It is impossible to talk about the movie Dune, and keep your dignity.

       Nothing can be said about Dune in anything but a whisper, or a shout. It is impossible not to love Dune. It is impossible not to mock it with mercilessness usually reserved for hatred. It is only possible to describe it with egregious generalizations, all of which are true and inaccurate. It is awesome. It is awful. It is a spectacle of awe-ness, both broad and narrow that is at the same time the best and the worst of movies. It is naivete fully realized. It is going North, to get South in a non-Euclidean dream universe where poles are interchangeable.

     And yet, some people don't actually like it. It is likely that these people are turned off by the fact that it is impossible to describe the movie without sounding like, for lack of a better term, a nerd. They are just too cool for school. Luckily, I'm not. So I'll describe it for them.

     In a distant future, in an intergalactic society founded during a religious revolution that banned thinking machines, the Emperor of the known galaxy has conspired with the House Harkonnen to overthrow Duke Leo Atreides, ruler of the planet Caladan, because the Duke's popularity in the Landsraad, the ruling aristocracy, threatens the emperor's power. The Harkonnens and the Atreides are mortal enemies (they are observing the future's form of vendetta, Kanly), and also run, through imperial license the company that produces the spice melange, on which the entire intergalactic economy is founded. The spice allows members of the Spacing Guild, who through extensive use of the drug mutate into giant embryos, to fold space and enable traveling between planets (travelling without moving, see, opposites become the same thing), but it also gives them the mystical power to see into the future, albeit in a limited way. Without the spice, travelling between locations in the empire is impossible.

     The Emperor has transferred control of the company to the Atreides, in order to provoke a war between the Harkonnens and the Atreides, in which he will secretly support the Harkonnens by providing his army of Sardaukar super soldiers. The Spacing Guild senses in this plan a threat to the production of spice, as the Harkonnens have, through brutal treatment of workers, pushed production to its maximum. The spice must flow is the status quo. And they request that the emperor ensure that the Duke's son, Paul, be killed. Paul is somehow the threat to the spice.

     A reverend mother of the universe's other great power, the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood (all the Spacing Guild members are male) overhears the conversation between the giant embryo and the Emperor using special spice telepathy, and travels to visit the Duke, to find out what threat Paul might constitute. Paul's mother, being a member of the sisterhood, had been told by this reverend mother to bear a daughter to the Duke, because the sisters' basic goal is to create a super being through spice inspired eugenics. But through a special test called the Gom Jabbar the mother discovers that Paul might actually be this super being, the Quizat Haderach.

     Believe it or not, I am leaving out a bunch of details. The Juice of Sapho.

     After a bunch of interesting things happen on Caladan, like shield fighting, a super high-tech way to fight with knives, we get to find out that the Harkonnens have a spy in the Atredies entourage, Dr. Yueh, who is supposed to be unable to do harm because of behaviorist conditioning done to medical professionals. His conditioning was broken by the Harkonnens, and they are extorting him to betray the duke by holding his wife prisoner, something the Atredies probably should have known about. Oh yeah, and Sting is a Harkonnen.

     OK, so, the Atredies are taking over the planet Dune, on which the spice is mined, and they learn about the Fremen, the planet's native inhabitants, and everybody likes them because they aren't as brutal as the Harkonnens. At this point, Paul saves one of the Fremen, who works in the Duke's household, from a trap left by the Harkonnens, and she says, in very loud whisper, "I am the Shadout Mapes, THE HOUSEKEEPER." Shortly thereafter, the Emperor and the Harkonnen execute their plan to get rid of the Duke. But they are double crossed by Yueh, who has come up with his own plan to kill the Baron Harkonnen. While his plan is foiled, it does allow Paul and his mother to escape and join the Fremen, who are secretly planning to take contol of Dune.

     The Fremen allow Paul and his mother to join them, because they can teach them the special fighting techniques that the Atreides developed, and without which, they would probably not be able to stand against the Sardaukar. But, the Fremen have also adapted the Bene Gesserit breeding program into a messiah prophesy. And they come to realize that Paul is that messiah. He confirms that he is indeed the Quizat Haderach by drinking the water of life, which is the bile of a new born sandworm, these giant phallic monsters, and surviving, something no man has ever done but is part of the rite of passage for reverend mothers. In doing so, he learns the true nature of the spice, and therefore has the become the threat that the Spacing Guild was afraid of.

     Now, as the leader of the Fremen, Paul leads a rebellion that stops the production of spice, making it necessary for the Emperor to come to Dune to resolve the problem. Paul takes the opportunity to attack the planet's capital city. During the attack, Paul's baby sister, who was born with all the knowledge and abilities of a full reverend mother and who is super freaky, kills the Baron Harkonnen. Paul confronts the emperor, and is backed up by the Spacing Guild, because they are afraid of him now. In the last scene, Paul fights and kills the last Harkonnen, Sting, and deposes the Emperor.

      There. That wasn't so bad was it? I don't mind giving you the whole story, because you can watch the movie, get none of what I described, and still enjoy it. I know it was long, but it is impossible to provide a short description of Dune. I dare you to try. I also dare you to try to find a way of doing so that doesn't sound like a Dungeons and Dragons game.

     The book Dune was an Hegelian attempt to provide a sythesis of perceived opposites, such as male and female, logic and intuition, etc., all the false dichotomies that really hard core science fiction fans live with. It wants to be the fulcrum between opposites, but ends up being both opposites at the same time. The book's failure to recognize the flaws in its own worldview becomes the movie's most fantastic feature. It is everything and nothing. A failure that became a classic. A whisper and a shout. The sci-fi masterpiece that science fiction fans hate. A glorious contradiction. And its contradictions are the best.