Everyone in Dune poops their pants

Photo: Chiabella James/Warner Bros. Pictures

He does number ones in there, too

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is one of the last film releases on the schedule for 2020, and with so much theater chain uncertainty in the air, it could very well slip later in the next seven months. Which is all to say that we may be seeing teases and peeks of the movie’s exceedingly attractive cast, like this recently released image of Josh Brolin and Timothée Chalamet, for a long time.

But there’s something you must remember, for those long months.

In the new look at Dune, Gurney Halleck’s (Brolin) braces himself to grab a young Paul Atreides (Chalamet) on the deck of a ’thopter. Possibly, they are escaping from a doomed Spice-mining operation just before it is destroyed by a massive sandworm, in a memorable early scene from the novel.

But I found myself examining the angles of the thighs of Halleck’s pants, and I could only think of one thing.

Basically every character in Dune poops their pants, as a matter of routine.

In this shot, Halleck and Paul are both wearing stillsuits, the ubiquitous garb of the desert-dwelling Fremen tribes. The technological marvel of an outfit is designed to capture all of the moisture a human body produces and render it back into drinkable water.

As planetologist Liet Kynes (played in the new film by Rogue One’s Sharon Duncan-Brewster) explains in the book, stillsuit material is “basically a micro-sandwich — a high-efficiency filter and heat-exchange system […] The skin-contact layer’s porous. Perspiration passes through it, having cooled the body … near-normal evaporation process. The next two layers […] include heat exchange filaments and salt precipitators. […] Reclaimed water circulates to catchpockets from which you draw it through this tube in the clip at your neck. […] With a Fremen suit in good working order, you won’t lose more than a thimbleful of moisture a day.”

But there’s an aspect of stillsuit function that Kynes mentions in this scene, one that isn’t much mentioned later, but that still sounds in the background of the rest of the book like a faint high-pitched whine in a beautiful concert hall.

“Urine and feces are processed in the thigh pads,” Liet Kynes says.

Urine and feces are processed in the thigh pads

Photo: Chiabella James/Warner Bros. Pictures

Urine and feces are processed in the thigh pads

Most characters in Dune are not Fremen by birth, but, when virtually all of them wind up exiled on the planet of Arakkis, they adopt the stillsuit as a matter of survival. This week’s image release isn’t the first time we’ve seen the new movie’s stillsuits, but there was just something about Brolin’s stance that made it impossible for me to ignore any longer.

The cast of Dune is absolutely stacked with actors known for their Hollywood clout and for being easy on the eyes. I think it’s vitally important that we appreciate the movie, and the news coming out of it, for that. It’s also vitally important that we remember that everybody in it is, canonically, is pooping their pants on the regular, as a matter of social custom.

Chalamet’s Paul Atreides, Rebecca Ferguson’s Lady Jessica, Oscar Isaac’s Duke Leto, Brolin’s Gurney Halleck, Duncan-Brewster’s Liet Kynes, Jason Momoa’s Duncan Idaho — and especially Javier Bardem’s Stilgar and Zendaya’s Chani, as Fremen born to the desert — are doin’ it in their pants every day.

And that’s what the boundless freedom of science fiction is all about.

Source: Polygon