Didn’t like it. Don’t hate it either. In my opinion it’s way to long and doesn’t have anything to say really. It touches upon multiple difficult topics, sure, but it either doesn’t follow through with them or it just straight up fails them. For example, take the spice mining thing about exploitation of both the people and the land. The people are introduced as warriors fighting for their freedom from the oppressors, but we don’t know what they are fighting for. Nothing is said about their culture apart from fighting. Also we don’t see in which way they are oppressed, they are shown to be the aggressor attacking a farming ship right in the beginning. In fact the Harkonens don’t even know how many of them are on arrakis, which makes it look like they just ignored them? Hardly what I would call criticism of colonialism. If they would have been enslaved by them or imprisoned or rounded up and killed in large numbers by the Harkonnens, that would have been criticism, but we aren’t shown any of that.
Now on to the exploiting the land trope. This is much better supported by what is shown in the movie, but its just feels so artificial. This planet might be exploited for its natural resources, but we aren’t shown the scars that this endeavor caused. The Planet is a wasteland, but not BECAUSE of the spice mining, but because it was a desert to BEGIN WITH!? WHYYYYY, there is so much potential flushed down the toilet, its infuriating.
I don’t know that exploiting the planet or colonization were really what the book was about to begin with… It was an element, but I think it has a lot more to do with Paul’s development as a “hero”, political intrigue, etc. I could be mistaken, but I just didn’t get a sense that colonialism was supposed to be a big part of it all, so I’m a bit curious as to why you think the handling of it is a problem.