Why Dune: Part Two Director Denis Villeneuve Made The Heartbreaking Choice To Cut Thufir
In the world of Frank Herbert's "Dune," set in the distant future of 10191, rich and powerful families hire powerful, sometimes supernatural assistants to aid in their business and in the rearing of their noble children. Both the benevolent House Atreides and the wicked House Harkonnen have, in their employ, beings called Mentats, who have trained their brains to serve as fast-thinking supercomputers. Mentats are what the "Dune" universe has instead of conventional computers. According to Herbert's lore, this was done out of fear of artificial intelligence. The House Atreides Mentat — as he was envisioned in Denis Villeneuve's 2021 film "Dune: Part One" — was a man named Thufir Hawat (Stephen McKinley Henderson), a kindly, grandfatherly type who sported a small lip tattoo, and whose eyes turned pure white when he did his mental calculations.
The lip tattoo, incidentally, is a remnant from Herbert's novel. On the page (as well as in David Lynch's noted 1984 film adaptation of "Dune"), Mentats drank "sapho juice," an addictive laudanum-like tincture that helped their brains operate faster. The juice stained their lips, allowing casual observers to identify Mentats.
Thufir appears in "Dune: Part One," but, curiously, is absent from "Dune: Part Two," now playing in theaters. Thufir's absence was a deliberate decision by Villeneuve. In Herbert's novel, the character played a more active role in the second half of the story. In the film, he's merely gone. According to a recent interview with EW, the decision to axe Thufir was a painful choice by Villeneuve, as he had decided to make a different kind of story. "Dune: Part Two" focuses heavily on the Bene Gesserit religious order and their manipulation of the political system. In that story, Mentats aren't really needed. Villeneuve merely streamlined things.
Thufir no more
In Herbert's novel, Thufir is captured by House Harkonnen when they invade the capital city of Arrakis and kill most of House Atreides. Although Baron Harkonnen already has a Mentat in his employ — the Twisted Mentat Piter De Vries — he forces Thufir to work for him. In the second half of the novel, the Harkonnens comb the desert looking for Paul and Jessica Atreides, the last surviving members of the royal family. Thufir stays close to the Baron and uses his position to sow discord between him and his evil nephew, Feyd-Rautha.
This subplot is cut from an admittedly already-ultra-dense story. Thufir might have been included, but if Villeneuve included every single detail from Herbert's novel, his film would likely run 12 hours. Villeneuve wasn't happy about the cuts he had to make, but he noted they were necessary, saying:
"When you adapt, there's always some kind of violence toward the original material. [...] You have to change things, you have to bend, you have to make painful choices. [...] One of the most painful choices for me on this one was Thufir Hawat. [...] He's a character I absolutely love, but I decided right at the beginning that I was making a Bene Gesserit adaptation. That meant that Mentats are not as present as they should be, but it's the nature of the adaptation."
The lore of "Dune" is so complex that any film adaptation would have to make such cuts. Heck, Villeneuve already had to split the first novel into two films that, collectively, run five hours and 20 minutes. A film is not a book, and it must, by the nature of the medium, include fewer details than a 500-page novel might.
Sorry, Thufir.