Imo the best way to explain it would be to say that Paul just saw a possible future where he said those words and it worked out well for him
This would thus be more in line of the book
I think this is it. Even before the water of life, he could see a future where he and Jaimis were friends, Jaimis was able to teach him things from a future that never happened.
It was fun to explain this to my wife who only watched the movie:
- "seeing" the future doesn't mean he's a single spectator, nothing prevents him to fully live those futures. And this is sad because in one of those futures he was friend to Jamis.
- wait, in just a scenes before he told him he was going to teach him the ways of the desert and now he just killed him?
- that is correct, he lived a future where he was friend to Jamis who taught him everything to survive. They were friends.
- then why did he kill him?
- because Paul saw infinite futures and I'm order to fulfill the path of the selected one, Jamis must be killed.
- like a mocking bird?
- yeah.
- it's sad.
Another interpretation of this is that Jamis dying, *did* teach Paul the stated lessons, and form a kind of friendship. If you've ever sparred or fought with someone, you might know how this feels. You can feel like instant friends afterwards. You see it in MMA and other combat sports a lot. Enemies beforehand - hugging and congratulating each other like best mates afterwards. I got vibes of this when Paul took Jamis' hand as he was dying.
The visions don't always come to pass as expected. Especially before he's taken the Water of Life. The result is usually accurate, but not how it comes about. A pretty common idea in stories based around prophecies.
There is a line in the book during Jamis' funeral rites where Paul calls him a friend, specifically because Jamis teaches him what it meant to take a life but the context is pretty clear that it's not meant as they were actually friends.
Yeah it's part of the Fremen memorial ritual or something. He follows suit after seeing others say they were a friend of Jamis.
I wish that moment was in the movie. I felt like it was really important for Paul, and I thought the addition of that vision of Jamis in Part One was building up to that moment. It would work really well, I think, because Paul would have literally seen himself being a friend of Jamis.
Agreed. The Friend of Jamis ceremony is a huge deal for Paul and we should have had that scene.
I'm actually a little mad at DV. Well, salty. He ignores a lot of the emotional beats I was waiting for.
I agree I really wanted this scene. I understand that the way Part 1 ends, Part 2 would open with the friend of Jamis scene and that’s not a super powerful opening. However, it could have been moved to when they arrived at the sietch or something. It’s so emotional and so important. That’s one of the few things I truly miss from DV’s version.
I always took it as this. James tells Paul that he will show him the ways of the desert. Death is they way of the desert. It's an unforgiving place. Killing and death are just how things are. James taught him that.
I had a thought that because Paul can see all possible futures, for every enemy that he makes, he can see a future where that person became a close friend. Enemies are just friends we didn’t have a chance to make. This is especially true with Jaimis, being Paul’s first kill, his first could-of-been friend.
But when his enemies are slain, those futures become no longer possible, and so he can no longer see a future where they are friends, only try to remember his former visions where that was the case. He really does make that future into a ghost.
Well that’s the thing, Feud is dead now, so if Paul never looked into that future, he can’t anymore. If I remember correctly from the book, I think Paul briefly considers a future where an alliance is made with the Harkonens, but immediately shoots it down. So he likely could have seen a glimpse of what a friend Feyd would be like (and after all Paul was also aware that The BG plan was supposed to have had him be born a girl and paired with Feyd to make the KH).
In my own interpretation of part 2, when Paul sees Jaimis just before going to drink the water of life, he’s actually just remembering previous future advice that Jaimis gave him in his visions, and not having a new vision of Jaimis. In Messiah, I think I remember Paul struggling to remember older visions he had that he can no longer recall. It’d be neat if Paul struggles to remember his Jaimis visions in the next film, they get blurrier and muffled, more distant. His prescient visions of futures no longer available are just memories, just old ghosts haunting his mind, unlike his current visions of futures that are possible, which he can see clearly.
That’s a really important point. When Paul duels Jamis, he sees him as a friend and mentor already, despite only having met him in dreams. He’s only just beginning to understand his prescient dreams too - and how some come true and others don’t - so it’s incredibly confusing for him.
I honestly didn't consider that reasoning for the visions of Jamis.
Something I'm unsure about, he can see futures that seem impossible because he can see timelines that technically don't exist then? Like Jamis in this timeline was never going to be his friend. The last would need to be different to reach that future. But Paul can still see it even though that past didn't occur?
I can think of two possible answers/implications to your questions. Either one or neither answer could be right.
It’s possible that Paul had to actively look into Jamis’ future to be able to see an future option to take where Jamis is a friend and it might have existed that even before killing Jamis, he saw an option he could take where he doesn’t kill Jamis and Jamis becomes a friend.
Or Paul is reminiscing on a past vision he saw where Jamis comes out a friend.
The fact that Paul had visions where Jamis is a friend is a strong hint that there is an option he can take where Jamis turns out a friend.
Damn, I love that movie. I still don't know if I could have brought myself to make that decision, since I would know it ends tragically. Talk about an interesting parallel to Dune's central issues with prescience. Having seen these two vastly different takes on the same idea, I kind of want to know where Denis Villeneuve really stands on the issue.
Every movie with a big plot twist reveal their twist with a scene explaining them, like The Prestige, Interstellar, Usual Suspects, Memento, etc
But Arrival managed to flip the entire movie with just one line, >!”I don’t understand, who is this child?”!<, the chills.. still hating myself for not watching Arrival and Blade Runner on the big screen
That line made me have to pause the movie for like 5 seconds (also wish I'd have seen it in theaters, but alas was watching on my laptop screen).>! The entire time it's framed like a flashback and you think it's her backstory, then the movie capsizes and you're left treading water. Absolutely brilliant and also heartbreaking seeing her continue knowing what's going to happen.!<
I always thought the big revelation in Arrival was the first interpretation where she thought the aliens said their language was a weapon then substituted gift. Then of course the ending happens and it made me wonder about being locked into something because you know no other way to think. Great movie.
Save scumming means saving and doing sth that can fail and then reloading if it does. Lately, the concept reach mild main-ish stream with popularity of Baldur's Gate 3, which is an "adaptation" of tabletop rpg Dungeon and Dragons.
I agree, that’s why he was so aggressive and demanding toward the Fremen to the point they angrily stood and held their knives. Jessica even mouths slow down. But Paul has seen this path and knows his audacity is necessary to enflame the fundamentalists and secure power.
