Published 9:44 pm Sunday, September 22, 2024 By Joshua Windus There are two series I’ve enjoyed seeing recently. Dune, though the third movie hasn’t been released yet, and Station 11, a television series that I finished awhile back ago. They are both post-apocalyptic stories.
Dune takes place generations after a machine uprising that came so close to defeating humanity that they placed religious restrictions on the development of robotics, forcing them to develop the human mind. The world is feudal and Machiavellian, with noble houses vying for control over each other and a mind-enhancing substance called spice. Station 11 is also science fiction, but it tells a much different story about humanities downfall.
During a COVID-like flu a young girl is orphaned, leaving her to forge a connection with an unlikely father figure who struggles with a responsibility he did not ask for. The aftermath of the flu leaves sees small bands of survivors clinging to each other for survival against the backdrop of a nearly emptied world where cities are quickly becoming overgrown. Both films have very different things to say about human nature.
Dune has inspired countless commentaries. A favorite of mine, by Pilgrim’s Pass, described how the brutal realism of Dune’s environment forces a character who starts out as an archetypical hero to make more and more horrific choices in order to survive in a hostile environment and culture that overwhelms his initial moral reservations. In Statio.