I like the new Dune movies. They're good. I also like that Funcom's survival MMO Dune: Awakening is based, stylistically and aesthetically, on the new Dune movies. That's great.
But I do miss some of the sheer weirdness of the original Dune film. Lynch's Dune film. And if I had to narrow it down to one thing I miss the most, it'd be the third-stage Guild Navigator.
That weird, huge, mushy mutated monster in the giant spice tank with a whole posse of bald dudes dressed in garbage bags vacuuming up the Navigator's, I dunno what the slop is it's leaking… tank sweat? It rules. The third-stage Guild Navigator is the best and weirdest part of a very good and very weird movie.
And yet, Denis Villeneuve has now made two Dune movies, and we still haven't seen his version of the third-stage Guild Navigator. Since Dune: Awakening is based on Villeneuve's Dune movies, we haven't seen a third-stage Guild Navigator in the game, either.
This is, frankly, a crime against casual Dune fans like myself. Look at it this way: I just paid Amazon $3.79 to rent it so I could check, and in Lynch's Dune movie, the Guild Navigator shows up precisely at the 8-minute mark. Eight minutes! That's all we had to wait to see the weird and fascinating space-folding disgusting tank mutant.
Between Dune and Dune: Part Two, we've sat through a combined 322 minutes without seeing a single third-stage Guild Navigator. That's 314 more minutes than Lynch made us wait. That's over five hours! What's the hold up, Denis? Why are you hiding the tank blob from us? Scared to get weird?
I think I finally have some good news, at least for fans of Dune: Awakening (or people who are just generally interested in seeing weird blobby creatures floating in large, sweaty tanks). We're gonna get a peek at a third-stage Guild Navigator in Dune: Awakening soon.
While talking to Joel Bylos, game director of Dune: Awakening, about the MMO's Chapter 3 update, I did what I always do in interviews: I ran out of questions to ask with, like, seven whole minutes left. So I panicked. I started asking about the third Dune movie that's currently in production, and if Funcom was in contact with Legendary Pictures, the film's production company, to bring elements of Dune: Part Three into the game.
"We're definitely working with them. I've had the privilege and honor of being able to both read the script and see a bunch of the art and things that are coming, and what they're actually doing in the film," Bylos said. "I do have some pretty good ideas about how we're going to incorporate some of those things into the game."
There was still seven minutes left, somehow, so I babbled about my obsession with the third-stage Guild Navigator in Lynch's Dune, similarly to how I outlined it above, and how I hoped to see it in Dune: Awakening someday.
"You'll be a very happy man during the next year, is what I'm gonna say," Bylos told me. I was so stunned my nervous rambling had resulted in a scoop I couldn't even think of a follow-up—which is fine, because Bylos couldn't really tell me more.
To be clear, Bylos was tipping me off about a Navigator making an appearance in Dune: Awakening, not the Dune movie—though like a lot of Dune fans, I sort of assume it'll be in the next film, too. Villeneuve has been punting the weird tank monster down the road for five years, but this is his final Dune film and he's gonna have to show us a Navigator, one way or another. And much to my delight, so will Dune: Awakening.
