And before them all, of course, was Dune’s Paul Atreides. Adrian Veidt, who travels through the Mediterranean and what used to be ancient Persia before calling himself Ozymandias, the Greek name of Pharaoh Ramesses II, in the graphic novel-turned-movie-turned-TV show Watchmen. En Sabah Nur, who grows up in Egypt and renames himself Apocalypse, in the comics X-Men: The Rise of Apocalypse. Luke Skywalker on Tatooine (and Rey Skywalker on Jakku) in the Star Wars film franchise.
Indigenous knowledge becomes the outsider’s knowledge, and when that child grows up to become a leader (there is no version of this story in which they do not become a leader), it was the desert people’s expertise and customs that emboldened their ascendence. Amid a harsh landscape of sun and sand, the child learns the ways of that place’s original inhabitants, and a fateful path unfurls. Their lineage is royal and mysterious, and a formidable order with shadowy powers takes an interest in their future. In their adolescence they seem different - special. The sci-fi story has always been about more than just arid expanses, but Denis Villeneuve’s Part One can’t see past the sand.Ī child (usually a boy, sometimes a girl) comes of age in the desert.
