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The Frank Herbert's Children of Dune Primer
INTRODUCTION
The imperium presided over by Emperor Muad'Dib is rife with powerful entities competing for political, military and economic advantage. Alliances are forged and dissolved as the competing noble houses of the Landsraad conspire to undermine the reigning House Atreides; merchants, priests and politicians become strange bedfellows as they hatch sinister plots that can take years or even decades to unfold.
Some of the major pieces of this galactic political puzzle are presented here. The information in this section is drawn from Frank Herbert's novels Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, and might contain background information and details not seen in the miniseries Frank Herbert's Children of Dune. It is intended to provide viewers with a larger context in which to view the Dune saga and its many complex relationships.
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The Story of Paul Atreides and Dune
The adventures of Paul Atreides, heir to a political dynasty, began in the year 10191. In the midst of an ongoing power struggle among the Great Royal Houses, the Emperor Shaddam IV sent House Atreides to the desert planet Arrakis (also known as Dune) to oversee the production of Spice. Spice is the most precious substance in the universe because it makes possible interstellar space travel; extends life; and enables people to see into the future.
Soon after the Atreides' arrival on Arrakis, Paul's father, Duke Leto Atreides, was assassinated by rivals from House Harkonnen. Paul and his mother, Lady Jessica, a mystical "Bene Gesserit" witch with powers of mind control, were forced to escape into the desert.
Rescued by the Fremen, a fierce desert people who believed the young Atreides to be the Mah'di — the messiah of their legends — Paul began to recognize his power to shape the future. Under his mother's tutelage, he honed his own considerable Bene Gesserit talents and began to see into the future.
Eventually, Paul accepted the mantle of his fate. Marshalling the Fremen "desert power," Paul — now known as Muad'Dib — led the Fremen in a successful revolt against his enemies, the corrupt House Harkonnen. He seized control of all Spice production on Arrakis and forced the emperor and other Great Royal Houses to accept him as their new ruler.
Muad'Dib preserved peace and united the ruling houses by marrying the Emperor's daughter, Princess Irulan. But it was a marriage in name only, because Muad'dib's heart belongs to his concubine, Chani, the future mother of his heir.
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"Every revolution carries within it the seeds of its own destruction...."
SCI FI Channel's December 2000 presentation of New Amsterdam Entertainment's Emmy Award-winning six-hour epic Frank Herbert's Dune was a star-studded action adventure that wove a complex tale of messianic compulsion, ruthless power manipulation, back-stabbing betrayal and heart-rending love. Wrapped in a stunningly visual package, the miniseries garnered two Emmy Awards (Outstanding Cinematography/Special Visual Effects) and became the most-watched program in the history of the SCI FI Channel. It also earned a place among the Top 10 highest-rated original basic cable miniseries in the past five years.
Frank Herbert's Dune told of the adventures of young Paul Atreides, heir to a political dynasty and destined to become the next messiah. Taking place amidst an ongoing power struggle among the Great Royal Houses in the year 10191, the saga began with the Emperor sending House Atreides to the desert planet Arrakis to oversee production of "spice" — the most precious commodity in the universe. But when Paul's father, Duke Leto Atreides, is assassinated by rivals within House Harkonnen, Paul and his mother, a mystical 'Bene Gesserit' witch with powers of mind control, are forced to escape into the desert. Under his mother's tutelage, Paul hones his own considerable Bene Gesserit gifts, and begins to see into the future. Rescued by the Fremen, a fierce desert people who believe the young Atreides to be 'Mah'di' — the messiah of their legends — Paul begins to recognize his power to shape the future.
Eventually, Paul accepts the mantle of his fate. Using the Fremen "desert power," Paul, now known as Muad'Dib, leads his people in a successful revolt against his enemies in the corrupt House Harkonnen. As this first miniseries in the Dune saga draws to a close, Muad'Dib unites the ruling houses and preserves peace by marrying the Emperor's daughter, Princess Irulan. But it is a marriage in name only, as his heart belongs to his concubine, Chani, the future mother of his heir.
