A major attraction of historical contexts, as well as fantastic stories based in historical contexts, is that they give writers the opportunity to avoid boring old canons for exciting weapons like swords and knives. A fight of firearms in head can often be uninteresting and impersonal, while a sword fight forces the two characters to get up on the faces of the other. It is a much more cinematographic way for two people to fight to death, Although firearm fights can certainly be cool sometimes as.
While Frank Herbert has established the events of “dune” in the future (as in a solid 20,000 years in the future), he always seemed to understand the attraction of close combat scenes. This is perhaps the reason why he had the idea of ​​a very specific type of futuristic shield, which remained faithful to the futuristic vibrations of the property while explaining the need for a really cool sword game .
They are called Holtzman Shields; These are portable devices that cover the whole body of the wearer. The shield protects its user from projectiles at high speed, but it also allows slow movement projectiles to pass. The attraction of this is quite obvious; He maintains the permanently protected user of elite shooters and other distant attacks, while allowing them to do basic things like holding objects or putting new clothes. Holtzmans do not make an invincible person, but they at least force potential assassins to try much more risky attack avenues. If you are going to kill someone with their shield, you will approach them; No authorized distance shooting.
How the films of a shields manage
The film “Dune” in 2021 by Denis Villeneuve does a very good job by establishing the operation of the shields. There is an early training combat scene between Paul (Timothee Chalamet) and Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin) which shows how the shields affected the game of sword in this universe. Not only are firearms ineffective in this situation, but the typical clums and clumsy swing do not work either. In order to kill someone with a Holtzman shield, you have to bring the blade closer to your sword, then slowly slide the blade.
But while shields may have forced books (and their adaptations) to kiss the game of sword as a realistic war method, I don’t think it’s the main “dune” films (David’s adaptation Lynch in 1984 or the Villeneuve version) managed to make sword fights look cool when the shields are involved. Holtzman Shields of Villeneuve may seem clearer than the very clumsy CGI in the combat scenes at the sword of Lynch, but the result is that a large part of the action in his first film “Dune” does not seem satisfactory. Especially during the fall of the house, the atreids in the second half of “dune: first part”, a large part of the violence which should feel brutal feels rather strange; Even with the best technology at your fingertips, Villeneuve could not ensure that the shield fights were beautiful. This is perhaps the reason why “Dune: the second part” seems to be deleting them largely.
However, even if the films cannot quite make shield fights as cool as books of books to hope, shields always reach the funny goal of justifying why one of these characters is so well formed in The sword also deeply in the future. They also open the way to the exciting combat between Paul and Jamis (Babs Olusanmokun) in “Dune: Part One”, as well as the Culminating duel between Paul and Feyd-Rutha (Austin Butler) in “Dune: the second part”. Not only that, but they also help to provide a visual shortcut easy to transmit that a character is hardcore; When Feyd-Rautha disintegates his Holtzman Shield with casualness before fighting a character at the Harkonnen Coliseum in “Dune: Part Two”, the film tells us about his specific brand of depravity without the need for Feyd to talk a word.
In short, the shields of “dune” are not only used to protect their users against bullets and other projectiles, but they also help to establish the values ​​of the characters, to ensure that the framework always feels vaguely feudal and at the ‘old, and make sure that violence is as personal and closely as possible. It’s strange that with All things “Star Wars” have taken “dunes” booksFrom their concentration on the sword -based combat to their surprise line reveals that the franchise has never tried anything to look like the Holtzman Shield of “Dune”. Maybe George Lucas knew he would not be able to remove these special effects either.
