Why Thufir Hawat was cut from Dune: Part Two

Dune: Part Two opened this past weekend, and it's a hit! The movie made $182 million over the weekend, making back almost all of its $190 million budget in its first few days of availability. This bodes well.

That's doubly impressive because, at two hours and 46 minutes, Dune: Part Two is a big, chonky movie. But Frank Herbert's Dune is a big chonky book, and director Denis Villenueve still had to cut things from the movie. “Sometimes I remove shots and I say, ‘I cannot believe I’m cutting this out.' I feel like a samurai opening my gut," he told Collider. "[I]t is a painful project, but it is my job. The movie prevails. I’m very severe in the editing room. I’m not thinking about my ego, I’m thinking about the movie. … I kill darlings, and it’s painful for me.”

One of the darlings Villeneuve had to kill was Thufir Hawat, the Atreides family mentat. In Dune lore, the galaxy is still recovering from a brutal humans-vs-robots war that happened millenia before the events of the book. Everyone has agreed never again to create "a machine in the likeness of a human mind." Hence we have mentats, humans with the computational powers of a computer. Thufir Hawat is the mentat for House Atreides, and in the first movie was played by Stephen McKinley Henderson. His fate was left unclear at the end of the first movie. Given that he plays a role in the back half of the Dune book, fans expected to see him again. But it was not to be.

“One of the most painful choices for me on this one was [to not include] Thufir Hawat,” Villeneuve told Entertainment Weekly. “He’s a character I absolutely love, but I decided right at the beginning that I was making a Bene Gesserit adaptation. That meant that Mentats are not as present as they should be, but it’s the nature of the adaptation.”

In the book, after House Harkonnen fells House Atreides, the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen forces Thufir Hawat to work for House Harkonnen. The baron poisons Thufir and then continually withholds the antidote, only supplying it when Thufir does what he wants. Even still, Thufir quietly sabotages House Harkonnen from the inside by, for example, trying to turn the baron and his nephew Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen against each other.

That would have been a fun arc to see onscreen, but Dune: Part Two was a rather packed movie as is, so I understand why it went.

We'll probably never see the deleted scenes from Dune: Part Two

Villeneuve also cut scenes for a character played by actor Tim Blake Nelson, who was announced as part of the cast back when but didn't show up in the final movie. Fans think Nelson may have played Count Hasimir Fenring, the husband of Bene Gesserit operative Lady Margot Fenring, who was played by Léa Seydoux. In the book, Count Fenring is also a mentat, and if mentats are getting cut, he may have had to go.

“I don’t think I’m at liberty to say what the scene was,” Nelson told Movieweb. “I’d leave that to Denis if he wants to talk about it. I had a great time over there shooting it. And then he had to cut it because he thought the movie was too long. And I am heartbroken over that, but there’s no hard feelings. I loved it, and I can’t wait to do something else with him, and we certainly plan to do that.”

So Villeneuve at least shot something with Nelson. It's unclear if he shot any deleted scenes with Stephen McKinley Henderson as Thufir Hawat, or if Thufir was just never going to appear in the movie. Both actors are thanked in the credits.

Whatever the specifics, we're unlikely to ever see the stuff that Villeneuve cut. “I’m a strong believer that when it’s not in the movie, it’s dead,” he said. "I cannot go back after that and create a Frankenstein and try to reanimate things that I killed. It’s too painful. When it’s dead, it’s dead, and it’s dead for a reason."

If Villeneuve ever changes his mind, I'm sure a lot of people would be happy to pay for a home video release of Dune: Part Two with deleted scenes on it, just saying.

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