In Frank Herbert's Children of Dune, we rejoin Muad'Dib twelve years later. He has come to witness his glorious revolution become a bloody jihad, with all manner of corruption performed in his name. While bound to Irulan in a loveless marriage made for political expediency, Paul has become Emperor of a society terrorized by its own soldiers. The freedom he fought for has become a dictatorship of his own making, and he has become the figurehead of a theocracy of which he wants no part.
Further complicating matters, conspiracies to gain political power abound, especially from Irulan's sister, Princess Wensicia. Paul's power base is also eroding from within. His highly ambitious sister, Alia, is gaining a political foothold. He is surrounded by corrupt priests and bureaucrats and eventually comes to realize that the only hope for the future may lay in the hands of his twin heirs, son Leto II and daughter Ghanima. Ultimately, the only salvation from the revolution begun by Muad'Dib may be the absolute destruction of his myth. And the tempest begun by the father must somehow be ended by the son.
JOHN HARRISON, director of Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, writer of Dinosaur and writer/director of Frank Herbert's Dune was entrusted with the job of adapting Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, the second and third novels respectively of Frank Herberts's six-book Dune Chronicles, into another blockbuster television event. Frank Herbert's Children of Dune marks the first time that either book has been adapted for the large or small screen.
According to Harrison, "Children of Dune is a musing on several themes that come out of Frank Herbert's work. One is that every revolution contains the seeds of its own destruction. The second is a phrase that comes right from Herbert, but is applicable to human history, 'when religion and politics ride in the same cart, the whirlwind follows.'"
Children of Dune's stellar ensemble cast includes Academy Award-winner SUSAN SARANDON as the deliciously evil Princess Wensicia, ALICE KRIGE, EDWARD ATTERTON, STEVEN BERKOFF, and newcomers DANIELA AMAVIA, JAMES MCAVOY and JESSICA BROOKS. Reprising their roles from the first miniseries are ALEC NEWMAN as Paul, BARBARA KODETOVA as Chani, JULIE COX as Princess Irulan and P.H. MORIARTY as Gurney Halleck.
Many members of the extraordinary production team who worked on Frank Herbert's Dune have also returned for the production of Frank Herbert's Children of Dune. Leading the team again is Executive Producer RICHARD P. RUBINSTEIN, whose credits include the 8-hour Stephen King's The Stand and Stephen King's Pet Sematary. Emmy-winning Producer DAVID KAPPES (Anne Frank) also returns, as do Emmy-winning Visual Effects Supervisor ERNEST D. FARINO, Editor HARRY B. MILLER, III, Associate Producer MICHAEL MESSINA, and Academy Award-winning Costume Designer THEODOR PISTEK (Amadeus).
New to the Dune miniseries family are Director GREG YATAINES (CSI: Miami, The Invisible Man), Director of Photography, ARTHUR REINHART and Emmy-winning production designer, ONDREJ NEKVASIL (Anne Frank).
BEHIND-THE-SCENES
THE COSTUMES
The father/son team of Academy Award-winning Costume Designer THEODOR PISTEK (Amadeus) and JAN PISTEK again dressed the cast in incredible costumes. As photography for both Dune and Children of Dune took place in their hometown of Prague in the Czech Republic, they had an easy commute to work.
The celebrated Theodor Pistek is a close friend of Czech President Vaclav Havel and has designed the country's military uniforms since independence. When asked about the differences between the two miniseries, the senior Pistek answered, "It should be a rule that every new job is more challenging than the previous one. It was inevitable — and necessary — to take that which I learned from working on Frank Herbert's Dune, and apply it to Children of Dune. There is great continuity between them, but new work as well." He added, "The cast was very cooperative, especially Susan Sarandon. She was great to work with. She's beautiful, professional and very patient."
