In Frank Herbert’s “Dune” novel, the primary try on Paul Atreides’ life comes when the Duke of Home Atreides is alone in his room after he and his household take up residence on the planet Arrakis. Within the guide, Herbert describes a second the place a Hunter Seeker drone, despatched by the nefarious Home Harkonnen, enters his room, writing:
“From behind the headboard slipped a tiny hunter-seeker not more than 5 centimetres lengthy. Paul recognised it without delay — a typical assassination weapon that each little one of royal blood realized about at an early age. It was a ravening sliver of metallic guided by some near-by hand and eye. It may burrow into shifting flesh and chew its method up nerve channels to the closest very important organ.”
Because the scene goes on, Paul has to stay utterly nonetheless in order to not give away his location to the drone operator, who’s seeing the Hunter Seeker’s discipline of view by a “compressed suspensor discipline” which “distort[s] the imaginative and prescient of its transmitter eye.” As Paul holds himself “in close to catatonic immobility,” the door to his room opens and the Hunter Seeker darts in direction of it, simply as Paul reaches out and snatches it from the air.
Although there are lots of issues fallacious with 1984’s “Dune,” this scene is depicted pretty faithfully in David Lynch’s a lot maligned epic, with Kyle MacLachlan’s Paul Atreides having to stay completely nonetheless whereas a model of the Hunter Seeker that principally seems like a flowery syringe searches the room. However for Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 model, the filmmaker and his crew added an additional degree of visible aptitude to the scene, which referred to as for some VFX ingenuity from Paul Lambert and his personal staff.
