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Notes -
I think one of my issues here is that I was not really that fond of the book Harkonnens, who just seem pointlessly evil. I'm not sure how many have read National Lampoon's Doon, but the first scene with the Hardchargin family has the baron Hardchargin just snap kitten necks throughout his speech about taking over planet Arruckus, with nephew Filp-Rotha raging He's killing all the good kittens!' Villeneuve makes the Harkonnens weird and alien in, for instance, how they're obsessed with purity (no body hair etc.) but in a fundamentally unpure way (the Baron's constant oil baths and so on) and, as said, more suggests the more perverted and atrocious stuff than focuses on it, and it makes them perfectly suitable villains for a movie like this.
Also re: Stilgar, I think the point is that Stilgar's a strongly religious guy who has not only expected the arrival of his Messiah for his entire life and (in the movie) been mocked by it by the /r/atheist Northerners, and now he's really seeing the Messiah come and genuinely do all the Messiah shit and demonstrating superhuman qualities. Of course he's awestruck! He should be! Within the context of this movie's timeframe, Stilgar is right and Chani is wrong.
This is the problem with cutting down on the BG ninja shit and having Paul's killing of Jamis happen in the last film and be relatively understated. When Stilgar seems to flip early on in Part Two, it's a bit less impactful.
In the books, Paul's defeat (and perceived humiliation) of Jamis alone was shocking to the Fremen. Jessica's POV hammers just how fucking strange (and terrifying) a creature trained like Paul appears, even when he's reluctant to kill.
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