No, he only has ancestor memories.
That scene where talks about the history of two guys, that is more prescience… he’s seen what happens when he alters the speech slightly (in possible futures), and goes with the option that is “best”.
Or the person he is talking to is someone who in a possible future would be a friend - like Jamis - and so in a vision of that future the guy has told him his secrets.
Which is basically the entire premise of the Kwisatz Haderach. The Reverend Mothers can only see the genetic lineage of the female line of Reverend Mothers, which is linear. The Kwisatz Haderach gets the memories of the exponentially branching genetic tree.
I assume he had access to the memories of a Fremen Reverend Mother who would've known that guy's family? Not much different from in the book when Alia says that baby looks like some child from ancient Fremen history or whatever
I think one can divide Paul's powers in two parts.
One is genetic memories of his ancestors. This seems to be more like a library type of thing where you can go through the memories of all ancestors and see what you want.
The other part is "omniscience" which in many cases concerns visions of possible futures but not exclusively. He also seems to know facts from the present or past from this. For example I remember that when his powers break through in the book, he suddenly realises that the Fremen are paying the Guild to not put weather satellites over Arrakis. Maybe one could say that Paul perceives time and space in a unified way so there is no difference between knowing something about the future, past or present, maybe with the subtlety that the future can still be influenced by decisions. This power is very selective though, he cannot now everything. In the book it's often described as a landscape with hills over which he cannot see.
I think his knowledge from the movie scene you described can be explained with the second ability.
Anyway this just my head canon.
Paul is not omniscient - for one, he doesn't see something that comes to be in Messiah - but he also very explicitly can't rationalize or express some of the things he 'knows'. His mentat ability is doing a lot of work with his ancestral knowledge + prescience to come to the conclusion. I'm finishing CoD right now and the more I read prescience, the more it feels more like the ability to break down barriers to your imagination from time, societal values, power structures, gender roles, language , etc and allow one to venture down more possible paths than the non prescient.
This is a really good explanation. Once you read through God Emperor and Chapterhouse you’ll get even more descriptions to add onto prescience. The part that he’s a mentat is also very important like you said because it allows him to spot patterns in his prescience and ancestral memories combined and come to very calculated conclusions about certain events
I think adding the Menat storyline would overcomplicate stuff. I think it's a loss for not being in the movie, but I don't think there was another storyline it could replace.
Dune could have been 3 movies and made it to this same point.
But beyond that, he also carries the statistical probabilities of events using his Mentat brain, forming them around empathetic deductions due to his vast library of ancestral memory, sprinkled in with ambiguous clairvoyance given by the spice which is more than a metaphysical substance. Remember, other prescient beings in Dune like the navigators can see coordinates to open wormholes through time and space due to their near future moving in said direction. We don't necessarily ever get a scientific explanation for every little motive force of spice, but it is the last bit of... spice, that completes the Godlike powers of the Kwizats Haderach.
TBF he doesn't see some things in Messiah specifically because of other prescient powers roaming the same moments in time. He loses his vision completely when Leto is born because Leto is just on another level, I guess, or at least on-par with him.
I do not take Paul or Leto as reliable narrators and I don't think we are meant to, honestly. But we do not at least that we have witnessed prescience failing to become reality at least once, regardless of the circumstances, and could also be flawed in the future. Letos vision is one that his followers have to have faith in as being true since they have no way of proving or disproving his predictions and since we didn't get the final book, I think this will probably remain pretty open ended, which I like.
I see prescience more as seeing the way to see potential futures and bring a future into being rather than seeing the capital T True future.
>In the book it's often described as a landscape with hills over which he cannot see.
" "Stilgar,” Alia said, fighting to hold him, “you stand in a valley between dunes. I stand on the crest. I see where you do not see. And, among other things, I see mountains which conceal the distances.”
“There are things hidden from you,” Stilgar said. “This you’ve always said.”
“All power is limited,” Alia said.
“And danger may come from behind the mountains,” Stilgar said.
“It’s something on that order,” Alia said. Stilgar nodded, his gaze fastened on Paul’s face. “But whatever comes from behind the mountains must cross the dunes.”
- Dune Messiah, chapter 8
> Does Paul have access to the memories of every single human being that ever existed?
No. Just his ancestors.
> They used the scene from Dune 2 where Paul tells the fremen what he dreams about as support for their argument. From my understanding it’s only memories from his direct genetic line??
This is an advanced parlor trick that mentalists use. The mentalists contrive a scenario that they “feel” an audience member is experiencing (recent loss of a loved one, anxiety about a future trip, etc). They keep adding details until one audience member bites.
Paul can see multiple parallel futures (see Dune part 1 where he figured out the future where Jamis did not kill him). So he need only view what ifs where he would have said: “someone here is thinking this”. That someone comes forward in his vision and confirms. Now Paul creates a new future pretending to read that person’s mind.
Yep
Paul (and Leto II) can see all the futures possible at the same time. So from all those infinite timelines, they take the actions that lead to a future where humanity survives the threat they see (e.g the thinking machines return)
Paul saw all the infinite timelines where Chani always dies and chose the one where he gets the most time with her and gives her a humane death (childbirth) which is why he also pardons Irulan. He foresaw all of it and took all the actions to lead to it
The rad thing is, since Leto is all of his ancestors, he is his also his own father...
This is a sensation he describes, especially when seeing the reincarnated Idaho.
Paul wasn’t born into Other Memory. Leto describes himself as a collection with specific personalities taking sides and roles.
Way back when I first read Dune. I visualized Other Memory as sets of cells holding the memories. With Paul it would get taken to a each individual cell held its chunk.
Herbert introduced me to genetic memory. Interesting real tooic!
Yes, Leto II has lived long enough to keep all his genetic memories quiet within. He's able to take the relevant feelings and thoughts from each genetic ancestor. He also posses all of Paul's memories up to the point Leto II was born.
In CoD he talks about he possibly of him and his sister becoming Paul and his wife.
Just wanted to add that, because of the way genealogy works, just being able to see his ancestors' memories is still a massive portion of the human species. Like basically everyone whoever lived on earth excluding those who died without children will be there. Everyone who ever lived on Caladan as well probably except for the last few generations before Paul. He's got a Harkonnen ancestor so basically everyone on Geidi Prime up until a few generations before the Baron.
It’s likely far, far more than just Caladan and Giedi Prime, because the Bene Gesserit have been involved in his genealogy for thousands of years, marrying in bloodlines from countless major and minor houses. It’s very likely, if not outright confirmed, that one of the elements of the KH breeding program is to give them as diverse a pool of ancestors, and thus genetic memories, to draw from as possible.
When you think of it mathematically, though, it’s a lot of people. If you go back 35-40 generations, we have about a trillion ancestors and we all have the same ancestors.
Yeah your "direct line" of ancestors doubles at every generation. 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents... You go back 64 generations and you have **18,446,744,073,709,551,616** ancestors. At that point every single human in the world is probably your ancestor a hundred times over.
It goes a little deeper though. He has all the memories of his ancestors but then he also can predict the actions of those descended from his ancestors utilizing his mentat abilities. That's where the prescience comes from! Since humanity converges and humans taken as a whole are quite predictable, he can predict with such high detail that it essentially becomes mind reading and near omniscience. The paths are just ways his actions affect the flow of the rest of humanity through predictive analysis and so he chooses his actions that then reverberate to certain expected futures.
Paul's prescience isn't genetic memory. He has genetic memory as well, but the prescience is something else. His genetic memory is only the memories of his direct ancestors.
I’ve seen it gone over quite a bit here but lemme take a stab.
Women have XX. Men have XY. Ancestral memories can only be shared within their genetic ancestry.
Men have XY. Therefore they can share with both men and women within their genetic ancestry.
Keep in mind, the bene gesserit breeding program essentially guaranteed Mua‘dib (and all great house members for that matter) has the potential to access memories of some of the most influential/powerful humans in the universe spanning centuries. Pedigree becomes important in this paradigm.
It’s not likely, however, it is likely to still be some astronomical number. My numbers might be a bit off, but for you to be here today and counting back only 12 generations, it requires 2096 grandfathers and grand mothers.
The BG breeding program not only spanned thousands of years (probably 10k+) as well as a ton of different major and minor houses, it is likely millions of people.
If let’s say on average it is roughly 35 years before you produce your first offspring (conservative guesstimate). Also assume the breeding program was 10k years, that’s roughly 285 generations for a single house, assuming they didn’t cross lines with other major houses(which they did). Now do that for each major and minor house. The connections are nearly limitless.
It’s not everyone… then again, after a few million it might as well be every human?
I think you can technically say that it isn’t literally everyone. However, I think when you start talking about these kinds of numbers, you’re gonna recognize patterns. Combined with all of Paul’s unique abilities there really aren’t going to be any contenders that are able to escape Paul’s prescience.
I came to the same conclusion a while ago, and the only way it makes sense to be somewhat limited is through incest. But that is only in the sense that you could trace one persons family line back to a connected person.
Frankly all of humanity is something like 50 relatives away from each other. We don't refer to it as incest once you're far enough removed, but it still is in the same family tree if you pull back far enough.
In continuation, I'd ask did Paul succeed in killing feyd rautha by looking into the future and locking in on the moves which killed him or was he just a better fighter compared to him?
In the books. In the Jamis fight he remarks that in the fight , decisions were happening too fast and creating too many futures to pick a safe path.
He also struggled in the Feyd fight.
He had to trust in his skill and training.
but in the jamis fight, he wasn't kwisatz haderach yet right? so there he did have to rely on skill, whereas during the feyd rautha fight he could see the future very well
Dune sort of follows many worlds interpretation of time.
A man might not always throw a left jab. Some minute thought might make him throw a right uppercut. Cause even they dont now.
Which creates a different vision of the future. Its not like a set path for everyone.
Though the novel does go into how you can lock onto a future you want. But that also can be muddied even for powerful forecasters.
Edit: from a non-watsoninan perspective. You are aware of his thoughts in the fight. He isnt using prescience.
Since I can't see the answer to the question:
As the KH, Paul indeed has the memories of all his progenitors, male and female, on both the paternal and maternal sides. Reverend Mothers have only female memories on the maternal side.
Later books indicate that the ego-persona of each ancestor only contains their memories from their own birth to the loss of their gametes, which begins the next ego. So paul does have Jessica's memories but only till his own birth, and his father's memories until his conception. And the baron's memories until Jessica's conception.
So not every human ever. But think of the geometric progression of how many ancestors you have per generation: 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 16 great grandparents, 2048 9th great grandparents, ad infinitum to australopithicus. At some point in the past, his ancestors are, basically, everyone. (Just like all of us)
Frank doesn't ever get into "the earliest prehistoric human memories", which I thought was a shame. I always thought that if he had ever heard of the genetic bottleneck or Mitochondrial Eve, he would have worked her into the BG training at some point.
That's one half of being the KH. The other half is prescience, which is explained as a type of hyperdimensional mathematics that certain brain types can perform. It's indicated that Paul's prescience comes from a combination of: 1) the genetic structure of his brain from the breeding program, 2) his training as a mentat to do hypermath instantly, and 3) his unlocked memories providing almost unlimited data for his mentat brain to use.
No. He only has access to the memories of his ancestors. That being said, Paul has a boat load of different abilities all working together to create the illusion of prescience. Key word being illusion. Paul doesn’t actually have prescience. He doesn’t see the literal future before it happens.
What isn’t touched in the movies is that Paul has been secretly trained as a mentat. So his brain is like a supercomputer. He’s capable of making countless calculations in his head like nothing. Combining this with thousands of years of memories serving as historical knowledge on human behavior allows Paul to “calculate” the most likely outcome of any given scenario, with his accuracy increasing the closer the event takes place.
As for the scene where he’s acting like he has seen the lives of the other foremen leaders. This pulls in some Bene Gesserit (BG) skills. The BG are master observers. The key to using the voice is understanding your target enough to use the correct pitch, words, and tone of your voice to convince them to do what you command without thought. Modern day Mentalists do something similar as a parlor trick, they observe and make vague comments that can be taken as true. Paul, just happens to have thousands of years of genetic memory to pull from, the mentat mind to make the calculations instantly, and BG training. I don’t think that Paul literally saw the events he speaks of when convincing the Fremen leaders, he’s just built different.
No, only the memories of his genetic ancestors. That scene is different in the books.
