I forgot to mention Javier Bardem was actually the best part. His acting, as always, is the very best.
Frank Herbert meant for Dune to be a messiah story, to lay the basis to talk about how messiahs are bad for your health, as he put it. They even hint in Dune Part One how the messiah story the Fremen believe is an artificial story implanted by the Bene Gesserit centuries prior, which the Bene Gesserit were then working in the shadows to make a reality to fulfill their own political and philosophical ambitions. The whole thing is Herbert's commentary on power, that religion is a tool of power wrangled by politicians for their own ends. That's my understanding, anyway. I started rereading the book recently, and I was shocked at how poorly written I thought it was. I think his ideas are very cool, and the style of throwing in ancient scripture and literary sources in his imaginery universe are awesome, and the fact that he created such a rich world, but the mechanics of his writing were kind of shocking to me. I still want to finish at least the first book again. It's been decades since I first read it. I read the whole original series in sixth grade, so it's been a while haha.