Dune is gonna be another one of those sci fi experiments where we see how casting people of color (but not the specific group stereotyped in the story) will make the racism and extremely white American lens of the story less cringey.

At least it will be pretty?

Every time I see tv/movie adaptations of Dune I think “let’s see how hard they tried to make people walking in a desert not look reminedsint if the Middle East, even as they’re telling a story about colonial invaders fighting in a desert over a fuel source.”

“But they cast a black woman, Latino man, a biracial Pasifika dude!”

Yeah, but no MENA!

Dune frames the indigenous people of the desert planet as violent religious fanatics who’s religion isn’t even real, but was secretly constructed by outsiders as a political tool.

And of course the messianic figure in the story is a white colonial aristocrat, who’s been bred via a eugenics program overseen by the same people who indoctrinated the ingenious people to believe a rich white boy settler would be their savior.

So before you try to tell me there are ways to rewrite and fix the source material, sit down and really think about what the basic story of Dune really is. All the flaws and politics aside. It’s about a white colonizer becoming a god by standing on the backs of indigenous people.

To be clear, I wouldn’t wish Dune on any MENA performers. It’s a mess.

I don’t know if there is anyway to rehabilitate the story of settlers using indigenous people as foot soldiers in a war driven by a personal grudge, politics, and economic.

But at least it’ll be pretty?

If you still think there’s a way to fix Dune’s core story of a white colonizer becoming a god by standing on the backs of indigenous people in a way that people are going to understand and view Paul as not being a hero allow me to present you with one last argument: