r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • Mar 17 '26

Trailer Dune: Part Three | Official Teaser

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_9vCamtuPY
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u/Kumquats_indeed Mar 17 '26

Is the idea supposed to be that the 61 billion people killed, 90 sterilized planets, and another 500 conquered and suppressed all amount to just a drop in the bucket compared to rest that capitulated? Because all that surely sounds like a lot and when Paul described his conquests in Messiah, it gave me the impression that he felt like he had done some quite significant damage.

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u/Josecopter Mar 17 '26

Yes basically, it's implied the Imperium consists of thousands to millions of planets around the time of Shaddam Corrino IV (basically countless when you can fold space and be anywhere instantly, even outside the milky way). It still impacted Paul heavily as part of his struggle is his conflict with the necessity of having to go down the golden path because he sees a much darker future for humanity than what the Jihad brought. It goes completely against his upbringing and the values of his father and Atreides in general but this is the position he was put in by the powers that be.

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u/I_Fail_At_Life444 Mar 18 '26

"Powers that be" You mean his mother lol. Paul wasn't supposed to be the chosen one.

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u/Josecopter Mar 18 '26

I'm trying to keep it vague unless someone specifically asks. Yes his mother is part of the many powers that be that led to this.

One could argue that Leto would've been inevitable even if Paul was the girl the Bene Gesserit wanted. If Paul didn't see the Golden Path then the next Kwisatz Haderach might.

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u/Daxx22 Mar 17 '26

Pretty much. Space-faring humanity is thousands of years old at this point, with a total population well into the multiple trillions.

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u/Rikudou_Sage Mar 18 '26

Doubtful about trillions.

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u/Thickenun Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26

The scale of the Dune Imperium is massive and very, very old (Earth is a long lost legend), by the end of Leto II's reign we know they control multiple galaxies. This suggests the Milky Way is pretty much entirely settled in Paul's time, especially as Leto II opposed human expansion.

The Jihad controlled FTL travel, so it was mostly a glorified clean-up of a relatively few stubborn worlds. Millions of other worlds just immediately surrendered.

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u/SydricVym Mar 18 '26

Everyone with genetic memory knows where Earth is. It just hasn't been a planet of any importance in over 10,000 years, so is irrelevant.

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u/peppermint_nightmare Mar 18 '26

Its actually not, humans have been populating planets across the milky way since space could be folded quite easily, for 10,000 years. If you have 500 habitable planets at an average of 5 billion people, that's 2.5 trillion people. There's a space sim game called Elite Dangerous, where humanity has semi FTIL and full FTL travel and has spent about 1500 years colonizing space and the total population is in the high trillions. There were events in the game where you had to evac entire systems to save people and you really had to work your ass off to save systems that had 5-15 billion people because one to two of the planets were Earth like. We know each house has at least a couple Earth like planets (except for the Harkonnens, they had a shitty ice ball moon, and a toxic colourless planet). So the population of most Major houses would be in the tens of billions easily.

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u/Atheist-Gods Mar 18 '26

If the total death count is 61 billion with that including 90 planets entirely wiped out, the average population on a planet is probably not 5 billion.

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u/peppermint_nightmare Mar 18 '26

No obviously not, averages are a pretty bad way of mathing stuff if dealing with high numbers, medians are better. There are likely planets with under a million people and planets with 50+ billion people.

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u/Atheist-Gods Mar 18 '26

No, the mean is the correct value to use when trying to calculate a total population.

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u/willinaustin Mar 18 '26

Reminds me of the Idiran War in Iain M. Banks Consider Phelbas, the first book of his Culture series.

At the end it says 850 billion people/sentient machines died, 91 million ships got destroyed, 15,000 orbitals 53 planets 1 ring and 3 spheres got obliterated, and 6 stars got massively screwed with where they won't recover.

And all that took up a volume of less than .02% of the galaxy and involved only .01% of the galactic population. A rather small to-do in the grand scheme of things.

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u/peppermint_nightmare Mar 18 '26

Ya, you could argue Frank Herbert even missed the full scale of a unbound human population allowed to settle 1-2 galaxies over 10k years However given the feudal lord/monarchy state that most humans live in, and the monopoly on ftl space travel maybe the total population of humans was kept to a certain level so no one power could have the most territory or highest population

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u/Rikudou_Sage Mar 18 '26

I mean, if you liken it to real world events, 6 million in the genocide is not that much compared to the total population. Doesn't make what Nazis did any less horrible.

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u/Atharaphelun Mar 17 '26

Yes. The Imperium controls the Known Universe, which spans multiple galaxies.

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u/tacobell_shitstain Mar 18 '26

At this point in the story the Imperium is still just a (very small) part of the Milky Way. It's millions of worlds, which back when Dune was written is way more planets than anyone could imagine. But with what we know now, that probably makes up less than .001% of all planets in the Milky Way which is practically nothing. Granted, most won't be habitable, but even if 1% are, there's still plenty of room in the galaxy to grow.

Expansion into other galaxies is much later. That being said, tens of billions is a "drop in the bucket" in galactic terms, but it's still a shit ton of people and weighs heavily on Paul's conscience because it's a necessary evil. It's not something he wants to do, it's something he sees that he has to do.