Haven't seen the movie yet, but from reading the book I just don't see the white savior angle. Freemen were indoctrinated by the Bene Gesserit to believe in a prophesy and Jessica "lies" to them to make them believe Paul is the one.

Freemen are being oppressed, but they aren't the weak ones in Dune not by a long shot since they even have enough wealth to outbid the empire on satellites in orbit around Arrakis.

I want to see Dune God Emperor adapted now that would start getting to "seriously weird" territory.

I think white savior just means guy came from outside who has amazing abilities and lead the native.

Yes, but my point is that he's not a saviour of the Freemen at all. It's clear in the books that they are better armed, better adapted and their numbers is severely underestimated by the Harkonnen. At no point in the first book are the Freemen truly at risk of being decimated.

This is a fine line to thread and I haven't seen the movie so I can't comment as to how the handled it, but while the Freemen don't have interplanetary domination in mind and Paul does lead them to Jihad, it's not like Avatar where the native are being exterminated and some random guy leads them to military success.

I dont think it matters whether they are oppressed or need a savior.

The ridiculous thing about that narrative is that an alien with their own agenda (most likely not for the benefits of the native) is somehow given leadership

In the book, at least, he earns/steals that position (it's not given to him) by virtue of his mother's knowledge of their religious beliefs and his training from birth to be a leader. Which was only barely hinted at in this movie.

I've always read Dune as a strong condemnation of the white saviour. Paul dooms the Fremen to a horrible purpose; forever to deliver a religious genocide in his name. Paul knows what he's doing is wrong, we the reader are told its wrong, and yet Paul does it anyway because his power of prescience shows him the alternative is worst for the universe. The sequels completely adhere to the idea that Paul is right, and turn the whole Dune universe into shlock, but the original novel posits the idea that Paul can't be sure it's the right thing to do.

The thing is all of that is explained in much more detail in the second part of the book. You know, the part that's not a film yet.

> condemnation of the white saviour

it seems more like condemnation of the concept of leading, or controlling, as opposed to educating and liberating. The white savior element is not neccessary to convey that message.

The white savior tropes are mostly from activists. The actual book is a critique of the very idea of saviors in general.

"white saviour" is just the pithy modern name for what the book was critical of. It wasn't just in general against saviours, the oppression and race aspects were def part of the book. I'm no activist but I was disappointed (and surprised given the current climate) that those undertones weren't in the movie at all (arguably acting nice to the Freman for "desert power", but the movie was too invested in showing Leto as a really great guy with so little screen time that it couldn't afford to dwell on the complexity) - it comes more to the foreground after he's with the Freman so hopefully the second movie will explore that critique a bit more.

None of this stopped me from really enjoying the movie - though I think highlighting the ambiguity could make it into a really great movie. The book does it by exploring how the systems work in the world which rarely works well in movies, so I'm not sure how part 2 could do it without it feeling "tacked on"

Was it the intention from the start or did Frank come up with it as he wrote more books?