>>42446Unlike IRL the Fremen are shown to be in contact with each other across the globe and routinely travel across the planet, so the effects of genetic drift on them would not be as strong as they are on Earth in our real history and prehistory. Given that in the story the Fremen are said to have various adaptations specific to Arrakis (like resistance to bleeding), they have some common ancestry and have adapted to the planet. You would expect to see variations, and arguably more than in many other parts of the Imperium (especially the nobles are practicing eugenics).
What you wouldn't expect is pretty much the whole spectrum of what you see on IRL Earth. We have a lot more conditions than one big desert. Given how white-dominated the Imperium is in the movies (a handful of characters like Yueh and Thufir aside) it seems like a deliberate casting choice, to contribute to the geopolitical coding of the characters and reality subtext of the movies - making the Fremen more representative of the global south in general. That's a fine choice to make in isolation, but it does clash with the themes of Dune (which are themselves problematic at times). It's sort of trying to have your cake and eat it too between grounded worldbuilding and symbolic impact. In the source material, that was already done by having the specificity and uniqueness of the Fremen contribute to the representation of an oppressed people, rather than being more of a melting pot.
The movies don't have time to delve into much detail so the overall effect was always going to genericize the Fremen, and it seems like they leaned into that by intentionally casting the Fremen as much more diverse than the rest of the cast. IMO that choice would work better thematically if the movies had also leaned into the mythic elements or had used a framing device like Princess Irulan's quotations to make the story feel more symbolic than literal. But that potentially would have worked against the cautionary tale by romanticizing it. There's a lot on the table thematically, and it's challenging to balance those pieces against each other. The choices they make in that regard reflect the popular zeitgeist within Hollywood, which in terms of anti-racism tends to be pretty simplistic and surface level. Hollywood is not really the best place to go for anti-imperialist propaganda even if now and then you
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