History Headscratchers / DunePartTwo

*** They theorically could reuse pre-Butlerian Jihad tech, but it's would have been a slow process. They would need to overcome their rejection of thinking machines, a tenet which is very deeply ingrained in the setting's culture (the Butlerian Jihad happened ''thousands years'' earlier). Because of this, they would also need to reinvent computers almost from scratch.

** The interstellar civilisation is older than Spice's discovery because Spice wasn't needed for space travel at first. [=AIs=] and computers are outlawed since an ancient backstory event referred as "Butlerian jihad" (either a revolt against technology or a robot war depending on the continuity, mentioned in passing in the original Frank Herbert's novels -- the event is the main focus of one of the novels' prequels series). Also, Spice isn't literally spaceships' fuel. The prescience granted by Spice serves to replace the use of "thinking machines" to pilot spaceships: instead of using computers to calculate trajectories, the Spacing Guild's navigators rely on short term visions of the future.

** The interstellar civilisation is older than Spice's discovery because Spice wasn't needed for space travel at first. [=AIs=] and computers are outlawed since an ancient backstory event referred as "Butlerian jihad" (a robot war won by the humans, mentioned in passing in the original Frank Herbert's novels -- the event is the main focus of one of the novels' prequels series). Also, Spice isn't literally spaceships' fuel. The prescience granted by Spice serves to replace the use of "thinking machines" to pilot spaceships: instead of using computers to calculate trajectories, the Spacing Guild's navigators rely on short term visions of the future.

** The interstellar civilisation is older than Spice's discovery because Spice wasn't needed for space travel at first. [=AIs=] and computers are outlawed since an ancient backstory event referred as "Butherian jihad" (mentioned in passing in the original Frank Herbert's novels, depicted in one of the novels' prequels series -- but those are controversed and inconsistent with the canon of the original author's books). Also, Spice isn't literally spaceships' fuel. The prescience granted by Spice serves to replace the use of "thinking machines" to pilot spaceships: instead of using computers to calculate trajectories, the Spacing Guild's navigators rely on short term visions of the future.

** The interstellar civilisation is older than Spice's discovery because Spice wasn't needed for space travel at first. [=AIs=] and computers are outlawed since an ancient backstory event referred as "Butherian jihad". Also, Spice isn't literally spaceships' fuel. The prescience granted by Spice serves to replace the use of "thinking machines" to pilot spaceships: instead of using computers to calculate trajectories, the Spacing Guild's navigators rely on short term visions of the future.

[[folder:How did the whole interstellar civilisation came to be?]]
* Expanding on the previous headscratcher, if interstellar travel is only made possible with Spice, and Spice can only be found on one remote planet, how exactly did the whole galaxy-spanning civilisation came to be in the first place? It seems like it couldn't have been founded without Spice, but how did the founders ever get of hold of Spice if they couldn't yet travel to Arrakis? The only explanation that would make sense is that the Fremen were the first interstellar travellers and the founders of the empire, but that doesn't seem to be the case?

[[folder:How did the whole interstellar civilisation come to be?]]

[[folder:How did the interstellar civilisation came to be in the first place?]]

* In the scene where Paul declares himself as Lisan al-Ghaib, he reads the mind of a man and talks to him about grandmother, saying that when his grandmother was a child, Arrakis still had a Fremen name. This would seem to imply that back then Arrakis still hadn't been colonised, since the colonisers hadn't yet renamed it. But that doesn't seem to jibe with the idea that the whole spacefaring empire has lasted for thousands of years, since the empire's whole existence relies on harvesting spice from Arrakis.

[[/folder]]

** If I remember correctly the scene, the personel operating it are mentats (one of them is seen entering a transe similar to the scene where Thufir calculates something in the first film) and use their abilities to set the position of things on the map.

* In the film's ending, a certain deviation from the book's plot risks causing issues for Villeneuve's project of making a sequel based on ''Literature/DuneMessiah''. [[spoiler:In this film, Chani breaks up with Paul when he accepts to marry Princess Irulan once he seizes the imperial throne. In the book, she doesn't and remains his main concubine (basically being his official wife in all but name). Paul and Chani still being together a decade later is very important in the sequel's events (notably, her death in childbirth is the last straw who eventually breaks Paul's mind and causes him to go in exile at the novel's end). Also Paul and Chani's breakup would also completely wreck the timeline for hypothetical sequels based on later books: the protagonists of ''Literature/ChildrenOfDune'' -- the sequel of ''Dune Messiah'' -- are Paul and Chani's twin children born during the events of ''Dune Messiah'', and them not existing would prevent the events of ''Children of Dune'''s own sequels to be possible.]]
** [[spoiler:It's possible that Chani and Paul may be reconciled in the future, as Paul does say to Jessica that he has 'seen' that Chani will come to understand; albeit Paul's visions sometimes don't come to pass. It would add extra weight to Paul's despair if, after having gotten back together with her after a few agonizing years apart, he then loses her forever.]]
** It's probably appropriate to point out that while it's obscured by the dark and ShouldersUpNudity, there's a scene showing [[spoiler:Paul and Chani having had sex already--and while it's not commented upon, it's not outside the reason Chani's unaware she's already conceived the twins. The fact that her last conversation with Jessica implies Chani still plays a part in all this--apart from her own combat in the climax--is likely where this is going. The discovery that Chani has Paul's Atreides-Fremen children--coupled with Irulan's increased agency in the film timeline--is going to make this storyline's version of ''Literature/DuneMessiah'' significantly darker, competing motivations-driven, and more emotionally-wrought than it already does]].

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