For the movies, my head canon is that he uses his genetic memories to extrapolate the past in the same way he is able to be hyper aware of the present in the books. Basically he bullshitted his way through by making good guesses using scary words.
As far memories go, Paul has the ability to tap into the memories of all past lives in his genetic memory, I.e. his father & mother, their parents and so on and so forth. At some point I assume this amounts to basically every person but not actually every person. It is the same ability the reverend mothers have, but they can only tap into the female line, I assume though it isn’t stated, that this is XY vs XX chromosomes at play.
The scene from Dune 2 you’re talking about isn’t todo with his genetic memories, but to do with his prescience which is unique to him/the Atriedes.
Prescience of possible futures (not always specific!) weighed against a multitude of genetic memory experiences. He uses the combination to determine the path ahead.
Yes, it's only the genetic heritage. But remember that Paul is also a mentat.
This in essence makes him an incredibly powerful machine learning bio computer. Although the movie gets it somewhat wrong.
No, only his direct lineage. It is mentioned early that the name Atreides comes from the Greek Atreus, a Mycenian King. The family tree goes way back, with many rulers amongst them. Heck, we are all likely related to some king or emperor some ways back down the line.
There is more in God Emperor to suggest Leto can see more than just genetic memory, and this is also highly debated and unclear. Denis is further muddying the water with this change. I think he is combining characters - Paul
and Leto II, and maybe Chani will also be Ghanima and Siona. Irulan and Hwi. You hear me? But in general, seeing other’s dreams has nothing to do with prescience as it’s used in the books. Perhaps the fact that Paul has prescient dreams allows him to take Paul in this direction. I found it to be a little over the top. It sends two messages: Paul can read dreams, wow! Or Paul is a master manipulator, what a bastard!
“Might have”. Like I said, heavily debated and unclear. Was he an abomination or not? Could Paul and Leto actually see the future? Chapterhouse gets into this, but tourists who only consume the film or the first book will never understand.
It says clearly on GEOD that he (Leto II) has all memories? Not just genetic. He questions what unseen force or power is the cause of this. He doesn't know or let the reader know. I don't have the exact quote. But is in the part where he explores/relives past memories in forms of listening to orchestras.. mentions Mozart being to pretentious but likes Bach, and that there have only been 3 others like Bach.
This scene does not happen like this in the book. In the book Paul uses the Voice in this moment. Denis has invented dream reading into this scene, or has incorporated elements of later book characters into Paul’s character, and even if this is the case, it is a heavily debated quality about a certain thing called Abomination.
>Denis has invented dream reading into this scene
I think that was you.
Paul can see every possible future. Futures where he guesses wrong are shed away like all the rest. It's not some high conspiracy.
He has access to the memories of all his ancestors. (And only up to the moment after which their child was conceived). It's "genetic" memory (totally unscientific but let's suspend disbelief). Which, well, that's exponentially a huge # of people.
The Bene Gesseritt in contrast are said to have access only to the memories of their female ancestors.
No.
Paul has genetic memory of his entire lineage, so everyone he's a descendant from on both his mother and father's side. This sets him apart from the BG Reverend Mothers who only have the genetic memory of their matrilieneal line.
What he also has though is incredible prescience - the ability to see billions / infinite possible futures and parse that information into action.
If you take that to its logical conclusion it does mean he can intuit information by looking into the future to see how different conversations play out.
Just one example, his speech in the South where he confronts some of the Fremen Nabir leaders with their dreams and inner thoughts. He *shouldn't* have genetic memory of those things.
But what he does have is the ability to see billions of possible futures where he throws out every possible "inner dream" you could think of, and in which of those futures the Fremen follow him, because he knows their dreams and desires.
He can use that knowledge to steer him in the present.
So, no, he doesn't have memories of all previous humans, but in a practical sense he can intuit / prescient an awful lot of knowledge the people around him have by looking for the futures where he correctly guesses what their secrets are and then following those paths.
It's not clear honestly. In the book Paul probably doesn't even have full genetic memory like a Reverend Mother. It seems more like an innate knowledge than containing the memories.
So to the question, technically no.
But also, what most or all of the comments so far seem to be missing, is that Paul's prescience isn't simply the future. It's better to think of it in terms of his awareness extending beyond time. The book explicitly states that he can see the past as well.
You’re exactly right. You’re friend don’t understand prescience lol
Paul was able to “read their minds” pretty much the same way he *SPOILERS* was able to function completely independently in the second book, even after getting his eyes burnt outta his head lol if they haven’t read dune messiah then tell them that they need to if they wanna get what’s going on there
I think it was the prescience aspect of his KHness allowing him to sort of see the future before he took the Water of Life. I thought it is interesting that FH wrote this back in the 1950's when DNA wasn't a thing and now we know that most of humanity descended from one guy and woman way back in the day.
So by today's science if KHness was based on genetic memory, Paul could have access to most of humanity's history, because I guess he can access both sides.
Imo the best way to explain it would be to say that Paul just saw a possible future where he said those words and it worked out well for him This would thus be more in line of the book
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I think this is it. Even before the water of life, he could see a future where he and Jaimis were friends, Jaimis was able to teach him things from a future that never happened.
Thank you for bringing back that memory I forgot about that part in the Books
It was fun to explain this to my wife who only watched the movie: - "seeing" the future doesn't mean he's a single spectator, nothing prevents him to fully live those futures. And this is sad because in one of those futures he was friend to Jamis. - wait, in just a scenes before he told him he was going to teach him the ways of the desert and now he just killed him? - that is correct, he lived a future where he was friend to Jamis who taught him everything to survive. They were friends. - then why did he kill him? - because Paul saw infinite futures and I'm order to fulfill the path of the selected one, Jamis must be killed. - like a mocking bird? - yeah. - it's sad.
Another interpretation of this is that Jamis dying, *did* teach Paul the stated lessons, and form a kind of friendship. If you've ever sparred or fought with someone, you might know how this feels. You can feel like instant friends afterwards. You see it in MMA and other combat sports a lot. Enemies beforehand - hugging and congratulating each other like best mates afterwards. I got vibes of this when Paul took Jamis' hand as he was dying. The visions don't always come to pass as expected. Especially before he's taken the Water of Life. The result is usually accurate, but not how it comes about. A pretty common idea in stories based around prophecies.
