (though if one falls, then two take their place).
The scene also has a strong character development angle: Chani is a badass, Paul is a brave warrior who puts himself at risk just like the Fremen, and the two of them are coming to trust each other.
When Napoleon crowned himself emperor, he went and had a replica of the Crown of Charlemagne made (most historians agree the original was destroyed during the Revolution). That crown had been supposedly worn by the kings of France for around 1,200 years when Napoleon took the throne.
Who cares, though, right? Who cares about dusty memorabilia from an obliterated regime?
Ceremony and tradition are important to our species. The Corrinos are still the imperial family. The Great Houses might resist Paul and the Fremen. He's a weird desert warlord and an utter madman. He's killed off the Sarduakar and Harkonnen and humiliated the Emperor. He's threatening to halt spice production. The Great Houses will surely reject this to start, but the Jihad will beat them into submission and Paul's choice of an Atreides/Corrino marriage will add legitimacy to his reign. Plus, leaving Irulan unmarried carries its own risks. Better to take her "off the board" by marrying her himself instead of leaving an opening for a potential rival.
I think it was because it sounded cool.
I don't think the means of destruction matters, though. The film makes the essential point that Paul and the Fremen now control Arrakis and the spice. They can "nuke" the fields in either the literal sense or in the metaphorical sense whenever they want to, which means they now control the economy.
The Weirding Way isn't in the Villeneuve like it was the Lynch version (and its inclusion in the Lynch version is one of its main weaknesses). I think it was for the best it was cut this time.
The rise of Muad'Dib was influenced by great conquerors from real history (e.g., Alexander the Great, Muhammad and the early conquests of Islam, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, etc.). Take a hardy but fractious people known for squabbling between one another, unite them around a common enemy under your Cult of Personality, and turn them loose and watch them go out and conquer most of the world.
Strap a couple of ropes to a couple of Fremen. They're strong. Rebecca Ferguson ain't that heavy.
One, visual flair. Two, the Fremen defeating the Sarduakar is an important plot point.
Three, the Fremen did run some Sarduakar over with the worms (and destroyed much of their heavy equipment). But what did you expect? The Fremen were going to drive the worms back and forth like they were "mowing the lawn" while the Sarduakar stood there dumb and took it? Is that what you would like?
That would have been 100x sillier than, say, Legolas soloing a CGI oliphaunt that one time.
Chani is from a society that has a strong sense of equality between men and women. Try telling your girlfriend from that society you can't be married because of political reasons. She's not going to be happy about it, and I doubt she's ever going to be happy about it. I like film Chani standing up for herself.
Paul could have disappeared into the desert with Chani and lived quietly and happily and been forgotten about. He could have said "Duke of Arrakis is enough" and married Chani and not Irulan. But no, he wanted it all -- the throne, humiliating the Emperor, destroyed the Harkonnen, vengeance for the murder of his father and Duncan, and he eventually won it all. But I also see why Chani is quite pissed about this outcome.
I thought the film was clear.
Muad'Dib is a prophet to the Fremen. He's sent by God to deliver them. The Great Houses are defying his authority. The Fremen are insulted that their prophet is not being given proper respect.
I think this is another instance where the film improves on the book. The book is somewhat vague on why the Jihad has to start after the Fremen conquer Arrakis. It implies a happy ending before Messiah. The film provides a reason: the Great Houses understandably will not submit to the tyranny of this madman, so Paul and the Fremen are going to beat them into submission with the Jihad. His power will be total when done.
Dune has all these great schools teaching people to do superhuman things to replace the computers banned by the Bulterian Jihad (e.g., mentats, swordsmasters like Duncan and Gurney, Suk doctors, etc.). The Bene Gessert are just another one of those. They can do all sorts of cool, superhuman things like ancestral memories, Truthsayers, martial arts, extreme control of their metabolism, control of the autonomic nervous system, The Voice, the advanced planning of human genetics, and controlling a baby's sex. What's one more thing?
Artillery is good at what it does.
For instance, we have this romantic notion of WWII being about tanks, aircraft, and squad-level infantry battles like Saving Private Ryan. However, roughly 75% of casualties in WWII were caused by artillery (a similar figure to that in WWI). The war in Ukraine now is fundamentally an artillery duel.
The Fremen don't use shields because they don't work well with sand futzing with them and they attract and piss off the worms. Artillery is a throwback technology, but its brutality still works.
Shields attract the worms. Again, there's a reason the Fremen don't like them.
Use shields, attract a worm, and now you're stuck there like the final scene from Tremors.
Antigravity technology in Dune is very power hungry. You can't constantly use it unless you're hooked up to some awkward equipment for a solider in the field (such as the Baron has with him).
12/10 ******* awesome film
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