The massive Dune looks to the future and finds a classic Hollywood epic there
Denis Villeneuve cuts the 1965 sci-fi novel in two to faithfully preserve its plot
Film Reviews Dune
In his 1965 sci-fi novel Dune, Frank Herbert presented a strange world thousands of years in the future. Having long ago rid itself of thinking machines, humanity has reverted to feudalism and strict social controls. Rival noble houses rule the known universe on behalf of an emperor. Mental conditioning and mind expansion have replaced advanced technology. Soldiers are trained to be fighting machines while human computers called Mentats act as court advisors. Behind the scenes are the Bene Gesserit; to all appearances a religious order, they are in fact a cynical shadow power, manipulating aristocratic bloodlines and engineering myths and religions on primitive planets for their own ends.
Without artificial intelligence, the business of navigating space at faster-than-light speed has come to depend on a mind-altering drug called spice, which can only be harvested on the planet Arrakis, colloquially the Dune of the title, an inhospitable desert world with giant sandworms and an unfriendly local population known as the Fremen, whose lifelong exposure to spice has given them characteristic glowing blue eyes.
In essence, the questions Herbert was posing were not unlike those raised earlier by the mathematician and cybernetics pioneer Norbert Wiener. In his popular books (including the influential The Human Use Of Human Beings), Wiener asked what kind of society we might be building as we came to rely more and more on computers and automation. If we imagined our technologies as a human underclass, we might see that it wasn’t advancing us toward a less stratified future. A related concern was whether we were not only ruining our planet in pursuit of natural resources but becoming addicted to them.
But there were also questions that were Herbert’s own, about the future of religion and the use of belief as a form of control. These ideas (which Herbert would continue exploring over a series of books) distinguish Dune as a work of science fiction rather than, say, a space fantasy. Yet they are the hardest aspect of the novel to bring to the screen. What Denis Villeneuve’s sleek new adaptation gets right, immediately, is the galactic, millennia-old scale: gigantic architecture, humongous spacecraft, vast landscapes, big ugly sandworms. No other recent film has looked quite so huge.
It’s worth noting here that the actual onscreen title of Villeneuve’s film is Dune: Part One. The script (by Villeneuve, Jon Spaihts, and Eric Roth) covers only the first half of Herbert’s novel, and the result ultimately feels like half of a movie. Fortunately, it’s an ambitious one, made with the same stylistic intelligence that Villeneuve brought to Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, his earlier forays into smart sci-fi. Having come a long way from his arthouse roots, he has emerged as one of our most reliable and talented directors of suspense and effects.
With floppy hair and an aloof air, Timothée Chalamet stars as Paul Atreides, son of Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac), ruler of the wet, Hebridean planet of Caladan. Trained by his Bene Gesserit mother, Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), Paul possesses some budding superhuman abilities. He is also having apparently prophetic dreams about Arrakis and an unknown Fremen woman (Zendaya). The unseen emperor has recently given the Atreides clan control of the arid planet, which had been ruled for decades by the cruel, sadistic House Harkonnen, headed by the villainous and often literally slimy Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård). Assisted by their loyal men-at-arms Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa) and Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin), the Duke and his family travel to Arrakis, aware that their new fiefdom might be a trap.
While most characters would be lucky to have one messianic destiny, Paul, as we soon learn, has two. He may be the Kwisatz Haderach, the being whose coming is the goal of the centuries-long Bene Gesserit breeding program. Or he may be the foreign savior of Fremen prophecy. Some Fremen treat him and his mother with religious awe; others, like the Fremen leader Stilgar (Javier Bardem), are skeptical and hostile.
This is, of course, a gross oversimplification of the plot, which is a tangle of dynastic politics, dual loyalties, court intrigues, assassination attempts, and mystical overtones. Villeneuve lays it out slowly; it takes some time before the characters even set foot on Arrakis. There are tests to pass, servants to meet, local leaders to win over. With the exception of travel between different star systems, nothing in the world of Dune happens instantly: spice is gathered by colossal lumbering harvesters; power is handed over in ceremonies; plans are laid far in advance; warfare in basically medieval. In an age of fast-moving effects creations, Villeneuve demonstrates that slowness can be suspenseful. It’s the dreaded approach of the all-devouring sandworm and the eerie menace of elite troops who float down silently to attack.
This is not the first attempt to translate Herbert’s novel to the screen. The midnight-movie auteur Alejandro Jodorowsky developed an unfilmed (and arguably unfilmable) adaptation in the 1970s that was later chronicled in the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune. In 1984 came the David Lynch version, which raced through a compressed version of Herbert’s plot in a bit over two hours, turning it into grotesque, baroque space opera; despite its shortcomings as coherent narrative, it remains a unique take on the blockbuster, and one of the era’s most memorable and varied showcases of production design. Much later came a 2000 TV miniseries, which is notable mostly for featuring some of the ugliest costumes to ever grace the small screen.
Despite his obvious talents, Villeneuve is not an esoteric, psychedelic voyager on the order of Jodorowsky, or an oneiric artist on the level of Lynch. If anything, his Dune might be accused of playing the story too straight, toning down its headier and stranger elements. In trying to distinguish itself from the numerous other visual interpretations (not just in film and TV, but in comics, book covers, computer games, etc.), the film opts for hard surfaces and geometries with more than a touch of monumental fascism. But there are still plenty of peculiar sights: The ‘thopter aircraft the characters use to get around resemble helicopter gunships mated with a dragonfly, and the mouth of the redesigned sandworm looks like a horrific toothy sphincter. (For the purists, it should be noted that it still has a triple jaw, though it’s now pharyngeal.)
Some narrative shortcuts are unavoidable; like Lynch’s version, for instance, the new Dune opens with extended expository narration. So is a sense of distance from the characters, given the fatalistic plotting of the source material, which also makes the scattered attempts at levity feel forced. But Villeneuve has a few tricks up his sleeve. The cast is uniformly strong, and it’s a credit to his direction that all of the performances—from Momoa’s boisterous Duncan to Charlotte Rampling’s imperious Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam to the “inhuman” Harkonnens—believably inhabit the same world. There’s also the effective use of flash-forwards; in providing cryptic glimpses of events beyond the film (to be presumably covered in Dune: Part Two), Paul’s visions reinforce the impression that all of this happening on a larger-than-human scale, with destinies to be fulfilled.
