*Some spoilers ahead for “Dune: Part Two” in the following article, beware.”
When adapting a rich sci-fi fantasy literary franchise as dense and epic as the scale of Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” some things just won’t be able to make the feature film adaptation. As you may have noticed if you saw this film this weekend, there are a few elements seen in the David Lynch incarnation that didn’t make it into director Denis Villeneuve’s two-part incarnation, such as the Spicing Guild and Navigator (A mutated clairvoyant that warns The Emperor of House Atreides and Paul Atreides becoming a threat to them).
While we do get the miraculous return of Josh Brolin’s formidable Gurney Halleck surviving the onslaught by the Harkonnens, there were a few other characters we didn’t see come back, like Stephen McKinley Henderson’s Thufir Hawat (Part of the Mentats, a group of living supercomputers as machines with the ability to think are feared in this universe) which Villeneuve admits to Entertainment Weekly why he had to cut him out of the follow-up installment.
“One of the most painful choices for me on this one was Thufir Hawat,” Villeneuve told EW. “He’s a character I absolutely love, but I decided right at the beginning that I was making a Bene Gesserit adaptation. That meant that Mentats are not as present as they should be, but it’s the nature of the adaptation.”
Focusing on the Bene Gesserit angle is clearly a choice made by the filmmaker to help foreshadow sequels like “Dune 3” based on “Dune Messiah” and potentially “Children of Dune” too given that the project is expected to be where we’ll see Paul’s equally powerful sister Alia Atreides that communicates via Rebecca Ferguson’s Lady Jessica as a fetus/baby and later seen in Paul’s vision as a fully grown adult (*Spoiler played by actress Anya Taylor-Joy*). If previous proclamations made by Villeneuve in the past are to be believed, another director is expected to come in and tackle other potential installments beyond the first two books. Still, we’re expected to see the Bene Gesserit continue to play a role even beyond the Max spinoff series “Dune: Prophecy” (formerly known as “Dune: The Sisterhood”) that will continue to explore the group that helped inspire the Jedi Order in “Star Wars.”
Thankfully, there is room for Thufir Hawat to make a triumph return, either having survived the Artiedies massacre like in the book or simply advising Paul beyond the grave, given his new powers to communicate with the dead. We wouldn’t be shocked if “Dune Messiah” ended up including the Navigators and Spicing Guild in the next installment, too, which is expected to get greenlit sooner rather than later by the studio, given the strong reception from both critics and audiences, leading to a much-improved box office take than the first film.
There isn’t an official timeline for when “Dune Messiah” will go into production as Villeneuve has a multitude of other projects that could happen first, such as his “Cleopatra” film and an adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s “Rendezvous With Rama,” the same sci-fi author who penned “2001: A Space Odyssey” that was turned into the iconic Stanley Kubrick masterpiece.