Dune: Part Two (2024) was my first foray into this genre. I hurriedly watched the first part at home on Netflix, as advised by my daughter. Having read the books, she offered to educate me about the film, should I have any doubts or questions. I said, ‘No, thank you’, and promptly returned with criticisms and questions that she deftly and helpfully addressed, parting with, ‘It’s all there in the books, Daddy’.

Dune: Part Two in the movie theatre was a terrific experience. It was a visual treat. The desert, I am certain, has never looked better, inviting, and I might even add, pretty. The sets and all the special effects were grand, imaginative and captivating. The sound design and score were superb.

I am not going to say much here about the story per se except to let you know it involves struggles for dominion, access and control of resources, and the drama amongst people and their rulers that include affections and hate, jealousy and vengeance, courage and cruelty, politics and competitiveness, loyalty and compromise, dependency and autonomy, cunning and intrigue, faith and hope for deliverance, tradition and resistance … and much more.

The scale and theatre of action is across planets. The conceptualisation is expansive. There are powers that some beings have that are not given to the ordinary, the technology on show is futuristic and yet the tussles are often reduced to fisticuffs and knife fights (very stylish and all, yet, this I couldn’t reconcile).

I came away from the movie wondering what the next phase of evolution of humankind could be. Will human emotions, wants and needs endure over time, and will we continue to see fear and desire, the need for power and control, aggrandisement, violence and war drive relationships at every level of existence? If we evolve into a different being, will we transcend these or will we mutate in a way that fundamentally reshapes what it is to be human?

Dune, I believe, is based on a book from the 1960s. At its core, it remains a human story. But what leaps were made back then!