There is some craftsmanship here, too, that is hard not to admire—for instance, the way Villeneuve manages to balance a large, effects-heavy battle scene (which he directs with aplomb) with simultaneous intrigue inside the Atreides compound by making the interior sets big and cavernous. This gift for visual dimension is key, because what Dune offers, despite its often monochromatic futurism, is a kind of entertainment that was a far older Hollywood’s stock-in-trade: that of stars and titanic spectacle. In an odd way, the movie feels like an update of a Cinemascope epic, with impressive vistas, an overall sense of exotic grandeur, and a deliberate pace.
If there’s a big idea here, lurking like the mammoth sandworm, it’s about the symbolism of power. It may be signified by futuristic castles, traditions, family crests, loyal aides, or the Duke’s prized signet ring. But ultimately, power lies in the infinite, untamable, and largely empty desert; in order to master it, that’s where you have to go. However inconclusive as a story, the resulting film is a rarity among the overlong effects-heavy blockbusters of the last decade: One actually wishes it didn’t have to end so soon.
464 Comments
I cannot wait. And wait we must for the premiere date in Australia was inexplicably moved from Oct 20th to Dec 2.
Was it really inexplicable 😛
It’s so fucking annoying. I feel like we’ve jumped back 20 years ago to when there would be huge delays between the rest of the world getting movies and us.
It could be worse. I saw Tron at the cinema in Sri Lanka – in the 1990s. The cinema across had and I kid you not “Breakin’ 2 – Electric Boogaloo” on its marquee.
I remember renting an Asian import of Highlander 2 somewhere between 6 months- a year before it hit cinemas here.
I sympathize; WB has completely botched this release schedule. I liked the book series a lot, and Villeneuve as well, but I’m specifically not going to a theater to see it just because I’m annoyed that the U.S. release was pushed back five weeks (so only half of what you have to deal with) relative to so many other places, and will simply use my brother’s HBO Max account to watch it instead. I have a huge TV and an awesome stereo, so it’s not like I’ll be missing that much, but it’s like, what’s even the point of getting excited now with the way things unfolded? There’s no way to be part of the zeitgeist at release as we were told to fuck off and wait because the studio wanted to cynically game the stupid awards season eligibility or some absurd horseshit, and a critical mass of people already saw the movie over a month ago now, the reviews have been out in print for an age and the moment has passed, so fuck it. Obviously most people aren’t going to care, but for my part, if WB wants to treat me like a second-class customer, by god I’m going to fully inhabit the part and so will happily just leech this one and provide them with zero direct consideration in return.
This strikes me as a pretty entitled attitude (it’s what most audiences outside of the US usually have to deal with), and also like cutting off your nose to spite your face.This film is a spectacle. It has been composed to awe, to overwhelm. If you have the opportunity to see it in true (2D) IMAX, you definitely should. If not, the largest cinema screen possible. A home entertainment system simply is not going to be able to come close to that experience.I pity the guy in the comments who was saying how he kept pausing the film and losing the thread of the movie.
Yeah, well, call me crazy, but I don’t see the expectation that a big-budget adaptation of a classic sci-fi story, written by an American author, made by an American studio, should treat American audiences like something other than an afterthought as really all that radical. Back when I lived in Chicago there was a run down little old theater on Milwaukee Ave, up in Logan Square, right on the Blue Line, that would show second-run movies for like $2. It was seedy, but awesome, they even had chocolate-covered frozen bananas. Great place to see a flick that had been out a while before it eased on down the road to DVD or whatever, I saw dozens of movies there. It IS a better experience, admittedly. Unfortunately, I now live in a much smaller town of 100k, and the theaters here all want $12 or more for a ticket, even for movies that have been playing in thousands of theaters across the planet since the beginning of last month. They HAD the fresh-baked bread available and could have put it out for sale here easily, but decided to hold it back, and are now trying to sell us the day-old stale shit at zero discount. Nah, man, I’m good; the viewing experience is already irrevocably compromised by WB’s actions, a slightly smaller screen won’t impact it much further.
Man, is this going to be the next big thing? A Hollywood blockbuster Critics and movie-goers are gushing over already. Seems like a long time we’ve had a big successful epic-scope movie franchise come along.
LoTR, maybe.So in 20 years, we’ll have Bezos demanding a Dune adaptation for Prime.
“Amazon-Walmart-Alibaba International Groups spent $2,000,000,000 on the rights to Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune for a lavish subliminal miniseries. Cast and production details will be available only to Probe adopters for 3 ounces of monetary gel. This article brought to you by Finman Capital Group. Hail Finman!” – Avclub 2049 (heavily edited for grammar and spelling)
lol I love that we’re still using (or perhaps, are ONLY using) Imperial measurements in the protoCHOAM future economy
“Avclub 2049 (heavily edited for grammar and spelling)“Which will be Kinja’ed
I’m very curious how they’ll handle God Emperor of Dune if the series gets that far. A whole lot of standing around and spelling out the ideas Frank Herbert wanted to talk about, and the occasional bit where the hero just straight-up says homosexuality is evil, before a sudden burst of action right at the end.
so it’s like the new Paw Patrol flick then?
I wouldn’t be surprised if (assuming he gets past the first book, even the first half), Villeneuve chooses to stop with Children as it’s the logical end point of Paul’s story.
I hope Villenueve can make his part 2 to this one. But no director should try to take on the insanity of the later Dune novels.
The problem, for me, is that the true message of Dune doesn’t spell itself out clearly with just Dune. Dune Messiah and Children of Dune both flesh out a lot more of the heady elements. Like the fact that Paul is not a messiah and that his empire was just as fucked up as the one that came before
Like the fact that Paul is not a messiah and that his empire was just as fucked up as the one that came beforeSo, what you’re saying is that he’s not the messiah, he’s a…
Like the fact that Paul is not a messiah and that his empire was just as fucked up as the one that came before This is pretty well understood from just the first book, actually.
He’s just a very naughty boy.
Nor should any reader venture into the later novels, I should know. (I recently re-read the first, and in the blackest part of my heart I know I would have re-read them all if they had been handy.)
Eh. I sort of like Heretics and Chapterhouse.
Sure, who hasn’t fantasized about a woman so sexy she can hypnotize a man? Herbert obviously did.
Not that part. That’s creepy.But Darwi Odrade is my favorite character from the whole series. And I like the deep dive into the Bene Gesserit.
It seems unlikely that Villeneuve would even want to. Dune (this movie) will be a giant two-part epic, and it’s almost certain Villeneuve would want to move on to something else after.
I believe I picked up from an interview along the way that Messiah is his desired end point.I do not know where this film stops in the first book, but Messiah is mostly a series of conversations in rooms. It could easily be combined with part of Dune and make a good movie.Messiah is also a good end point, or, where it ends until the studio decides to cash in on a hasty third sequel with half the original actors and an up and coming new director. Think “straight to streaming”.