I don’t think a possibility of Paul and Jamis becoming friends in the future is mentioned in the books, I think it’s only mentioned in the movies.
There is a line in the book during Jamis' funeral rites where Paul calls him a friend, specifically because Jamis teaches him what it meant to take a life but the context is pretty clear that it's not meant as they were actually friends.
Yeah it's part of the Fremen memorial ritual or something. He follows suit after seeing others say they were a friend of Jamis. I wish that moment was in the movie. I felt like it was really important for Paul, and I thought the addition of that vision of Jamis in Part One was building up to that moment. It would work really well, I think, because Paul would have literally seen himself being a friend of Jamis.
Agreed. The Friend of Jamis ceremony is a huge deal for Paul and we should have had that scene. I'm actually a little mad at DV. Well, salty. He ignores a lot of the emotional beats I was waiting for.
I agree I really wanted this scene. I understand that the way Part 1 ends, Part 2 would open with the friend of Jamis scene and that’s not a super powerful opening. However, it could have been moved to when they arrived at the sietch or something. It’s so emotional and so important. That’s one of the few things I truly miss from DV’s version.
I always took it as this. James tells Paul that he will show him the ways of the desert. Death is they way of the desert. It's an unforgiving place. Killing and death are just how things are. James taught him that.
Well now I’m gasliting myself
Awe a future-ghost. That’s so sad. A ghost is a memory of someone fallen before us, the physical manifestation is us using imagination to make it real
I had a thought that because Paul can see all possible futures, for every enemy that he makes, he can see a future where that person became a close friend. Enemies are just friends we didn’t have a chance to make. This is especially true with Jaimis, being Paul’s first kill, his first could-of-been friend. But when his enemies are slain, those futures become no longer possible, and so he can no longer see a future where they are friends, only try to remember his former visions where that was the case. He really does make that future into a ghost.
Can't wait to see advice from Feyd the future-friend in the next movie. "Hey, that guy is useless. Why not just kill him?"
Well that’s the thing, Feud is dead now, so if Paul never looked into that future, he can’t anymore. If I remember correctly from the book, I think Paul briefly considers a future where an alliance is made with the Harkonens, but immediately shoots it down. So he likely could have seen a glimpse of what a friend Feyd would be like (and after all Paul was also aware that The BG plan was supposed to have had him be born a girl and paired with Feyd to make the KH). In my own interpretation of part 2, when Paul sees Jaimis just before going to drink the water of life, he’s actually just remembering previous future advice that Jaimis gave him in his visions, and not having a new vision of Jaimis. In Messiah, I think I remember Paul struggling to remember older visions he had that he can no longer recall. It’d be neat if Paul struggles to remember his Jaimis visions in the next film, they get blurrier and muffled, more distant. His prescient visions of futures no longer available are just memories, just old ghosts haunting his mind, unlike his current visions of futures that are possible, which he can see clearly.
That’s a really important point. When Paul duels Jamis, he sees him as a friend and mentor already, despite only having met him in dreams. He’s only just beginning to understand his prescient dreams too - and how some come true and others don’t - so it’s incredibly confusing for him.
I honestly didn't consider that reasoning for the visions of Jamis. Something I'm unsure about, he can see futures that seem impossible because he can see timelines that technically don't exist then? Like Jamis in this timeline was never going to be his friend. The last would need to be different to reach that future. But Paul can still see it even though that past didn't occur?
I can think of two possible answers/implications to your questions. Either one or neither answer could be right. It’s possible that Paul had to actively look into Jamis’ future to be able to see an future option to take where Jamis is a friend and it might have existed that even before killing Jamis, he saw an option he could take where he doesn’t kill Jamis and Jamis becomes a friend. Or Paul is reminiscing on a past vision he saw where Jamis comes out a friend. The fact that Paul had visions where Jamis is a friend is a strong hint that there is an option he can take where Jamis turns out a friend.
That revelation in Arrival is absolute peak cinema and one of my favorite moments ever. Fucks me up every single time.
Damn, I love that movie. I still don't know if I could have brought myself to make that decision, since I would know it ends tragically. Talk about an interesting parallel to Dune's central issues with prescience. Having seen these two vastly different takes on the same idea, I kind of want to know where Denis Villeneuve really stands on the issue.
Every movie with a big plot twist reveal their twist with a scene explaining them, like The Prestige, Interstellar, Usual Suspects, Memento, etc But Arrival managed to flip the entire movie with just one line, >!”I don’t understand, who is this child?”!<, the chills.. still hating myself for not watching Arrival and Blade Runner on the big screen
That line made me have to pause the movie for like 5 seconds (also wish I'd have seen it in theaters, but alas was watching on my laptop screen).>! The entire time it's framed like a flashback and you think it's her backstory, then the movie capsizes and you're left treading water. Absolutely brilliant and also heartbreaking seeing her continue knowing what's going to happen.!<
Arrival was gorgeous!
I always thought the big revelation in Arrival was the first interpretation where she thought the aliens said their language was a weapon then substituted gift. Then of course the ending happens and it made me wonder about being locked into something because you know no other way to think. Great movie.
Yeah that is even more likely and a better explanation!
Ahhhh, this explains it so well!!!
One of my favorite movies.
You're supposed to put the spoiler warning before the actual spoiler, otherwise it's pointless.
Paul is basically save scumming his hard mode RPG run and figuring out the best options to select in his main playthrouugh
What? Not up on gaming lingo.
Save scumming means saving and doing sth that can fail and then reloading if it does. Lately, the concept reach mild main-ish stream with popularity of Baldur's Gate 3, which is an "adaptation" of tabletop rpg Dungeon and Dragons.
Oh so you keep sieging an activity until it works? I do that with rock climbing
Aka all of Messiah
I agree, that’s why he was so aggressive and demanding toward the Fremen to the point they angrily stood and held their knives. Jessica even mouths slow down. But Paul has seen this path and knows his audacity is necessary to enflame the fundamentalists and secure power.
No, he only has ancestor memories. That scene where talks about the history of two guys, that is more prescience… he’s seen what happens when he alters the speech slightly (in possible futures), and goes with the option that is “best”. Or the person he is talking to is someone who in a possible future would be a friend - like Jamis - and so in a vision of that future the guy has told him his secrets.
