SPOILER ALERT: This text includes spoilers for the premiere of “Dune: Prophecy,” titled “The Hidden Hand,“ now streaming on Max.
Eight months after the premiere of the movie “Dune: Half 2,” it’s time to go 10,000 years into the previous story with the HBO prequel sequence “Dune: Prophecy.”
As it was previously prepared, there is no Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides, Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen or Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan Corrino – but their family dynasty is effectively represented in “Dune: Prophecy.” It now explains the origins of the Bene Gesserit, a highly effective, all-female sect that secretly pulls the political strings of the universe. (Rebecca Ferguson’s Woman Jessica and Lea Seydoux’s Woman Margot are among the most famous Bene Gesserit in Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune.”) Emily Watson and Olivia Williams are Valya and Tula Harkonnen, the two sisters who lead the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. .
The premiere episode begins with a flashback to the Butlerian Jihad, a struggle waged by people against all thinking machines which is one of the earliest events recounted in the novel “Dune”. The battle is obsolete (almost) every pc, the members of Home Atreides have been labeled heroes and the Harkonnens have been villainized and banished. Years later, the younger Valya Harkonnen became head of the Bene Gesserit after Mother Superior Raquella died. Before she dies, Raquella has a vision of a giant sandworm on Arrakis and burning flesh – a sign of what will return in 10,000 years.
Now grown up and the new Mother Superior, Valya is ready to induct Princess Ynez Corrino (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina) into the Bene Gesserit. Her mother and father are Emperor Javicco Corrino (Mark Robust) and Empress Natalya (Jodhi Could), who have been training Ynez with sword master Keiran Atreides (Chris Mason). Regardless of the goo-goo eyes on each other, Ynez politically betrothed to the prince of Home Richese, who looks like a nine-year-old boy.
In the meantime, a soldier named Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel), who survived the attack on Arrakis, arrives and requests an audience with the Emperor, but the resident Reverend Mother Kasha (Jihae) is suspicious of him. Identical to Mother Superior Raquella before her, Kasha will also get imaginative and prescient about what’s in store for Princess Ynez.
Imaginative and prescient quickly become reality when Ynez’s wedding ceremony with a rich boy goes off the rails. After the wedding, the little groom pulls a robot lizard that looks innocent, but the toy is a forbidden and forbidden pc. The palace visitors panic, but Desmond destroys the machine before it can cause too much trouble. In a surprising twist, however, Desmond later meets Prince Richese and Burns a living man with some form of telepathic hearth powers. The same fate as Ms. Kasha, is the question of Desmond’s beginnings before his ascension.
Showrunner Alison Schapker and stars Watson and Williams break down the premiere with Electiondiscussing the Harkonnen characters and the creation of the “Dune” universe that spans 10,000 years to the present day.
Available from HBO
Were you familiar with the world of “Dune” before entering “Prophecy”?
Alison Schapker: My past history with “Dune” began, like many individuals, as a fan and as a child studying in my attic bedroom. I have very strong memories of studying that e-book. I found it very mind-blowing and affecting, then I continued with my life and profession, and I have written quite a lot of science fiction. When it was in the ether that “Dune” came to TV as a sequence, and I would be concerned in some way, it was just a real no-brainer. It felt like a dream I didn’t know I had, as a result of which you will be able not to think about a single thing that comes your way.
Emily Watson: I have seen the first “Dune” movie, but that’s it. But it is a stunning factor for the leap. There’s a lot to wrap your head around, a lot of world lore but besides the real, down and dirty human habits.
Olivia Williams: I had a hotline to Alison, and she said, “I want the most complete and fastest crash course.” And he, happily, wrote the guide. We sat down and he went through level by level what I wanted to know. The person who came here to put in the audio-visual in front, after I informed him I used to pay Tula Harkonnen, which knelt in ft at the time, I know that I have to take this significantly. There are many hopes and wishes of people that I care about, and I want to respect them.
You may have Denis Villeneuve’s motion picture as a reference for the long term, but how do you make the world 10,000 years into the present?
Schapker: It’s a huge amount of world building. There is nothing in this world, so you can imagine everything. Does it look like a hat or a swimsuit or something light? For me, making a film is a lot of choices, and I try to do everything carefully and to be imaginative and prescient in gathering. We’re going to a new planet that we’ve never been to before. We go to an icy planet, so what do the people there like, what do they trade, where do they live, how does it feel familiar and real to us, but we don’t understand?
Williams: Most importantly, no sand. We are a really humid planet with quite a lot of moss, and there are people with tanks filled with water again, we are going down in every alternative.
Watson: We name 10,000 years BC – Before Chalamet.
The Harkonnens from the flicks are all pale, bald criminals, But how are Valya and Tula depicted in “Answer”? What is his relation to the Atreides household?
Watson: The title of Atreides makes us wince as a result of they have, based mostly on lies, destroyed our popularity and fortune. That’s what I said. In the universe of “Dune”, there is no such thing as good or bad. We predict we are very good. Not everyone will agree.
Williams: If you look back at any struggle for land and energy and household disputes, where did it come from? Science fiction in the 60s had this honorable custom of mirroring what you see in real politics today. Who was there first? Who owns this land? Whose family spit on whose goat first? That’s human nature in any era, 10,000 or 20,000 years from now. Unfortunately, people ignore it.
One of the various parts related to our world today is the position of expertise and AI. Do you consider it to be prescient when you have created it now?
Schapker: It’s a really trippy expertise to work in “Dune” Universe that imagines the fallout of synthetic intelligence and the value that people pay – and a good price for the species to now ponder over and outsource that. It imagines a worst-case scenario, where false intelligence eventually defeats people and requires a great struggle that almost pushes people to the brink of extinction. Suspicion, fear and the value of what the expertise can do, you are in the fall of the world of my creation, and in the real world, I walk and I see that people have given their thoughts. What happens if you don’t have a machine? We will try this; I believe we are just going to see it. I don’t know if this can be stopped, so I thought it would be a good time to ask. This gift will help you formulate some questions about expertise.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