Jan Pistek commented, "On this miniseries, I had much more responsibility day to day compared with working on Frank Herbert's Dune. This time around, I worked side by side as well as independently of my father. Working with him makes me work harder because my sense of accountability is heightened. In fact, I enjoy working under the intense scrutiny and pressure. That's when the end result is most personally satisfying."
THE SPECIAL EFFECTS
Ernest D. Farino won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Effects for Frank Herbert's Dune. "After all the hard work that went into the first Dune miniseries," he says, "it was gratifying for the visual effects crew and myself to be awarded an Emmy. Many from that team worked together again on Children of Dune. It is also gratifying that we were encouraged by the producers to go even further with the design and quality of the visual effects for Children. In some cases, we were able to accomplish certain things that were only on our wish list the first time around.
"In fact, work on the CGI related effects commenced four months prior to principal photography, which allowed us to create some extensive effects and backgrounds that might not ordinarily be possible from a time standpoint." Farino adds, "This miniseries also features some of the same characters, such as, Baron Harkonnen, who returns as a ghost to haunt the mind of the now grown-up Alia. The sandworms are of course back. There's a very elaborate sequence where a giant worm is trapped and captured, which I've been told is pretty spectacular and not often seen on original TV programming. This miniseries also has a very different look because the VFX team worked with a different director (Greg Yaitanes) and a different cinematographer (Arthur Reinhart). It has an extremely exotic visual feel."
Per Farino, his team's biggest challenge on the new miniseries was to find a way to visualize Leto II's capacity to run at super-speed. His other main challenge related to the physical growth of the city of Arrakeen itself. "We expanded the city's detail and scope," explains Farino. "In the first mini, our establishing shot was a matte painting of the palace inside the shield wall. This time we've built the entire city in 3D on computer, and its scope has been expanded, consistent with the long timeline of the story. It's far more elaborate in execution. Plus, by doing the city in 3D, we can fly over the city, adding a dimension that expands the scope of the visual imagery."
The actors were also challenged by the demands of the special effects. Farino explains, "It takes a lot of acting skill to play effectively against a special effect that has not yet been created. There are times when the script calls for specific reactions or interactions. For example, Alice Krige, who plays Jessica Atreides, has a couple of scenes in which she engages in 'the weirding way,' a process that supposedly allows the practitioner to move faster than time, so we needed a blurred movement between one position and another. Alice is also a dancer and we worked very closely on the particular kinds of body language and movement that were required to give the visual effect the excitement we needed. She really nailed it."
THE POWER BEHIND DUNE
Despite the saga's protagonist being male, it is definitely the women who fuel Children of Dune. "The female characters are indeed incredibly powerful and strong," explains Harrison. "Muad'Dib himself really is at the pivot point of a triangle of women in Frank Herbert's Dune — Irulan, Chani and his mother. They all have such incredible influence on him in terms of what he becomes. His mother, Lady Jessica, was supposed to have a daughter who would change the world, not a son. It was only for the love of Duke Leto, who wanted a boy, that she defied the edict of her own Bene Gesserit sisterhood, which was trying to breed females. Paul's the one who comes into being and changes history — and all the events in Dune are the direct result of his mother's choice.
"Female characters play pivotal roles throughout Children of Dune in defining the drama and pushing the plot," continues Harrison. "Look at Alia, another in a line of great tragic figures. This is a young woman who never had a chance, 'pre-born' in her mother's womb, she is sinking into madness, succumbing to ghostly possession when the evil Baron Harkonnen inhabits her soul."
No less tragic and fascinating is Princess Irulan, a woman in love with a man who will never love her in return. Ironically, it is she who is left to raise his children. Harrison took creative license with Irulan in Frank Herbert's Dune by having her show interest in young Paul Atreides before he became Muad'Dib. Harrison contends, "An epic requires substantial adaptation. There's a lot of risk. You've got to leave things out and move things around chronologically so it works as a straight-line narrative."