Yeah, Part Two could easily cover the rest of Dune in its first half, and everything going to shit in the second.
Save it for someone else…
Frank Herbert. He was a great author. Smart. Loyal. Homophobic, but not racist… In those days, that was pretty good.
Three out of four ain’t bad!
Up until the early 2000s, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that” was considered a progressive opinion on “the gays” so I wouldn’t really expect much more than that out of Frank.
It would be sad as hell if, in a fictional story in an alien world, you can’t have homophobia, yet can have racism and xenophobia.
Baron was also a pedophile.
To be fair, we can’t even get an adaptation of Dune where Baron Harkonen doesn’t fly around and rather just just slightly hovers. Though, I’ve long since made my peace with this adaptational change since it’s too cool a visual.
To be fair, we can’t even get an adaptation of Dune where Baron Harkonen doesn’t fly around and rather just just slightly hovers. Though, I’ve long since made my peace with this adaptational change since it’s too cool a visual.Why would you get yourself an antigravity generator and not give yourself the ability to fly? Especially if you are a megalomanic interplanetary overlord. That change, at least, is unquestionably superior to the source material.
“Language English” there’s your problem in this movie of the book Dune the only character who could conceivably speak English is Timothée Chalamet’s and only because of Denis Villneuve’s inexplicable decision to take Chalamet’s character in this movie from a character in another movie who spoke English Rebecca Ferguson’s character was Danish and Northern Russian rather than Swedish and as a educated noblewoman spoke French and German and Latin her husband was Danish and German and Russian and educated and spoke Swedish and French and Latin and Austrian Rebecca Ferguson’s character was Bene Gesserit so like Sian Phillip’s character’s Reverend Mother and the person her character was from spoke Cornish Breton Welsh Basque Galician Western Isles Shetland Orkney Icelandic and Norse Princess Irulan was Austrian and Northern Italian and spoke German and a Jew and spoke Hebrew and Arabic Chani spoke Breton Western Saharan Bedouin and Arabic and Hebrew the Emperor spoke Persian and German and Russian and French and Latin and a variety of Italian Mediterranean Empire languages Sardinia North Western Italy Venice the Imperial Ecologist spoke Napoleonic French Western Saharan Bedouin Arabic and German and Persian and on and on and on nowhere except in this 155 minute tedious cliche of a 1965 Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey adaptation of the book does anyone in a movie of Dune need to speak English except for Princess Irulan’s narration of her histories which she wrote in English
That was the Dune book I could never finish. I fundamentally did not care about Leto II and his kvetching.
they will not get to god emperor, let me just reassure you right now
One of my favorite revelations on Dune discussions are the debates arguing how the Dune books aren’t really that homophobic. Like I should have known they existed, but it was still stunning to read the attempted explanations.At least the movie is able to sidestep this one with much more ease. Having written that, there was something hilarious about the movie’s ‘We are just going to move along here’ approach to the books inherent sexism. Not a complain in anyway as that is basically the only way to deal with, but it was still pretty funny.
Does it come up much (so to speak)?There is Feyd’s assassination attempt on the Baron using a boy (very clearly written as this is supposed to reflect the Baron’s cartoonish monstous appetites, though the same might be said if it was a girl rather than a boy). Then in God-Emperor the hero is disgusted that some of the Fish Speakers are gay, and Leto (or whoever) tells him to chill out.I don’t recall the subject is mentioned other than that.
In Dune, the Baron’s homosexuality and corpulence are both supposed to heighten his villainy, so that book is definitely homo- (and fat-) phobic. The Baron is the only male heterosexual in all 6 books, if I recall correctly. However, after that, Herbert did seem to chill out on the subject. You’re correct that in God-Emperor, Duncan is homophobic, but the book itself is not. (I would say that Leto II is the “hero” of the book, not Duncan).
That aligns with my memory, it’s been a few years. I read Dune as a young teenager, I think that was the first time I had seen the subject in a work of fiction (sheltered childhood, plus it wasn’t part of the kinds of stories I read). Even then I thought it wasn’t really acceptable to make it as a character trait of the most outrageously unpleasant character in the story (and never appear elsewhere).It’s a shame that Herbert never got to finish the series and describe what the final threat was that Leto was trying to protect humanity from. Would have cast his reign in a different light rather than “I’m a tyrant to keep you all from stagnating”.
I think too many people ignore the fact that Frank Herbert basically disowned his son Bruce Calvin Herbert because he was gay, Frank didn’t want Bruce to visit when his mother was dying and Frank never really accepted Bruce even upon his death. So the Baron’s characterization was more of a reflection upon Frank’s views on homosexuality rather than just trying to heighten his villainy.
It can be two things.
only if you ignore the real world context in which Frank Herbert wrote the whole Dune saga. The Baron was the personification of what Frank thought of homosexuals. the descriptions of the wrongness of the Fish Speakers homosexual tendencies goes along with the fact that God Emperor Leto II was a villain. It’s never portrayed in a good light,
First, sometimes you have to let the text speak for itself. Insight into what authors were thinking (especially dead authors) is necessarily limited and partial.Nevertheless, I don’t see a contradiction wrt the characterization of the Baron. For Frank, (male) homosexuality signifies moral rot, so he makes the Baron a homosexual (and he likes ‘em young, too). Ditto obesity.As for the God-Emperor passage… I think it’s intended to show Duncan’s limited, human point of view, in contrast to Leto’s trans-human POV. And note that anti-homosexual bigotry is often asymmetrical, with greater tolerance for female homosexuality. The Fish Speakers are going through a phase, they will eventually become wives and mothers. They’re LUGs.I don’t think Leto II is a villain, though.
It’s ok to like something that has problematic characterization. If you truly enjoy something then you should be able to criticize it’s flaws and shortcomings. Frank Herbert died 35 years ago. our understanding of homosexuality being a baked in human characteristic rather than a choice has been firmly established since the time of his death. Maybe he would have changed his views, maybe not? All we have is his personal history and his treatment of his late son and his in book characterizations. With all that context is become pretty clear that Frank Herbert thought being gay was wrong.
I don’t really disagree.
I thought the villainy of the Baron was more that he was a paedophile rather than homosexual. It’s always boys and he lusted after Feyd who was also 15 or 16. I guess that could just be my interpretation as I didn’t see his preference for males to be an issue.
Homophobia tends to link homosexuality and pedophilia. Note that there are no non-pedophilic homosexual men in the entire Dune saga, and the only homosexual women are the LUG Fish Speakers.
