One of the most interesting inventions in theDunefranchise is the stillsuits worn by the Fremen. The Fremen culture is the most fascinating part of theDuneseries. Desert people, fierce warriors, and wormriders,the Fremen blend their rugged survivalism with scientific ingenuity and deep, psychedelic-laced spirituality.Each adaptation ofDunehas featured the Fremen, and that mean each adaptation has also featured the stillsuit, the Fremen desert armor-slash-survival gear. The on-screen depictions have been very different, but the depiction in Denis Villeneuve’s version have arguably been the most realistic and the closest to the books.
Dunecostume designers Jacqueline West and Robert Morgan worked with conceptual artists Keith Christensen and sculptor Jose Fernandez to create the look of the stillsuits for the most recentDunemovies. Together, they created the actual “micro-sandwiches” of the books' stillsuits by weaving together porous cotton and acrylic fiber. They then added tubes to make the whole thing look functional, but also flexible. The result isa suit that resembles something that’s closer to equipment for an extreme sportthan a skintight bodysuit or a militaristic uniform. Still, as cool as they look, it’s led audiences who haven’t readtheDunebooksto wonder how the stillsuits even work in the first place.
Dune Story & World Explained: Characters, Spice & Sandworms
The world of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune is vastly complicated despite the success of Denis Villeneuve’s movie. Let’s break down this complex story.
Dune’s Stillsuits Recycle The Body’s Water
It’s Not A Pleasant Process, But It Works
In the desert, the most valuable commodity is water. Exposure for just a day in the fierce Arrakis sun and bone-dry heat can easily kill someone from dehydration or heatstroke. Thus,the stillsuits are not only a neat-looking piece of costuming, but necessary for survival.Stillsuits ensure not a single bit of moisture from a person is lost. It’s not a pleasant method of survival, but it’s an effective one; the Fremen don’t have the luxury of squeamish sensibilities.
The stillsuits are simple, but ingenious. Any moisture or bodily fluid that comes from a person – sweat, tears, urine, saliva, anything – is essentially water, and cleaning and redistributing that transformed water is the difference between survival and death in the desert. The stillsuits capture all that moisture and run it through various filters built into the suit.These filters clean and purify the fluid of various pollutants, whether waste, salt, or other contaminants, then return it to internal pouches that act as drinking water reservoirs. In this way, stillsuits work as miniature water treatment plants, taking in the polluted water-based liquids of the body, cleaning them, and expelling them back as purified water.
In this way, stillsuits work as miniature water treatment plants, taking in the polluted water-based liquids of the body, cleaning them, and expelling them back as purified water.
The stillsuits also go one step further in ensuring that the body’s moisture doesn’t go to waste. It’s not just the filtration system that makes a stillsuit a necessity, but the design itself. A stillsuit acts as an entirely self-contained unit. It covers the entire body, ensuring that sunburn is limited. But that coverage also ensures no sweat goes to waste. Likewise, there is a nose plug, a mouth tube with face mask, and a catheter. A wearer breathes in filtered air through their mouth and exhales any saliva and breath back into the stillsuit. The efficiency of the suit means that rather than losing liters of water a day and dying,a Fremen will only lose a minuscule amount.
How The Fremen Get On & Off The Giant Worms
While Dune 2 gives a glimpse of how the Fremen ride the sandworms, it still maintains an air of mystery around how one mounts and dismounts them.
Who Invented The Stillsuit In Dune (& How They Are Made)
The Old Imperial Scientists Unknowingly Helped
Credit for the stillsuit goes to an ancient Zensunni of Arrakis named Selim Wormrider, who laid the foundations for life on Arrakis and the Fremen culture and society, including being the first human to ride one of the sandworms, and inventing the stillsuits. Selim, according to history, created the stillsuits ten thousand years before the events ofDune. It’s a headscratcher that a barren planet had the resources to create stillsuits, especially as Frank Herbert never got that far into the details. His son, Brian, did, however.
The Dune Encyclopedia has some conflicting information on the first wormrider, naming it as a Zensunni tribesperson named Rothar.
Selim first got the materials to make stillsuits, as well as an enormous amount of artifacts and supplies,from an ancient abandoned outpost originally manned by Old Imperial scientists.There, he found materials, supplies, and hundreds of literjons of water from the automatic water extractors that had kept running for years. Later, the Fremen found dozens of those outposts scattered throughout the deserts of Arrakis, each one stocked full of materials that they turned into their sietches and survival equipment like wind traps. Though these preserved gifts, and their own ingenuity, the Fremen ofDunehave survived for thousands of years.
Dune
Dune is a sci-fi franchise created by Frank Herbert with the 1965 novel of the same name. In 1984, the first live-action adaptation was released from director David Lynch and starring Kyle MacLachlan. About 20 years later, a TV mini-series was released, followed by a new adaptation starring Timothée Chalamet.