Executive Producer Rubinstein also appreciated the female-empowered nature of the novels and script. "What Frank Herbert did more than 35 years ago," he explains, "was to endow females with power. They were players! Their capacity to effectively compete related to their capacity for motherhood. And they used it in a political sense. It's one aspect of what attracted me to these books in the first place."
Rubinstein has had an extremely successful track record in finding broad audience material that appeared to skew male but in fact skewed female. His adaptations of Stephen King's The Stand, The Langoliers and Pet Sematary were successful in part because of his vision. "A good story is a good story. You traditionally think of science fiction as driven by boy toys — ray guns, explosions, space ships — that's not the case here. This is a story as much for women as it is for men. Children of Dune is for people who don't ordinarily read or watch science fiction. The underlying subtext of the whole production, and of Frank Herbert's books, is interpersonal relationships. It's about families, mixed with action-adventure. Fathers and sons. Mothers and daughters. Grandparents and grandchildren. Ecology. Love. Sex. Loyalty. Betrayal." In fact, Rubinstein considers the Children of Dune miniseries to be a multigenerational story in the tradition of Lawrence of Arabia, Gone With the Wind, Romeo & Juliet, All the King's Men and Star Trek.
THE SARANDON FACTOR
Fate had a hand in bringing Susan Sarandon to Children of Dune. Rubinstein had seen Sarandon co-hosting USA Network's broadcast of the annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in New York City. One of the floats was of the Dune worm. "I love those books!" she gushed. Rubinstein heard that and filed it away.
Two years later, he approached Sarandon to be part of Children of Dune. Sarandon's agent initially scoffed at the concept, but showed her the script. The answer was immediate. Sarandon wanted in. A series of trans-Atlantic telephone calls between the actress and director Greg Yaitanes followed, and they spoke for several hours at a time.
Yaitanes recalls, "I got an e-mail from Richard [Rubinstein] that Susan wanted to talk to me on the phone. It was the night I was planning on proposing marriage to my girlfriend. This totally put a wrench in my plans. I postponed getting engaged for one day, and talked to Susan that night for a solid hour. We didn't even speak of the movie! She just wanted to get a feel for the kind of person I was. We bonded immediately." Yaitanes continued, "The great thing about Susan is that she really has a passion for the books. She actually had a better perspective on her character than I did and wound up adding certain motives for her character's actions. She wanted to make the evil of her character real, and as a result, she created a diabolical character who believes in her heart that her cause is right."
John Harrison notes that Sarandon has never played an unrepentant villain before — an area very familiar to the writer. He got his start in film as an evil zombie in George A. Romero's classic Dawn Of The Dead. "Susan was intrigued," he remembers. "Frankly, I loved working with her in the pre-production period because she had a lot of wonderful things to say about the character. Princess Wensicia is the character we all agreed could be the focal point of the evil side of the story. It would have been inappropriate to make Alia the central heavy because, after all, she's prey to evil forces beyond her control. As vile and evil as she behaves under those influences, I was reluctant to make her 'the real bad guy.' Wensicia, on the other hand, is naturally greedy, vindictive and ruthless.
"There's this wonderful climactic scene near the end of the miniseries," Harrison continues. "It's a confrontation between Wensicia and Lady Jessica. Susan asked me, 'wouldn't it be great if the two of us could just lock eyes with a clear understanding that even though we're on opposite sides, we are both victims of the same tragedy?' That was there in the script to some extent, but because of the way she wanted to play it, I elaborated upon it. And that's what you want! I love working with actors. That collaboration is crucial. We were lucky to get such extraordinary actors."
THE CHALLENGE OF ADAPTATION
Adapting a novel for television always presents challenges. When attempting to translate a beloved classic like Dune, a novel revered by millions of readers from many generations, the task is all the greater. The first miniseries was universally hailed by fans as an astonishingly faithful rendering of Frank Herbert's classic work.
"The adaptation of Herbert's material has always been regarded as difficult," admitted Rubinstein. "I said to Frank Herbert's son, Brian, who came with his wife Jan to visit us on the set in Prague, 'I feel like an adopted member of your family' because we shared a commitment to seeing his father's work adapted in a way that was faithful to the books.
