"They are nothing more than a few ragtag groups of desert rats. Sure, they got lucky and messed with Spice production out in the desert but it's not like they can mount a full scale invasion with so few of them, and besides, the Sardukaur are hardened from the harshness of their planet, it's not like Fremen are planet hardened AND even if they could come up with the numbers, the Shield Wall will protect us from the worms.... I mean, could you imagine if a worm got past the Shield Wall? We wouldn't be able to use our shields and laz guns..."
The point is the Fremen were dangerous but nomadic and leaderless. Paul breaks then cycle and unites the north and south in a totally unprescented move that creates an army head count never previously thought possible.
Lastly, Paul brings an insider working knowledge to the cities arms and defenses eliminating much doubt about what the enemy would have hiding up their sleeve. These two things alone would give an unforeseen upper hand and confidence like never before to the Fremen army.
That North/South divide... Was that a movie invention? I don't remember it in the book*. Weren't all Fremen basically united and following Liet? Not organised as an effective military force but not divided either, right?
*Notwithstanding whatever's going on at >!Fondak!<, I've only just got to that part in COD.
Movie invention. The south was the safe place because the hatkonnens did not venture there due to storms and it was deemed uninhabitable, but there was no divide based on faith as is presented in the movie.
> I mean, could you imagine if a worm got past the Shield Wall? We wouldn't be able to use our shields and laz guns...
Shields can't be used in the desert because they attract worms and put them in a killing frenzy. This wouldn't make a difference here, since the worms were already controlled by Fremen, pointing them straight at the imperial troops. Just nitpicking here, your other points are spot on.
In that books, part of the point of blowing a hole in the shield wall is to allow a huge storm to knock out all the shields of the Emperor’s army too if I remember correctly.
Correct me if I'm wrong, as I've read dune a few years ago, but wasn't it mentioned that Harkonen were afraid to.use lasers after Duncan hid some shield generators under the sand and set them to weakest strength, maximum coverage? I believ there was a scene where Paul was terrified that Duncan set off the family atomics.
In general, in Dune universe knives are the preferred weapon exactly because of the risks involved. Las gun and shield combo produces a nuclear explosion that would kill both the shooter and the target. Since shields are very wide spread, it means that las guns in general are too dangerous to use. At the same time, Arrakis and the effects shields have on worms put every party into a unique position where the status quo is revised and using las guns is ok, but using shields isn’t. However, if you consider the way they train for the combat I am fairly certain that all people involved have fear of las gun/shield come ingrained. And living with Femen is the only reason why Paul isn’t the same, which brings him one step ahead of the rest of Imperium.
In the books Paul & Jessica are with the Fremen a few years before the final battle. They teach the Freman Bene Gesserit kung fu (the weirding way) and that pushes them to the next level. But you are underestimating how devastating the atomics & worms surprise attack (coordinated with a huge sandstorm) is, love how it was depicted in the films.
The Fremen were already substantially better than the Sardaukar even before they met Jessica. Thufir observes the Fremen almost effortlessly dispatch a contingent of them and take their ornithopter, then kamikaze an entire troop transport, and the Fremen are like "wow, the Sardaukar fight well" because they made them work a bit for it.
One of the things I missed the most in the movies, I loved how the Sardaukar have their unbeatable reputation and then every offworld character gets a scene where they're stunned when the Fremen steamroll them. I could read a whole book of Thufir saying things like "... Those were *Sardaukar* 🤯"
It’s definitely understated in the movies. Theres the scene where a group of Sardaukar totally slaughter the Atreides that had been defending against the Harkonnens, then later on a small group of Fremen manage to kill several Sardaukar in the ecology base.
If I’m remembering correctly, in the books the real threat of House Atreides was that they had trained a small core of troops to be the equal of the Sardaukar, and the Emperor feared what would happen if they were allowed to grow that force into something approaching the scale of the Sards.
It's also that the emperor ruled through heritage, patronage, and fear. The Atreides on the other hand genuinely *loved* their Duke and were fanatically loyal to the same degree as Sardaukar but without the brainwashing.
In the first movie, Duncan explicitly states, “there’s no better fighters in the imperium…” when referring to the Fremen. He even mentions in the same scene how close he came to dying because of their fighting ability.
To glom from this with quotes from a chapter that does *not* appear in the movie. This happens after the Atreides are killed/on the run from the Harkonnens, and Thufir (who survives) is holed up with a Fremen trying to figure out what to do next. It's a lovely scene, but I'll edit for brevity:
> "Liet wished to see one of the weapons for himself."
>
>"Then you should just go take one," Hawat sneered.
>
>"Yes," the Fremen said. "We took one. We have it hidden where Stilgar can study it for Liet and where Liet can see it for himself if he wishes. But I doubt he'll want to: the weapon is not a very good one. Poor design for Arrakis."
>
>"You . . . took one?" Hawat asked.
>
> "It was a good fight," the Fremen said. "We lost only two men and spilled the water from more than a hundred of theirs."
>
>"We would not have lost the two except for those others fighting beside the Harkonnens," the Fremen said. "Some of those are good fighters."
>
>"He's talking about Sardaukar," Hawat said.
>
>"Sardaukar!" the Fremen said, and there appeared to be glee in his voice. "Ah-h-h, so that's what they are! This was a good night indeed." "We've sent three of them captive to be questioned by Liet's men . "
>
>Hawat ' s aide spoke slowly, disbelief in every word: "You . . . captured Sardaukar?"
>
>"Only three of them," the Fremen said. "They fought well."
That would have been a good and short scene to keep in. A way of covering the Sarduakar menance, the cinematics of hundreds of Sarduakar leaping over the hill and still finding it tough going, and the Harkonen then gleaning the direction of the escaping ‘thopter Duncan is piloting.
The sardaukar are also way past thier prime at this point right? They haven't fought a proper battle in eons by the time the whole Jihad starts.
Ironically the same thing sorta happens to the fremen after the Jihad, they too get complacent and loose thier edge.
Edit: found the source (Terminology Of The Imperium)
the soldier-fanatics of the Padishah Emperor. They were men from an environmental background of such ferocity that it killed six out of thirteen persons before the age of eleven. Their military training emphasized ruthlessness and a near-suicidal disregard for personal safety. They were taught from infancy to use cruelty as a standard weapon, weakening opponents with terror. At the apex of their sway over the affairs of the Universe, their swordsmanship was said to match that of the Ginaz tenth level and their cunning abilities at in-fighting were reputed to approach those of a Bene Gesserit adept. Any one of them was rated a match for any ten ordinary Landsraad military conscripts. **By the time of Shaddam IV, while they were still formidable, their strength had been sapped by overconfidence, and the sustaining mystique of their warrior religion had been deeply undermined by cynicism.**
Not quite. The Sardukars true strength dosent com from their Imperial training, rather from surviving, the radiactive dog-eat-dog prison world of Salusa Secunuds. The single most deadly enviroment in the empire.
Well, second most deadly, after Arrakis. Which is why the fremen are that much tougher still.
Its in the appendices of the first book (Terminology of the Imperium)
**By the time of Shaddam IV, while they were still formidable, their strength had been sapped by overconfidence, and the sustaining mystique of their warrior religion had been deeply undermined by cynicism.**
Or that one paragraph where one fremen kamikazes his ornithopter into a troop transport containing 300 sardaukar and the only response the fremen gives is ,,a fair exchange''. Bro that's not a fair exchange at all
Just to add on: the sandstorm really screwed with advanced technology (because... reasons). So when you compound losing access to a bunch of tech they rely on along with atomics, sandworms, and a surprise attack IN a sand storm and the Imperial troops were just thrown into a confusing situation without being able to rely on tools they likely had taken for granted.
The sandstorm messes with shields because shields block anything moving quickly from entering. Suddenly you have billions of little things moving quickly trying to enter constantly for a long time. They basically overwhelm it.
The shields shut down. We don't know if the batteries ran out, they overheated from the strain, or their capacity was exceeded and some sand got through them damaged them. But they stopped working.
I always thought it to be both.
The sand flying around makes the shields not work correctly (overloading its capacity), and the static in the air interfering with both the shields and the communications equipment. Effectively, this removes the emperors protection, conceals the battle, and prevents the emperor from communicating to the landsraad what is happening.
Exactly. OP's question is slightly funny to me because the movie clarified how they used the atomics for me, I sorta could picture it but I'm a little slow.
When dealing with fantastical technology “reasons” is a fine enough explanation for why it behaves the way it does. It was necessary for plot purposes that it behave in a certain way so that is why it behaves as it does.
Yes, the films demonstrated a decisive strategic victory against an opponent that was over-reliant on technology *(Butlerians rolling in their graves)* and Sardaukar superiority. It was about as perfect of an Video Game RTS overwhelming victory as could be depicted on screen. Watching it unfold was like playing a round of Total War.
The books did a better job laying the foundation of the matchup. The comparisons between the Sardaukar and Fedaykin environment playing an important roll in the *power level*. This plot point is entirely missing from the Emperor's motivations to destroy Leto and House Atreides. That reveal was powerful in the books. The whole "he was a weak man" bit doesn't do the original reasoning justice at all.
The Fremen's ability was nodded to throughout the movies in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Like Duncan's comments about their fighting ability being incredible. This, coming from one of the best swordsmen of House Atreides. Another big moment in the Part 2 that reflected some of the book text was the Fremen that attack Rabban on the thopter. It was a great addition to showcase the Fremen suicidal relentlessness. Rabban staring in fear and disbelief. Underrated scene.
In the books it’s that every Bene Gesserit is roughly on par with Batman.
Sadly, Combat Yodeling - like Battle Pugs and Heart Plugs - was an invention for the 1984 movie.
The book specifies its takes (if I remember correctly) 8 sarduakar to kill 1 fremen on average. The fremen are highly skilled fighters, the idea being the sarduakar are trained on a planet that’s made to be difficult to live on, while the fremen survive on a planet that’s naturally difficult to live on.
In the books when the Harkonnens invade sietch tabr, only 3 sarduakar escape alive and the sietch was made up of purely women children and old men.
TLDR Fremen are 8 times as badass as Sarduakar
I’m talking about the book. They capture the Sardaukhar and Muad’Dib lets them go so the other Sardaukhar fears them. If they’re killed and never found, nature could’ve killed then. But 3 bearing witness to how superior the Fremen are, that builds fear. Or, at the least, distrust.
Yall are discussing two separate events. There's the assassination attempt by Captain Aramsham, in which three Sardaukar are captured and released to House Corrino, and there the Sardaukar raid on the sietch, in which Alia is captured and Leto II (thd OG) is killed.
I’m talking about the book as well in the scene where they specify that the sarduakar lost to women and children, they only escaped cause they turned on the jet engine and fried the fremen. This is when they captured Alia
/u/PM_ME_YOUR_THESES is talking about when Paul meets Gurney and the smugglers in the desert and some are Sardaukar infiltrators, where Paul sends Captain Aramsham back to the Emperor with his message.
You're talking about the end of the book when the Sardaukar attack the southern sietches where the old and nonfighters are staying away from the conflict in the north, but even they fought with such ferocity that the Sardaukar had to retreat using their ship thrusters to incinerate some Fremen.
That was a different event. You're referring to the sardaukar that were mixed in with the spice smugglers they brought back to Sietch Tabr. Understandable mistake though, because that was the only time in the book that Sardaukar were in Sietch Tabr. The raid OP referred to wasn't at Sietch Tabr, but another unnamed one where the women and children were.
Edit: actually it seems like OP was combining elements of both events.
I also love how despite that difference in ability the fremen actually respect the sarduakar somewhat since they are much better than the Harkonnen troops lol.
It’s also that the sardukar have been getting less deadly as time has gone on with relative peace. They’ve become sort of soft because of the luxuries that come with being the emperors personally army.
Sardukar were plenty deadly.. they were corporate soldiers. Freeman were fighting for their Messiah and they were bad assess before...they were 3 levels up..
lol are you serious? That sounds kinda silly to me personally 😂
On dune they don’t choose the weakest like on Secundus, the weak just die. The planet is the most brutal place in the galaxy to live on. It’s completely believable that a people who HAVE to be BORN STRONG to survive would be more capable fighters than a trained military force who grew up in RELATIVE comfort.
