The Sand in Our Lungs: The Desertification of Our Imaginations
In 2024, two major science fiction franchises produced blockbuster sequels: Dune Part II, directed by Denis Villeneuve, and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, directed by George Miller. Both films overlapped in their depictions of the desert landscape, cults of survival, and a desire to return to a “green place.” These respective deserts are not seen as their own habitats, as unique biomes and cultural spaces, but rather as something dangerous that must be made green. This utopic desire combined with the extractive activities in both Villeneuve’s and Miller’s deserts suggests an inability to imagine life beyond extraction in the heat of global warming but only in lush greenness, where even the air is purer. The impact of this cultural imagining can be seen in the recent political landscape, as President Trump released an AI-generated video depicting the West Bank as an “oasis” with palm trees, and when Elon Musk, while heading DOGE, reposted a Mad Max meme with the text: “Ladies, it’s time to start thinking whether the guy you’re dating has post apocalyptic [sic] warlord potential.” In current political imaginings, the desert can either be greened to create some type of utopia or is full of savage warlords hoarding resources.
Rather than focusing on how humanity has adapted and survived these places, Dune Part II and Furiosa depict progress as the desire to return to green. While this view of the desert not only supports the current imperial actions in the Middle East, it also limits the ability to imagine and pursue survival in the heat of global warming. These coincidental releases suggest a turn toward imagining hot, dry futures where the air is poisoned or changing humanity, as in the Spice sands on Arrakis. Rather, we must (re)imagine these desert futures as more than extractive places where the heat and air can kill.
Unlike its predecessor Mad Max: Fury Road, which I’ve argued in my essay “Mad Max and the Wasteland of Commodification” has strong ecofeminist and environmental justice themes, Furiosa reverts to a biblical story of the sinful woman. The first shot of the titular character is her reaching for a lush piece of fruit while another girl whispers they should hurry. Immediately after she picks the fruit, Furiosa sees that men have invaded their sanctuary. While trying to warn the others, she is captured, which prompts her mother to follow them into the desert to rescue her. She fails, and Furiosa is enslaved and raised by Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) before she is eventually traded to Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) to be one of his or his son’s child wives as part of a deal for Dementus to run Gas Town, a petrol fortress. Indeed, it is the attempted rape by his son Rictus (Nathan Jones) that allows a young Furiosa to escape and hide among the War Boys, eventually growing up to become a mechanic and then learning to drive the War Rig alongside Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke). They become partners—both romantically and in their desire to escape. Meanwhile, Dementus is scheming to take over Immortan Joe’s fortress, which features fresh produce, green gardens, renewable energy, and—most importantly—unlimited water from underground aquifers. Caught up in his schemes, Praetorian Jack and Furiosa are captured, Jack is horrifically killed, and Furiosa escapes to tell Immortan Joe in hopes of enacting her revenge. After a forty-day war, she tracks Dementus through the wasteland to kill him. The film ends with the History Man (George Shevtsov) suggesting that Furiosa didn’t kill Dementus but rather planted the seed of the fruit she took from the Green Place where she was captured while eating the fruit, and the film ends with Furiosa now played by Charlize Theron handing one of these fruits to the enslaved women that she escapes with in the next film.
In many scenes, Dune Part II mirrors the plot points of Furiosa. Like Furiosa, Paul (Timothée Chalamet) comes from a place utopic for its greenery and, most importantly, water—a sacred element on Arrakis. Furiosa and Paul both seek revenge against grotesque villains known for their cruelty. In Dune Part I, Paul’s family, who have come to rule the desert planet, are murdered by the villainous Harkonnens, and Paul and his mother flee to hide in the desert, where they are taken in by the native population called Fremen. Paul’s mother, Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), is part of a galaxy-wide religious order that has seeded prophecies and propaganda about an outsider who will turn Arrakis green again and lead the Fremen. While Paul is perfectly positioned to fulfill this prophecy, he is hesitant at first, but in order to defeat the Harkonnens and avenge his father, he must use the native practices of the Fremen to not only survive the desert but to control their loyalty. By ruling the Fremen, he regulates what makes Arrakis so important: Spice production. The drug called Spice enables interstellar planetary travel, so it is a necessary and valuable resource required by the empire. Ultimately, Paul takes leadership of the Fremen to oust the Harkonnens from Arrakis by force, which prompts the other ruling families to threaten violence, leading to the Fremen intergalactic war off their home planet.
The desert is the prime visual for both these films, but in Furiosa there is no cinematic beauty in the desert, only fear, while Dune features long shots of the sun catching Spice in the air, the shifting sands, the decorated sietchs where the Fremen live, often overlaid with a stereotypical Middle Eastern soundtrack. While both films depict the desert in different lights, survival and exploitation are still central to the desert, primarily for various types of fuel, whether it’s petrol, food and water, or Spice.
