is Denis Villeneuve messing with the Dune canon?

Nerd Cookies wasn't happy with Denis Villeneuve's portrayal of the Lady Jessica in "Dune: Part 1," and she's not happy with Villeneuve's promise to amp up Jessica's role in "Part 2." After hearing Nerd Cookies's* criticisms, I'm inclined to agree with her.

Actress Rebecca Ferguson, who plays Lady Jessica (and on whom I have a massive crush even though she's a married mom and an off-the-scale leftie), did a now-infamous interview in which she betrayed her utter ignorance of the Dune canon, and of Lady Jessica in particular. Ferguson's take on author Frank Herbert—and she said this without ever having read his work—was that he was a sexist product of his time, so it would be necessary to "modernize" Lady Jessica for today's audiences. This was a profoundly ignorant thing to say: had she actually read Dune, she'd have seen right away that Jessica was a feminist heroine par excellence, even by today's standards. Lady Jessica, concubine of Duke Leto Atreides, is a member of the Bene Gesserit Order, trained in political manipulation; extreme biofeedback (bodily self-control); near-telepathic feats of deduction, perception, and manipulation; and ferocious hand-to-hand combat. Despite being among the galaxy's best fighters, the doughty Fremen of Arrakis are easily defeated in combat by Jessica, whom they superstitiously describe as using the weirding way against them.

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*Point of grammar: the plural of cookie is cookies. The plural possessive is therefore cookies'. So why add the extra "s" above? Because Nerd Cookies is the vlogger's handle, and despite Cookies being plural, the name as a whole is singular. So I'm treating this as a singular noun that happens to end in "s."

Mr. Jones's car
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Nerd Cookies's opinions