If Dune is this generation’s Star Wars, we are all in big trouble

According to Florence Pugh, Denis Villeneuve’s stunningly strange and breathtaking universe is the equivalent to George Lucas’ heroic space opera. Let’s hope not

A long time ago, far far away, in a galaxy called the 1970s, kids dreamed of joining the rebellion, rescuing a princess and blowing up the Death Star. Peer into the cosmic tea leaves and it would become immediately clear that no amount of evildoing could withstand a neurotic gold butler, a dustbin with ideas above its station and a walking seven-foot tall shagpile carpet with a very low tolerance for disagreement.

It is worth remembering this when considering Florence Pugh’s recent declaration, ahead of next month’s Dune: Part Three, that Dune is her generation’s Star Wars. And then wondering how much trouble we might be in if she’s actually right. “I think they brought back movie-going. What an event the second [Dune] was,” Pugh cheerfully told the New York Times. “It was just so lovely to be a part of something that we know is our generational kind of Star Wars.”