Dune’s booming thopters are the reason to see it in theaters

Contrary to all predictions, DuneIn the post-COVID theatrical shakeup, it has been a success. This film achieved two seemingly impossible feats: getting Americans back in movie theatres and getting them to watch it again. Get people interested in HBO Max. With the calm restraint displayed by its leads, dark and mysterious senses of mystery and the sheer scale of everything, it did this. Denis Villeneuve was also a remarkable director.

He finally got ornithopters — Dune’s awesome dragonfly fighter planes — right.

Also called “thopters,” these aircraft are one of the overlooked gems of Frank Herbert’s original novel. In the context of the 1960s, when Herbert’s first Dune stories and novel were published, they make absolute sense. The pulp fiction writers of that era believe humanity will eventually get past the inefficiency of conventional airplanes and helicopters.

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Just couple Leonardo Da Vinci’s original designs with some of that new-fangled atomic power and we’re off to the races. But ornithopters — heavier than air travel based on insect-like flight — never really caught on. Our military continues to try and understand the technology in 21st-century.

Dune’s thopters have never made sense when depicted onscreen. It was hilariously off-balance in the 1984 film. The inert little brass bricks floated through the air, buoyed only by Kyle MacLachlan’s potent overacting. The 1992 video game was still in progress Dune 2They flitted around the screen as tiny bugs, making this game the first to embrace real-time strategy. The engines were woefully inefficient, their legs too slack, their wings too small and the wings too spindly.

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Villenuve clearly invested a lot in the creation of these thopters for his film. They finally feel like flying airships. A thopter is seen in flight with Oscar Isaac (Duke Leto Atreides) as the pilot. It is massive, loud, and powerful. At the 4DX cinema where I watched the film, it was humming as it spun up. The syncopated beats of its wings filled the air, filling the space around me (thanks to clever fan work).

Warner Bros. Pictures

In the air, Villneuve’s thopters are anything but clumsy. Leto’s maneuvers are controlled and intentional. The ships don’t hover in place so much as they carve out a space for themselves from the wind, maintaining their orientation in the air while jetting forward on powerful twin engines. When the time is right, the ships drop their wings and fly like raptors towards the ground. It is thrilling to see the crew of harvesters saved by them. Duncan Idaho (Jason Mamoa), later runs wild on Harkonnen landing boats, weaving through and out fire while he escapes. Both of these scenes show the audience what mastery of a thopter in flight looks like, and they represent a kind of expertise for Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) to grow into.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Thopters go on to play an important role in the film’s climax. It was easy to feel the need to do what is necessary to survive watching Paul (Rebecca Ferguson), ride through a sandstorm. I found myself sitting there quietly one moment, and the next I was actually calling out to the screen: “Drop the wings!”

Paul’s mastery of the thopter in that scene — and of the sandstorm itself — feels like the character growing from boyhood into adulthood. He’s not just taking the reins of House Atreides, preserving his bloodline by rescuing himself, his mother, and his unborn sister. He’s stepping into his father’s shoes by strapping into that cockpit.

That was the climactic scene. Dune Part One simply wouldn’t be as powerful if Villeneuve hadn’t already — finally — shown the audience how a thopter truly handles in the air. That successful crash landing represents Paul’s first real steps in his transformation into Muad’Dib, the messiah that will help to free the entire planet, and it wouldn’t have been nearly as powerful for me without a trip to the theater.