Oscar Isaac sees parallels between Dune and current events

See more pictures from Dune 2020, including Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto Atreides and Rebecca Ferguson as the powerful Lady Jessica.

Empire continues its barrage of Dune content this week, all in advance of its September 3 blowout issue. Yesterday, it showed us Jason Momoa (Duncan Idaho) in the midst of an action scene. Now we have looks at some of the other stars of the movie, including Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto Atreides.

Dune, for the uninitiated, is a classic sci-fi novel by Frank Herbert about a noble family headed by Duke Leto assigned to serve as governors of the desert planet of Dune, occupied by the native Fremen people. Below, we see Javier Bardem as the Fremen leader Stilgar, who will be a key point of contact as Duke Leto tries to establish a presence on the planet despite threats from all sides.

If I had to boil Dune down to just one word, it would probably be “dense.” There’s a lot going on in this story: it touches on religion, tyranny, politics, ecology, and much more. Isaac looks at it and sees a lot of parallels to what’s happening in the world today. “It’s about the destiny of a people, and the different way that cultures have dominated other ones,” he told Empire. “How do a people respond when it’s at the tipping point, when enough is enough, when they’re exploited? All those things are things we’re seeing around the world right now.”

Another key character in Dune is the Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), Duke Leto’s partner and a member of a powerful sisterhood of supernaturally gifted power brokers known as the Bene Gesserit. Their child Paul (Timothée Chalamet) is the main character of the story, but both Leto and Jessica have big roles to play, and director Denis Villeneuve is determined they be given their due. “I didn’t want Lady Jessica to be an expensive extra,” Villeneuve said. “Something I deeply love in the book is that there was a strong balance between the masculine power and feminine power.”

With every new bit of information, I get more hyped for this movie. Dune is a classic story, but despite several attempts, no one has ever quite made a movie or TV show that fully did it justice. If it’s gonna happen, it seems like this is the time. When we get a trailer tomorrow I may faint.

Coronavirus willing, Dune will be in theaters on December 18.

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