I feel like that’s a pretty well thought out theoretical! Will admit to still not having seen the new Dune movie so mostly going by the book.

I don’t know if I explicitly ever read into Dune that particular “Dark Side” interpretation of the Duel before as since it is so solidly from Paul’s perspective it seemed to be painted in terms of something nessisary to survive further and thus more like a morally neutral painted thing. A loss of innocence for sure but not nessisarily any more so than other fantasy protagonist who took the same sort of step of killing for the first time. He wasn’t granted much autonomy to completely peaceful exit the situation by Jamis so his options were more or less try and kill or cement his one likely route to survival. With the “locking in fate” thing painting his choice to die in the duel rather than kill as maybe for the greater good for nebulous wibbly wobbly timey wimey reasons.

It almost felt to me since the books were so bloody weird with plot points shooting the moon (though after awhile more like jumping the shark in personal opinion) and the factor of such grand prescience weakened a lot of the moral picture of any grand themes of Paul becoming an absolute monster as he’s got such a solid “greater good” he’s working towards that doesn’t really have theoreticals?

Like okay, Paul sees literally everything that will happen from the arrayed options so his demise is always placed as being stopping a series of dominoes from falling by plucking the first one to fall out of the lineup… but those grand losses are almost always impersonal. He at the same time is a human with human desires for personal safety for him and his loved ones which doesn’t place him as nessisarily “bad” just kind of instinctively alive. The plot always frames this as ultimately selfish but really only from the perspective of having a complete and total knowledge of how everything single action is going to eventually play out. It’s eclipsing human moral frameworks by this bizzare aspect of sizing it up to a Godlike scale. Paul can make a “good choice” as essentially a God working on that scale of knowledge or a “bad choice” as singular human with a bias towards survival. While an interesting hypothetical I think that removes him strictly from the territory as being at all relatable on a moral scale to a conventional ethical paradigm. Like for all Paul’s prescience he is limited in his ability to affect the board state so a lot of what happens is painted as his fault because of a choice he makes but if you look at the choices made where he really sort of fucks the dog on a God-like scale it’s generally for reasons which make him relatable as a person.

Absolute power corrupting absolutely or later themes that people really need to not think too collectively and not create cults stikes me as not being Paul’s downside. He didn’t ask for the power he has to be dropped into his lap and can never fully get ahead of the consequences of having that power so I don’t think Paul is painted as being a complete subversion of being a self insert turned bad guy so much as being a " tragic hero Chosen One" just being a hell on earth situation that he needs to weather with highs and personal lows. The framing sort of struck me as a fairly typical compounding trauma storyline where all the terrible things that happen to him make him more “heroic”.

This is all sort of personal opinion though. I feel like I don’t exactly love the Dune universe. My reading of them was largely because while I was staying in Japanese guesthouses I tended to read whatever English novels were left behind by previous occupants.

In the books, the role of the Atreides family was not to be the good guy but the necessary evil to reach the final step of saving humanity. Even Paul can’t stand his own role in the story.

It’s complicated. Paul isn’t really a good guy, but he’s not really a bad guy either. He’s just a dude. He’s a dude who has limited vision into the future from which he cannot escape. He’s not using his future vision to pick the bad choices he’s trying to pick the best ones he can and the hand he’s dealt kinda just sucks.

Not so much opportunistic but unavoidable. He’s a slave to the powers surrounding him, and the more real-world power he attains the less choice he has in how to wield it.

The real gut-punchers of how his station is betraying Paul’s actually and genuinely good character are going to come in the second book, that is, subsequent movies.

And, yes, Paul, the Atreides in general, are good people. Noble, honourable, just, wise, kind, upright, everything, to a fault. Which is the only way to tear down the Messiah archetype, the Messiah has to fail despite their virtues, the failure has to be dictated on them by the universe, in a way that’s not incidental but an unescapable truth about how the universe works. Or at least humanity.

I only read the books so the movie may have course corrected somewhat to make that clearer. I feel like in the books it was a little bit like greek tragedy but Paul gets the “shades of grey” treatment for much longer than he deserves.

I have to admit a bias though that since the books kind of go off the rails pretty quickly I tend to prefer to look at Dune as a stand alone work strictly from an enjoyment standpoint.