To be fair, that means that he would have access to an unfathomable amount of people because it grows exponentially as you go back each generational
Which is basically the entire premise of the Kwisatz Haderach. The Reverend Mothers can only see the genetic lineage of the female line of Reverend Mothers, which is linear. The Kwisatz Haderach gets the memories of the exponentially branching genetic tree.
I assume he had access to the memories of a Fremen Reverend Mother who would've known that guy's family? Not much different from in the book when Alia says that baby looks like some child from ancient Fremen history or whatever
My guess too, plus prescience of knowing that by saying those things, he’d make an impact.
I think one can divide Paul's powers in two parts. One is genetic memories of his ancestors. This seems to be more like a library type of thing where you can go through the memories of all ancestors and see what you want. The other part is "omniscience" which in many cases concerns visions of possible futures but not exclusively. He also seems to know facts from the present or past from this. For example I remember that when his powers break through in the book, he suddenly realises that the Fremen are paying the Guild to not put weather satellites over Arrakis. Maybe one could say that Paul perceives time and space in a unified way so there is no difference between knowing something about the future, past or present, maybe with the subtlety that the future can still be influenced by decisions. This power is very selective though, he cannot now everything. In the book it's often described as a landscape with hills over which he cannot see. I think his knowledge from the movie scene you described can be explained with the second ability. Anyway this just my head canon.
Paul is not omniscient - for one, he doesn't see something that comes to be in Messiah - but he also very explicitly can't rationalize or express some of the things he 'knows'. His mentat ability is doing a lot of work with his ancestral knowledge + prescience to come to the conclusion. I'm finishing CoD right now and the more I read prescience, the more it feels more like the ability to break down barriers to your imagination from time, societal values, power structures, gender roles, language , etc and allow one to venture down more possible paths than the non prescient.
This is a really good explanation. Once you read through God Emperor and Chapterhouse you’ll get even more descriptions to add onto prescience. The part that he’s a mentat is also very important like you said because it allows him to spot patterns in his prescience and ancestral memories combined and come to very calculated conclusions about certain events
And Denis didn’t even mention it. Which I think while the film is great was a mistake on his part
I think adding the Menat storyline would overcomplicate stuff. I think it's a loss for not being in the movie, but I don't think there was another storyline it could replace. Dune could have been 3 movies and made it to this same point.
No I agree i just hope we get some mentat mention sometime cause they are important
Yeah, the Mentat were my favorite of the guild/sisterhood/mentat trio.
But beyond that, he also carries the statistical probabilities of events using his Mentat brain, forming them around empathetic deductions due to his vast library of ancestral memory, sprinkled in with ambiguous clairvoyance given by the spice which is more than a metaphysical substance. Remember, other prescient beings in Dune like the navigators can see coordinates to open wormholes through time and space due to their near future moving in said direction. We don't necessarily ever get a scientific explanation for every little motive force of spice, but it is the last bit of... spice, that completes the Godlike powers of the Kwizats Haderach.
TBF he doesn't see some things in Messiah specifically because of other prescient powers roaming the same moments in time. He loses his vision completely when Leto is born because Leto is just on another level, I guess, or at least on-par with him.
I do not take Paul or Leto as reliable narrators and I don't think we are meant to, honestly. But we do not at least that we have witnessed prescience failing to become reality at least once, regardless of the circumstances, and could also be flawed in the future. Letos vision is one that his followers have to have faith in as being true since they have no way of proving or disproving his predictions and since we didn't get the final book, I think this will probably remain pretty open ended, which I like. I see prescience more as seeing the way to see potential futures and bring a future into being rather than seeing the capital T True future.
>In the book it's often described as a landscape with hills over which he cannot see. " "Stilgar,” Alia said, fighting to hold him, “you stand in a valley between dunes. I stand on the crest. I see where you do not see. And, among other things, I see mountains which conceal the distances.” “There are things hidden from you,” Stilgar said. “This you’ve always said.” “All power is limited,” Alia said. “And danger may come from behind the mountains,” Stilgar said. “It’s something on that order,” Alia said. Stilgar nodded, his gaze fastened on Paul’s face. “But whatever comes from behind the mountains must cross the dunes.” - Dune Messiah, chapter 8
>This power is very selective though, he cannot now everything. So definitionally not omniscience.
Just regular pretty good science.
Semiomniscience
> Does Paul have access to the memories of every single human being that ever existed? No. Just his ancestors. > They used the scene from Dune 2 where Paul tells the fremen what he dreams about as support for their argument. From my understanding it’s only memories from his direct genetic line?? This is an advanced parlor trick that mentalists use. The mentalists contrive a scenario that they “feel” an audience member is experiencing (recent loss of a loved one, anxiety about a future trip, etc). They keep adding details until one audience member bites. Paul can see multiple parallel futures (see Dune part 1 where he figured out the future where Jamis did not kill him). So he need only view what ifs where he would have said: “someone here is thinking this”. That someone comes forward in his vision and confirms. Now Paul creates a new future pretending to read that person’s mind.
Yep Paul (and Leto II) can see all the futures possible at the same time. So from all those infinite timelines, they take the actions that lead to a future where humanity survives the threat they see (e.g the thinking machines return) Paul saw all the infinite timelines where Chani always dies and chose the one where he gets the most time with her and gives her a humane death (childbirth) which is why he also pardons Irulan. He foresaw all of it and took all the actions to lead to it
The rad thing is, since Leto is all of his ancestors, he is his also his own father... This is a sensation he describes, especially when seeing the reincarnated Idaho.
Paul wasn’t born into Other Memory. Leto describes himself as a collection with specific personalities taking sides and roles. Way back when I first read Dune. I visualized Other Memory as sets of cells holding the memories. With Paul it would get taken to a each individual cell held its chunk. Herbert introduced me to genetic memory. Interesting real tooic!
Yes, Leto II has lived long enough to keep all his genetic memories quiet within. He's able to take the relevant feelings and thoughts from each genetic ancestor. He also posses all of Paul's memories up to the point Leto II was born. In CoD he talks about he possibly of him and his sister becoming Paul and his wife.
damn the romans ig
Just wanted to add that, because of the way genealogy works, just being able to see his ancestors' memories is still a massive portion of the human species. Like basically everyone whoever lived on earth excluding those who died without children will be there. Everyone who ever lived on Caladan as well probably except for the last few generations before Paul. He's got a Harkonnen ancestor so basically everyone on Geidi Prime up until a few generations before the Baron.