Okay. I’ll bite. Where are sexism and homophobia promoted in the book?
I guess if you boil off a lot of that standing around and talking, there probably is enough action left for a 2-hour movie, counting lots of dramatic desert shots. The rebel plot, the romantic triangle, Siona being tested. Given how unlikely it is, though, that the last three books will ever be filmed, what I’d like to see is a Dune Part Two that includes Dune Messiah, one that covers Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune, and one combining Heretics and Chapterhouse (but maybe altering that weird ending).
I would be surprised if Villeneuve gives a crap about anything beyond the first novel, even if there are a handful of decent ones.
Step one in adapting God-Emperor would be coming up with a design for Leto II that doesn’t look silly, which is a fairly tall order.
The best part of the book comes right at the end, where Paul turns to the mysterious ancient cult who’s been manipulating his whole rise to power, and tells them “You know what? Fuck you. You’ve ruined countless lives for this plan of yours, and I’m not going to follow your script anymore.” Having first read the book right after Lost ended, that kind of thing was very gratifying, and I dearly hope we get a second film just to see it.
Of course Paul following his own way starts a multiplanetary jihad causing billions of deaths, but hey! At least they weren’t following the sinister she-Jesuits!
Okay but that’s nitpicking, isn’t it?
Sooooo…it’s like Space Jesuits vs Space Lutherans?Where are the Spaces Jews in all this?
Ah, yes. The Death Star of David.
I think Protestants and Catholics have merged back by this point — I think that is what is implied by “Orange Catholicism” which seems like an oxymoron given that orange is the color of Northern Irish Protestants. The Fremen are Zensunni, which is a mixture of Zen Buddhism and Sunni Islam, which is why they tend to pepper their dialog with Arabic terms (plus the Fremen are clearly fictionalized Bedouins). Jews apparently still exist in an unmerged form in the Dune universe, though — they are briefly mentioned here and there in the books although they don’t play a big role in the plot.
Seriously? Chapterhouse Dune I think. It was weird. Religion in Dune was previously a stew of things, and then in one of the later books, Jews show up as largely unchanged. Which, for a series that was purposely a melange of influences/alternate history/fantasy, was a weird development.And then the sex witches.
You had me at sex witches.
They’re zooming along protecting the Hebrew race.
The Space Jews are the generals of the Jihad.
They’re right next to the Space Mormons.
BELTALOWDA!
They’re in a later book (no, not kidding)
Bajor.
Over on Hulu.
Turns out they’re on Hulu.
https://www.avclub.com/hulu-announces-history-of-the-world-part-ii-series-fro-1847888939
Buried in a lot of even more crazy in Chapterhouse.
It’s been…actual decades since I read it…but I thought his vision was that no matter what happened including if he died, the jihad was coming regardless.
IIRC he only reaches that conclusion at or just before the final confrontation with the Harkonnens and the Emperor. Before then, he’s holding out hope that he can somehow avert it.
Frank Herbert did not like women.
Yeah, Herbert was a really fascinatingly timelocked writer (I think most writers are, tbh, and that’s not bad, it’s just folks gotta be born into a generation).
He understood the potency and importance of feminine power in the Bene-Gesserit, but he saw their movements towards peace and the dissolution of the Landsraad as “Machinations” and so much spooky action and manipulation rather than as the hard power of birth and social/cultural/psychological controls.
Love love love Dune and all it’s imperfections, Herbert, too.
I don’t think we need to walk past Children of Dune, though, cinematically, for Herbert’s best additions to our conversations to play out.
True, but that was one of Herbert’s deliberate themes, that grand schemes are impossible to control and wind up controlling you. That, and the idea that everything is doomed to fail spectacularly if you give it enough time.
I mean weren’t the fremen also manipulating him? To fulfill their prophecy? And then instead of being helpful to his family he instead starts a jihad that kills billions and semi-ends their civilization? Then becomes a sandfish person? I dunno, being the superbeing of house Atriedes doesn’t sound so bad comparatively. Or at least I imagine there’s a middle ground here that doesn’t involve starting wars that kill billions.
This movies does not have Sting in a speedo getting a steam bath and is therefore the inferior film adaptation…
Dd you not keep watching for the end credit stinger? They’re calling it the “Paul Initiative.”
A leather winged (two syllables) speedo, no less.
The prototypical Lightspeed Briefs…
💯
I watched the original Dune movie about a month ago to see it before the remake and my god what a horrible movie it was. I don’t see how anyone could like such a piece of crap.
I also watched it on HBO about a month or so ago and marveled at how stunningly bad it was. I’m a Lynch fan (mostly) and had watched this and forgotten it way back on VHS but hadn’t really seen it since. After watching it I had to research the production a bit. All I remembered from my youth was that it was released with a hand-out glossary to explain some of the terms used in the movie—so yes, you had a ‘study guide’ for Dune at the theater. I’m still baffled by that whole thing—I mean, how does that help in a dark theater? Were people supposed to memorize it before the lights went down?). The production had some issues. It’s an interesting read, and things went bad enough that Lynch had his name removed from the film initially. I’ve heard mixed things about the extended release (which adds 100 MINUTES of footage!) from it’s much better to somehow it makes even less sense. There are so many crazy choices it still baffles me that anyone thought it was a good idea. I lost count of how many narrators there are—-I believe at least six of the characters had an ‘inner voice’ at some point in the film.The interesting thing is there are at least one or two shots in this version of DUNE that pay direct homage to Lynch’s version. It’s also superior in literally every way, but Sting.
The longer “Novel for Television” version has a long explanatory (7:15) introduction that is cheaply-done and has a generic male voice-over, but it fills in a lot of the backstory which Virginia Madsen’s opening introduction to Lynch’s movie certainly doesn’t! It also includes scenes of epic sweep Lynch clearly wasn’t interested in, and characterization I don’t think he noticed were missing from his cut:
It’s certainly superior in length. I had time to compare the Fremen walk to the Hokey-Pokey, and to contemplate that the ornithopters seem much more likely to fail than a plain ol’ rotary-blade helicopter would.
Is it longer, though? I thought the Lynch version and this version were damn near the same length. Though I have to admit I appreciated the slower pans through several of the scenes, just to marvel at how good it all looked (I did much the same with Blade Runner 2049–the man has vision, I’ll say that for him).
It’s 18 minutes longer, but only covers half the story. And it doesn’t use that time to include more material from the book. (The dinner scene comes to mind.) Lynch reached the same point in the narrative at the 85-minute mark. One can certainly argue that Dune ‘84 was rushed, but I don’t feel that the remake does anything with the additional running time other than linger.
