“In the book, [Baron Vladimir Harkonnen] is very talkative but in the film I wanted him to be a man of few words. … I wanted [him] to get away from a feeling of decadence and more toward a feeling of power.” — Denis Villeneuve
So a major facet of Dune’s world-building is that it’s taking place after an event called “The Butlerian Jihad”–sometime after humanity colonized space, there was a massive purge of “Thinking Machines”–we completely wiped out all computers and AI. “But Nite,” you’re saying, “We need computers to do so many things! How the fuck are people in Dune functioning without computers?! I mean they’re in fucking space!!!”
Well, fun fact! A lot of the technology in Dune is in fact, analog! We’re talking like weird fucked up mutant children of clockwork and VCR-core! It’s wild stuff! Some factions in Dune (like the Tleilaxu) probably have computers and robots hidden away somewhere, but AI is a HUGE taboo in the Dune Universe.
“But wait, we still need computers to calculate stuff.”
Well yes, and that’s where Mentats come in.
Mentats are humans who have been conditioned from a young age to basically… do what computers do. They can run rapid calculations, store insane amounts of memory, and combine human logic with perfect calculation to advise and instruct.
But there are some calculations that even Mentats can’t handle, and that’s where my special special boys the Spacing Guild Navigators come in:
See… the thing about Spice in Dune is it isn’t just a hallucinogen. It literally expands consciousness–it makes you no longer perceive time linearly– so spacing guild navigators have conditioning similar to mentats, but this is paired with being dosed with massive amounts of Spice until it mutates their bodies into fucked up fish people and they can’t survive outside of a spice-infused tank. So that combination of pinpoint accuracy calculating capabilities with a mind that has been bombarded with so much Space Acid you can plot out the movements of celestial bodies results in a being who can calculate safe FTL travel through the stars!! That’s a fucking person in that tank!! It’s so fucked up!! I love them!!! And that’s how Dune uses Spice to safely navigate space!! That’s why Spice is vital to space travel!!!
so uh. Ursula Vernon is an acclaimed and accomplished writer (also known as T Kingfisher) of multiple genres, including fantasy and horror - lots of horror. she also wrote and illustrated the award-winning webcomic Digger. I knew this screenshot couldn’t be showing us her whole opinion, so I pulled up the actual tweet, and I was right! she goes on to explain that many in her crowd loved it, including her husband, but that it wasn’t for her. even more relevant than her original thread, though, is this response she had to someone who was asking in (apparently) good faith why she found the lack of humour frustrating:
like. yeah. not every movie requires a comedy element. of course not! but I think this post is ripping unfairly on entirely the wrong person. Vernon was clear in her original thread that being humourless did not make it a Bad Movie, and has been exceptionally straightforward about why that lack of humour felt detrimental to the film in her experience.
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