I mean it’s a story where magic sand lets you travel through space but THATS where you drew the line? To each his own I guess lol
The idea that harsh environments make stronger soldiers is not backed up in reality. That said, it is a pretty established rule of Dune’s world, and one that I think works well in the story, as long as we realize it’s not based in reality
Yeah it’s fiction lol who cares if it’s based in reality it works in the story. I wasn’t the one saying I stopped reading cause dune wasn’t realistic 😂
I would be curious if harsh environments along with battle training from an early age would produce better soldiers. That would be tough data to provide, harsh environments probably do produce better physical attributes or at least I would think it did
Historically, it was the opposite. Part of it was that if you lived in bad land, and were stronger than your neighbor who lived in good land, you would go take their land. People who lived on good land would also be well fed, and with a food surplus would have time to be able to learn to fight. They also tended to have larger populations.
Spartans were not particularly good warriors. At most, they were marginally better than the rest of Greece, and that was because they had more flexible tactics rather than anything else. As for the Mongolians, they did benefit from their lifestyle, but only because it was directly applicable to how they fought (which happened to be rather effective). If you spend most of your life riding and hunting with a bow, that translates fairly well into fighting with a bow from horseback. While the Fremen certainly do have skills that will help them fight on Arrakis (worm-riding mostly), I’m not convinced that that’s going to make them better generalist soldiers than sardaukar who have been training their whole lives. Now, the weirding way does change that somewhat, but I’m not sure that the sardaukar couldn’t have been taught the weirding way if someone had tried.
Ι am 100% confident whatever you know about Spartans is coming from YouTube channels.
Since I have read the sources in original greek, I cam assure you that for at least 2 centuries Soartans were by far (and I mean by far) the best land troopers in ancient Greece.
Fremen had seen more action than Sardaukar since Sardaukar were largely unchallenged for many may years. Fremen didn't only train at worm riding, but at stealth, duelling, guerilla warfare.
In a universe where melee battle is pre eminent, and having the home advantage, that is paramount.
Tough men, men who have lived tough lives, tend to be quite good in battle, even when outgunned. See the Vietcong, the Caucasians vs the Russian Empire, the Taliban vs the Soviets etc
Desert power. This was the whole plan by Leto. No one expected them to be so numerous, organized, or that they would have atomics to blow the shield wall. In addition Paul has prescience. He can see the different futures and their outcomes and he chose this strategy because of its effectiveness and the narrow path it would lead to: survival for him and revenge for his father's death.
throughout the movie Paul waged war on Harkonnen spice fields so it's not crazy to assume their forces we're dwindling already, plus when the Baron is brought before the emperor the intel they have on the fremen is little to none. They also didn't expect nukes and worms and a giant storm as their main fighting force.
Atomics causing mass disorientation (there's purposeful laws against using them that Paul was very close to breaking)/worms.
Shock and awe is a powerful thing.
"My Duke", Guerney said, "my chief worry is the atomics. If you use them to blast a hole in the Shield Wall..."
"Those people up there won't use atomics against us," Paul said. "They don't dare...and for the same reason they cannot risk our destroying of the spice."
But the injunction against--"
"The injunction!" Paul barked. "It's fear, not the injunction that keeps the Houses from hurling atomics against each other. The language of the Great Convention is clear enough: 'Use of atomics against humans shall be cause for planetary obliteration.' We're going to blast the Shield Wall, not humans."
In the book it’s explained that the sarduakar are so highly trained because their training happens on the emperors prison planet. An extremely rough and tough place to just live combined with an extremely rigorous training program made it so the sarduakar had to be insanely strong just to not die.
The fremen had a similar sort of thing just existing and surviving on arrakis. The planet is so tough with living conditions so bad that in order to just not die the fremen had to become stronger than the sarduakar. There’s a great quote from the book that goes something like “god created Arrakis to train the faithful.”
This was something that Leto had some knowledge of and it’s why he tried to make a fremen alliance before he was killed. He thought if the fremen and atredies combined forces they could have stopped the incoming attack that he knew was coming.
So combine their strength with the dust storm weakening the captiols shields with the atomics and they were able to storm the capitol without much issue.
This is the best answer: I think Paul and the Emperor even talk about it at the end of the book, when Paul threatens him by promising to make Salusa Secundis a nice place to live.
1. They did not believe it was possible that the Fremen could attack the basin. (Book Baron specifically says they patrol the walls for Fremen infiltrators, but the Emperor believes it is impossible.)
2. None of their conventional weapons were capable of harming a sandworm. The worms can crush entire formations and breach any defensive position.
3. The sandstorm disables their shields. They did not anticipate this. (In the movie, the Baron says the basin walls will protect them from the sandstorm but....)
4. They did not anticipate that Paul would use atomics to destroy the wall. The destruction of the walls throws the Sardaukar into total confusion, and that's BEFORE the sandworms showed up.
This is what Leto referred to as "desert power." The Harkonnens and the Emperor do not understand Arrakis, the weather, the people, or the wildlife. They are stupid and arrogant and failed to adapt their tactics to the operating environment.
The Fremen were taught the Weirding Way that Jessica and Paul knew. (Forget the weirding modules in Lynch’s Dune, they were a means to tell a story quickly.) The timeline from Paul entering the desert until the end is at least four years, and during that time the Fremen added the Weirding Way of fighting to their already considerable fighting prowess.
Edit: weirding modules. Also by “the end” I mean where the Dune book ends.
Paul and the Fremen had a ton of advantages.
* Paul's prescience allowed them to time the attack with the storm which shorted out all the Harkonnen shields
* They blew a huge hole in the shield wall which allowed them to ride worms in, which the Harkonnens assumed they were safe from
* The Harkonnens and the emperor believe the Fremen are a small group of pesky native guerilla fighters. A full frontal assault was the last thing they were expecting from them
* Fremen are already the best fighters in the galaxy, plus Paul and Jessica have been teaching them Bene Gesserit fighting techniques. Even without the element of surprise Fremen will beat Sardaukar head to head every time. In the book the Sardaukar try to take out a sietch full of exclusively the elderly, women, and children, and they still barely win.
The Emperor and his troops were very well defended by the Shield Wall, who were a literal mountain range. Paul blew up the mountains using atomics and cleared up the way for the biggest sandstorm Arrakis has been, which threw whatever troops there were in disarray and was ised as a cover for the sandworms' riders.
So probably whatever weapons and forces the Sardaukar or Harkonnen had, were completely overwhelmed.
Yes, BUT, it’s most subtextual. The scale of the Fremen and their operations are portrayed more clearly (as a large, coordinated culture). Paul is also a genius level strategist (even without prescience). And the Fremen are all basically at peak human conditioning.
The United States was put into complete shock and inability to act after the 9-11 attack. Imagine if Al Queda had the numbers and skill the Fremen did to have a full scale attack after the planes hit the towers.
The movies portray too advanced technology in rocketry. The great houses fight very ritualized wars. They use poison and a knife in the back. Rockets and artillery are very rarely used because they cause more civilian damage and generate more paperwork. The Empire does not like economic splash damage in wars. Also any kind of automated targeting or guided rockets is incredibly, incredibly forbidden. A single modern cruise missile would is likely to get your planet slagged, because all the great houses would unite against you.
That's not to say that manually targeted artillery and unguided rockets weren't known. It's actually the other tactic Paul brings to the Fremen. They make rockets in the seitch factories and use them against Harkonen spice harvesting. The Baron used artillery in the betrayal attack, but he forbids Rabban from keeping them.
In the final battle, the Emperor doesn't know the Fremen can ride worms. "They will ride in on the backs of worms" would have been Sardukar joke answered with "you've been drinking too much spice liquor with the smugglers." Then there was the great grandmother of a strom. The never would have thought that anyone would attack during the storm.
Shields don't work in a sandstorm. It overwhelms the shield generator from deflecting so much mass. So their shield advantage was moot. Further Sardukar are used to fighting with shields, and trained to be slow on the attack. Fremen have no such conditioned weakness in unshielded combat.
In the books the big concern is that they will escape back to space. They solve this by using their rockets to knock the nosecones off the ships.
Also in the books the final battle is a coordinated attack against Harkonen garrisons all over the northern hemisphere. Or rather the culmination of such an offensive. I'm so tired of the "mob charging each other" trope in movie battles.
The Baron is forced to abandon Rabban completely after some careless words the Emperor's errand boy that implies he wants to copy Salusa Secundus. This is the opening the Femen exploit. The Emperor shows up on Arrakis because he thinks the Baron was on Leto's side all along and they they intend to challenge with with their "New Sardukar." He doesn't expect the numbers of Femen because the Fremen have been paying off the Guild to prevent any permanent satellites over Arrakis.
Even the movie makes it clear;
1) The Sardaukar heavily relies on their reputation and tech. It is implied that they may have softened under Imperial preference; for example, the Atriedes troops actually put up a good fight. Their tech is also largely a liability on Arrakis (shields draw worms, the jetpacks have limited utility on the relatively flat open dunes). They are also very arrogant and overconfident.
2) The source of their power is living on a deathworld. The Fremen also live on (arguably) a harsher world, and that latter world is where they are fighting.
3) The Fremen utilize guerilla tactics, whereas The Sarduakar has been largely deployed by the Emperor to fight his enemies (i.e. highly organized conventional armies owned by the Houses or various other guilds).
4) Remember that the initial mission was to eliminate House Atriedes with sabotage on their side. They were not initially prepared to fight a guerilla war.
Now remember that the Sarduakar are considered much stronger than the Harkonnen troops (who favor artillery strikes, which are much less effective if the enemy is spread out, mobile, and lacks a rigid command structure), making the Harkonnen even easier targets. As well, the Harkonnen require the spice fields to operate, giving the Fremen an easy target that has massive economic reprecussions for their enemy, while lacking any similar target.
The book elaborates on these points (for example, the Fremen later become 'softened' with their world being terraformed and the various rewards earned from their many conquests), but the movies do a good job of conveying this.
Many of these technical questions aren't actually important to the story. What's important is the result. They did win. I feel like there's this new kind of fandom, that expects a fully written wiki about every aspect of a book, which isn't needed for every story.
It's like asking: "so how did the little red riding hood not notice, that it was in fact the wolf dressed up as her grandmother?"
There were always such people, the internet just made them visible. Some people feel better when they can rationalize everything, even if it deprives actual story from it's charm.
But the book does have extensive information on this, people arent making this up and twisting sentences and adding up their own tidbits to the story. They are just explaining it as it was spread out in the book in a consolidated manner
> how does spice work?
To be honest I feel like THEY barely know, and that's why it works so well narratively.
I am definitely someone who wants to be grounded in my worlds. I want to know how the spice works because that probably informs more about the world which is all informing the story, so normally things like this (it doesn't matter how it works, it works) get on my nerves. Especially in scifi where that shit happens all the time.
But if your story takes place in a setting where humans have canonically massively shunned technology ('thinking machines' but point still stands) it totally makes sense that the reality of the situation (and not just lazy worldbuilding) is that yeah, they don't know really know how it actually works either.
You need to make the audience believe in what happens. There's a lot of ways to do this, and appeals to realism are usually misguided, but getting them to believe in your story is crucial.
If the Fremen are awe-inspiring fighters, then inspire awe!
They don't get into it deeply in the movies but in Part 1, when Jessica and Paul run into Stilgar and his group, Jessica dispatches the Fremen that tries to sneak up on her and the Weirding Way is mentioned at that point.
The Fremen were fierce warriors.
They were good enough against the Harkonnen.
With the extra training from Paul and his mother, they got better.
And when Gurney was "found" they gained better training.
At that point they were good enough against the Sardaukars.
After that, when the jihad started, they simply had the "high ground" advantage with the guild support when going against rogue houses. (they could destroy whole planets from orbit).
Also one thing people havent mentioned is the sandstorm cut off the one thing they have over the fremen, air power. Their warships and gunships were unable to help them.
The Fremen are better fighters, and not trained to fight shield users. They have the element of surprise, the shock and awe of the atomics and worm attack, and then the fact the Imperium would not really use Lasguns because of the risk of it going nuclear in contact with a shield. The Harkonnens and Sardaukar also cannot use shields because of the dust storm.
In the movie the Fremen appear from the dust of the explosion and the storm atop invulnerable Sandworms against inferior fighters who are not really accustomed to having such brutal ferocity directed at them, or who are simply not used to fighting against the Sandworms.