What I found interesting is that the Lynch movie did a much better job of exposition at the start of the movie. It didn’t waste time bringing in Chani too early or having too many flashbacks. Lynch also emphasized the significance of Mentats while in the new movie Thufir and Piter very minor. Did they even name Piter? Watching the first half of Lynch Dune is a good way of filling in some holes in the narrative of the Villeneuve version.
I remember getting one of those glossaries from the VHS version of the movie. My uncle either bought or rented the movie and it had that booklet with it.
I mostly love David Lynch, but his Dune was unwatchable.
Ha I watched it the night after I watched the new one. I like it for it’s dark aesthetics and over the top acting…especially from the Baron. It’s so campy but everyone in the movie is so serious lol. As I was watching the new version, I kept going…”oh I remember that scene in Lynch’s version. And that scene and that scene.” Lol.
Also I forgot how dated the special effects were in this movie. Like the personal shields. Man, were they blocky and very hard to see the actors. But I do like Lynch’s version of the sandworms compared to the new ones on how they looked.
Have to agree that the Baron was easily the best (and grossest–though that competition was a lot closer) character in the film.
No cat milking I am sure as well
The cat milking felt like one of those things Lynch put in knowing that people would ask and he could refuse to answer any questions about it.
So if this was where Villeneuve went with the character – cast a pop star who looks good in a swimsuit but can’t act – who would get the role today?
I’d say Harry Styles, but he seems pretty easy-going on camera.
God help. Please not Justin Bieber. Lil Nas X on the other hand…
Jared Leto?
That kid that played Cyclops in X-Men? Or any of the cast aside from Doogie Howser in Starship Troopers.
Sorry, but a young Virginia Madsen doing the intro narration beats this every time.
Okay, I LOL’d!
Fun fact: originally, Sting was supposed to be nude.
and tantric
Sting is always nude.
And he can do that for 8 hours, mind you!
The actor, Timothée Chalamet, bothers me in that part because he looks like a little boy. I get that Paul is supposed to be the young upstart but maybe as future movies are made, dude starts looking more mature, which would be lend to the natural progression of him.
Ignatiy,The first two paragraphs here might be the best, most concise description of the broad strokes of Dune I’ve ever read. My daughter has asked me multiple times what it’s actually about as we’ve been waiting for it to come out, and I always say “you have to google it”, but now I’m just going to have her read this.
I thought the whole series was just about intergalactic crackheads and crack dealers?
If airline pilots needed to smoke crack. And if crack, rather than significantly reducing your lifespan, increased it.
Ahem. *Opiate* addicts and dealers.
Much later came a 2000 TV miniseries, which is notable mostly for featuring some of the ugliest costumes to ever grace the small screen.Just in case anyone was wondering…And, my two personal favorites…Costumes and some unconvincing desert sets/CGI aside, though, I thought the adaptation as a whole was pretty decent – although as with the Lynch adaptation it flattens out the moral complexity of Paul’s journey and turns him into a straight-up hero, save for one moment at the end where it films him from a scary low angle. Bonus costume!
Shittest TISM cover band ever.
That looks like a play put on by a high school with a decent budget.
“Miss Cosgrove! Tyler’s dad runs a Clarke Rubber franchise! He can help us with the costumes!”
I actually always considered that very thing an actively positive aspect of that version.
Don’t forget some of the most hilarous overacting:
The GUILD…does not TAKE…your ORDERS…
I love that the red head with pigtails in the back is looking at them with a WTF? face too
To me he looks like he’s just seen himself in the mirror and is questioning his life choices.
Hey – I had to look that up. Weren’t The Residents (with the giant eyeballs) kind of the same deal?
Ummm…also, Coneheads.
Devo’s new look just isn’t doing it for me.
Everything is way too clean looking lol
How do these people fit thru doorways?
They fold the space between rooms.
It’s really fucking inconvenient to go to the bathroom. But at least the party can take place across galaxies.
That is why everything was on such a grand scale. Big hats.
“Emperor ::doink!:: Emperor Shad – ::doink!:: Emperor Shaddam the Fourt- ::doink!:: Pardon us….”
Everything here is fabulous except the butterfly headdress
because its FRABULOUS?
Personally, I think the costumes should look ridiculous and aesthetically confusing. This is meant to be a society centuries removed from ours and completely unrecognizable. Bring on the weird!
No no, fantasy and sci-fi worlds need tons of dull fucking grays and dark colors everywhere to be respectable, see? And no one should ever smile, unless they’re smiling about how they deviously decapitated their nephew just a moment ago.
Yeah, I did enjoy the TV version- I guess in my mind I treated it more like a play than anything else, and that seemed to work for me.
Looks like the Meow Meow Beenz episode of Community.
Those costumes are so bad, I can’t even easily map them onto the book, which I’m currently about to finish my pre-film reread of.
Man, if you didn’t imagine Princess Irulan wearing a freaky pinned butterfly headdress, then were we even reading the same book?
Kinja, remind me to check back on this post in 20 years so we can mock the fashion choices of Dune 2021.
Holy shit.
The costuming was hot garbage, however, the cinematography was pretty good by Vittorio Storaro. The problem was the limited budget made everything look so cheap.
I thought those first 2 photos were from Flash Gordon
Hahah, I saw that when it came out but I do not remember the costumes looking that hilariously awful. I guess that’s what twenty years of increases in TV production budget’s’ll do to ya!
God it looks so cheap.Highlander The TV series appears to have had a higher budget.
My favorite aspect of the cheapness is how Irulan’s butterfly headdress is so clearly made of paper/cardboard and is crumpled at the edges as though someone sat on it. But I guess all the butterflies were already PVC-glued on so they just decided to leave it.
Highlander the TV Series was miles better than any of the movies, including the first.
Eye of the beholder and all, but to me only the first 2 of those (and maybe Irulan’s hat) are ugly. The other headgear is bizarre for sure but I’m into it; it’s pretty much in the Moebius tradition of future fashion.
Especially Julie Cox’s Irulan. She’s so good here.
I wanted very much to appreciate its ambition in the face of woefully insufficient budget, its willingness to lean-in to the theatricality of it all, the unique aesthetics of the translight backdrops and bold lighting… but ultimately, the script was just too flat, the direction uninspired and gimmicky, and the acting all over the place. I thought the sequel combining Dune Messiah and Children of Dune was a vast improvement on all fronts, but that first one really does feel like community theatre in all the worst ways.
