How Do The Shields Work In The Dune Universe?

One major appeal of historical settings, as well as fantasy stories based in historical settings, is that they give writers the chance to eschew boring old guns for exciting weapons like swords and knives. A one-on-one gun fight can often be uninteresting and impersonal, whereas a sword fight forces the two characters to get up in each other's faces. It's a far more cinematic way for two people to fight to the death, although gun fights can admittedly be cool sometimes too.

While Frank Herbert set the events of "Dune" in the future (as in, a solid 20,000 years into the future), he still seemed to understand the appeal of up-close fight scenes. That might be why he came up with the idea for a very specific type of futuristic shield, one that stayed true to the property's futuristic vibes while explaining the need for some really cool swordplay.

They're called Holtzman shields; they're portable devices that cover the wearer's entire body. The shield protects its user from high-speed projectiles, but it also allows slow-moving projectiles to pass through. The appeal of this is pretty obvious; it keeps the user permanently protected from snipers and other far-away attacks, while still allowing them to do basic things like hold objects or put on new clothes. Holtzmans don't make a person invincible, but they do at least force any would-be assassins to try far riskier avenues of attack. If you're going to kill someone with their shield on, you're going got have get up close to them; no shooting from a distance allowed.

Denis Villeneuve's 2021 "Dune" film does a pretty good job establishing how the shields work. There's an early practice fight scene between Paul (Timothée Chalamet) and Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin) that demonstrates how shields have affected swordplay in this universe. Not only are guns ineffective in this situation, but the typical clumsy smashing and swinging doesn't quite work either. In order to kill someone with a Holtzman shield, you have to get the blade of your sword close to them and then slowly slip the blade through.

But while the shields may have forced the books (and their adaptations) to embrace swordplay as a realistic method of warfare, I don't think either of the major "Dune" films (David Lynch's 1984 adaptation or Villeneuve's version) has succeeded in making sword fights look cool when the shields are involved. Villeneuve's Holtzman shields may look sharper than the very clunky CGI in Lynch's sword fight scenes, but the result is that a lot of the action in his first "Dune" film feels unsatisfying. Especially during the fall of House Atreides in the second half of "Dune: Part One," a lot of the violence that should feel brutal instead feels oddly muted; even with the better technology at his fingertips, Villeneuve couldn't quite make shield fights look good. That might be why "Dune: Part Two" largely seems to do away with them.

Still, even if the movies can't quite make the shield fights look as cool as book readers might have hoped, the shields still achieve the fun purpose of justifying why any of these characters are so well-trained in swordplay this deep into the future. They also pave the way to the exciting fight between Paul and Jamis (Babs Olusanmokun) in "Dune: Part One," as well as the climactic duel between Paul and Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler) in "Dune: Part Two." Not only that, but they similarly help provide some easy visual shorthand to convey that a character is hardcore; when Feyd-Rautha casually deactivates his Holtzman shield before fighting a character in the Harkonnen coliseum in "Dune: Part Two," the movie gets to tell us a lot about his specific brand of depravity without needing Feyd to speak a word.

In short, the shields in "Dune" don't just serve to protect their users from bullets and other projectiles, but they also help establish the characters' values, ensure the setting still feels vaguely feudal and old-fashioned, and make sure the violence is as personal and up-close as possible. It's odd that with all the things "Star Wars" took from the "Dune" books, from their focus on sword-based combat to their surprise lineage reveals, that the franchise never attempted anything quite like the "Dune" saga's Holtzman shield. Maybe George Lucas knew he wouldn't be able to pull those special effects off either.