Jodorowsky's Dune Uncovered

Scenes 50-51 : Atreides Arrival

The single Guild ship carrying the whole of the Atreides army touches down on the landing strip on Dune, the only other ship there bears the Imperial emblem on its side.

Count Fenring and his wife are waiting in a truck, and under Fenring's order an army of Sardaukar line both sides of the direct road from the landing field to the government palace.

Fenring greets the Duke as he exits the ship, and the Atreides being to move down the road towards the palace, while Rabban and his men move from the palace towards the landing field.

The armies pass each other, but the last line of 10 men from each troop march on the spot, facing off against each other as the rest of the armies continue on.

Suddenly they attack each other, but two of the Sardaukar who are lining the road run up and, in a fraction of a second, kill the twenty combatants.

Fenring returns in the truck from the palace, picking up the Sardaukar as he passes them, and once back at the landing field they all board the Imperial ship.

The pile of twenty bodies are being scavenged by a group of beggars, but a group of Fremen scare them off, and cover the bodies with a special cloth to which they connect a machine which extracts the water and fills up a container as the bodies shrink under the shrouds.

At the Government palace the Atreides soldiers are burning the Harkonnen banners and raising their own coat of arms.

Leto instructs Duncan to help the wounded and Gurney to search all the villages, and they leave in the palace in vehicles raising a cloud of dust.

As the dust clears thousands of beggars fill the square; hooting and pounding small stones together.

Leto raises his arms and imposes silence. Leto tells the crowd that the Atreides are not like the Harkonnens, and they want colleagues not slaves.

The crowd stands and bows, all as one. As they leave some place gifts at the feet of Paul and Jessica: fruit, necklaces, eggs while murmuring "Madhi", and proclaiming Paul as the child of legend.

When the square is empty Paul gathers the gifts in his cape and Jessica takes the key to the Caladan castle from its bag and buries the key in the sandy earth. Then Leto, Jessica and Paul walk resolutely towards the palace.

The only Moebius drawings that we have that seems to relate to this scene is a single storyboard page. The low quality makes reading the text impossible, but it appears to show a caped figure (Leto?) raising his arms before a crowd of people while vehicle arrive or leave. The board is numbered 18 which makes it perfectly placed for the next scene where Duncan encounters the Fremen for the first time.

Continue to Part 18: It's a Trap