The sequel was legitimately good and added a lot of complexity, and was also my first exposure to James McAvoy. I remember thinking ‘oh, I bet he makes it beyond sci-fi miniseries territory, he’s single-handedly raised the quality of this thing to ‘I wouldn’t even have felt bad paying to see this in theaters’ level.’
I liked the mini-series tho.
I saw it when I was younger and yeah, I liked it just fine. Upon rewatch it has aged pretty badly, but it’s still an okay adaptation.
Damn. Those look like a Saturday Night Live skit, or several of them.
If you told me this was a still from a late-90s perfume commercial, I’d believe you. Something fresh, summery, floral. Base notes of jasmine, mids of bergamot, top notes of frangipani.
It’s a pretty cool costume for a Halloween party.
Some of these costumes appear to be heavily inspired by Moebius, who created concept art for Jodorowski’s attempt.The designs aren’t necessarily taken straight from the concept art, but from other Moebius comics.
Hilarious – thanks.
Are we 100% sure these aren’t rejected costumes for the Met Gala?
I thought the SciFi Channel’s version of Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune was an honorable television adaptation of an infamously difficult series of books to adapt, on the order of a BBC adaptation of a British SF/fantasy classic like The Tripods, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe or 1984. Yes, the Czech Republic would not have been where I’d have shot an adaptation largely set on a desert planet, the costumes were laughable and the hats(!) utterly insane, but apart from that? It was surprisingly faithful and watchable.
The Sardokar’s big floppy goth chef hats made me LOL when I first saw them.
Yep. Gotta love the woolly knitted scarf, too.The other costumes beat you over the head with their ridiculousness, but the Sardaukar outfits are a more subtle, nuanced kind of absurdity, I feel.
I didn’t know Justin Turner was in the Dune TV series!
Frank Herbert’s DUNE or Cirque du Soleil’s DUNE?
I personally always though Lynch was trying to one up 1980 Flash Gordon. I think he thought they existed in the same universe. If fact all of this would be better if they did.
its like they watched Phantom Menace and said “Yes. more of this with less action”
Are the Dildo-heads the Harkonnen? Are they angry because they KNOW everyone calls them Dildo-heads?
I think maybe the mass audience is more ready for Dune after the success of Game of Thrones. The idea in the book (which didn’t really carry over to Lynch’s version where there were clear good and bad people) is that none of the warring noble houses (including the Atreides) are really “good” although some might place a higher role on “honor”.
House Atreides has been cursed since Tantalus fed Pelops to the gods.
Yeah I always figured this was the big shift, people are more used to this level of complexity in genre media whereas in 1984 you weren’t seeing anything much more elaborate than Star Wars or Star Trek.
Blade Runner?(Of course, that was a massive flop at the time.)
I mean on a story level, there’s just one major thing the audience has to get (Replicants) and the opening crawl covers that. Granted the fact that WB insisted on a voiceover was probably also a sign they weren’t confident audiences would follow all of it.
I was thinking more of the thematic and moral complexity.In Dune there is a nice exchange (that they unfortunately didn’t use in full in the movie) where Paul accuses, “You! What have you done to me?” and Jessica responds, “I gave birth to you.”Similarly, I like how Blade Runner, beside its human/imitation, empathy/violence, master/slave, rebel/oppressor, and murderer/licensed murderer dichotomies, also functions as a parent/child allegory, with Batty effectively charging Tyrell that he “did close my tongue in senseless clay, and me to mortal life betray.”
What complexity? They smoothed over virtually every textural element of the novel. They did so in order to focus more on Paul alone. Perversely, however, this oversimplifies Paul himself. Here’s an incomplete list of elements lost, often unnecessarily:1. In the category of entirely unnecessary losses, why was there no mention (or display) of the Sardaukar operating in “Harkonnen livery?”2. A far more critical loss is the lack of showing the relationship between Leto and Jessica. We spent all that extra time on Caladan and got nothing of the second-most critical relationship in the book. Hey, but how else could they show more repetitive Paul visions?3. Jessica suffers greatly for only being in scenes with Paul. A mother loves her son? No shit. Is she anything beyond that? Not much, according to the movie. We’re meant to believe Jessica has power and dignity of her own, yet she only gets a single scene of her exercising power without Paul in the room (meeting Shadout Mapes).4. Speaking of Mapes, Paul saves her but they drop her response to that. In the grand scheme of things it’s not a huge loss, but it does give us more information about Fremen attitudes and beliefs.5. As long as we’re fumbling the Fremen, let’s rewrite Stilgar’s introduction for absolutely no good reason. It’s not like the book cared at all about the disposition of one’s water upon death and the culture clash between Fremen and even honorable outsiders.6. Oh, and let’s not forget the dishonorable outsiders. It’s bad enough that Dr. Yueh got short shrift along the way (particularly in terms of how shocking it was that he turned traitor) but they made Baron Harkonnen’s plot a fucking bore. There’s no background given for the Harkonnen/Atreides conflict and the Baron himself presents as a simple one-note bad guy because there’s no time given for him to indicate the depth of his plan, particularly his use of Pieter and Beast Rabban to pave the way for Feyd-Rautha.7. Seriously, turning this book into a two-movie, likely 5-hour spectacle makes it completely unacceptable to leave out so much.I’m certain some will see this as the whinging of a nerd with unreasonable expectations. It’s not. Focusing almost entirely on Paul while ignoring every other character is bad screenwriting. Take out half the spaceship porn (yeah, they’re silently defying gravity, and?) and the absolutely pointless signing ceremony and room could have at least been made for Baron Harkonnen to show his cruelty, appetites, and brilliance. Jessica’s argument with Leto over the bloody bull head could have shown her standing up for herself and being able to disagree with the Duke despite their lack of official marriage. The state dinner could have shown this society is real and complex, but we get zero indication of that.Bottom line: Beautiful visuals and good acting couldn’t compensate for a script which removes so much character from the story.D-
Okay it is worth pointing out that when I posted said comment I had not SEEN the new Dune so I was not discussing specific aspects of this new version.Having seen it, yeah there are few elements that get papered over but you have to remember, to the common man, even basic concepts like “The Landsraad” and it having major houses in it and that basic feudal structure, or the Spice being both a personal drug and key to space travel, or the way the Bene Gesserit manipulate bloodlines, all this is complexity. It is hardcore nerd shit. When the 1984 movie came out the standard was something like Star Wars, where there’s an Evil Empire and a good Rebellion and a mystic Force and guys with laser swords, it’s no wonder Universal were freaked as all Hell about anyone understanding this. Now we have gotten to a point where people are a bit more used to things- Game of Thrones had its Houses so everyone knows the idea of houses competing for power and influence, for example. That’s all I was saying, it’s a LITTLE easier to introduce the basic elements of the story nowadays.
