Dune: Messiah is on its way to theatres, as Denis Villeneuve is hard at work on his threequel. However, there have been some comments from the visionary director that have fans concerned about what might be in store for the franchise.
While Villeneuve has said multiple times that the entire point of Dune: Messiah was to dispel some misunderstanding about Paul’s character in the first Dune novel, Frank Herbert himself talked about how Messiah was not a correction, but the natural continuation of Dune.
Frank Herbert deliberately wanted to paint Paul as a hero that the people would root for
While internet folklore would suggest that Frank Herbert was disappointed by how the public understood Paul Atreides in Dune, the truth could not be further from the matter. Frank Herbert has very much set up Paul to be someone the audiences root for, with the goal still being to talk about the problems with a messianic figure. However, Dune was just one part of the story, with Frank Herbert always expecting to write more books. He said:
The book as I conceived of it was the first three books, they were one book in my head, and I told my agent this. After he recovered from his heart attack he said ‘Do you think you could split it into three at least, maybe four?’ Well I split it into three.
There was always an idea about the length of the story, and that it would be spread over three books. When Villeneuve says that Messiah was written due to the wrong perception that viewers developed about Paul, it seems that there are some problems with that story. Further, given that this paints the way Denis Villeneuve interprets his version of Dune, there might be some things that he has gotten wrong.
Fans have been scouring the internet for information about where Denis Villeuenve found the story
While Denis Villeneuve is very confident in his story that Frank Herbert was disappointed with how Paul Atreides was received, and hence penned Messiah to turn the character into the villain, there isn’t a shred of evidence that fans have been able to find about that being the case.
Villeneuve made significant changes to the story based on this reading of the books, which is the reason why Chani is less devoted to Paul in the duology directed by him. Fans are trying to figure out where this line of thinking originated, given that there does not seem to be a record of such sentiments before Villeneuve parroted the misinterpretation story.
The Dune: Messiah that Denis Villeneuve will make might be a lot harder on the themes it puts forward. This could point towards a more blatant interpretation of the plot and story, painting Paul out to be the bad guy even further. It remains to be seen how mainstream audiences will receive this, given that there are some who genuinely believe that Paul was the hero of the story they were told.
Dune is streaming on Netflix.
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