6: Dune (2021)

Tim and Tola return to the Denis Villeneuve ouevre to discuss his 2021 film "Dune" as well as the days when you could make a TV miniseries for $28, getting past the things that the 12 year old you thought were perfect, concubines vs spouses, swordfighting, spaceships rolling coal, reactionless propulsion, how Stellan Skarsgård will make your movie better, Harkonnens as Hashemites, Villeneuve and Cameron as worldbuilders, Syd Meade and Weta, Cinematic maximalism, waterjets, heat sinks, ambiguously magical saviors, Magical Pixie Fremen Elves, charismatic macrofauna, one fault op systems, Zendaya as Chekhov's gun, Spaniards not being equivalent to Arabs, agents of carnage, being almost saved but not quite, famous made up Fremen double entendres, sandworm breath, the only good Imperial person is a dead Imperial person, canon vs non-canon, more Grinspoon xenobiology, surprise two-parters, embracing genocide, cheap shots at Elon, Dead Can Dance and Hans Zimmer, and the intersection of gender and futurism. Final score: Science (75%), Fiction (85%), Film (94%). Next podcast: Forbidden Planet!