Dune

After finishing yet another incredible, religious viewing experience of Dune on the glorious 4k BluRay with my new setup, I was really trying to think about depictions in film of male characters who are masculine yet at the same time also have empathy, aren't emotionally distant, nor have the "dumb dad" trope. But the only one that kept coming to mind is Leto Atreides in Part One. He just fits into all of these criteria, and it just makes his death even more tragic. But in the book, it’s not necessarily like that. Villeneuve and Oscar Isaac gave this character such a palpable warmth. Book Leto is a much grayer character. He can get very intense with Jessica and Paul and at times he openly says that he wants to exploit the Fremen. Jessica kind of explicitly said it in the first book: “The Duke is really two men. One of them I love very much. He’s charming, witty, considerate… tender— everything a woman could desire. But the other man is… cold, callous, demanding, selfish— as harsh and cruel as a winter wind. That’s the man shaped by the father”.Part one ultimately made him into a genuine good guy. It plays a lot with the idea of Leto being a truly honest and honorable man whom the other great houses really look up to for leadership and his Atreides qualities, and the Emperor fears that. Don’t get me wrong, while those characteristics do shine through in the book, it's much more about the Atreides' military power. Dune often mentions that Leto was training a fighting force just as formidable as the Sardaukar. Book Leto is a threat to the Emperor not just from a personal view, but even more so from a heavily military and economic standpoint. He could completely shake up the Landsraad. Book Leto has a completely different kind of charisma. He commands the same kind of loyalty as a great general. He's a savvy politician and a strategic leader, and he makes sure his people know how important they are to him. But he's not warm and fatherly, not like in this film— he wants power and he’s smart enough to get it. So yeah thank you for reading that was my brief rant about Daddy Leto I Atreides!