In the books artillery was used in a very similar manner against Atreides troops. The fun part? It was Vladimir's plan. He is verbally high-fiving himself in that scene. I would expect nothing less of him.
Because in the word of Dune artillery is useless, since it is stopped by the shields generators. But the firemen don't use them, since it attacks the worm.
At 2:51 I just realized after the one soldier was shot they were saying “DONT SHOOT! DONT SHOOT, WE’RE HARKONNEN!” You can recognize the same word for “Harkonnen” ("Haqueen") from the arena announcer
The user @harrybirchall3308 explained this under the video "Dune 2 harkonnen arena with extra subtitles" They said: "The noble families and houses all speak galach (translated to english for the viewer) and don't actually speak the tongues of the lower classes of their worlds, much like how medieval aristocrats all spoke french to communicate with each other, but the people they ruled over had their distinct languages."
@@erni_fx Why do Fremen speak Galach though?, I mean English in the movie. Of course there's Jakobsa language, but everyone understands Galach perfectly on Arrakis
@@fyn8172 the fremen arrived on arrakis a long time ago, and there have been spaceports there since, with some of the fremen relating more to city life than the reclusive sietch-goers, that is reason enough without adding the emphasis on the spaceports being the most important in the galaxy, being on the panet Dune
@@fyn8172 In the books it is noted that the Spacing Guild engaged in off-the-books trade with the Fremen so they could have extra spice. The fact that the Guild Navigators heavily depended on Spice was a tightly kept secret so as to prevent either the Emperor or whoever from the great houses who controlled Arrakis from chocking them. Thus it is possible to assume that many Fremen who engaged in the illicit trade had some grasp of Galach so they could communicate with the Spacing Guild contacts.
from what I heard, Feyd-Rautha's dad was one of the few decent Harkonnens in the books, so maybe he decided to give his son a more folksy-sounding name in the Giedi Prime language, whereas names like "Vladimir" are foreign-language aristocratic names
Idk if it was just me but after watching the movie a second time i realised only the commoners and harkkonen army regulars spoke their native language exclusively while the baron, rabban, rautha, and more prominent/senior officals including mentats seem to be bilingual but chose to speak whenever possible or exclusively speak whatever language they were speaking in English. Not sure if it was an intentional choice by Villeneuve to irl history of how some aristocracies would speak an entirely different language for a time, (like in england and russia who once spoke french) unlike the rest of their population who spoke an entirely different "lesser" language, but its a pretty neat inclusion if it turns out to be true.
The nobility in Dune speak Galach which we the audience hear as English, although obviously when shown in written form it’s clearly not and English would only be known to those with ancestral memory.
@@fel_zharost Harkonnens have literally hunting grounds where they breed humans and hunt them. Even the herectics, who call our beloved God a Tyrant, never cry those scums
Whenever the characters are speaking English, they're implied to be speaking Galach, the Imperium's main inter-cultural language. Or speaking their own languages in private (Harkonnens among themselves, sometimes Fremen among themselves, etc).
@@hannster7314 sacrifice [to House Harkonnen] our mortal blood give up our blood dedicate [to House Harkonnen] our faithful flesh give up our flesh leave to ourselves the deadly fear leave the fear leave to the mortals the endless fear beckon to death what's funny is that it phonologically vaguely makes sense with what's heard in the film so the chinese subs may not have been making shit up
Everyone everywhere is fawning over the arena announcer... Meanwhile I'm enjoying the troopers' combat speech much more. It sounds more direct, distilled, less fancy than what the arena announcer is using. Like a sub-speech you develop purely for use mid-battle.
And that's a battle language for you. In the book it's explained that each house have a specific sub language exclusively for combat so messages are more efficient and coded against enemy espionage.
@@Sid-th5ch Yeah, I realize that inventing three different interesting-sounding alien languages (Harkonnen, Sardaukar, and Fremen) was probably more than enough work for the filmmakers already. But it would have been nice to hear some Atreides battle language at some point. Imagine a version of the siege of Arrakeen where Duncan and Gurney keep slipping seamlessly between English and code language while they fight.
The hologram room felt very Combine to me. A large “computer” powered by a line of humans (mentats?) hooked up to a machine chanting numbers. Reminds me of how the Combine use brains grown in jars and Vortigaunt slaves hooked up to machines to power their computers and technology.
