That Time A Cartoon Network Show Parodied The Weirdest Dune Book
Frank Herbert's "Dune" is an exquisite book and a science-fiction masterpiece. On the surface, it tells an entertaining and well-crafted adventure about a young boy who avenges the death of his family and rises to become Emperor. Beneath that, though, is a very dense narrative with complex themes of religion, politics, and ecology.
In Herbert's later books, however, the "Dune" universe gets weird as hell. There are clones, mutants, dogs that look like chairs, and much more. That being said, easily no aspect of the book series is as bizarre and memorable as the character Leto II becoming a sandworm.
In Herbert's "God Emperor of Dune," the son of Paul Atreides decides to lead humanity into a better future by transforming into a human-sandworm hybrid that could live for thousands of years and rule with an iron fist. It makes sense that something as outlandish as this has never made it to the big screen in any of the "Dune" adaptations. Not even Denis Villeneuve seems interested in the prospect, choosing instead to focus on adapting "Dune Messiah" as the end of his potential "Dune" film trilogy.
As it were, Villeneuve's "Dune: Part Two" is a bleak blockbuster that is primarily focused on Paul's story and the cautionary tale of believing in messianic figures. That means the movie has less time to showcase the weirder parts of its source material, the intricate politics of the "Dune" universe, or even the ecology of its primary setting of Arrakis (which is, of course, central to the story).
Still, there is one sort of adaptation of "God Emperor of Dune" already — specifically, a cartoon homage. That would be a reference to "The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy," the '00s Cartoon Network show about two kids, Billy and Mandy, who befriend the Grim Reaper after beating him in a game.
God emperor of cartoon
In the first segment of season 2, episode 3, "Mandy the Merciless," Mandy gets a vision of a future in which she learns the secret of immortality by transforming into a giant worm hybrid. She now rules the world, much like Leto II, by controlling the supply of spice. More specifically, she controls cinnamon (which is what spice melange smells like, according to the "Dune" books). The sight of a little mutant worm girl is already hilarious but the fact that it's an overt and very deliberate homage to "God Emperor of Dune" — a story no child who watches Cartoon Network could be familiar with — is golden.
And the parody doesn't stop there. Just like Leto II awakes clones of the character Duncan Idaho through the ages to have someone to talk to, Mandy unfreezes clones of Billy, who keep dying off in ridiculous ways — or get killed by Mandy.
That Cartoon Network would ever allow such a bizarre parody is hilarious. Cartoons are full of homages and parodies of things kids aren't familiar with, that's part of the fun. But "God Emperor of Dune" is such a specific choice, with such a long history and a context that is ignored in favor of memorable iconography in all the "Dune" adaptations so far, yet it works as part of a cartoon that is full of monsters and other strange creatures like this one.
Speaking with Syfy Wire, creator Maxwell Atoms once described the episode as "probably my favorite parody we ever did" because of how obscure the reference was. "This was a very post-modern show and I don't know if I even could do another one like that, let alone have it greenlit today," he added.
"Dune: Part Two" is now playing in theaters.