MRT’s Road to Dune brings you exclusively the advances of the long-awaited adaptation to the big screen of the science fiction saga of Frank Herbert, directed by Denis Villeneuve. While our first installment featured House Atreides and the second focused on the Fremen, this week’s one features the House Harkonnen, the tyrants and villains of Dune.
Dune takes place thousands of years in the future, during a time when humanity has spread to other worlds in the galaxy. In this future, power is divided between a monarch known as the Padishah Emperor, the Space Guild, and a collection of feudal houses known as the Landsraad. In this age, there is a substance called Melange, a psychotropic spice that can improve mind and prolong life, and some users even acquire psychic abilities and the power to access the shared memories of their ancestors.
Much of the saga Dune, de Herbert, focuses on a desert planet called Arrakis. Although remote and inhospitable (thanks to its extremely dry climate and the presence of huge sandworms), Arrakis is the only major source of said spice in the universe. Whichever house Arrakis controls will be able to reap great wealth, but it will also face constant danger from rival houses. There is a reason why in the Dune-verse it is said: “Who controls the Spice, controls the universe“.
One of the many rich yet complicated aspects of Dune is the vicious dynamic between rival Great Houses that control politics, wealth and power in the Padishah Galactic Empire. In a nutshell, Duke Leto’s House Atreides are the good guys and House Harkonnen -leaded by the Barón Vladimir Harkonnen, played by the MCU veteran Stellan Skarsgård– son the bad guys. House Harkonnen hails from the bleak and highly industrialized world of Giedi Prime. For director Denis Villeneuve, distilling such a complex maneuver into an understandable subplot for Dune: Part One proved “challenging,” but he cited one particular cast member as his “secret weapon” to make it work.
“The Dune policy is very interesting and we try to keep it as simple as possible, without losing your wealth. That was a challenge. I’ll say my secret weapon for it was Stellan Skarsgård“Villeneuve explained during a question and answer session last year.
To learn more about the “secret weapon” of Stellan Skarsgård’s character and House HarkonnenCheck out the following exclusive videos:
Barón Vladimir Harkonnen
“The desert leads the weak. My desert. My dune“. The Harkonnen House, one of the richest members of the Landsraad, is the bitter rival of House Atreides. This sinister family is ruled by the cruel and hedonistic Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. At the beginning of Dune, the Emperor has granted House Atreides control of Arrakis, displacing House Harkonnen, which had controlled the gathering of spices for generations.
Although the baron Harkonnen pretends to be outraged that he lost control of Arrakis at the hands of his rival, Duke Leto, actually he hopes to seize the situation as an opportunity to destroy his enemy once and for all. Actor Stellan Skarsgård underwent hours of makeup to transform himself into the monstrous, morbidly obese Baron, who is strapped into “jockstraps” so that he can move (or, more accurately, float) and look down, literally, at the rest of the world. characters.
Rabban the beast
Dune features another Marvel veteran, Dave Bautista from Guardians of the Galaxy, in the key role of the psychotic head of the Harkonnen, Glossu “The Beast” Rabban. Through the Rabban Beast, House Harkonnen has brutally suppressed the indigenous population of Arrakis, the Fremen, in their search for the most valuable natural resource on the planet.
Living up to his nickname, Rabban is a wild and unintelligent animal that uses brute force to instill fear and secure the nefarious objectives of the Harkonnen. Dune reunites actor Dave Bautista with his Blade Runner 2049 director, Denis Villeneuve.
Continue to follow with MRT El Camino Dune to see more exclusive previews every other Thursday until the movie premiere in the United States on October 22, in Spain it is still dated for September 17.