I notice this too! Mabye Is a language only for slave/servant. In the First movie, the harkonnen Who want rape Lady Jessica spoke this in english, mabye because he want to feel noble too.
Well aristocracy in ancient times have been known too speak languages they considered “higher” such as Europeans with Latin or French and Koreans and Japanese with chinese
Peasant language. The language most people are speaking is Galach (English for our ears) and is the lingua Franca of the Imperium. Aristocrats would speak it while regular subjects would use their native language. Think of Galach pretty much exactly like how English is used today; it’s the language of business and international politics, and younger generations in other countries learn to speak it.
fyi for those unaware the reason why the Harkonnen said not to turn the shield on was because when a laser hits a shield it causes the equivalent of a nuclear explosion... at both ends of the laser
@@robothunter Indeed using shields also attracts sandworms in the novel. There's also two instances shields are shown to influence hand to hand combat: Everyone outside of Arrakis is trained to kill with slow blade movements, in order to penetrate the shield, so: -When Paul fights Jamis, the fremen around think Pauls is cruelly and unnecesarily humilliating him, because his would-be fatal or finishing blows are slow, so Jamis is able deflect him, the fremen not knowing this is on purpose because they aren't used to take shields into consideration. -Two years later, when Paul and Feyd Rautha (without shields) fight in front of the Emperor, Paul is able to defeat Feyd in part thanks to the latter still being used to the slow blade and with certain postures related to the use of shields, while Paul's constant battles in Arrakis have already made him strike faster and with different tactics.
@@quentin7135No in the novel it goes into more detail and explicitly says that Paul's strikes were an instant too late because he was used to combat with shields, though he was also trying to spare him, asking Jamis to yield when he had the upper hand and later saying he didn't want to kill him.
@@verikan4241I’ve never read the books, thus I have a question. If the Fremen and the Fedaykin are used to fast paced strikes in melee, then how are they able to effectively fight shielded warriors on the Great Houses own turf during the holy war?
Harkonnen ("Harkonian"?) language sounds like a kind of compressed English with some additional words in Dutch, German and occasional French/Spanish. E.g. Harkonnen "saun" (="shield") sounds a lot like "Zaun" (German for "fence") which could be thought of as a shield. Another example: "her tis ton da?" means "do you hear this sound there"? "Ton" is German for "sound", "da" means "there", the rest is grammatically wrong English.
A shield is just a little fence that you carry around so that all tracks. It was really bugging me that harkonnen sounded like creolised french and german and your comment is the only explanation I've found
I don't remember if the novels depict the Harkonnens as strongly patriarchal, but in the movie the only Harkonnen women we see are either slaves or "pets". We only see men in the Harkonnen military. And everyone in the audience at the arena appears to be male.
The imperium is a pretty patriarchal society overall (excluding the Bene Gesserit) and I wouldn’t be surprised if Herbert originally intended for the Harkonnens to be pretty misogynistic
I realized that one already and really had to laugh so hard at the fact that there are dipsh*ts out there who have declared this film somehow their 'anti-woke' masterpiece of the year. Chani literally says 'Here, we're all equal. Men and women alike.' Not that I would care all that much for that culture war stuff from people like Ben Shapiro and The Critical Drinker, but the fact that this movie is so good that it can sneak in stuff like that without a right-wing sh*t storm is telling. Also artistically, it just makes sense to depict the Harkonnens as deeply misogynistic. Not that I agree with most of the criticism against Disney's Star Wars, but the fact that the Empire or the First Order have an egalitarian employment policy somewhat interferes with the idea that these societies are supposed to symbolize pure evil. This also waters down all possibly daring and relevant political messages you could have made with those movies and series. Dune Part II on the other hand is really intelligently made in this regard, you actually sympathize for a protagonist who's morals are questionable at best. But Paul actually kicks the idea of equality out the door. Chani and her egalitarian and anti-imperialist ideals are implicitly the political subtext of the movie. The end of the film was satisfying, yet tragic, for those reasons. The tragedy has a human and a political dimension.