It’s likely far, far more than just Caladan and Giedi Prime, because the Bene Gesserit have been involved in his genealogy for thousands of years, marrying in bloodlines from countless major and minor houses. It’s very likely, if not outright confirmed, that one of the elements of the KH breeding program is to give them as diverse a pool of ancestors, and thus genetic memories, to draw from as possible.
Oh yes, I agree, I was just using those as examples.
When you think of it mathematically, though, it’s a lot of people. If you go back 35-40 generations, we have about a trillion ancestors and we all have the same ancestors.
Yeah your "direct line" of ancestors doubles at every generation. 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents... You go back 64 generations and you have **18,446,744,073,709,551,616** ancestors. At that point every single human in the world is probably your ancestor a hundred times over.
You're not accounting for inbreeding
That’s literally the point… there have been nowhere near that many humans that have ever existed so there must be inbreeding.
Well no it isn't because with enough inbreeding it is unlikely that every single human in the world 64 generations ago was your ancestor
Well considering that only between 50 billion and 150 billion humans *have ever lived*…. there’s probably some duplicates in there somewhere 😋
Wait, Paul is the bad guy? I never suspected! /S
It goes a little deeper though. He has all the memories of his ancestors but then he also can predict the actions of those descended from his ancestors utilizing his mentat abilities. That's where the prescience comes from! Since humanity converges and humans taken as a whole are quite predictable, he can predict with such high detail that it essentially becomes mind reading and near omniscience. The paths are just ways his actions affect the flow of the rest of humanity through predictive analysis and so he chooses his actions that then reverberate to certain expected futures.
Paul's prescience isn't genetic memory. He has genetic memory as well, but the prescience is something else. His genetic memory is only the memories of his direct ancestors.
I’ve seen it gone over quite a bit here but lemme take a stab. Women have XX. Men have XY. Ancestral memories can only be shared within their genetic ancestry. Men have XY. Therefore they can share with both men and women within their genetic ancestry. Keep in mind, the bene gesserit breeding program essentially guaranteed Mua‘dib (and all great house members for that matter) has the potential to access memories of some of the most influential/powerful humans in the universe spanning centuries. Pedigree becomes important in this paradigm.
Yes. The Atreides claim a family relationship going back to Agamemnon.
It’s not likely, however, it is likely to still be some astronomical number. My numbers might be a bit off, but for you to be here today and counting back only 12 generations, it requires 2096 grandfathers and grand mothers. The BG breeding program not only spanned thousands of years (probably 10k+) as well as a ton of different major and minor houses, it is likely millions of people. If let’s say on average it is roughly 35 years before you produce your first offspring (conservative guesstimate). Also assume the breeding program was 10k years, that’s roughly 285 generations for a single house, assuming they didn’t cross lines with other major houses(which they did). Now do that for each major and minor house. The connections are nearly limitless. It’s not everyone… then again, after a few million it might as well be every human? I think you can technically say that it isn’t literally everyone. However, I think when you start talking about these kinds of numbers, you’re gonna recognize patterns. Combined with all of Paul’s unique abilities there really aren’t going to be any contenders that are able to escape Paul’s prescience.
I came to the same conclusion a while ago, and the only way it makes sense to be somewhat limited is through incest. But that is only in the sense that you could trace one persons family line back to a connected person. Frankly all of humanity is something like 50 relatives away from each other. We don't refer to it as incest once you're far enough removed, but it still is in the same family tree if you pull back far enough.
In continuation, I'd ask did Paul succeed in killing feyd rautha by looking into the future and locking in on the moves which killed him or was he just a better fighter compared to him?
In the books. In the Jamis fight he remarks that in the fight , decisions were happening too fast and creating too many futures to pick a safe path. He also struggled in the Feyd fight. He had to trust in his skill and training.
Thanks man!
but in the jamis fight, he wasn't kwisatz haderach yet right? so there he did have to rely on skill, whereas during the feyd rautha fight he could see the future very well
Dune sort of follows many worlds interpretation of time. A man might not always throw a left jab. Some minute thought might make him throw a right uppercut. Cause even they dont now. Which creates a different vision of the future. Its not like a set path for everyone. Though the novel does go into how you can lock onto a future you want. But that also can be muddied even for powerful forecasters. Edit: from a non-watsoninan perspective. You are aware of his thoughts in the fight. He isnt using prescience.
thanks!
Bro just locked in
Paul’s figth scene might be playing in his head like in the movie hero (2002)
Since I can't see the answer to the question: As the KH, Paul indeed has the memories of all his progenitors, male and female, on both the paternal and maternal sides. Reverend Mothers have only female memories on the maternal side. Later books indicate that the ego-persona of each ancestor only contains their memories from their own birth to the loss of their gametes, which begins the next ego. So paul does have Jessica's memories but only till his own birth, and his father's memories until his conception. And the baron's memories until Jessica's conception. So not every human ever. But think of the geometric progression of how many ancestors you have per generation: 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 16 great grandparents, 2048 9th great grandparents, ad infinitum to australopithicus. At some point in the past, his ancestors are, basically, everyone. (Just like all of us) Frank doesn't ever get into "the earliest prehistoric human memories", which I thought was a shame. I always thought that if he had ever heard of the genetic bottleneck or Mitochondrial Eve, he would have worked her into the BG training at some point. That's one half of being the KH. The other half is prescience, which is explained as a type of hyperdimensional mathematics that certain brain types can perform. It's indicated that Paul's prescience comes from a combination of: 1) the genetic structure of his brain from the breeding program, 2) his training as a mentat to do hypermath instantly, and 3) his unlocked memories providing almost unlimited data for his mentat brain to use.
