‘Dune’ and the War of Online Factions

The New Center: A Newsletter From Sohrab Ahmari

Dune: Part Two is as good as “everyone” says. In the past, Denis Villeneuve has been reproached for films that are visually stunning but lack a certain depth. I think the criticism is wide of the mark with respect to a number of the Canadian director’s previous efforts (Blade Runner 2049, Sicario). But in the event, those voices of reproach should be hushed by Dune: Part Two, which contains a number of rich, compelling character studies: most notably, the rise of its protagonist, Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), as a reluctant desert prophet.

Call me terminally online-brained, if you must, but I kept thinking about how the film invites the partisans of various online factions to identify themselves with the story’s warring camps. This should be part of the pleasure of the film for very-online Millennials and Zoomers in our moment of diminished economic and technological expectations, and amid the ideological instability created by this feeling of stasis and stagnation.

Precisely because the immediate horizon for social transformation appears narrow, a younger generation feels free to play around with radical imaginaries, often expressed in memes. As an epic exercise in visual world-building, Dune: Part Two is especially generative source text for such exercises. It offers maps of possible futures, in which various memetic-cum-political online camps, from Catholic Twitter to the racial e-right, can identify themselves.