In the opening sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: The Space Odyssey “The Dawn of Man”apes are seen fighting over resources, more concretely, a hole filled with water. We see the violent beginnings of human race in the pre-historic times, and in the famous scene the very piece of bone which is used to beat down another ape is shown transforming into a space ship. Kubrick was not naïve about human progress, we can say that he was amazed by it, but he also saw its complexity and brutality masked in civilizational etiquette, as is seen in the conversation between the Americans and Russians on a space station. He was more in line with Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique of Enlightenment than inclined to celebrate human progress to an extent 19th century did.
In the opening sequence of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two we can see the exact same thing. Paul and Jessica, alongside the Fremen, are fighting Harkonnen soldiers, to save Paul from death, she beats down a Harkonnen soldier with a stone. The year is 10,191 AG (After Guild), in terrestrial terms, it is roughly 25,000 AD. Nothing has changed. As Georges Bataille has observed, in human societies, murder is a taboo, and that coincides with civilization, but when people wage war against each other, this taboo is lifted. Paul and Jessica are at war for survival with the Harkonnens, but also, they fight over resources, namely the spice, just as the apes in Kubrick’s film fight over a hole filled with water. Frank Herbert, as a conservative, was also sceptical about the notion that technological and economic progress will bring equality and prosperity for all, he saw the future as a stark stage of interstellar struggle for dominance between the nobility who hold power. As it is stated in Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard “Everything must change so that everything can stay the same”.
Vigour of Film Lines 