"Brian told me that his dad would have been pleased with John's scripts and their realization on screen. I considered this important not only for fans of the books but also because I respect Brian and his writing partner Kevin Anderson for their best-selling Dune prequel books, each of which has been a hardcover as well as softcover national best-seller.
"I've had positive reinforcement from audiences, particularly based on the success of The Stand as a miniseries, in safeguarding the spirit of a book that they love and translating that to the screen," says Rubinstein. "That doesn't mean a literal translation." Associate Producer Michael Messina adds, "Dune Messiah and Children of Dune are not as linear from a plot/character standpoint as the first Dune novel. John had to do some interpreting, as well as some filling in of the spaces that Herbert hadn't addressed, which was no easy task. He did it extraordinarily well."
"From my experiences writing and directing Frank Herbert's Dune, I learned how to condense the epic nature of the story and draw out of Herbert's books the big issues and themes," said Harrison. "Once I saw it come to life in the first miniseries and saw that it was coherent, I was a lot more confident that I could take these next two books, and do with them what I had done before."
A NEW DIRECTOR
Harrison, as much as he wanted to, could not coordinate his schedule to return as director for Children of Dune due to conflicting commitments. "As things go in the way of Hollywood," he explains, "as I was writing Children of Dune, I received the rights to a book I've been in love with for years about the Johnstown Flood, a huge catastrophe in the 1880s that took place close to where I grew up. By the time I had it sold, the funding suddenly fell in for Children of Dune. I tried to work things out but I just couldn't."
Instead, Rubinstein selected the very talented director Greg Yaitanes to take the helm. A television veteran, this young director was relatively new to the Dune universe. "I hadn't read the books. I've never made any secret about that," confesses Yaitanes. "I had to make a choice early on whether I was going to read the books, or try to understand them through the script. In the end, I decided to go by the script so that I could be objective and create something that would be accessible to everybody. The biggest thing for me was making sure somebody could come into this show having not seen Frank Herbert's Dune and be able to enjoy it. This way, I knew if I was unclear about something in the plot, other people would be unclear as well." He adds, "Thankfully, John [Harrison] is very much the Dune scholar — he knows everything! Not only was the script a great roadmap, I was also able to lean heavily on those who've been down this road before, on both sides of the camera. It was a great help to have a very experienced producing team around me, and to have been lucky enough to hook up with Arthur Reinhart, our Director of Photography, and Harry Miller, who cut the first miniseries."
Yaitanes' experience in series television proved to be a tremendous asset for the highly complex production. "I've done a lot of episodic television, working under extreme deadlines where speed, time and pressure played a part. I had already worked on projects where I had to deliver a lot more in a lot less time. Here, after I took the time to properly break it down, I realized we were only doing a couple of scenes a day. I'm used to doing nine pages of material a day. So, in a way, I felt that I could use the resources, the economy of ideas I've streamlined working in television, and apply them to Children of Dune.
"We shot the movie with the new Sony/Panavision 24p High Definition camera, instead of traditional 35mm film. So, it was also an eye opener with respect to what you can achieve creatively with a new digital format. Ultimately, I believe we have given this miniseries a distinct visual style and look that the audience will really enjoy."
CAN LIGHTNING STRIKE TWICE?
Faced with the daunting task of topping the beautiful visuals, exciting set pieces, and sweepingly epic nature of Frank Herbert's Dune, Rubinstein remained unflappable. "I think that same glorious atmosphere is heightened within Children of Dune. Don't forget, it all comes from the story. Visuals are intended to complement a story, and while the first one had its own particular style, Children of Dune also has a distinct style. It's faithful to the books, it has the right attitude, and it stands on its own. It is not a sequel by the traditional definition. Children of Dune is the second part of an epic story."
Photos by Zdenek Vavra
Blixa Film Produktion GmbH & Co. KG and Touchstone Television Productions, LLC |