The Fremen also outnumber the Sardaukar and Harkonnen force’s significantly, in addition to being superior fighters, in addition to having their strategy predetermined by a near infallible prescient vision.
How could they lose?
Everyone else has touched on Fremen fighting abilities.
The book describes the battle as follows: It’s a three or two pronged attack. The city dwellers pushed out of the city and pissed off by the looting flood arrakeen. The worms will shock the troops from an unexpected direction after the wall blows. The main force comes from some other direction.
Right after the wall blows and right when the storm hits, artillery blows off the noses of the ships so they can’t escape.
It’s basically described as a slaughter.
In the book(s), the Sardaukar are in decline—as is the entire Imperium. While they still the best known fighters in the Imperium they are no real match for the Fremen in anything like an equal contest. So even though large, technology assisted, forces of Sardaukar and Harkonnen can arguably hold their own against smaller, raider size Fremen forces, they had no answers for the en masse Fremen assault of Arrakeen accompanied by nukes and sandworms. I thought it was a particularly good decision by DV to have the last we see of the Sardaukar being a handful rushing into an offscreen battle against a no doubt significantly larger group of Fremen fighters. Their quick destruction off camera as witnessed by Paul’s immediate arrival on camera was very impactful.
So, end of the day, the superior fighting force won through surprise and disabling the shield wall. A “karma’s a bitch” full circle repeat of the original fall of Arrakeen to the Sardaukar and Harkonnen. Only this time, there will now be hell to pay throughout the universe.
>So why didn’t the Sardukar and Harkonen have a bunch of gun placements around the imperial tent ?
https://preview.redd.it/ijlk56onm2vc1.jpeg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=63615f74981a56e09fd2fb86ed8d8e03b531f5f6
dig as many trenches, build as many lasgun nests, deploy as many barricades as you want, none of that will matter when a giant sandworm literally destroys the ground beneath your feet.
A key factor is that Sardaukar were used to fighting with shields, and the Fremen were used to fighting without them. Shield combat requires a whole different way of thinking and moving, and fighting like that without a shield is a death sentence. And the sandstorm prevented their shields from working properly.
It could be compared to a professional sword fighter fighting a professional boxer in a fist fight. It doesn't matter how good you are with a sword if you don't have one.
Books will always explain these concepts better. How the frenen were better fighters. How the voice works. How spice of life works, what it specifically did and felt like inside Paul's brain. What it feels like from the gom jibbar and his conciousness and past memories unfolding, which ones of those memories stick out.
These movies are amazing renditions of the even more amazing book and can only show so much. For anything where there may feel like gaps in comprehension, almost surely a book is going to be more beneficial to explain Outside of Dune, as well!
Warfare has been reduced to knife fighting.
They are possibly the best knife fighters in the galaxy, they don’t fear death, they barely get tired, and they can survive in conditions that would kill almost any other human. It’s like having a whole civilization of Sardukar
Yeah but the film shows they have plenty more weapons like laz guns, rockets/atrillery, that beam of death that chased Duncan in the first film, and that machine gun looking thing that diced up the Fremen during their spice raids.
Oh yeah, I was just thinking about the book.
Well, Paul’s emperor. He also has access to all that technology, and likely more of it than anyone else.
And if you’re wondering how they could have initially won: guerilla fighters win wars all the time: Cuba, Afghanistan, Vietnam to name a few
The books make 3 important additional claims
1. The emporer uses his prison planet as a meat grinder to turn out his Sardukar troops. They are the most feared troops in the galaxy in part because they survived an extremely hostel environment. Dune is an even more hostile environment than the prison planet making the freman even more hard.
2. Gurney and Duncan were able to train atreides troops to be nearly as good as sardukar
3. There is a LOT more freman than everyone thought.
So you have a large group of people who have already been hardened by the extreme conditions of dune, and who get further training from the best warriors or students of the best warriors the universe has ever seen. That’s how they won.
Its been mentioned in these comments already but I wanted to state it again + add some important context: The book puts a lot of emphasis is placed on the fighting capability of the individual fighters within a fighting force- and the idea that a harsh environment results in more hardened fighters.
The emperor's power comes in large part because of the Sardaukar- who are considered to be the strongest fighting force within the universe, not due to their technology but due to the skill of every individual Sardaukar.
Leto had some of the best fighters in the universe (Duncan & Gurney) train his forces to be basically the best amongst all the houses but they still didnt measure up to the Sardaukar (except for Duncan himself). Leto figured out that the missing ingredient wasnt better training but rather the fact that the Sardaukar come from the harsh conditions of a prison planet.
This was the major reason that Leto took the gamble of accepting the Emperor's offer to rule Arrakis- because he believed that A. There were more Fremen than was officially reported and B. The Fremen were potentially better warriors than the Sardaukar due to surviving in the harsh conditions of Arrakis. The book specifies that this is what Leto refers to when he uses the phrase "Desert Power"- the potential to acquire a large army of Fremen, give them the Atreides training, and thus have an army capable of outright defeating the emperor.
The book also has several differences and specifies some things the movie doesnt.
1. During the combined Harkonnen & Sardaukar raid which wipes out the Atreides, some Sardaukar end up going against desert Fremen and the Fremen are actually able to hold their own if not defeat the Sardaukar in 1 on 1 fights- a feat virtually unheard of by any other fighters. In fact the Sardaukar preserve Duncan Idaho's body specifically because it was so unusual for someone to be able to take on so many Sardaukar at once.
2. 5 years take place between the Fremen taking in Paul & Jessica and Paul leading the Fremen against Arakeen. During this time Paul & Jessica actively train the Fremen in Bene Gesserit & Atreides fighting styles- elevating their combat capability to above that of the Sardaukar.
So fast forward to the raid on Arakeen- the Emperor & Harkonnens have no idea that the Fremen are as capable, numerous, or organized as they are. They just found out Paul is alive however they have no idea that he is prescient. Paul on the other hand- is leading a fighting force which is stronger than the Sardaukar and he has used prescience to plan the attack- meaning he's already figured out the path to victory in his head.
Yes:
1. In the book, Paul has several years with the Fremen. Paul knew how Duncan and Gurney trained his family’s troops, and it was that training that scared the emperor enough to try wiping out Paul’s family. They only lacked wealth and numbers. The Fremen gave them numbers
2. Raban is a “tank brain” in the books. He is not a great military strategist. The first choice was Piter, who was a vastly more interesting (and terrifying) character in the books. Piter being “unavailable” left the Baron with Raban
3. The Baron intentionally isolates Raban for political reasons (and because the captured Hawat is subtly weakening the Harkonnens from within
4. The battle of Arakeen happens very differently in the books. The explosion (which was certainly not delivered by missiles) lets in the storm, which takes out shields, and the Fremen immediately shoot the nose off the imperial ships on the ground (the moment the shields are down) which prevents them from taking off
5. Paul doesn’t threaten the great houses with destruction “of the spice sands”… he threatens the guild with triggering an environmental catastrophe that would kill all the worms (and therefore end the spice cycle forever). The guild needs to spice more than anyone else, so they threaten to strand any house that lands a ship on Arrakis. This leaves the emperor completely isolated
6. Most importantly, Paul never sends a note to the Emperor. The Emperor goes to Arrakis because Raban was defeated strategically- the Harkonnens controlled the cities, but the Fremen made the desert a killing ground for spice miners
It’s also worth noting that Paul had a son with Chani, and the Emperor sent a large force to take some hostage, but Paul’s son was killed in the action.
Paul’s sister (the toddler with millions of years worth of memories) is taken captive and she is the one who tells the emperor who he’s fighting.
Finally, the “north vs south” Fremen is almost entirely a movie addition. The Fremen were very much unified (largely as a result of Liet Kynes and his father manipulation of the Fremen religion).
Basically- yes. It’s explained. The movie was a good movie, but it took away a lot of the subtlety in the books, and at the end it’s telling a very different story.
Two big examples-
1. Chani doesn’t leave
2. The great houses accept Paul’s ascension
He had the fremen capture the emperor’s entourage and hold them until the duel the next morning. I imagine he needed time to formulate a plan for the exact terms he’d use to seize the throne.
That and let the battle outside finish up, they also had to capture Arakeen the city, which Gurney pulled off overnight when he killed the Beast. Plus his forces had to wipe up all remaining Sardaukar from the field.
I don’t think the movie did a bad job of it. You see that the Sardukar are in formation around the camp, but they’re not really expecting anything on the scale that they got. Paul’s use of atomics is frankly an insane plan, I mean imagine you’re standing around in a largely ceremonial role guarding the imperial camp; you’re protected by a huge mountain range that any force would be hugely impeded by, you’d see anything coming, and you know that there’s a giant sandstorm ravaging the desert outside the mountain range. Then all of a sudden a fucking atomic bomb goes off and blast a hole in a huge freaking mountain. It’d be just as shocking as today with the strict prohibition on atomics in the Great Convention (if you ever played MW2 when it came out, that level was shocking even in a video game).
The imperial forces couldn’t use shields either. This might be the only point against the movie as I can’t remember an explicit explanation in them, but sandstorms render shields useless IIRC. They kind of hint at that with the way the storm batters the shield of the Emperor’s ship, but I don’t think it’s ever spelled out. I might be wrong about this though, I can’t remember shields ever being shown during the fighting.
Regardless. The Sardukar thought they were completely safe, then in a matter of two seconds there’s an atomic bomb blowing up their defenses, their formation is completely destroyed by the debris crushing them and the dust cloud, then a bunch of worms rear out of the cloud and start eating them. Of course they panic and run, and then they’re easy pickings for the Fremen to chase down and destroy in pockets.
Laz guns aren’t going to be used in combat around shields, one bad shot and you blow up the Emperor and his entire court. I do wish that projectile weapons were more widely used in the Dune universe, but they’re really not very common even in the book. This is explained by the prevalence of shields which render them useless, but they should really be more common as they have plenty of uses in situations where shields aren’t likely to be used, especially on Dune where the Harkonens had plenty of time to adapt. I think the use of guns in the movie was improvement on this fact from the book, but does present this incongruity you point out.
I think the best explanation is that the Emperor thought they were safe behind the shield wall, and that major defenses weren’t necessary as he could always just leave in his ship if there was an attack, and Paul’s plan was just so crazy that no one thought it likely. It’s a dumb mistake, but hardly the first one made in fact or fiction that I don’t think it breaks suspension of disbelief.
In the book it is mentioned that the Emperor's party even brought along their women and civil servants; they truly thought they were beyond untouchable.
Well the main shield had been taken down by a massive sandstorm , and no army can really stand up to a bunch of sand worms raining down on them. That combined with the fact that the Fremen were simply much better and more numerous fighters than the sardaukar and were trained by Paul in how to fight people with shields
The Fremen who were already incredible warriors were now battle hardened, elite, soldiers under an excellent command structure. Maybe I’m wrong but when I read the book I kinda got the subtext that the Fremen under Paul’s leadership started using and training with captured Harkonnen weaponry. So by the end of the book you have a Harkonnen force so deteriorated that they stopped patrolling outside of cities, one division of Sardakaur vs. Paul with all the Fremen he can gather, hundreds of Ornithopters, a nuke that blasts open a hole in the shield law (which comes very close to breaking their rule on nukes being used on humans), and crashing in on giant sandstorms. So in context it’s kinda easy to see how the Fremen just absolutely smashed the imperial forces.
And to answer a few of your questions Lazeguns are too dangerous to use around emperor with so many shields about. Even so, once the worms showed up everyone knows shields off or those worms are going into a shield killing frenzy and killing anyone not on top of them. Also if there were gun placements they would have been taken out quickly by the Ornithopters Paul had been stockpiling during his guerrilla war for the past few years.
All in all I feel the book does a better job and pacing the conflict and making it feel earned but both movies are still excellent IMO.
I can't remember how overtly it's covered in the films, but it's definately in the books.
The sarduakar aren't actually as good as they think they are. They are painfully arrogant, and have got complacent. They haven't had a quality opponent in generations. Everyone believes they are invincible, so they didn't bother putting out defences. Even if they could get in, which they can't, they would loose.
Paul even talks about how is going to train the fremen to loose and not be so arrogant.
> The sarduakar aren't actually as good as they think they are. They are painfully arrogant, and have got complacent.
