Why is ‘Dune’ so Anti-Gun?

HBO Max’s Dune is set in a future where planets have been conquered, interstellar travel is a snap, and there are — for some reason — no guns. Yeah, there are no guns in Dune! Well, actually there are guns in Dune, but the main characters seem to prefer to wield a crysknife, sword, or old fashioned blade. So what gives? Why are the characters in Dune so anti-gun?

Dune is set in the year 10191. Noble families run entire planets and a mysterious substance known as the Spice can enhance mental abilities to superhuman limits. However for all the technological advances, the machinery folks like Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa) use is pretty analogue. There’s a good reason for that. In this future, humanity waged an epic war for survival against A.I. called the Butlerian Jihad (as it was a holy war led by a woman named Serena Butler). When the dust settled, the survivors decided that it would be a grave sin to create any computer that functioned like a human brain. Instead, people ingested Spice to expand their own mental capacities to serve as human computers called “Mentats.” Stephen McKinley Henderson’s Thufir Hawat and David Dastmalchian’s Piter de Vries are two such beings.

So high tech is a no-no and tripping balls on space dust is what folks do. But how does that explain why there are no guns in Dune? It kind of doesn’t! To understand why there are so many damn blades in Dune, you’re going to have to make like a Mentat and use that old logic…

Why Are There No Guns in Dune? (Actually, There Are, But…)

So if you’re wondering why there are no guns in Dune, stop. Please. You’re embarrassing yourself. There are literally guns in the opening montage. The Fremen use sniper rifles to pick off Harkonnens and later Paul steals a small pistol off of Jamis (Babs Olusanmokun) in a melée.

That said, there aren’t many guns in Dune. The main characters prefer to use swords, knives, and crysknives in close hand-to-hand combat. Now why would these rough and tumble folks prefer that to a good old-fashioned gun full of bullets? Because high-born and high-ranking officers have these nifty body shields that protect them from fast-moving objects and…projectiles.

The early practice fight scene with Paul and Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin) establishes that body shields are useful, though not foolproof. A slow-moving, close blade can penetrate the shield. (Or a slow-moving dart in a later important Dune scene.) So if you want to kill an opponent wearing a body shield, like a Sardukar or high-ranking noble, you have to get up close and personal with a blade. Your gun isn’t as useful as you think!

Also some knives, like the Fremen’s crysknife, is a sacred object. Crysknives are taked from the teeth of the great sandworm, giving them an extra oomph of honor and religious prestige.

So that’s why there are “no” guns in Dune. It’s because it’s smarter, and objectively cooler, to fight in close quarters.

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