Yeah, that’s a lot of hardcore nerd shit…that is mentioned without any real explanation. If you asked someone who watched the movie without any previous Dune exposure, they wouldn’t be able to tell you anything about the Landsraad except that they heard the word said in the movie, and even that wouldn’t be a lock.The Bene Gesserit manipulating bloodlines? How do they do that? Why would anyone be mad about Jessica having a son? Was she supposed to go to Dr. Yueh and have Paul aborted?You’re seeing complexity because you’ve presumably read the book or seen other adaptations (even the Lynch movie gave more detail). So when the Landsraad is mentioned, you already know about it. When you see the mounted bull’s head, you know it killed Leto’s father and Jessica hates looking at it.These things do not represent complexity, not when no time is given to explaining them. These are Easter eggs. Worse than that, they trick fans of the book into thinking they make the movie more meaningful. They don’t.
You’re still not reading what I’m actually writing here. Is there still simplification? Yes, plenty! Is it still something that only had a chance because this kind of genre work is more mainstream? Also, yes! I am not here to argue about how good or bad the new version is! Pick a fight with somebody else!
I apologize. I am sometimes confused when I see a post on a discussion board. I will remember for next time.
That’s not what this thread is about.
I really enjoyed the movie for it’s spectacle and everything but i 100% agree with everything you said. SO much political intrigue and backstory and build up was lost. There is no mention of the Butlerian Jihad and the ban on thinking machines so the entire motive to have Mentants is completely absent. The Spacing Guild is practically a non-entity and their machinations to motivate the Emperor in this matter is gone. the Keynes plan to turn Arrakis Green, while not really critical to the plot, was missed by me.
“He’ll share our dream” was why Liet helped Paul and Jessica. Yes, yet another point barely grazed.The 3-part SyFy Dune miniseries included so much more of the book and its running time sans commercials may end up being shorter than the current two movies.I had high hopes for this movie but it’s redoing Star Wars more than it’s adapting Dune.
I’ve been talking to some people who haven’t really been into Dune until this movie. They seem to think this movie is just fine. It does a whole lot of show, not tell relying on contextual clues as much as dialog. They don’t seem lost from it. I guess what is happening is that the backstory known to existing fans is supported by everything this film shows but it apparently doesn’t need to touch upon it to convey the story it is conveying. So while we feel it is lacking, to people who’ve never touched Dune it does just fine. Which if that trend in perception continues i guess it really does make it a brilliant film. Newcomers are perfectly immersed in the world and aren’t lost. While existing fans will feel it lacks context because it seamlessly fits within our existing understanding of the Known Universe but the reality is everything the story actually needs is there.
At some point, though, it stops being Dune. What particularly bothers me is that there was absolutely time to add texture that wouldn’t have been confusing. There are at least 20 minutes of the movie that could have been replaced with non-Paul character development (calling it that is deceptive because all of it informs Paul’s character) and wouldn’t have confused the neophyte viewer at all.For example, more insight into the relationship between Leto and Jessica would clarify the reasons (beyond power) that Paul makes the decision he does about Chani later. Including information about mentats and Paul’s training would reinforce how unique he is. These two elements wouldn’t take more than 10 minutes of screen time.They were so intent on removing complexity that they went way too far. As I noted before, the TV miniseries gave more in what will end up being a shorter time.I can see why a new viewer would like it, but I think any viewer would want more story rather than less.
I started rewatching it over my lunch break. I think I get what Villeneuve was going for. We are essentially only given the Atredies perspective of what is going on. We get that they perceive the Emperor set them up to fail but House Atredies doesn’t full grasp the full gravity of how much the Emperor wants them out of the picture, at least not until it’s too late. Rather than have a grand view like both the Lynch and Syfy version have we get a much more narrowed view of what is going on, mostly from Paul’s process of awakening as the movie goes on. While it does leave a lot of potential plot and world building on the table, it in turn creates a deeper dramatic impact of what Paul goes through. Plus it doesn’t oversaturate the viewer with information. The lack of massive exposition dumps is something that casual viewers appreciate more than can be described. Still we’ll need to see how things play out in PART II to see if this left too much on the table that it can’t pull off the politic intrigue or if it set things up in a way that allows the political intrigue to fill up the second part.
THANK YOU!!!! Oh my god, I’ve been knee deep in nerd debates with a couple fellow nerds that are losing their shit over this while my answer has been “I’m fairly disappointed.” I mean, it’s Dune so I’m still fackin’ psyched and I watched it three times over the weekend but, like, all the shit they cut out so Dennis Villeneueve could hand wave the mess he made of the screenplay with some “look at my cinematography brilliance!” It’s fucking sand, bruh, we get it. The lack of anything explaining Yueh, not mentioning at all that Paul had an option to fully commit to the Bene Gesserit, not giving us a couple extra seconds of the Shadout Mapes scene with her cutting her breast to blood the crysknife (which they show later but it makes zero sense in context), and yet another version where they don’t address the weirding way? For what? Timmy not emoting until he freaks out? Scared Jessica? More shots of sand?And again on the Weirding Way once again getting poofed. So the whole movie, aside from some dialogue implying she’s a badass, Jessica spends the entire movie shaking and crying and at the end she just does a couple Black Widow spin moves and takes Stilgar? Duncan said he came the closest to death fighting one of these guys? Did he try spin moves? It’s 2021, ffs, you can give us some short-range teleportation. Shit, even the SyFy version tried!For this amount of time, money, and hype, you’d think we’d get more than the tent scene and a couple minutes of Duncan Idaho going ham on some Sardaukar (righteous but, seriously, adds what to the depth of the story or the character?)
Duncan was represented best among the non-Paul characters (and I always like Jason Momoa, even when everything around him is weak; he’s got charm to burn) and they still watered (oops) him down compared to the book.It’s wild that Foundation is being adapted in a way that compensates for the weak points of the original work and expands it in interesting ways, while Herbert’s quality character work is thrown away and stripmined until only Paul is left, free of context.