Sounds like what happened to the Knights Templar.
In the book the Fremen are taught the weirding way by Paul, the bene gesserit martial arts that allows them to move at super human speeds. This is what pushes them over the edge to effortlessly beat the sardukkar and harkonnens
Even before that, when the Harkonen attacked the Atreides and Paul and Jessica were fleeing, they met with some fremen and one commented about how the Sardaukar were pretty tough, and took a little longer to kill than expected (or something like that, not near my books to check).
Point being that the Fremen were more than a match for the Saudaukar before learning the Wierding Way. With it, they were nearly unstoppable.
After Paul and his Fremen arrive at the Shieldwall mountains outside where the Emperor landed, Imperial forces do shoot at a forward group of Fremen with projectile weapons, but the Fremen were shielded.
This does two things: it tells the Imperial forces that projectile weapons won’t be useful, and using las guns would be suicidal.
I'm pretty sure Paul notes some kind of proto-prescience present in all fremen, manifesting as some kind of hive-mind/connectedness, which is also described when Jessica gets some tea when she was thirsty without even asking.
The books definitely do give better descriptions, but outside of the appendices you still don't get a whole lot of *direct* information about how the Fremen are such good fighters compared to the Sardaukar, just that they are on average able to go about 3-to-1 vs them.
At least as far the final battle goes, they were within the shield wall, so they did wear some shields in the books, at least enough to discourage the use of lasguns or projectile weapons, which would be suicidal or useless, respectively, against a shielded opponent.
So that brings them to knife combat where they are at least 3x better, in the middle of a massive, ***massive*** sandstorm which they know how to use to their advantage, with sandworms breaching any defensive positions of the enemy and demoralizing/striking fear into even the likes of the Sardaukar.
That pretty much makes it clear how they so thoroughly routed the imperial forces.
Haven't seen the second movie yet, but am currently reading through Heretics of Dune. One thing I've noticed is that major violent events don't have alot of pages dedicated to them. They are often referred to and there are some abstract descriptions about the Fremen Jihad, but more often its the focus is on the politics, and single combat violence that occurs. For the final fight the book basically ignores most of the fighting between the Sardukar and Fremen and focuses on how Paul and his party end up in the throne room fighting the Haroknens is about the extent of it.
The movies hint at the reason it was so easy for the Fremen to win when the Harkonnen's toughest warriors refused to go down into the deep desert because they didn't think anything could survive there. Paul and his warriors not only learned how to survive, but thrive, in that environment. And then, they caused that deadly-to-other-people environment to descend on the emperor and his troops.
Yes definitely. For one, before the final battle officially began, in small skirmishes the Fremen used shields so the Harkonnens and Saudakar weren't willing to use lazguns. Then the Great great grandmother of a storm wiped out any shields they had as well, as well as the shield around the emperor's ship and tent. The Fremen were already better fighters than the Saudakar but on top of that they had Paul's and Jessica's training in the weirding ways and Paul was a fantastic tactician who had special knowledge into the ways of the major houses. Fremen had home court advantage and the atomics, worms, and the attack in general took the enemy by surprise, and they disabled the emperor's ship cutting him off from retreat. Basically the emperor was fucked any two ways you look at it. He overestimated his position thinking he was safe behind his shield and Saudakar and on top of that he had Alia as a hostage, though she had let herself be caught.
I like the idea that Freemen have some kind of prescience accuracy limited to a few seconds in front or perhaps their opponent's movement in melee, due to the spice in their body.
I thought it was pretty simple; shock and awe. Just look at what the Sardaukar had to deal with; atomic weapons, an incredibly motivated and skilled group of fighters in the Fremen, including large numbers from the South, **and multiple sand worms**.
If I'm not fever dreaming, Paul instructed the Fremen to put shields on some storage caches, to make the Harkonnen think they are using shields.
I also feel like it was mentioned that the Emperor didn't know the Fremen had no Shields, just after the landing.
You have to remember that Arrakis is the only place in the Dune universe where more traditional projectile based weapons can be used more freely as shields aren’t always turned on. So, the Sardakaur wouldn’t be armed with guns and things of that nature as they rushed to arrive on Arrakis at the end of the movie and had no use for them prior to that. They might have a few lasguns or other projectile weapons but not enough to hold back the Fremen.
When it comes to the Harkonnens, you then have to remember how Paul and the Fremen conducted their attack. One, their attack was extremely swift, leaving the opposing forces with very little time to coordinate a counter attack. Two, they completely disoriented/shocked the opposing forces with the use of atomics and then shortly afterward descended on Emperor’s palace/Arakeen with the sand worms, the full force of the Fremen, and with a “great grandmother of a storm” at their backs. The Harkonnens might be able to get a few of the Fremen with their defenses of Arakeen but would be overwhelmed extremely quickly.
The key to Fremen victory isn't necessarily in strength of arms, though that certainly helped. It was Paul's threat to destroy the source of the Spice.
In the books he uses this threat, which the Guild knows to be very real, to blackmail and extort the Spacing Guild. Through them Paul now has ***EXCLUSIVE*** control over all interstellar space travel.
Once he defeated the Emperor's forces, it would be a simple matter to take his millions of the strongest fight force in the Universe, and go planet to planet subjugating them one by one.
I think leaving this out of the film is a misstep, as evidenced by your confusing over this victory.
Or do you mean how the Fremen beat the Sardaukar and Harkonnen forces on Arrakis? That is explained in the books, you see the Sardaukar were such a strong force because they lived and trained on the hellish planet of Salusa Secundus. Frank Herbert posits that the adverse conditions of Salusa Secundus honed the Sardaukar, they adapted, ecologically, to this adversity and were therefore supreme against any other fighting force.
However....The Fremen not only lived on Arrakis but had adapted to it, and as far as adverse conditions go there are none so adverse as Arrakis. The Fremen were therefore better fighters than even the Sardaukar.
Arrakeen, Carthag (not in the films), and all the towns and villages were situated behind massive rock formations called the Shield Wall, worms couldn't venture past the Shield Wall, so Paul destroys a section of it with the Atreides nukes, this allows Fremen riding worms to breach the safe zone and engage the Sardaukar with enormous war beasts, negating the use of Lasguns and Shields (which would only serve to drive the worms into a killing frenzy).
This meant that large amounts of the Sardaukar legions were instantly destroyed by worms and any remaining were quickly dispatched by the superior Fremen fighters.
The books never really dwell much on the action. Major battles or story beats are sometimes completely off-page and implied by the continuity of the next chapter. The end of the book illustrates how the Fremen prepare the attack and they way they coordinate. By the next chapter, Arrakeen was taken.
Frank Herbert never goes much into detail about the battles and the sense of conflict is usually evoked by the build-up and strong lore surrounding the characters and circumstances.
Been a while since i read the book but here's what i recall.
1. Paul blew up the mountain range (shield wall) that protected the basin in which the emperor had stationed himself.
2. The sandstorm blew in and disrupted the shields of all the ships inside the basin.
3. The fremen used stolen Harkonnen artillery which they had pre sighted on the ships to blow up their engines preventing them from escaping.
4. After the storm a massive armada of stolen Ornithopters piloted by Fremen swooped in and took out what they could followed by overwhelming numbers of Fremen on wormback.
All of this happened in the span of seconds catching the emperor / Harkonnen troops off guard.
All in all the emperor never stood a chance.
(The emperial planetologist had also been lying to the emperor / Harkonnen for decades on how the south was uninhabitable and the Fremen numbers couldn't be more than 50 000 or so)
The Sardukar ain't what they used to be. And the movie establishes a minimum 9:1 kill ratio for Fremen over Harkonnen. (Based on the scene where Chani's friend is captured, and right before he torches her, he says "you killed 9 of my men). Maybe slightly less against Sardukar. Throw worms and a huge sandstorm into the mix...it was always going to be a one-sided fight. That was my take anyway.
Not having seen Part 2, I'm guessing it leaves out Salusa Secundus and suspicions about how the Sardukar are trained and how Duncan, Gurney, Thufir, and the Duke think they can do the same with the Fremen?
It's not addressed in the DV films, but in the books it's made clear that when a lasgun hits a shield, something akin to a nuclear explosion happens, so the use of either one is fraught.
I seem to remember that the Fremen actually use this as a tactic in the book: they'd plant shield generators in the desert, and when the Harkonnen went around shooting things with lasguns, they'd hit the shields and BOOM, no more Harkonnen. It only takes a few occurrences of that to disincentivize the indiscriminate use of lasguns.
In the Dune universe living in a harsh environment makes you a better fighter, so desert people = good fighter. salusa secundus is just a shithole of a prison world and thus good fighers.
Did you miss them having Paul Atreides atomic weapons???? Doubt the emperor and Harkonens brought theirs to Arrakis plus they have over million soldiers on home soil.
Not really, it kinda happens in the beginning of book two. The jihad has happened and Paul is in a dominant position.
For the end of book one, there’s some Marty Stu goodness. Paul is effectively a prince of a major house. Trained by Duncan Idaho and Gurney Halleck, who are very good and rival Sardukar. He’s also trained as a male BG and mentat. The Fremen are effective ambush fighters, like Lawrence of Arabia and his Bedouin.
Add in prescience and the weirding way, and he’s god mode with cheats on. Paul MD OP, need nerfs kthx bye.
re-watch the movie as it is clearly explained in the movie.
The storms mess with shields, the fremen are in that way unaffected by the storm.
thats an easy one.
to go farther, the fremen acted up so badly that the emperor choose to intervene twice and only once because of paul.
additionally, everyone in the imperium thought there were a few thousand fremen, not several million with ten thousands (number for the sake of numbers) available for combat during a sneak attack just after the emperor landed, precipitated by a nuclear explosion that no one has for thousands of years held fear of (because none of the great houses would use them on each other)
So...Shock & Awe with an element of surprise, a lot of unknowns and a significantly bigger force and better trained than anyone expected.
its not shown in the films, but paul does tech the fremen how to fight the way the bene gesserit did, called The Weirding Way which functions like skilled Jedi/Sith and their ability to project or obscure their actions using the force to cause their opponents to be unsure of where the next true strike may come.
"They are nothing more than a few ragtag groups of desert rats. Sure, they got lucky and messed with Spice production out in the desert but it's not like they can mount a full scale invasion with so few of them, and besides, the Sardukaur are hardened from the harshness of their planet, it's not like Fremen are planet hardened AND even if they could come up with the numbers, the Shield Wall will protect us from the worms.... I mean, could you imagine if a worm got past the Shield Wall? We wouldn't be able to use our shields and laz guns..."
The point is the Fremen were dangerous but nomadic and leaderless. Paul breaks then cycle and unites the north and south in a totally unprescented move that creates an army head count never previously thought possible. Lastly, Paul brings an insider working knowledge to the cities arms and defenses eliminating much doubt about what the enemy would have hiding up their sleeve. These two things alone would give an unforeseen upper hand and confidence like never before to the Fremen army.
That North/South divide... Was that a movie invention? I don't remember it in the book*. Weren't all Fremen basically united and following Liet? Not organised as an effective military force but not divided either, right? *Notwithstanding whatever's going on at >!Fondak!<, I've only just got to that part in COD.
Movie invention. The south was the safe place because the hatkonnens did not venture there due to storms and it was deemed uninhabitable, but there was no divide based on faith as is presented in the movie.
> I mean, could you imagine if a worm got past the Shield Wall? We wouldn't be able to use our shields and laz guns... Shields can't be used in the desert because they attract worms and put them in a killing frenzy. This wouldn't make a difference here, since the worms were already controlled by Fremen, pointing them straight at the imperial troops. Just nitpicking here, your other points are spot on.
In that books, part of the point of blowing a hole in the shield wall is to allow a huge storm to knock out all the shields of the Emperor’s army too if I remember correctly.
Ah yes, you may be right. I'm reading the first book again, I'm almost at the end. I'll check.
the Shield Wall is a rocky geographic feature, not a bunch of the energy shields in one place.
I'm well aware. OP said "our shields and laz guns". We're talking about actual shields, not the geographic feature.
ah, my bad. i saw your quote include "Shield Wall" and my thumbs just started typing. apologies.
