‘Dune: Part Two’ Isn’t The Only Pro-Life Hollywood Blockbuster

This year’s Oscars look pretty bleak. Duking it out in the Best Picture category, we have “Emilia Perez” (about a transgender-identifying drug lord) and “Conclave” (about an intersex pope). There’s also “The Brutalist,” which uses homosexual rape to illustrate how much America hates immigrants (even European ones, apparently). 

In the international category, the depressing Danish period drama “The Girl with the Needle” argues with a straight face that abortion should be legal because, otherwise, women will murder unwanted babies after they’re born. 

Yet, amid all this degeneracy, at least one wholesome message slipped through the cracks. Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two” is a pro-life cinematic masterpiece. In this far-future sci-fi sequel, the clairvoyant Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) spends much of the movie communicating telepathically with her unborn daughter, Alia. For women who’ve been taught to regard their preborn children as worthless clumps of cells — or worse, hostile parasites — Lady Jessica’s deep bond with her baby could serve as an important corrective.

Anya Taylor-Joy even appears in a brief vision sequence as the woman Alia will grow up to be and tells her teenage brother, Paul (Timothee Chalamet), that she loves him. Reportedly, about 60 percent of abortions are performed on women who already have kids. For mothers considering abortion, this scene could be a powerful reminder that this decision would deprive their older children of a loving younger sibling.

Did the acclaimed director intentionally infuse pro-life messages into his film? Does he hold pro-life views? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean the messages aren’t there. 

Winning the culture war doesn’t just mean creating our own “conservative art.” It means offering “resistant readings” of mainstream art that expose weak points in the artists’ leftist ideology and reveal moments in which, despite their intentions, the truth shines through. Let the libs shriek all they want about “media literacy.” They’re the ones who proclaimed the “death of the author.”

But it’s not just “Dune: Part Two.” Other blockbusters over the years have featured possibly unintentional, but very real, pro-life messages.

‘Arrival’

In 2016’s “Arrival,” another Denis Villeneuve film (maybe this guy is pro-life), linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is recruited by the government to establish communication with aliens hovering above Montana. When we meet Banks, she appears to be in the midst of a divorce after her daughter died at 12 from some incurable illness. 

The aliens she encounters are squid-like beings who “speak” in circular pictographs. Because you can start at any point on the circle, all the words and ideas in a given “sentence” strike the reader/hearer at the same time. Slowly, Banks realizes the aliens experience not just language but time itself in a nonlinear manner. As she learns their language, she becomes similarly unstuck from time, simultaneously aware of her own past, present, and future.

In a climactic moment, we learn that her daughter’s death was not a flashback but a flash-forward. She will fall in love with Ian (Jeremy Renner), her co-worker on the translation project. They will marry and have a daughter. That daughter will die young after years of agony. And yet, at the end of the film, she falls into Ian’s arms anyway, knowing full well what will happen. 

To those who would argue for aborting babies who suffer from genetic abnormalities or are considered “non-viable” outside the womb, the message is clear: Every life is precious. Cherish whatever time you’re given, whether it’s 20 years or 20 minutes.

‘Revenge of the Sith’

George Lucas is a big old lib, but the plot of his final Star Wars prequel relies on an undeniably pro-life assumption. 

Anakin Skywalker’s conversion to the Dark Side is driven largely by his prophetic dreams that his secret wife, Senator Padmé Amidala, will die in childbirth. To save his wife and unborn child(ren), Anakin renounces his religion, overthrows the government, tries to kill his best friend, and slaughters a room full of younglings. But he never even considers asking Padmé to seek out an abortion, an option that would definitely be on the table for a modern couple facing a potentially life-threatening pregnancy. 

The idea simply doesn’t occur to him or seemingly anyone else in the Star Wars universe. A writer for Vice jokingly suggested that the Galactic Senate must have “defunded Planned Parenthood.”

Obviously, this doesn’t make Anakin a good person. It does, however, suggest some awareness on the storyteller’s part that abortion is an ugly, ignoble thing and has no place in a moral order defined by chivalry and self-sacrifice.

‘Kill Bill’

Quentin Tarantino’s two-part revenge epic is famous for its graphic depictions of severed limbs and arterial spray, but behind all the stylized violence is a story of a protective and loving mother. 

The protagonist, initially known only as The Bride (Uma Thurman), is the sole survivor of a massacre at a small wedding chapel in Texas. A team of professional assassins killed everyone in attendance, beat the pregnant Bride nearly to death, and then shot her in the head and left her to expire. 

As the film progresses, we learn that The Bride was once a member of this team of assassins and the lover of its leader, the eponymous Bill (David Carradine). She left both behind for an ordinary man and a stable life after learning she was pregnant.

We see, in a flashback, the moment The Bride got the happy news. We see her in a hotel room, on an assassination mission, taking a pregnancy test and waiting for the results. Just as she gets them, a female assassin sent by her target blows a hole in the door with a shotgun. A Mexican standoff ensues, as The Bride pleads with her enemy to pick up the test from where it has fallen.

“I’m the deadliest woman in the world,” she says. “But right now I’m just scared sh-tless for my baby. Please, just look at the strip. Please!”

After some fumbling with the instructions, she manages to read the test. The two women agree to call off their missions, and both depart in peace.

Abortion discourse focuses too often on the existence or limits of a so-called right to “bodily autonomy.” It is seldom framed as it should be: in terms of duty. For any parent, mother or father, in whatever circumstances, the proper response to a pregnancy is the willingness to take any risk, make any sacrifice to protect that little poppy seed-sized life. Those who feel otherwise should seek not to eliminate the unwanted child but to correct the deficiency in their own souls.

Grayson Quay is a Young Voices contributor based in Arlington, VA. His work has been published in The American Conservative, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and The Spectator US.