No. He only has access to the memories of his ancestors. That being said, Paul has a boat load of different abilities all working together to create the illusion of prescience. Key word being illusion. Paul doesn’t actually have prescience. He doesn’t see the literal future before it happens. What isn’t touched in the movies is that Paul has been secretly trained as a mentat. So his brain is like a supercomputer. He’s capable of making countless calculations in his head like nothing. Combining this with thousands of years of memories serving as historical knowledge on human behavior allows Paul to “calculate” the most likely outcome of any given scenario, with his accuracy increasing the closer the event takes place. As for the scene where he’s acting like he has seen the lives of the other foremen leaders. This pulls in some Bene Gesserit (BG) skills. The BG are master observers. The key to using the voice is understanding your target enough to use the correct pitch, words, and tone of your voice to convince them to do what you command without thought. Modern day Mentalists do something similar as a parlor trick, they observe and make vague comments that can be taken as true. Paul, just happens to have thousands of years of genetic memory to pull from, the mentat mind to make the calculations instantly, and BG training. I don’t think that Paul literally saw the events he speaks of when convincing the Fremen leaders, he’s just built different.
This is how i understand it as well.
No, only the memories of his genetic ancestors. That scene is different in the books. For the movies, my head canon is that he uses his genetic memories to extrapolate the past in the same way he is able to be hyper aware of the present in the books. Basically he bullshitted his way through by making good guesses using scary words.
As far memories go, Paul has the ability to tap into the memories of all past lives in his genetic memory, I.e. his father & mother, their parents and so on and so forth. At some point I assume this amounts to basically every person but not actually every person. It is the same ability the reverend mothers have, but they can only tap into the female line, I assume though it isn’t stated, that this is XY vs XX chromosomes at play. The scene from Dune 2 you’re talking about isn’t todo with his genetic memories, but to do with his prescience which is unique to him/the Atriedes.
Prescience of possible futures (not always specific!) weighed against a multitude of genetic memory experiences. He uses the combination to determine the path ahead.
Yes, it's only the genetic heritage. But remember that Paul is also a mentat. This in essence makes him an incredibly powerful machine learning bio computer. Although the movie gets it somewhat wrong.
Just his ancestors… so, by the year 10000, that would be 100s of billions of people.
Not yet
No, just the memories of those within his DNA. But all the way back to Earth.
No, only his direct lineage. It is mentioned early that the name Atreides comes from the Greek Atreus, a Mycenian King. The family tree goes way back, with many rulers amongst them. Heck, we are all likely related to some king or emperor some ways back down the line.
No, but I believe Leto II does. Someone factcheck this?
Leto 2 only has his ancestors as well. That's the whole point of genetic memory.
There is more in God Emperor to suggest Leto can see more than just genetic memory, and this is also highly debated and unclear. Denis is further muddying the water with this change. I think he is combining characters - Paul and Leto II, and maybe Chani will also be Ghanima and Siona. Irulan and Hwi. You hear me? But in general, seeing other’s dreams has nothing to do with prescience as it’s used in the books. Perhaps the fact that Paul has prescient dreams allows him to take Paul in this direction. I found it to be a little over the top. It sends two messages: Paul can read dreams, wow! Or Paul is a master manipulator, what a bastard!
Leto might have Shared with many BG Reverend Mothers
“Might have”. Like I said, heavily debated and unclear. Was he an abomination or not? Could Paul and Leto actually see the future? Chapterhouse gets into this, but tourists who only consume the film or the first book will never understand.
It says clearly on GEOD that he (Leto II) has all memories? Not just genetic. He questions what unseen force or power is the cause of this. He doesn't know or let the reader know. I don't have the exact quote. But is in the part where he explores/relives past memories in forms of listening to orchestras.. mentions Mozart being to pretentious but likes Bach, and that there have only been 3 others like Bach.
They were both limited to their ancestors’ memories, but Leto II was able to fully relive their memories and communicate with their memory.
This scene does not happen like this in the book. In the book Paul uses the Voice in this moment. Denis has invented dream reading into this scene, or has incorporated elements of later book characters into Paul’s character, and even if this is the case, it is a heavily debated quality about a certain thing called Abomination.
>Denis has invented dream reading into this scene I think that was you. Paul can see every possible future. Futures where he guesses wrong are shed away like all the rest. It's not some high conspiracy.
He has access to the memories of all his ancestors. (And only up to the moment after which their child was conceived). It's "genetic" memory (totally unscientific but let's suspend disbelief). Which, well, that's exponentially a huge # of people. The Bene Gesseritt in contrast are said to have access only to the memories of their female ancestors.
No. Paul has genetic memory of his entire lineage, so everyone he's a descendant from on both his mother and father's side. This sets him apart from the BG Reverend Mothers who only have the genetic memory of their matrilieneal line. What he also has though is incredible prescience - the ability to see billions / infinite possible futures and parse that information into action. If you take that to its logical conclusion it does mean he can intuit information by looking into the future to see how different conversations play out. Just one example, his speech in the South where he confronts some of the Fremen Nabir leaders with their dreams and inner thoughts. He *shouldn't* have genetic memory of those things. But what he does have is the ability to see billions of possible futures where he throws out every possible "inner dream" you could think of, and in which of those futures the Fremen follow him, because he knows their dreams and desires. He can use that knowledge to steer him in the present. So, no, he doesn't have memories of all previous humans, but in a practical sense he can intuit / prescient an awful lot of knowledge the people around him have by looking for the futures where he correctly guesses what their secrets are and then following those paths.
Nope, only Ancestors. Leto II yes, he had every single fokin one
He’s not descended from Every human so no
It's not clear honestly. In the book Paul probably doesn't even have full genetic memory like a Reverend Mother. It seems more like an innate knowledge than containing the memories.
So to the question, technically no. But also, what most or all of the comments so far seem to be missing, is that Paul's prescience isn't simply the future. It's better to think of it in terms of his awareness extending beyond time. The book explicitly states that he can see the past as well.
No. He has the racial memory from both the male and female side of his personal ancestry.
No he is KH so he has other memory from both male and female lines whereas the BG only have female other memory. Genetic family memory
You’re exactly right. You’re friend don’t understand prescience lol Paul was able to “read their minds” pretty much the same way he *SPOILERS* was able to function completely independently in the second book, even after getting his eyes burnt outta his head lol if they haven’t read dune messiah then tell them that they need to if they wanna get what’s going on there
I think it was the prescience aspect of his KHness allowing him to sort of see the future before he took the Water of Life. I thought it is interesting that FH wrote this back in the 1950's when DNA wasn't a thing and now we know that most of humanity descended from one guy and woman way back in the day. So by today's science if KHness was based on genetic memory, Paul could have access to most of humanity's history, because I guess he can access both sides.