@@sirrathersplendid4825Sumerian is completely unrelated to any known language in human history outside of borrowed words actually. Hittite is Indo-European though
@@presseagainidareyou4704 - I’ve heard of people linking Sumerian with Japanese/Korean, but that’s got to be dubious at best. Certainly a thousand years older than Hittite, in any case.
I love languages that sound like this. I think the Harkonnens are a bunch of scumbags, but how they were presented in these films feels so cool. Almost every culture has a sort of priestly aesthetic to it going on, robed people humming or speaking in unison, but the Harkonnen are so industrial. I love how their language sounds and I love how their armor looks. I've always just sort of enjoyed these more "industrial Soviet grunt" races shown in media throughout the last thirty years, from the Space Jockeys to the Kett to these guys. There's more examples but I can't think of any at the moment. Maybe the bad guys from Quake 2 and 3.
@@riloegaming Combine are so good and the Overwatch is interesting to me. I like the idea that the Combine Empire isn't ran by aliens, but hyperadvanced AI that surpassed their original alien masters, and is hoarding as much technology as possible. I would love to see a Half-Life film, since the Half-Life universe is a bunch of sci-fi tropes done well, paired with some serious and goofy writing that gave us the gems of 2 and Alyx.
@@Karl-nv5ok True, but in the books, when Paul gets ancestral visions, him and his sister trace back the Atreides bloodline to King Agamemmnon in ancient Greece, and the Harkonnens are traced back to Finnish people.
@@fabztau1996 I don't remember that from the book, but the name Atreides literally means descendants of Atreus (which Agamemnon was) so it makes sense. The bloodline of Atreus was also cursed...
There are precedents in history. In Ancient Rome, patricians tended to speak Ancient Greek, while plebians spoke Latin. In England, after the Norman invasion, the nobility (often replaced by Norman nobles) tended to speak French, while the common population spoke Anglo-Saxon (Old English, which would contribute to modern English).
Persian was the court language of much of the Islamic world for a long time, and persisted longer as the language of science, given the immense influence Persia once had on the arts, science, administration, etc.
@extrude22 Yes I know I acknowledged that by stating it was Uralic. But that doesn't take away from the fact that Finnish was influenced by Scandinavian and Slavic (to an extent)
It does sound like that, but it’s important to note the long vowel. Not something that English makes a fuss about, but Italian, Hungarian, Finnish, and many others do have this distinction.
This movie did very well on developing the Harkonnens, more than the stereotypes that Lynch did with the 1984 version, where they looked like a fusion of Clive Barker's Hellraiser movie saga, and a weird New Wave band from the same span of years it was filmed, with actors that simply talked menacingly. Developing the Harkonnens as a culture, even as the brutes they are, as a bunch of pasty fiends living on a blighted industrial planet with a guttural language is still a bit stereotyped...basically they're Space Orcs, but it's cool to see them get development nevertheless.
@@Gelatinocyte2 Salutations to you that corrected stefanvukasinovic without the know-it-all-denigration that some RU-vid commentators too often use. Kudos👍🖖
I liked the Harkonnen language much more than the Fremen one. I wonder why he had the Harkonnen speak englisch most of the time while the fremen sticked to their language when they were with their own
We are invading a desert planet where the temperature is extremely hot. Let's force our infantry to wear heavy, black body armor -- because it looks so bad-ass.
Movie reason: They do it for the audience. In-universe reason: It is common for aristocracies to speak an "international" language such as Latin, English, Mandarin, Greek, French, etc (in our world history) while the population at large speaks the common native language. The aristocrats can speak both, however. This is probably how the Landsraad Houses operate.
This has to be Harkonnen battle language, right? In the books the only mentioned languages that aren't extinct (like Franzh) are Galach, Chakobsa, and the various house battle languages.
Harkonnen is a form of Finnish. In the book the Harkonnens are of Finnish origins and descendants. The Atreides are of Greek origins. House Corrino origins are actually unknown. The book just states they where from the planet Corrin and after the battle of Corrin House Corrino came to power.
I find it interesting that you never hear the actual Harkonnens themselves speak Geidian nor anyone speak it to them. Id like to think maybe they have a law stating that they only speak Imperial Standard( English basically) as a way of further putting them separate and above their own populace which is conditioned to revere them nearly to the point of worship over the centuries theyve ruled there.