Correct me if I'm wrong, as I've read dune a few years ago, but wasn't it mentioned that Harkonen were afraid to.use lasers after Duncan hid some shield generators under the sand and set them to weakest strength, maximum coverage? I believ there was a scene where Paul was terrified that Duncan set off the family atomics.
In general, in Dune universe knives are the preferred weapon exactly because of the risks involved. Las gun and shield combo produces a nuclear explosion that would kill both the shooter and the target. Since shields are very wide spread, it means that las guns in general are too dangerous to use. At the same time, Arrakis and the effects shields have on worms put every party into a unique position where the status quo is revised and using las guns is ok, but using shields isn’t. However, if you consider the way they train for the combat I am fairly certain that all people involved have fear of las gun/shield come ingrained. And living with Femen is the only reason why Paul isn’t the same, which brings him one step ahead of the rest of Imperium.
Shields were deemed useless because of the storm that entered the basin when the mountains were destroyed.
In the books Paul & Jessica are with the Fremen a few years before the final battle. They teach the Freman Bene Gesserit kung fu (the weirding way) and that pushes them to the next level. But you are underestimating how devastating the atomics & worms surprise attack (coordinated with a huge sandstorm) is, love how it was depicted in the films.
The Fremen were already substantially better than the Sardaukar even before they met Jessica. Thufir observes the Fremen almost effortlessly dispatch a contingent of them and take their ornithopter, then kamikaze an entire troop transport, and the Fremen are like "wow, the Sardaukar fight well" because they made them work a bit for it.
I love that part, the fremen is like "yeah, they good" and Thufir is just like "???"
One of the things I missed the most in the movies, I loved how the Sardaukar have their unbeatable reputation and then every offworld character gets a scene where they're stunned when the Fremen steamroll them. I could read a whole book of Thufir saying things like "... Those were *Sardaukar* 🤯"
It’s definitely understated in the movies. Theres the scene where a group of Sardaukar totally slaughter the Atreides that had been defending against the Harkonnens, then later on a small group of Fremen manage to kill several Sardaukar in the ecology base.
If I’m remembering correctly, in the books the real threat of House Atreides was that they had trained a small core of troops to be the equal of the Sardaukar, and the Emperor feared what would happen if they were allowed to grow that force into something approaching the scale of the Sards.
That is true, plus Duke Leto's influence could build a power base to challenge the Emperor and his supporters.
It's also that the emperor ruled through heritage, patronage, and fear. The Atreides on the other hand genuinely *loved* their Duke and were fanatically loyal to the same degree as Sardaukar but without the brainwashing.
In the first movie, Duncan explicitly states, “there’s no better fighters in the imperium…” when referring to the Fremen. He even mentions in the same scene how close he came to dying because of their fighting ability.
To glom from this with quotes from a chapter that does *not* appear in the movie. This happens after the Atreides are killed/on the run from the Harkonnens, and Thufir (who survives) is holed up with a Fremen trying to figure out what to do next. It's a lovely scene, but I'll edit for brevity: > "Liet wished to see one of the weapons for himself." > >"Then you should just go take one," Hawat sneered. > >"Yes," the Fremen said. "We took one. We have it hidden where Stilgar can study it for Liet and where Liet can see it for himself if he wishes. But I doubt he'll want to: the weapon is not a very good one. Poor design for Arrakis." > >"You . . . took one?" Hawat asked. > > "It was a good fight," the Fremen said. "We lost only two men and spilled the water from more than a hundred of theirs." > >"We would not have lost the two except for those others fighting beside the Harkonnens," the Fremen said. "Some of those are good fighters." > >"He's talking about Sardaukar," Hawat said. > >"Sardaukar!" the Fremen said, and there appeared to be glee in his voice. "Ah-h-h, so that's what they are! This was a good night indeed." "We've sent three of them captive to be questioned by Liet's men . " > >Hawat ' s aide spoke slowly, disbelief in every word: "You . . . captured Sardaukar?" > >"Only three of them," the Fremen said. "They fought well."
Welp, I guess I'm reading Dune again!
oh yeah I remember this dialogue, gave me a chuckle
That would have been a good and short scene to keep in. A way of covering the Sarduakar menance, the cinematics of hundreds of Sarduakar leaping over the hill and still finding it tough going, and the Harkonen then gleaning the direction of the escaping ‘thopter Duncan is piloting.
The sardaukar are also way past thier prime at this point right? They haven't fought a proper battle in eons by the time the whole Jihad starts. Ironically the same thing sorta happens to the fremen after the Jihad, they too get complacent and loose thier edge. Edit: found the source (Terminology Of The Imperium) the soldier-fanatics of the Padishah Emperor. They were men from an environmental background of such ferocity that it killed six out of thirteen persons before the age of eleven. Their military training emphasized ruthlessness and a near-suicidal disregard for personal safety. They were taught from infancy to use cruelty as a standard weapon, weakening opponents with terror. At the apex of their sway over the affairs of the Universe, their swordsmanship was said to match that of the Ginaz tenth level and their cunning abilities at in-fighting were reputed to approach those of a Bene Gesserit adept. Any one of them was rated a match for any ten ordinary Landsraad military conscripts. **By the time of Shaddam IV, while they were still formidable, their strength had been sapped by overconfidence, and the sustaining mystique of their warrior religion had been deeply undermined by cynicism.**
Not quite. The Sardukars true strength dosent com from their Imperial training, rather from surviving, the radiactive dog-eat-dog prison world of Salusa Secunuds. The single most deadly enviroment in the empire. Well, second most deadly, after Arrakis. Which is why the fremen are that much tougher still.
I don't think living on a deadly prison planet lets you survive with a dull edge. Arrakis is just that much more deadly.
Is that stated somewhere in the books? I can't remember anything about them being past their prime.
Its in the appendices of the first book (Terminology of the Imperium) **By the time of Shaddam IV, while they were still formidable, their strength had been sapped by overconfidence, and the sustaining mystique of their warrior religion had been deeply undermined by cynicism.**
They were better, but the only skirmish among them on almost equal footing saw 7 dead Sardaukar vs 2 dead & 4 injured Fremen. So not effortlessly.
Or that one paragraph where one fremen kamikazes his ornithopter into a troop transport containing 300 sardaukar and the only response the fremen gives is ,,a fair exchange''. Bro that's not a fair exchange at all
Just to add on: the sandstorm really screwed with advanced technology (because... reasons). So when you compound losing access to a bunch of tech they rely on along with atomics, sandworms, and a surprise attack IN a sand storm and the Imperial troops were just thrown into a confusing situation without being able to rely on tools they likely had taken for granted.
The sandstorm messes with shields because shields block anything moving quickly from entering. Suddenly you have billions of little things moving quickly trying to enter constantly for a long time. They basically overwhelm it. The shields shut down. We don't know if the batteries ran out, they overheated from the strain, or their capacity was exceeded and some sand got through them damaged them. But they stopped working.
The storm DDoS attacked the shields, overloading them.
I thought it was the static electricity in the storm?
I always thought it to be both. The sand flying around makes the shields not work correctly (overloading its capacity), and the static in the air interfering with both the shields and the communications equipment. Effectively, this removes the emperors protection, conceals the battle, and prevents the emperor from communicating to the landsraad what is happening.
Exactly. OP's question is slightly funny to me because the movie clarified how they used the atomics for me, I sorta could picture it but I'm a little slow.
bruh, its not reasons, its electromagnetism which even here on Holy Terra during storms
When dealing with fantastical technology “reasons” is a fine enough explanation for why it behaves the way it does. It was necessary for plot purposes that it behave in a certain way so that is why it behaves as it does.
Yes, the films demonstrated a decisive strategic victory against an opponent that was over-reliant on technology *(Butlerians rolling in their graves)* and Sardaukar superiority. It was about as perfect of an Video Game RTS overwhelming victory as could be depicted on screen. Watching it unfold was like playing a round of Total War. The books did a better job laying the foundation of the matchup. The comparisons between the Sardaukar and Fedaykin environment playing an important roll in the *power level*. This plot point is entirely missing from the Emperor's motivations to destroy Leto and House Atreides. That reveal was powerful in the books. The whole "he was a weak man" bit doesn't do the original reasoning justice at all. The Fremen's ability was nodded to throughout the movies in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Like Duncan's comments about their fighting ability being incredible. This, coming from one of the best swordsmen of House Atreides. Another big moment in the Part 2 that reflected some of the book text was the Fremen that attack Rabban on the thopter. It was a great addition to showcase the Fremen suicidal relentlessness. Rabban staring in fear and disbelief. Underrated scene.
The thopter scene was one of the best in both movies and all adaptations...DV nailed it and the fear on Rabbans face..🤌
Don't you mean Combat Yodeling instead of kung fu?
Some sort of sound based weapon, I hear?
The only sound based weapon you'd need
Do you need some sort of module for that or can you do it without?
Weird module that would be eh?
Paul was so good at it that he didn't NEED a module.
Wow. That’s seems like it would make a great ending
I think it would be even better if Paul was able to implode a dead guys chest and cause a small earthquake... with just his voice!
GET OUT OF MY MIIIND
If you do, better put in your earplugs!
In the books it’s that every Bene Gesserit is roughly on par with Batman. Sadly, Combat Yodeling - like Battle Pugs and Heart Plugs - was an invention for the 1984 movie.
You could blow with this. It’s my weapon of choice.
A great grandfather of a storm!
Usul, we have wormsign the likes of which even God has never seen.
The book specifies its takes (if I remember correctly) 8 sarduakar to kill 1 fremen on average. The fremen are highly skilled fighters, the idea being the sarduakar are trained on a planet that’s made to be difficult to live on, while the fremen survive on a planet that’s naturally difficult to live on. In the books when the Harkonnens invade sietch tabr, only 3 sarduakar escape alive and the sietch was made up of purely women children and old men. TLDR Fremen are 8 times as badass as Sarduakar
And the 3 that “escaped” were actually captured and awaiting execution. They escaped because Muad’Dib commanded they’d be let go.
I thought they fired up the jet engines and that set ablaze all the fremen chasing them? Or am I getting scenes mixed up?
I’m talking about the book. They capture the Sardaukhar and Muad’Dib lets them go so the other Sardaukhar fears them. If they’re killed and never found, nature could’ve killed then. But 3 bearing witness to how superior the Fremen are, that builds fear. Or, at the least, distrust.
Yall are discussing two separate events. There's the assassination attempt by Captain Aramsham, in which three Sardaukar are captured and released to House Corrino, and there the Sardaukar raid on the sietch, in which Alia is captured and Leto II (thd OG) is killed.
Thank you. You’re right
I’m talking about the book as well in the scene where they specify that the sarduakar lost to women and children, they only escaped cause they turned on the jet engine and fried the fremen. This is when they captured Alia
/u/PM_ME_YOUR_THESES is talking about when Paul meets Gurney and the smugglers in the desert and some are Sardaukar infiltrators, where Paul sends Captain Aramsham back to the Emperor with his message. You're talking about the end of the book when the Sardaukar attack the southern sietches where the old and nonfighters are staying away from the conflict in the north, but even they fought with such ferocity that the Sardaukar had to retreat using their ship thrusters to incinerate some Fremen.
Thank you for clearing that up!
Youre mixing up scenes, the reunion with gurney and the attack on the sietch are two different fights
That was when Alia was captured (or allowed to be taken), it was the only way the Sarduakar could retreat against elderly, infirm, women and children.
That was a different event. You're referring to the sardaukar that were mixed in with the spice smugglers they brought back to Sietch Tabr. Understandable mistake though, because that was the only time in the book that Sardaukar were in Sietch Tabr. The raid OP referred to wasn't at Sietch Tabr, but another unnamed one where the women and children were. Edit: actually it seems like OP was combining elements of both events.
I also love how despite that difference in ability the fremen actually respect the sarduakar somewhat since they are much better than the Harkonnen troops lol.
By Paul's own account, it's 3 Sardaukar for 1 Fremen.
I thought they had Paul's death commandos there too
that's kinda ridiculous and where the book falls short imo. pretty unreasonable
It’s also that the sardukar have been getting less deadly as time has gone on with relative peace. They’ve become sort of soft because of the luxuries that come with being the emperors personally army.
Sardukar were plenty deadly.. they were corporate soldiers. Freeman were fighting for their Messiah and they were bad assess before...they were 3 levels up..
