Movie Mysteries: Why Did David Lynch Put a Pug in Dune?

During a recent rewatch of David Lynch‘s film adaptation of Dune — which itself is frankly somewhat of an undertaking — we noticed something that we never paid attention to before: House Atreides has a pet pug. The cuddly canine was not present in Frank Herbert’s original novel, so Lynch took some major creative license by including the dog in the film. (He even makes an appearance, held by Patrick Stewart‘s Gurney Halleck character, in the movie’s climactic battle sequence. WEIRD). But why? We’ve given up trying to decode what Lynch does a long time ago, and in the grand scheme of things a superfluous pug isn’t nearly as strange as say, anything that is happening in the current season of Twin Peaks. So you know what? We are going to stop questioning this and just accept it for the awesome thing that it is. He who controls the spice…well, gets all the belly rubs we guess? Or something.

This article originally ran last July, we are reprinting it again today as part of our Dog Days of Summer Week.