@JMcCarroll
Paul Atreides is a wimp: He's small for his age; he's not in the mood to practice knife-fighting; he misses the oceans and storms of Caladan; he ignores the girl at the dinner party; he's always thinking, analyzing, self-reflecting; among the Fremen, he decides to name himself after the desert mouse, a decision Stilgar has to spin into something not laughable.
Paul is so much of a wimp that his father had to give him both duke and mentat training just so that he'd have a chance at staying even in the empire – forget about getting ahead.
Moreover, he was supposed to have been born a daughter, and was mostly raised by his psionic mother, Jessica, who, herself, was either a wimp for giving Leto the son he wanted or a self-centered egotist for not providing the daughter the Bene Gesserit had ordered her to bear.
Paul only becomes the leader of the Fremen because the Bene Gesserit had pre-conditioned the Fremen to expect the Lisan al-Gaib, the savior from off-world. It's Jessica, not Paul, who teaches them the weirding way and elevates them from good and tough to nearly invincible fighters.
Paul's most courageous act is to take drugs (the Water of Life), which is hardly the act of manly man. It's actually halfway a suicide attempt, a wimp's way out of his troubles, because the drugs were as likely to kill him as give him supernatural powers. The other half, the supernatural powers, are a wimpy coward's way out of defeating the Emperor.
Like a wimp, Paul cheats his way to the top, using the Voice, matter manipulation, and the Bene Gesserit-molded superstition of the Fremen.
I will give him a manliness bump for capturing and riding the sandworm, though. That he did like a man, by learning and training and committing and, ultimately, putting himself at risk, for the high, manly, purpose of helping the weak, not just for thrill-seeking.
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That being said, I loved the book, the David Lynch movie, and the Sci-Fi Channel mini-series, and I'm sure I'll see Villeneuve's effort when it is released.
I have never read any of the sequels. Dune itself stands as a great triumph of science fiction literature, and I never felt the desire to extend the story.