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lol are you serious? That sounds kinda silly to me personally 😂 On dune they don’t choose the weakest like on Secundus, the weak just die. The planet is the most brutal place in the galaxy to live on. It’s completely believable that a people who HAVE to be BORN STRONG to survive would be more capable fighters than a trained military force who grew up in RELATIVE comfort. I mean it’s a story where magic sand lets you travel through space but THATS where you drew the line? To each his own I guess lol
The idea that harsh environments make stronger soldiers is not backed up in reality. That said, it is a pretty established rule of Dune’s world, and one that I think works well in the story, as long as we realize it’s not based in reality
Yeah it’s fiction lol who cares if it’s based in reality it works in the story. I wasn’t the one saying I stopped reading cause dune wasn’t realistic 😂 I would be curious if harsh environments along with battle training from an early age would produce better soldiers. That would be tough data to provide, harsh environments probably do produce better physical attributes or at least I would think it did
Historically, it was the opposite. Part of it was that if you lived in bad land, and were stronger than your neighbor who lived in good land, you would go take their land. People who lived on good land would also be well fed, and with a food surplus would have time to be able to learn to fight. They also tended to have larger populations.
Harsh upbringing with few resources and harsh training from an early age definitely can breed superb warriors. See Spartans and Mongolians
Spartans were not particularly good warriors. At most, they were marginally better than the rest of Greece, and that was because they had more flexible tactics rather than anything else. As for the Mongolians, they did benefit from their lifestyle, but only because it was directly applicable to how they fought (which happened to be rather effective). If you spend most of your life riding and hunting with a bow, that translates fairly well into fighting with a bow from horseback. While the Fremen certainly do have skills that will help them fight on Arrakis (worm-riding mostly), I’m not convinced that that’s going to make them better generalist soldiers than sardaukar who have been training their whole lives. Now, the weirding way does change that somewhat, but I’m not sure that the sardaukar couldn’t have been taught the weirding way if someone had tried.
Ι am 100% confident whatever you know about Spartans is coming from YouTube channels. Since I have read the sources in original greek, I cam assure you that for at least 2 centuries Soartans were by far (and I mean by far) the best land troopers in ancient Greece. Fremen had seen more action than Sardaukar since Sardaukar were largely unchallenged for many may years. Fremen didn't only train at worm riding, but at stealth, duelling, guerilla warfare. In a universe where melee battle is pre eminent, and having the home advantage, that is paramount. Tough men, men who have lived tough lives, tend to be quite good in battle, even when outgunned. See the Vietcong, the Caucasians vs the Russian Empire, the Taliban vs the Soviets etc
Desert power. This was the whole plan by Leto. No one expected them to be so numerous, organized, or that they would have atomics to blow the shield wall. In addition Paul has prescience. He can see the different futures and their outcomes and he chose this strategy because of its effectiveness and the narrow path it would lead to: survival for him and revenge for his father's death.
throughout the movie Paul waged war on Harkonnen spice fields so it's not crazy to assume their forces we're dwindling already, plus when the Baron is brought before the emperor the intel they have on the fremen is little to none. They also didn't expect nukes and worms and a giant storm as their main fighting force.
Atomics causing mass disorientation (there's purposeful laws against using them that Paul was very close to breaking)/worms. Shock and awe is a powerful thing.
What are the laws against them? And why would Paul care about those rules after his family was wiped out ?
"My Duke", Guerney said, "my chief worry is the atomics. If you use them to blast a hole in the Shield Wall..." "Those people up there won't use atomics against us," Paul said. "They don't dare...and for the same reason they cannot risk our destroying of the spice." But the injunction against--" "The injunction!" Paul barked. "It's fear, not the injunction that keeps the Houses from hurling atomics against each other. The language of the Great Convention is clear enough: 'Use of atomics against humans shall be cause for planetary obliteration.' We're going to blast the Shield Wall, not humans."
Dope
In the book it’s explained that the sarduakar are so highly trained because their training happens on the emperors prison planet. An extremely rough and tough place to just live combined with an extremely rigorous training program made it so the sarduakar had to be insanely strong just to not die. The fremen had a similar sort of thing just existing and surviving on arrakis. The planet is so tough with living conditions so bad that in order to just not die the fremen had to become stronger than the sarduakar. There’s a great quote from the book that goes something like “god created Arrakis to train the faithful.” This was something that Leto had some knowledge of and it’s why he tried to make a fremen alliance before he was killed. He thought if the fremen and atredies combined forces they could have stopped the incoming attack that he knew was coming. So combine their strength with the dust storm weakening the captiols shields with the atomics and they were able to storm the capitol without much issue.
This is the best answer: I think Paul and the Emperor even talk about it at the end of the book, when Paul threatens him by promising to make Salusa Secundis a nice place to live.
Gentrification, the last resort of the fanatic.
1. They did not believe it was possible that the Fremen could attack the basin. (Book Baron specifically says they patrol the walls for Fremen infiltrators, but the Emperor believes it is impossible.) 2. None of their conventional weapons were capable of harming a sandworm. The worms can crush entire formations and breach any defensive position. 3. The sandstorm disables their shields. They did not anticipate this. (In the movie, the Baron says the basin walls will protect them from the sandstorm but....) 4. They did not anticipate that Paul would use atomics to destroy the wall. The destruction of the walls throws the Sardaukar into total confusion, and that's BEFORE the sandworms showed up. This is what Leto referred to as "desert power." The Harkonnens and the Emperor do not understand Arrakis, the weather, the people, or the wildlife. They are stupid and arrogant and failed to adapt their tactics to the operating environment.
The Fremen were taught the Weirding Way that Jessica and Paul knew. (Forget the weirding modules in Lynch’s Dune, they were a means to tell a story quickly.) The timeline from Paul entering the desert until the end is at least four years, and during that time the Fremen added the Weirding Way of fighting to their already considerable fighting prowess. Edit: weirding modules. Also by “the end” I mean where the Dune book ends.
COMBAT YODELING
does that make the Lynch movie qualify for being a shounen anime?
Mostly the Emperor's vanity was at fault. He couldn't possibly conceive there was a fighting force superior to his Sardaukar.
IIRC the appendix in the first book mentions that they basically got complacent, including lowering investments into further training.
Paul and the Fremen had a ton of advantages. * Paul's prescience allowed them to time the attack with the storm which shorted out all the Harkonnen shields * They blew a huge hole in the shield wall which allowed them to ride worms in, which the Harkonnens assumed they were safe from * The Harkonnens and the emperor believe the Fremen are a small group of pesky native guerilla fighters. A full frontal assault was the last thing they were expecting from them * Fremen are already the best fighters in the galaxy, plus Paul and Jessica have been teaching them Bene Gesserit fighting techniques. Even without the element of surprise Fremen will beat Sardaukar head to head every time. In the book the Sardaukar try to take out a sietch full of exclusively the elderly, women, and children, and they still barely win.
The Emperor and his troops were very well defended by the Shield Wall, who were a literal mountain range. Paul blew up the mountains using atomics and cleared up the way for the biggest sandstorm Arrakis has been, which threw whatever troops there were in disarray and was ised as a cover for the sandworms' riders. So probably whatever weapons and forces the Sardaukar or Harkonnen had, were completely overwhelmed.
Yes, BUT, it’s most subtextual. The scale of the Fremen and their operations are portrayed more clearly (as a large, coordinated culture). Paul is also a genius level strategist (even without prescience). And the Fremen are all basically at peak human conditioning.
The United States was put into complete shock and inability to act after the 9-11 attack. Imagine if Al Queda had the numbers and skill the Fremen did to have a full scale attack after the planes hit the towers.
The movies portray too advanced technology in rocketry. The great houses fight very ritualized wars. They use poison and a knife in the back. Rockets and artillery are very rarely used because they cause more civilian damage and generate more paperwork. The Empire does not like economic splash damage in wars. Also any kind of automated targeting or guided rockets is incredibly, incredibly forbidden. A single modern cruise missile would is likely to get your planet slagged, because all the great houses would unite against you. That's not to say that manually targeted artillery and unguided rockets weren't known. It's actually the other tactic Paul brings to the Fremen. They make rockets in the seitch factories and use them against Harkonen spice harvesting. The Baron used artillery in the betrayal attack, but he forbids Rabban from keeping them. In the final battle, the Emperor doesn't know the Fremen can ride worms. "They will ride in on the backs of worms" would have been Sardukar joke answered with "you've been drinking too much spice liquor with the smugglers." Then there was the great grandmother of a strom. The never would have thought that anyone would attack during the storm. Shields don't work in a sandstorm. It overwhelms the shield generator from deflecting so much mass. So their shield advantage was moot. Further Sardukar are used to fighting with shields, and trained to be slow on the attack. Fremen have no such conditioned weakness in unshielded combat. In the books the big concern is that they will escape back to space. They solve this by using their rockets to knock the nosecones off the ships. Also in the books the final battle is a coordinated attack against Harkonen garrisons all over the northern hemisphere. Or rather the culmination of such an offensive. I'm so tired of the "mob charging each other" trope in movie battles. The Baron is forced to abandon Rabban completely after some careless words the Emperor's errand boy that implies he wants to copy Salusa Secundus. This is the opening the Femen exploit. The Emperor shows up on Arrakis because he thinks the Baron was on Leto's side all along and they they intend to challenge with with their "New Sardukar." He doesn't expect the numbers of Femen because the Fremen have been paying off the Guild to prevent any permanent satellites over Arrakis.
Even the movie makes it clear; 1) The Sardaukar heavily relies on their reputation and tech. It is implied that they may have softened under Imperial preference; for example, the Atriedes troops actually put up a good fight. Their tech is also largely a liability on Arrakis (shields draw worms, the jetpacks have limited utility on the relatively flat open dunes). They are also very arrogant and overconfident. 2) The source of their power is living on a deathworld. The Fremen also live on (arguably) a harsher world, and that latter world is where they are fighting. 3) The Fremen utilize guerilla tactics, whereas The Sarduakar has been largely deployed by the Emperor to fight his enemies (i.e. highly organized conventional armies owned by the Houses or various other guilds). 4) Remember that the initial mission was to eliminate House Atriedes with sabotage on their side. They were not initially prepared to fight a guerilla war. Now remember that the Sarduakar are considered much stronger than the Harkonnen troops (who favor artillery strikes, which are much less effective if the enemy is spread out, mobile, and lacks a rigid command structure), making the Harkonnen even easier targets. As well, the Harkonnen require the spice fields to operate, giving the Fremen an easy target that has massive economic reprecussions for their enemy, while lacking any similar target. The book elaborates on these points (for example, the Fremen later become 'softened' with their world being terraformed and the various rewards earned from their many conquests), but the movies do a good job of conveying this.
Many of these technical questions aren't actually important to the story. What's important is the result. They did win. I feel like there's this new kind of fandom, that expects a fully written wiki about every aspect of a book, which isn't needed for every story. It's like asking: "so how did the little red riding hood not notice, that it was in fact the wolf dressed up as her grandmother?"
There were always such people, the internet just made them visible. Some people feel better when they can rationalize everything, even if it deprives actual story from it's charm.
But the book does have extensive information on this, people arent making this up and twisting sentences and adding up their own tidbits to the story. They are just explaining it as it was spread out in the book in a consolidated manner
True. Same as the whole jihad. If happens off screen. How exactly doesn't matter. Or how does spice work? Not actually important.
> how does spice work? To be honest I feel like THEY barely know, and that's why it works so well narratively. I am definitely someone who wants to be grounded in my worlds. I want to know how the spice works because that probably informs more about the world which is all informing the story, so normally things like this (it doesn't matter how it works, it works) get on my nerves. Especially in scifi where that shit happens all the time. But if your story takes place in a setting where humans have canonically massively shunned technology ('thinking machines' but point still stands) it totally makes sense that the reality of the situation (and not just lazy worldbuilding) is that yeah, they don't know really know how it actually works either.
You need to make the audience believe in what happens. There's a lot of ways to do this, and appeals to realism are usually misguided, but getting them to believe in your story is crucial. If the Fremen are awe-inspiring fighters, then inspire awe!
That's a problem if the movies though. The books make the "weirding way" sound quite powerful (at least in my imagination)
They don't get into it deeply in the movies but in Part 1, when Jessica and Paul run into Stilgar and his group, Jessica dispatches the Fremen that tries to sneak up on her and the Weirding Way is mentioned at that point.
