Where did this Dune spinoff go so wrong?

By all rights, the debut of Dune: Prophecy on HBO should be an exciting way to cap off 2024. Director Denis Villeneuve’s two Dune movies stand as some of the best sci-fi films of the last decade, and are very worthy adaptations of the beloved source material. Who wouldn’t salivate at the prospect of spending more time in that universe?

But however great Dune: Prophecy may sound on paper, in reality the series is shaping up to be a surprisingly bland and downright boring spinoff of the movies. It’s a prequel that fails to make a strong case for its own existence. Let’s break down what went wrong and why Prophecy probably picked the wrong story to tell in the first place.

Dune: Prophecy’s Opening Flashback

Dune: Prophecy’s pilot episode is easily at its most compelling right at the very beginning. The series is itself a flashback to a period some 10,000 years before the Dune movies, but it opens with a sequence set several hundred years earlier, during a conflict known as the Butlerian Jihad. One of the most significant wars in the Dune universe, the Butlerian Jihad was a titanic clash between mankind and the artificial intelligence on which it had become so deeply dependent. Not unlike the wars seen in franchises like The Matrix and Terminator, humanity in the Dune universe had to conquer its machine oppressors and reclaim its independence.

The Butlerian Jihad is a fascinating conflict, and one author Frank Herbert only alluded to in his various Dune novels. It’s a war that shaped humanity for thousands of years to come, explaining why technology in this far-flung futuristic universe is so oddly primitive and simplistic. In the absence of advanced computers, humans had to rely on spice to become computers themselves. It’s also the war that birthed the all-important feud between the Atreides and Harkonnen families.

With all of that in mind, it’s enough to wonder why HBO didn’t focus their Dune prequel on the Butlerian Jihad itself. It would have been such fruitful ground for a prequel spinoff, giving movie fans much greater insight into how this sci-fi universe came to be and why the hatred between the Atreides and Harkonnens has remained so potent for so long. Instead, Prophecy glosses over that material in the span of a couple of minutes, jumping ahead two centuries to when humanity is recovering and the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood is beginning to consolidate its grip on the galaxy.

In a way, this opening sequence is reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. That series’ first episode also opens with a flashback to an ancient conflict in Middle-earth, the original war with Morgoth. But at least in The Rings of Power’s case, the show pivots to an equally compelling storyline involving Morgoth’s former lackey Sauron. Dune: Prophecy fails to make that same pivot. It glosses over the Butlerian Jihad only to arrive at something far smaller and less interesting.

How Prophecy Makes Dune Feel Small

Frankly, this is an area of the Dune timeline that just isn’t as compelling. The Bene Gesserit are an integral part of the Dune mythology, to be sure, but what does the series premiere really add to this reclusive coven of space witches that we don’t get from the movies? Sure, we get a sense of the harsh training the sisters must undergo on their paths to becoming Reverend Mothers. But apart from that, the series hits on the same material we’ve already seen, with Emily Watson’s Mother Superior Valya Harkonnen obsessing over her precious genetic archive and pulling the strings of the newly forged Imperium.

The problem is that the Dune universe as seen in Prophecy has already become pretty much identical to the one seen in the movies. Humanity has turned to spice to form the backbone of its new intergalactic economy and its system of space travel. A Corrino sits on the Imperial throne. The Atreides and Harkonnen families are locked in a deadly feud. Arrakis is the source of immense wealth and incredible peril. It all highlights just how little is fated to change over the next 10,000 years.

What exactly is the point of a prequel where all the pieces are already arranged in recognizable order? How is Dune: Prophecy meant to shock or surprise us? What room is there for drama when it seems this universe is just going through the motions for the next 100 centuries? Whatever minor setbacks the Sisterhood may experience over the course of this series, we know where all of this is leading. They’ll have their Kwisatz Haderach eventually. It’s all just a waiting game.

What’s the point of picking a specific and very early point in the history of the Sisterhood and parking the story there?

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As Charlotte Rampling’s Reverend Mother Mohiam said in the first Dune movie, “Our plans are measured in centuries.” So what’s the point of picking a specific and very early point in the history of the Sisterhood and parking the story there? If anything, a series about the Bene Gesserit needs to be more like Foundation – one willing to take great leaps forward in the timeline to trace the conflict over a great span of time.

It’s one reason Dune: Prophecy just feels small and insignificant compared to the films. The Dune movies depict the endpoint of thousands of years of planning and turmoil. The series simply explores the earliest origins of that unrest. The cast of characters is small, and many seem to recycle familiar archetypes from the movies. Once again, we’re dealing with an eclectic assortment of Bene Gesserit sisters, Imperial monarchs, and master swordsmen all jockeying for control.

Even the visual scope of the series is underwhelming. There’s a grandiose, operatic quality to Villeneuve’s Dune that is sorely lacking in Prophecy. The scope of this series feels closer to the SyFy miniseries from the early ‘00s. Dune shouldn’t feel this small and contained, especially a series ostensibly part of the same universe as the films.

Dune: The Original Game of Thrones

One of the reasons Dune has struck such a chord with readers over the decades is that the books did Game of Thrones before Game of Thrones was a thing. Cut through all the sci-fi trappings and the spice visions and you have basically the same premise – a kingdom made up of many great houses all scheming and plotting against one another. The original Dune even has its own, shocking Red Wedding moment when the Areides family are betrayed and many beloved characters are killed in one fell swoop.

It stands to reason that any TV spinoff of the Dune movies would want to lean into the franchise’s Game of Thrones-esque qualities. The Game of Thrones books made for compelling television in their own right (give or take a couple of seasons at the end), so why not give viewers the Dune equivalent of that?

So far, it doesn’t appear that Dune: Prophecy is veering in that direction. Again, the scope of the series is just too small. The show centers mainly around the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood and House Corrino, with a few Arrakis-based characters like Travis Fimmel’s war hero Desmond Hart thrown in for good measure. You don’t get that sense of many houses warring and plotting against one another.

If Dune: Prophecy is going to succeed, it needs to cast a wider net and draw in more characters. We need more characters who aren’t part of the same handful of houses and organizations. We need protagonists whose fates aren’t preordained. Prophecy needs a true Game of Thrones-sized cast pulled from all walks of life in the Dune universe. There needs to be room for betrayal and surprise and all the unexpected plot twists that made Game of Thrones such a compelling watch. Spending time with a handful of ancestors of characters from the movies simply isn’t going to cut it.