Furiosa is unable to escape her captors because she has no resources to survive the desert, and resources are exclusively stolen, not shared. The apocalypse of the Mad Max franchise is summarized in voiceovers at the beginning of the film, and the first two instances of destabilization listed are the power grid collapsing and that “currency is worthless,” (Miller 00:00:30), once again proving the quote commonly attributed to Fredric Jameson that “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” The voiceovers end with the final sentiment from the History Man: “‘As the world falls around us, how must we brave its cruelties?’” (Miller 00:01:21). The film’s answer to this question is revenge and the utopic desire to return to a green paradise. The cruelties that Furiosa survives depict what Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor call “end times fascism:” “A darkly festive fatalism—a final refuge for those who find it easier to celebrate destruction than imagine living without supremacy” (“The Rise of End Times Fascism”). Indeed, destruction—of both property and the human body—are moments of joy rather than horror, such as when Dementus orders a wasteland gang he’s overcome to fight each other for the honor of riding motorcycles attached to the body of their boss, pulling him apart (Miller 00:27:23). This destruction is linked directly to the desert because there is no alternative lifestyle presented in the sands. The only people living in this desert are destructive—except for our heroine, raised elsewhere, and her eventual romantic interest, who is murdered. Rather, the alternative lifestyle is rooted not in the desert but in an oasis of green where there are still trees bearing fruit, water, and animals.
In the first few minutes of Furiosa, what is called “the green place of many mothers” in Mad Max: Fury Road is depicted. In a rocky canyon, the few shots of daily life show men and women working together at chores while windmills turn in the background. In addition to human life, there is nonhuman life, from birds crying to the horse Furiosa’s mother rides in an attempt to rescue her. Shelters feature solar panels on the roofs, and the people use sustainable technology such as a pedal-powered whetstone and a solar oven (00:04:13). While they are not pacifist—Furiosa’s mother is a crackshot—they represent the opposite of the desert barbarism by incorporating advanced technology along with sustainable living to create an egalitarian community. This progressive community, though, is visually connected to the water and lush flora that surrounds them. Indeed, as Furiosa’s mother ventures deeper into the desert in her rescue attempt, she must take on more and more of the violent trappings of Dementus’s men—first abandoning her horse for one of their motorcycles, then putting on their clothes and helmets of human bone. Thus, the desert and its connection to scarcity—whether real or imagined—is the promoter of this savagery, not something brought to the sands. Indeed, as Imre Szeman points out, “We moderns are creatures of fossil fuels (if to different degrees in different places in the world)” (7). As she progresses into the desert, she becomes more a creature of fossil fuels by taking on the trappings and riding the bike. The focus on automobiles in the Mad Max franchise emphasizes this connection, and control of “guzzolene” is important to who rules the desert. Rather than adapt to the more sustainable and fossil-fuel-free life of the green place with many mothers, the people of the desert hold onto their desire for fossil fuels and the supposed modernity it produces, such as Immortan Joe’s brother, the lord of Gastown, painting a recreation of John William Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs (1896) while wearing a regimental coat (Miller 00:43:23).
Alternatively, in Dune Part II, the Fremen do present the desert as a unique environmental and cultural space, but their depiction throughout the film still connects to violence and is presented as uncivilized or lacking in empathy. Throughout both films, their martial prowess is partly what makes them unique, but early in Part II after a battle, Paul witnesses Chani (Zendaya) drain the water from a body of a still living Harkonnen, swatting away the Harkonnen’s weak arm (Villeneuve 00:11:19). This moment positions the Fremen as lacking empathy or respect for their enemy, by doing something brutal as they loot the water from the bodies, causing the pregnant Jessica to vomit. While Fremen violence begins and ends the film, there is worldbuilding around their culture and relationship with the desert. This connection is depicted visually through their eyes, which become a vibrant blue due to them breathing in and eating Spice. Additionally, the reason for collecting water from the dead is not only due to scarcity, but in the case of dead Fremen, their water is poured into an underground tank where it is being saved to turn the planet green. As Stilgar (Javier Bardem) explains to Jessica: “‘When we have enough water, the Lisan al-Gaib will change the face of Arrakis. He will bring back the trees. He will bring back a Green Paradise’” (Villeneuve 00:20:24). Even though they’ve adapted to live with the desert, have a culture intertwined with the desert, and have the ability to create advanced technology out of the desert (such as their stillsuits, which retain water), their religious purpose is to change the planet to a green paradise that they have no frame of reference for.