Oh, definitely. It's really not something to skip!
Yeah I hear you but how do the fedaykin bury themselves in the sand before that battle
The Fremen were fierce warriors. They were good enough against the Harkonnen. With the extra training from Paul and his mother, they got better. And when Gurney was "found" they gained better training. At that point they were good enough against the Sardaukars. After that, when the jihad started, they simply had the "high ground" advantage with the guild support when going against rogue houses. (they could destroy whole planets from orbit).
Also one thing people havent mentioned is the sandstorm cut off the one thing they have over the fremen, air power. Their warships and gunships were unable to help them.
The Fremen are better fighters, and not trained to fight shield users. They have the element of surprise, the shock and awe of the atomics and worm attack, and then the fact the Imperium would not really use Lasguns because of the risk of it going nuclear in contact with a shield. The Harkonnens and Sardaukar also cannot use shields because of the dust storm. In the movie the Fremen appear from the dust of the explosion and the storm atop invulnerable Sandworms against inferior fighters who are not really accustomed to having such brutal ferocity directed at them, or who are simply not used to fighting against the Sandworms. The Fremen also outnumber the Sardaukar and Harkonnen force’s significantly, in addition to being superior fighters, in addition to having their strategy predetermined by a near infallible prescient vision. How could they lose?
Everyone else has touched on Fremen fighting abilities. The book describes the battle as follows: It’s a three or two pronged attack. The city dwellers pushed out of the city and pissed off by the looting flood arrakeen. The worms will shock the troops from an unexpected direction after the wall blows. The main force comes from some other direction. Right after the wall blows and right when the storm hits, artillery blows off the noses of the ships so they can’t escape. It’s basically described as a slaughter.
In the book(s), the Sardaukar are in decline—as is the entire Imperium. While they still the best known fighters in the Imperium they are no real match for the Fremen in anything like an equal contest. So even though large, technology assisted, forces of Sardaukar and Harkonnen can arguably hold their own against smaller, raider size Fremen forces, they had no answers for the en masse Fremen assault of Arrakeen accompanied by nukes and sandworms. I thought it was a particularly good decision by DV to have the last we see of the Sardaukar being a handful rushing into an offscreen battle against a no doubt significantly larger group of Fremen fighters. Their quick destruction off camera as witnessed by Paul’s immediate arrival on camera was very impactful. So, end of the day, the superior fighting force won through surprise and disabling the shield wall. A “karma’s a bitch” full circle repeat of the original fall of Arrakeen to the Sardaukar and Harkonnen. Only this time, there will now be hell to pay throughout the universe.
>So why didn’t the Sardukar and Harkonen have a bunch of gun placements around the imperial tent ? https://preview.redd.it/ijlk56onm2vc1.jpeg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=63615f74981a56e09fd2fb86ed8d8e03b531f5f6 dig as many trenches, build as many lasgun nests, deploy as many barricades as you want, none of that will matter when a giant sandworm literally destroys the ground beneath your feet.
A key factor is that Sardaukar were used to fighting with shields, and the Fremen were used to fighting without them. Shield combat requires a whole different way of thinking and moving, and fighting like that without a shield is a death sentence. And the sandstorm prevented their shields from working properly. It could be compared to a professional sword fighter fighting a professional boxer in a fist fight. It doesn't matter how good you are with a sword if you don't have one.
Books will always explain these concepts better. How the frenen were better fighters. How the voice works. How spice of life works, what it specifically did and felt like inside Paul's brain. What it feels like from the gom jibbar and his conciousness and past memories unfolding, which ones of those memories stick out. These movies are amazing renditions of the even more amazing book and can only show so much. For anything where there may feel like gaps in comprehension, almost surely a book is going to be more beneficial to explain Outside of Dune, as well!
Warfare has been reduced to knife fighting. They are possibly the best knife fighters in the galaxy, they don’t fear death, they barely get tired, and they can survive in conditions that would kill almost any other human. It’s like having a whole civilization of Sardukar
Yeah but the film shows they have plenty more weapons like laz guns, rockets/atrillery, that beam of death that chased Duncan in the first film, and that machine gun looking thing that diced up the Fremen during their spice raids.
Oh yeah, I was just thinking about the book. Well, Paul’s emperor. He also has access to all that technology, and likely more of it than anyone else. And if you’re wondering how they could have initially won: guerilla fighters win wars all the time: Cuba, Afghanistan, Vietnam to name a few
Quick summary: - They're seriously underestimated in numbers - They're absolute beasts - They're religious zealots
The books do a better job at everything. There are a lot of great details. Highly recommend them.
The books make 3 important additional claims 1. The emporer uses his prison planet as a meat grinder to turn out his Sardukar troops. They are the most feared troops in the galaxy in part because they survived an extremely hostel environment. Dune is an even more hostile environment than the prison planet making the freman even more hard. 2. Gurney and Duncan were able to train atreides troops to be nearly as good as sardukar 3. There is a LOT more freman than everyone thought. So you have a large group of people who have already been hardened by the extreme conditions of dune, and who get further training from the best warriors or students of the best warriors the universe has ever seen. That’s how they won.
The fremen are led by a guy that can see the future. That's a pretty formidable advantage.
Its been mentioned in these comments already but I wanted to state it again + add some important context: The book puts a lot of emphasis is placed on the fighting capability of the individual fighters within a fighting force- and the idea that a harsh environment results in more hardened fighters. The emperor's power comes in large part because of the Sardaukar- who are considered to be the strongest fighting force within the universe, not due to their technology but due to the skill of every individual Sardaukar. Leto had some of the best fighters in the universe (Duncan & Gurney) train his forces to be basically the best amongst all the houses but they still didnt measure up to the Sardaukar (except for Duncan himself). Leto figured out that the missing ingredient wasnt better training but rather the fact that the Sardaukar come from the harsh conditions of a prison planet. This was the major reason that Leto took the gamble of accepting the Emperor's offer to rule Arrakis- because he believed that A. There were more Fremen than was officially reported and B. The Fremen were potentially better warriors than the Sardaukar due to surviving in the harsh conditions of Arrakis. The book specifies that this is what Leto refers to when he uses the phrase "Desert Power"- the potential to acquire a large army of Fremen, give them the Atreides training, and thus have an army capable of outright defeating the emperor. The book also has several differences and specifies some things the movie doesnt. 1. During the combined Harkonnen & Sardaukar raid which wipes out the Atreides, some Sardaukar end up going against desert Fremen and the Fremen are actually able to hold their own if not defeat the Sardaukar in 1 on 1 fights- a feat virtually unheard of by any other fighters. In fact the Sardaukar preserve Duncan Idaho's body specifically because it was so unusual for someone to be able to take on so many Sardaukar at once. 2. 5 years take place between the Fremen taking in Paul & Jessica and Paul leading the Fremen against Arakeen. During this time Paul & Jessica actively train the Fremen in Bene Gesserit & Atreides fighting styles- elevating their combat capability to above that of the Sardaukar. So fast forward to the raid on Arakeen- the Emperor & Harkonnens have no idea that the Fremen are as capable, numerous, or organized as they are. They just found out Paul is alive however they have no idea that he is prescient. Paul on the other hand- is leading a fighting force which is stronger than the Sardaukar and he has used prescience to plan the attack- meaning he's already figured out the path to victory in his head.
Yes: 1. In the book, Paul has several years with the Fremen. Paul knew how Duncan and Gurney trained his family’s troops, and it was that training that scared the emperor enough to try wiping out Paul’s family. They only lacked wealth and numbers. The Fremen gave them numbers 2. Raban is a “tank brain” in the books. He is not a great military strategist. The first choice was Piter, who was a vastly more interesting (and terrifying) character in the books. Piter being “unavailable” left the Baron with Raban 3. The Baron intentionally isolates Raban for political reasons (and because the captured Hawat is subtly weakening the Harkonnens from within 4. The battle of Arakeen happens very differently in the books. The explosion (which was certainly not delivered by missiles) lets in the storm, which takes out shields, and the Fremen immediately shoot the nose off the imperial ships on the ground (the moment the shields are down) which prevents them from taking off 5. Paul doesn’t threaten the great houses with destruction “of the spice sands”… he threatens the guild with triggering an environmental catastrophe that would kill all the worms (and therefore end the spice cycle forever). The guild needs to spice more than anyone else, so they threaten to strand any house that lands a ship on Arrakis. This leaves the emperor completely isolated 6. Most importantly, Paul never sends a note to the Emperor. The Emperor goes to Arrakis because Raban was defeated strategically- the Harkonnens controlled the cities, but the Fremen made the desert a killing ground for spice miners It’s also worth noting that Paul had a son with Chani, and the Emperor sent a large force to take some hostage, but Paul’s son was killed in the action. Paul’s sister (the toddler with millions of years worth of memories) is taken captive and she is the one who tells the emperor who he’s fighting. Finally, the “north vs south” Fremen is almost entirely a movie addition. The Fremen were very much unified (largely as a result of Liet Kynes and his father manipulation of the Fremen religion). Basically- yes. It’s explained. The movie was a good movie, but it took away a lot of the subtlety in the books, and at the end it’s telling a very different story. Two big examples- 1. Chani doesn’t leave 2. The great houses accept Paul’s ascension
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What left me confused was that, in the movie, Paul had a run-in with the emperor earlier but didn't engage him. Killed his grandfather and left.
He had the fremen capture the emperor’s entourage and hold them until the duel the next morning. I imagine he needed time to formulate a plan for the exact terms he’d use to seize the throne.
That and let the battle outside finish up, they also had to capture Arakeen the city, which Gurney pulled off overnight when he killed the Beast. Plus his forces had to wipe up all remaining Sardaukar from the field.
Yes exactly. Negotiate while advancing. He needed to be sure he secured Arakeen and that no remaining enemy combatants could contest him.
I don’t think the movie did a bad job of it. You see that the Sardukar are in formation around the camp, but they’re not really expecting anything on the scale that they got. Paul’s use of atomics is frankly an insane plan, I mean imagine you’re standing around in a largely ceremonial role guarding the imperial camp; you’re protected by a huge mountain range that any force would be hugely impeded by, you’d see anything coming, and you know that there’s a giant sandstorm ravaging the desert outside the mountain range. Then all of a sudden a fucking atomic bomb goes off and blast a hole in a huge freaking mountain. It’d be just as shocking as today with the strict prohibition on atomics in the Great Convention (if you ever played MW2 when it came out, that level was shocking even in a video game). The imperial forces couldn’t use shields either. This might be the only point against the movie as I can’t remember an explicit explanation in them, but sandstorms render shields useless IIRC. They kind of hint at that with the way the storm batters the shield of the Emperor’s ship, but I don’t think it’s ever spelled out. I might be wrong about this though, I can’t remember shields ever being shown during the fighting. Regardless. The Sardukar thought they were completely safe, then in a matter of two seconds there’s an atomic bomb blowing up their defenses, their formation is completely destroyed by the debris crushing them and the dust cloud, then a bunch of worms rear out of the cloud and start eating them. Of course they panic and run, and then they’re easy pickings for the Fremen to chase down and destroy in pockets. Laz guns aren’t going to be used in combat around shields, one bad shot and you blow up the Emperor and his entire court. I do wish that projectile weapons were more widely used in the Dune universe, but they’re really not very common even in the book. This is explained by the prevalence of shields which render them useless, but they should really be more common as they have plenty of uses in situations where shields aren’t likely to be used, especially on Dune where the Harkonens had plenty of time to adapt. I think the use of guns in the movie was improvement on this fact from the book, but does present this incongruity you point out. I think the best explanation is that the Emperor thought they were safe behind the shield wall, and that major defenses weren’t necessary as he could always just leave in his ship if there was an attack, and Paul’s plan was just so crazy that no one thought it likely. It’s a dumb mistake, but hardly the first one made in fact or fiction that I don’t think it breaks suspension of disbelief.
In the book it is mentioned that the Emperor's party even brought along their women and civil servants; they truly thought they were beyond untouchable.
