In 2021 and 2024, director Denis Villeneuve adapted Frank Herbert's 1965 sci-fi epic "Dune" to the big screen in a pair of expansive (and expensive) live-action feature films. "Dune," as its many readers can tell you, is overwhelmingly complicated, requiring a special glossary of terms. 

The book is set tens of thousands of years in the future and surrounds a war over control of the planet Arrakis, known to a mysterious desert-dwelling people called the Fremen and the only known source of a valuable spice called melange. In the first "Dune" novel, the key sides vying for control over Arrakis are the gentle House Atreides and the wicked House Harkonnen. Both sides are being variously manipulated by the galaxy's emperor, Shaddam IV, as well as insidious psychic witches known as the Bene Gesserit.

"Dune" had previously been adapted to the big screen by David Lynch in 1984, and was turned into a pair...