While Paul respects the Fremen and their understanding of the desert, they are still positioned as religious zealots willing to die for the Lisan al-Gaib in a war necessitated because the natural resource of their planet—Spice—is required for galactic travel. Indeed, the movie is framed around Spice, and its metaphoric connection to oil is emphasized visually. In a restructuring of the opening credits, sounds that do not necessarily mimic language seem to speak, with the words appearing on black screen: “Power over Spice is power over all” (Villeneuve 00:00:05). The production credits follow, creating an interruption of the story started with the truism on Spice. While Spice production happening on a desert planet being controlled by colonizers already prompts viewers to think of oil production, the connection is solidified by the main villain, Baron Harkonnen. He soaks in a black pool of liquid that clings to his white skin, the oily surface swirling (Villeneuve 00:49:02). While the Fremen offer an alternative few of the desert, the central conflict still revolves around the Harkonnens keeping the Spice flowing, thus limiting this imagining of the desert to an extractive space.
While Furiosa and Dune Part II come from very different franchises, the narrative of the protagonist’s revenge, violence, and extraction creates a unified view of “desert” as a space where scarcity leads to savagery. Another way this savagery can be read is a response to the question posted by Wilson, Szeman, and Carlson: “Energy transition will therefore involve not only a change in the kinds of energy we use, but also a transition in the values and practices that have been shaped around our use of the vast amounts of energy provided by fossil fuels” (4). Without these practices of modernity, these films suggest the only option when fossil fuels become limited is not adaptation or transition but violence, even though much of the Global South already does not operate with the same amount of energy usage as the Global North. While there are certainly other films that do not present the desert or its people in this framework, the release of two such blockbuster narratives in 2024 suggests the desertification of imagination in the U.S. and a need for alternative narratives, particularly for the masses. As Paul says of the Fremen to his mother: “It’s not a prophecy. It’s a story you keep telling. But it’s not their story; it’s yours” (Villeneuve 01:02:21). The Fremen are certainly more nuanced than the people of Furiosa, but because their values are created and manipulated by Paul and the religious order his mother Jessica belongs to, the Fremen’s agency is degraded. Their culture of wishing for a green utopia is entirely manufactured to make them more pliable in relation to collecting Spice. Additionally, the supposedly uninhabited and unlivable southern part of the planet being filled with a large population of “fundamentalists” who are mostly nameless and faceless, depicted as a mass, dehumanizes the Fremen. They become a tool for violence, another thing to be extracted from the desert in Paul’s galactic conquest.
As this violent and resource-drive depiction of the desert unites the movies, so, too, does the desire for a green utopia. The desert is not seen as a viable location, even though in Dune the Fremen have adapted to the desert. In Furiosa, the desert is not adapted to but rather something to be endured by scavenging and killing others in order to, someday, find what one of Dementus’s men calls a “place of abundance” (Miller 00:12:30). Both these narratives focus on a return to a green utopia, which suggests an imaginative reaction to global warming. As the climate changes and global warming causes places to become hotter and drier, this yearning for a green utopia will harm humanity’s ability to adapt. As the After Oil Collective writes in Solarities (2022): “Stories and myths are tools of immense possibility that provide powerful means of creating different worlds and making new futures, and of seeing the present in new ways” (61). While the releases of Furiosa and Dune Part II are coincidental, these narratives suggest we are struggling with “seeing the present in new ways” and instead relying on imperial, oil-driven narratives of scarcity, violence, and extraction in the desert. These narratives also reinforce the problematic idea that lush, green spaces are the only viable vision in the midst of climate change rather than presenting a diversity of flourishing landscapes and beings.
As the impacts of climate change continue to cause more desertification, our popular storytelling must adapt rather than react. Depicting deserts as spaces of scarcity and violence only serves extractive and imperial industries. Rather, we can use storytelling practices to imagine flourishing communities in the desert not beset by extraction. There is more to the desert than supposedly empty sands and oil; it is not a place that must be transformed in order to reach a more utopic state—and storytelling can develop our imagination in these directions as more of the planet experiences extreme heat and drought. At this time, we need our imaginations expanded, not limited by these imperial narratives.
Works cited
After Oil Collective et al., editors. Solarities: Seeking Energy Justice [U of Minnesota Press, 2022].
Dune Part II. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, Warner Brothers, 2024.
Klein, Naomi and Astra Taylor. “The Rise of End Times Fascism.” The Guardian, 13 April, 2025.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Directed by George Miller, Village Roadshow Pictures, 2024.
Szeman, Imre. On Petrocultures: Globalization, Culture, and Energy [West Virginia U Press, 2019].
Wilson, Sheena et al., editors. Petrocultures: Oil, Politics, Culture [McGill-Queen’s U Press, 2017].
POSTED BY: Phoebe Wagner (she/they) is an author, editor, and academic writing and living at the intersection of speculative fiction and environmentalism.
