In Dune: Part Two, Denis Villeneuve flips the script – there are more action sequences in the sequel compared to 2021's Dune, more sandworm-riding, and more at risk. However, there are also changes in the sequel that are less bombastic than Timothée Chalamet's Paul harnessing the Shai-Hulud: the role of the film's women. Dune is Paul's story, undoubtedly, but he's not the one writing it. The Bene Gesserit runs the world, a group of all-powerful women acting as puppet masters while male barons and lords fight over spice fields, so it makes sense for their members to stay at the forefront of the narrative.
In sci-fi and genre fiction more generally, though, motherhood is often monstrous. Pregnancy and labor are represented as visceral, brutal acts, symbolized most famously in Alien's chest-bursting scene, in which the parasitic alien Xenomorph breaks free from Officer Kane's body. The Bene Gesserit are mothers, but they're not maternal. These women are calculating, enmeshed in the workings of the universe, but emotionally removed from the consequences of their schemes.