I’d say Paul’s rise is portrayed as a mixed event throughout the books that depends on the perspective of different factions and what time period you view it from, but overall the main characters see it as good as the end of the first book. The movie doesn’t try to explain many of the details that didn’t fit into it’s cinematic storytelling style (you get almost none of Paul’s thoughts and struggles) so there is a lot of clarity that can be provided by the book. I think the movie left less of a sense of his ascension being motivated by good intentions (and magical foresight/inescapable destiny) than the book did, so it’s a less optimistic ending.

The Fremen saw it as a good/liberating event and Paul as a true member of their tribe, and he genuinely seems to internalize that into his sense of self. (From the reader’s perspective, this is disregarding the white savior bias of the book that the comment before yours alluded to. Paul is a colonizer who is sympathetic to the natives and helps them lift themselves up in ways the book implies couldn’t have been done without his help). Overthrowing the Harkonnens and the Emperor’s forces leaves the Fremen and moreso Paul in an overwhelmingly powerful position as Arrakis is the only planet able to produce spice at the time.

This is juxtaposed with the view of the nobles, the spacer’s guild, and the populations of other planets that is explored in later books. Fast space travel is only possible due to the effects of spice that allow the navigators of the space guild to see short distances into the future to avoid collisions, etc in space travel. Control of the key to space travel grants the Fremen immense political and economic power, but also puts them at odds with the rest of the empire who are reliant upon the spice.

One aspect the movie didn’t explain well is that the Fremen were not motivated by gaining the political and economic power of spice, but instead envisioned an Arrakis that was no longer a wasteland. They developed plans to terraform the planet to make it more hospitable and liberation allowed them that opportunity. On the flip side, spice is produced by the worms, but water is toxic to the worms (the scene with the worm dying in water isn’t just from it drowning), so if they are able to accomplish this goal, spice production will be eradicated, affecting space travel everywhere.

I don’t want to spoil the story after the first book because I believe they will explore it further in the movies. Ultimately, the first book is a story of liberation as well as a coming-of-age story for Paul and the outcome is generally seen as positive by the majority of the characters you get the perspective of. The ones who are opposed are portrayed as grotesque embodiments of evil, like the baron Harkonnen (the movie was too nice to him and cut out the pedophilia, though it kept some of his sadistic and cruel tendencies).

Whether your views of the events of the first book will hold up over time might depend on the events that happen next in the series. There is fallout from everything that happens in Dune as it’s very much a story focused on political machinations. Something that is good or bad may turn out to have consequences with the opposite effect down the line.

Lots of contextual details were left out of the movie as well as a lot of the character building, so I suggest reading it if you are interested. The first 100 pages are tough to get through, but then it goes smoothly. For example, the lack of detail in the movie makes Chani and Stilgar feel fragile and insecure rather than resolute and pillars of strength/growth for Paul, Jessica sees less focus and you get little exposure to her thoughts, there is a miniscule amount of light shed on Paul’s thoughts throughout the movie, so he comes off as callous in the movie while he is far more empathetic in the book.

Oh damn really good point. I was thinking the same as OP until your comment. Rebels definitely dove into this aspect in a very similar way like the Fremen. Andor hinted at it as well. Both explore what life is like for the everyday inhabitants of the galaxy, which is why they’re so cool.

Although Dune was certainly more deliberate with making the indigenous people rising as a core part of the main story. Haha the Jihad was also a significantly different response than the Rebellion though.

I mean yes, but that’s a bit of a surface level read and I would argue more of a trope than a theme. Like there’s a lot of fantasy where there is a scarcity based culture that makes for skilled people with very survival forward approaches to things normally governed by sentimental attachments that paint kindness as a privilege of those with resources to spare…

Those conditions in fictional tropes pre 1960’s were just more often than not just temporary generational stuff. Famine, war, extreme poverty and so on were popular places to draw touch characters from but the sci-fi boom just elaborated it into death worlds where things are always horrible as a matter of a more overarching environmental nature. People have otherwise been on their box about the effects of soft living on moral character since as long as the written word has existed.

I think I made it through one Burroughs book [ a WW2 era Tarzan]

If you want a great heroic fantasy, try Robert Heinlein’s “Glory Road.” He gives you a great adventure, and casually kicks all the tropes in the knee.