Is this a little cheap? Maybe it’s a little cheap. After all, this is one of the most famous lines from one of the most popular science-fiction books of all time, one which has even made it into other movies. Imagine my surprise when I finally saw Phantasm and realized that all of the Easter eggs (not that the benighted term existed back then) were Dune related, five years before David Lynch’s adaptation was released and more than forty years before this one. You know what else is kind of cheap, though? Putting “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” as your number one American movie quote ever, when the only thing that the movie adds is the adverb. Thank you as always, AFI, for letting me indulge my baser instincts.

The only Dune which has ever done all that much for me is the David Lynch one, and that has a lot more to do with the fact that it’s David Lynch than it has to do with Dune. The 2021 Dune is handsome, which I mean as a compliment, but as is the case with Henry Cavill or a rented tuxedo, “handsome” is no substitute for “compelling.” What Dune does have, which I’ll grant is a little ironic given the emphasis on its color-coordinated settings and its Oscar-winning score, are a number of good lines which are scattered pretty evenly among the large cast. Oscar Isaac gets “Desert power!” Josh Brolin gets the one about mood not being important to fighting, Jason Momoa gets the one about “everything important happens when we’re awake,” Charlotte Rampling talks about the box, Stellan Skarsgard gets to say “My Dune.” Shoot, Rebecca Ferguson even gets what might be the most memed line from this film when she tells Timothee Chalamet (who is conspicuously absent from the list above), to “Use the voice.” I didn’t have room for any of those, but I made room for “Fear is the mind-killer.”

I like compound words. They’re busy. In nature, they’re some of the more beautiful words in English. “Upstream” is a beautiful word, almost mystical. “Sunflower” doesn’t need any gilding from me. “Strawberry” is better than “blackberry” because of how unexpected its two halves are together, but “blackberry” is better than “blueberry.” Less obvious, but more importantly the alliteration is interrupted by another (velar as opposed to bilabial) stop, and not a vowel. Outside of nature, I’m less impressed. Who could be moved by “smartphone” or “notebook?” The difference between “daylight” and “nightlight” says it all, although “dayspring” for dawn is more lovely than the noonish implications of “daylight.” And then there’s “mind-killer,” hyphenated but still a compound word, one which makes absolutely no bones about being a compound word. It’s designed for this single thought, a test which can only diagnose a single disease. Other emotions are not mind-killers. Thrill or melancholy or ire might dull the mind, but only fear can kill it. It’s a mantra, and it’s a damn good one. No wonder it’s taken hold since it was originally written, and no wonder it’s dug its fingernails into the cultural consciousness even more since 2021.