'Dune 2' And The Art Of Messianic Leadership

Strategic choices and foreseeable consequences

Spoilers below the paywall. This post will be locked for one week.

---

Ninety-six “atomics” are not enough to blow up a planet or strike every last spice field on Arrakis. As nuclear arsenals go, it is actually…puny? In fact, that is just one-third of the full warhead capacity of a single USS Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine. Nor are the “Atreides family atomics” stored for safety in silos, receiving regular maintenance and inspection, ready to fire at a moment’s notice. Rather, Duke Leto Atreides had them hidden away in a cave, packed side-by-side like sardines, with no visible means of deployment, erection, or launch. Three of these precious, heirloom nukes are used in one fleeting moment on screen. No one mentions radiation or the dangers of exposure to thermonuclear fallout. The resulting blast seems less powerful than Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear warhead ever detonated (50 megatons). What is going on here?

Perhaps future technology, deployed off-camera, takes care of such pesky material details as are involved in the actual use of nuclear missiles. Maybe the nuclear missiles of the future can hover out of their storage racks and follow Gurney Halleck around to wherever he wants them, erecting themselves and launching on command. Paul Atreides might have used three at once to make a point, perhaps “dialing them down” to reduce fratricide, or employing some special penetrative power to bury the detonations deep inside the targeted rock wall and reduce the resulting radiation. Weapon choices are definitive of a strategic culture, and nuclear weaponry is inherently strategic in purpose. It makes sense that the Atreides strategic culture chose to maintain a small, very flexible deterrent. Hewing to the family script, Paul Muad’Dib uses them to make a small display of strategic nuclear power, then uses the remainder as a deterrent.

Denis Villeneuve has delivered a relatively faithful adaptation of Frank Herbert’s book. There are no surprises that lurch very far from the text. Here, however, Villeneuve has made much more of the Atreides’ nuclear option than Herbert ever did. The scene depicting the recovery of the nuclear weapons from the cave was unnecessary to the script. Perhaps Villeneuve was just giving Josh Brolin more screen time, but I think he is movie-meditating on the disturbing image of a messiah with nukes. Of course, Paul Muad’Dib Atreides is a reluctant messiah in the making, learning how to win battles with desert power. His nuclear behavior is cold-blooded rather than imbued with holy zeal, wholly consistent with the Atreides in him. Holy war too is just another nuclear option that the Kwisatz Haderach unleashes in the manner of the strategic culture of the Atreides. Jihad is but a weapon, to Paul.