Smh. Of course they do. They explain everything between, it's a trope for a reason
Yes
Short answer: yes
Well the main shield had been taken down by a massive sandstorm , and no army can really stand up to a bunch of sand worms raining down on them. That combined with the fact that the Fremen were simply much better and more numerous fighters than the sardaukar and were trained by Paul in how to fight people with shields
The Fremen who were already incredible warriors were now battle hardened, elite, soldiers under an excellent command structure. Maybe I’m wrong but when I read the book I kinda got the subtext that the Fremen under Paul’s leadership started using and training with captured Harkonnen weaponry. So by the end of the book you have a Harkonnen force so deteriorated that they stopped patrolling outside of cities, one division of Sardakaur vs. Paul with all the Fremen he can gather, hundreds of Ornithopters, a nuke that blasts open a hole in the shield law (which comes very close to breaking their rule on nukes being used on humans), and crashing in on giant sandstorms. So in context it’s kinda easy to see how the Fremen just absolutely smashed the imperial forces. And to answer a few of your questions Lazeguns are too dangerous to use around emperor with so many shields about. Even so, once the worms showed up everyone knows shields off or those worms are going into a shield killing frenzy and killing anyone not on top of them. Also if there were gun placements they would have been taken out quickly by the Ornithopters Paul had been stockpiling during his guerrilla war for the past few years. All in all I feel the book does a better job and pacing the conflict and making it feel earned but both movies are still excellent IMO.
I can't remember how overtly it's covered in the films, but it's definately in the books. The sarduakar aren't actually as good as they think they are. They are painfully arrogant, and have got complacent. They haven't had a quality opponent in generations. Everyone believes they are invincible, so they didn't bother putting out defences. Even if they could get in, which they can't, they would loose. Paul even talks about how is going to train the fremen to loose and not be so arrogant.
> The sarduakar aren't actually as good as they think they are. They are painfully arrogant, and have got complacent. Sounds like what happened to the Knights Templar.
In the book the Fremen are taught the weirding way by Paul, the bene gesserit martial arts that allows them to move at super human speeds. This is what pushes them over the edge to effortlessly beat the sardukkar and harkonnens
Even before that, when the Harkonen attacked the Atreides and Paul and Jessica were fleeing, they met with some fremen and one commented about how the Sardaukar were pretty tough, and took a little longer to kill than expected (or something like that, not near my books to check). Point being that the Fremen were more than a match for the Saudaukar before learning the Wierding Way. With it, they were nearly unstoppable.
Yes
Read the fuckin book lol
After Paul and his Fremen arrive at the Shieldwall mountains outside where the Emperor landed, Imperial forces do shoot at a forward group of Fremen with projectile weapons, but the Fremen were shielded. This does two things: it tells the Imperial forces that projectile weapons won’t be useful, and using las guns would be suicidal.
I'm pretty sure Paul notes some kind of proto-prescience present in all fremen, manifesting as some kind of hive-mind/connectedness, which is also described when Jessica gets some tea when she was thirsty without even asking.
The books definitely do give better descriptions, but outside of the appendices you still don't get a whole lot of *direct* information about how the Fremen are such good fighters compared to the Sardaukar, just that they are on average able to go about 3-to-1 vs them. At least as far the final battle goes, they were within the shield wall, so they did wear some shields in the books, at least enough to discourage the use of lasguns or projectile weapons, which would be suicidal or useless, respectively, against a shielded opponent. So that brings them to knife combat where they are at least 3x better, in the middle of a massive, ***massive*** sandstorm which they know how to use to their advantage, with sandworms breaching any defensive positions of the enemy and demoralizing/striking fear into even the likes of the Sardaukar. That pretty much makes it clear how they so thoroughly routed the imperial forces.
Paul is prescient
Haven't seen the second movie yet, but am currently reading through Heretics of Dune. One thing I've noticed is that major violent events don't have alot of pages dedicated to them. They are often referred to and there are some abstract descriptions about the Fremen Jihad, but more often its the focus is on the politics, and single combat violence that occurs. For the final fight the book basically ignores most of the fighting between the Sardukar and Fremen and focuses on how Paul and his party end up in the throne room fighting the Haroknens is about the extent of it.
the fremen are simply: like that
The movies hint at the reason it was so easy for the Fremen to win when the Harkonnen's toughest warriors refused to go down into the deep desert because they didn't think anything could survive there. Paul and his warriors not only learned how to survive, but thrive, in that environment. And then, they caused that deadly-to-other-people environment to descend on the emperor and his troops.
Read them and find out?
Don’t really feeel like it tbh
Yes definitely. For one, before the final battle officially began, in small skirmishes the Fremen used shields so the Harkonnens and Saudakar weren't willing to use lazguns. Then the Great great grandmother of a storm wiped out any shields they had as well, as well as the shield around the emperor's ship and tent. The Fremen were already better fighters than the Saudakar but on top of that they had Paul's and Jessica's training in the weirding ways and Paul was a fantastic tactician who had special knowledge into the ways of the major houses. Fremen had home court advantage and the atomics, worms, and the attack in general took the enemy by surprise, and they disabled the emperor's ship cutting him off from retreat. Basically the emperor was fucked any two ways you look at it. He overestimated his position thinking he was safe behind his shield and Saudakar and on top of that he had Alia as a hostage, though she had let herself be caught.
I like the idea that Freemen have some kind of prescience accuracy limited to a few seconds in front or perhaps their opponent's movement in melee, due to the spice in their body.
I thought it was pretty simple; shock and awe. Just look at what the Sardaukar had to deal with; atomic weapons, an incredibly motivated and skilled group of fighters in the Fremen, including large numbers from the South, **and multiple sand worms**.
If I'm not fever dreaming, Paul instructed the Fremen to put shields on some storage caches, to make the Harkonnen think they are using shields. I also feel like it was mentioned that the Emperor didn't know the Fremen had no Shields, just after the landing.
"Paul? Mau-DIB!!!????" And the Sardukar noping out of the worm fight were some of my fave parts in D2. The Sardukar hauled ass..not a shot fired.
You have to remember that Arrakis is the only place in the Dune universe where more traditional projectile based weapons can be used more freely as shields aren’t always turned on. So, the Sardakaur wouldn’t be armed with guns and things of that nature as they rushed to arrive on Arrakis at the end of the movie and had no use for them prior to that. They might have a few lasguns or other projectile weapons but not enough to hold back the Fremen. When it comes to the Harkonnens, you then have to remember how Paul and the Fremen conducted their attack. One, their attack was extremely swift, leaving the opposing forces with very little time to coordinate a counter attack. Two, they completely disoriented/shocked the opposing forces with the use of atomics and then shortly afterward descended on Emperor’s palace/Arakeen with the sand worms, the full force of the Fremen, and with a “great grandmother of a storm” at their backs. The Harkonnens might be able to get a few of the Fremen with their defenses of Arakeen but would be overwhelmed extremely quickly.
Yes.
The key to Fremen victory isn't necessarily in strength of arms, though that certainly helped. It was Paul's threat to destroy the source of the Spice. In the books he uses this threat, which the Guild knows to be very real, to blackmail and extort the Spacing Guild. Through them Paul now has ***EXCLUSIVE*** control over all interstellar space travel. Once he defeated the Emperor's forces, it would be a simple matter to take his millions of the strongest fight force in the Universe, and go planet to planet subjugating them one by one. I think leaving this out of the film is a misstep, as evidenced by your confusing over this victory. Or do you mean how the Fremen beat the Sardaukar and Harkonnen forces on Arrakis? That is explained in the books, you see the Sardaukar were such a strong force because they lived and trained on the hellish planet of Salusa Secundus. Frank Herbert posits that the adverse conditions of Salusa Secundus honed the Sardaukar, they adapted, ecologically, to this adversity and were therefore supreme against any other fighting force. However....The Fremen not only lived on Arrakis but had adapted to it, and as far as adverse conditions go there are none so adverse as Arrakis. The Fremen were therefore better fighters than even the Sardaukar. Arrakeen, Carthag (not in the films), and all the towns and villages were situated behind massive rock formations called the Shield Wall, worms couldn't venture past the Shield Wall, so Paul destroys a section of it with the Atreides nukes, this allows Fremen riding worms to breach the safe zone and engage the Sardaukar with enormous war beasts, negating the use of Lasguns and Shields (which would only serve to drive the worms into a killing frenzy). This meant that large amounts of the Sardaukar legions were instantly destroyed by worms and any remaining were quickly dispatched by the superior Fremen fighters.
harnessing and riding the sand worms is a really big fucking deal that no one besides fremen thought possible or knew about.
The books never really dwell much on the action. Major battles or story beats are sometimes completely off-page and implied by the continuity of the next chapter. The end of the book illustrates how the Fremen prepare the attack and they way they coordinate. By the next chapter, Arrakeen was taken. Frank Herbert never goes much into detail about the battles and the sense of conflict is usually evoked by the build-up and strong lore surrounding the characters and circumstances.
Been a while since i read the book but here's what i recall. 1. Paul blew up the mountain range (shield wall) that protected the basin in which the emperor had stationed himself. 2. The sandstorm blew in and disrupted the shields of all the ships inside the basin. 3. The fremen used stolen Harkonnen artillery which they had pre sighted on the ships to blow up their engines preventing them from escaping. 4. After the storm a massive armada of stolen Ornithopters piloted by Fremen swooped in and took out what they could followed by overwhelming numbers of Fremen on wormback. All of this happened in the span of seconds catching the emperor / Harkonnen troops off guard. All in all the emperor never stood a chance. (The emperial planetologist had also been lying to the emperor / Harkonnen for decades on how the south was uninhabitable and the Fremen numbers couldn't be more than 50 000 or so)
The Sardukar ain't what they used to be. And the movie establishes a minimum 9:1 kill ratio for Fremen over Harkonnen. (Based on the scene where Chani's friend is captured, and right before he torches her, he says "you killed 9 of my men). Maybe slightly less against Sardukar. Throw worms and a huge sandstorm into the mix...it was always going to be a one-sided fight. That was my take anyway.
Not having seen Part 2, I'm guessing it leaves out Salusa Secundus and suspicions about how the Sardukar are trained and how Duncan, Gurney, Thufir, and the Duke think they can do the same with the Fremen?
Not really. Herbert just seemed to think living in harsh conditions made mass groups of people experts at hand to hand combat.
It's not addressed in the DV films, but in the books it's made clear that when a lasgun hits a shield, something akin to a nuclear explosion happens, so the use of either one is fraught. I seem to remember that the Fremen actually use this as a tactic in the book: they'd plant shield generators in the desert, and when the Harkonnen went around shooting things with lasguns, they'd hit the shields and BOOM, no more Harkonnen. It only takes a few occurrences of that to disincentivize the indiscriminate use of lasguns.
In the Dune universe living in a harsh environment makes you a better fighter, so desert people = good fighter. salusa secundus is just a shithole of a prison world and thus good fighers.
How about…. Weird thought, read the book? And find out?
Did you miss them having Paul Atreides atomic weapons???? Doubt the emperor and Harkonens brought theirs to Arrakis plus they have over million soldiers on home soil.
The books skip over most of the war between the Fremen and Harkonens.
Not really, it kinda happens in the beginning of book two. The jihad has happened and Paul is in a dominant position. For the end of book one, there’s some Marty Stu goodness. Paul is effectively a prince of a major house. Trained by Duncan Idaho and Gurney Halleck, who are very good and rival Sardukar. He’s also trained as a male BG and mentat. The Fremen are effective ambush fighters, like Lawrence of Arabia and his Bedouin. Add in prescience and the weirding way, and he’s god mode with cheats on. Paul MD OP, need nerfs kthx bye.
re-watch the movie as it is clearly explained in the movie. The storms mess with shields, the fremen are in that way unaffected by the storm. thats an easy one. to go farther, the fremen acted up so badly that the emperor choose to intervene twice and only once because of paul. additionally, everyone in the imperium thought there were a few thousand fremen, not several million with ten thousands (number for the sake of numbers) available for combat during a sneak attack just after the emperor landed, precipitated by a nuclear explosion that no one has for thousands of years held fear of (because none of the great houses would use them on each other) So...Shock & Awe with an element of surprise, a lot of unknowns and a significantly bigger force and better trained than anyone expected. its not shown in the films, but paul does tech the fremen how to fight the way the bene gesserit did, called The Weirding Way which functions like skilled Jedi/Sith and their ability to project or obscure their actions using the force to cause their opponents to be unsure of where the next true strike may come.