I mentioned all these same things to my friends who hadn’t read the book as well. Some strange things to leave out. They didn’t even mention Jessica was a concubine until late as well.Chani didn’t need to appear (apart from a brief vision or two) until the last scene of the movie. Also no explanation of what Mentats are, just some eyeballs rolled back. Oh and Paul just comes out and says he might marry the Emperor’s daughter. What Emperor, what daughter (both missing so far) and why has he already decided that?Lots of bull head visuals but I don’t think they mentioned that it was the actual bull that killed Paul’s Grandfather.And why so little focus on the importance of water. You are correct that the state dinner would have been a good scene as it could have shown the water customs of the Fremen and the Harkonnen/Atreides.For all the exposition the set up was worse than the Lynch version.I enjoyed the new movie a lot, but so much wasted potential to create a story confusing for non book readers.
Funny you should say that. I last reread Dune about 7 years ago and my mind immediately cast the book with all GoT characters. Sean Bean as the Duke, naturally
I thought the same thing watching the movie. Paul is very John Snow. His mom is Cersai. Dad is Sean Bean etc etc. I liked the movie but trying to make violent male dominant messianic hero journey novels seems very old fashioned and tiresome. Hard to be original these days. Cools visuals tho. Dragonfly.copters are the dumbest coolest thing I have ever seen.
Also, throwing in the concept of “The One” is now almost a sci-fi cliche. I just watched this movie, having never read the book or seen the previous film so I was going in 100% cold, and it was kind of surprising to me how many other different movies and books and TV shows I could see coming out of this story.
One kinda distracting thing that I think is gonna keep happening: There are so many goddam DC/Marvel movies, what seems like 50% of all movies, that it was impossible to watch this and not occasionally think, “Oh, there’s Thanos/Cable standing next to Apocalypse. And Mary Jane and Aquaman. And Drax arguing with Polka Dot Man and Eric Selvig…”
I’ve been trying to read Dune since 1986.Currently up to Page 113 on my latest effort.
I’m taking a very similar pace with Guns, Germs and Steel. 15 years in and only 80% to go!
Summary: Europe and Asia had more easily accessible natural resources plus easier to domesticate animals, which is why (rather than any inherent superiority of their cultures or people) they developed technology quicker and so dominated the rest of the world through trade and colonialism. It makes sense, although many anthropologists accuse Diamond of cherry-picking examples that support his conclusions while ignoring ones that don’t.
Also, the dimensions of your continent are important. Is it wider than it is tall or taller than it is wide? Changes in day length can have profound impacts on the ability to spread agricultural advances. (See the chapter about the domestication of grains.)
I enjoy Diamonds books, my issue is that he often takes over large credit for coming up ideas on his own that others were kicking around for years before. As an ecologist I have issue with a geographer claiming credit for ideas that were around the ecology world long before just not is popular trade nonfiction. That is about most of his books not just GGS which I did like.
Strangely, I wasn’t entirely sure if you were referring to Dune or Guns, Germs and Steel. It sort of works for both.
Alright wise guy. Then why did Europe suddenly go into warp drive technologically and outpace Asia so much, England was able to bully China into giving them whatever they wanted?
That’s a separate issue that often gets conflated with the first. Up until 1700 or so, China was the richest and most technological society on the planet. The reasons for the scientific revolution in Western Europe (and especially England) are complex, but a big part was printing (which ironically was developed first by the Chinese, but was more practical with alphabetic languages). Printing was kind of like the Internet in that it allowed ideas to be transmitted much more easily that by manuscripts.
yeah, the title of Guns, Germs and Steel should be changed to Wheat, Rice, and Barley
That whole book has been thoroughly debunked, so you can probably stop trying to read it without any guilt at this point.
Fine, but I can keep reading my phrenology textbook, right?
If you have the feel for it.
I keep hearing that Guns, Germs and Steel is full of holes, but I’ve honestly never seen or heard a proper explanation as to why that is. I get that it’s speculative rather than strictly academic, but all the criticisms I’ve read of it boil down to 1) that it gets wrong that the true cause of Western dominance is social organization/engineering and 2) that it therefore serves as colonialist apologia by making colonialism seem like a natural outgrowth of the above.Number one is somewhat fair, but ‘social engineering’ is the answer to a slightly different question from the one that GGS is answering. And two is just flat-out wrong, and seems to be based on an egregiously uncharitable reading of the book. I’d be curious to know if there’s something else that I’ve missed there.
Its impact will depend on the background and assumptions of its audience. The book positions itself as a counternarrative to the idea that Europeans’ success at colonization was rooted in some sort of inherent biological superiority. That’s a super unpopular and out-of-date opinion in most academic circles, and I’m sure there are many valid and field-specific criticisms of the book to be make.I will never forget talking about Guns, Germs, and Steel with my grandfather in high school. An aeronautical engineering professor from small town Texas, he admitted he’d always had nagging doubts, at least on some level, as to why history turned out the way it did if there were not inherent, biologically rooted differences between races.At the time, I was mostly just horrified that he could still harbor these sorts of doubts after being close friends with people from all over the world his whole life. But obviously, I’m also impressed that Diamond’s argument had such a big impact on him. The deeper we get into the culture war craziness, the more I’m also impressed that he was still willing to actively re-evaluate his assumptions even though he was in his late 80s.
In my experience scientists can harbor some impressively disturbing beliefs because they perceive those beliefs as rational without realizing they started from an irrational premise. The nice thing is that truly analytical people often find it rewarding to start thinking from a new premise. I’m happy for your grandfather.
That’s great to hear that it had that effect, and I think it speaks to the real purpose and value of the book, as opposed to the one a lot of academics seem to think it has and thus criticize it for. And your granddad sounds very reasonable for adjusting his outlook at such a late age, yeah.
The critique is less about social organization/engineering, and more about geodeterminism: that, gee golly, Europeans couldn’t HELP but conquer the world because they got all the good resources, so it can read as an apologia for colonialism, and undercuts the responsibilities and effects of human choice.
I can get where that’s coming from, because Diamond REALLY does lay it on a bit thick in providing his evidence while not considering obvious other explanations. But I think the book overall has a good point to make about how important the natural world is in creating and sustaining cultures. Not to mention that there are many, MANY counter-examples to geodeterminism that lie in the book itself, most notably the anecdote about the utter dismantling of the Ming dynasty’s navy in 1433, which essentially occurred on the whim of the Hongxi Emperor. I mean, you can’t claim the book thinks geography conquers all when it prominently discusses the moment when the decision of a single man ended Chinese exploration for centuries, especially when the previous single man had CREATED that navy to begin with. Most critics of the book that point that out scoff that Diamond must simply not have known the seemingly self-undermining implications of what he was putting to page, rather than realizing that their interpretation of the book in its entirety is a bit, as you say, uncharitable when the details are considered.
gee golly, Europeans couldn’t HELP but conquer the world because they got all the good resources,
Exactly, that’s what’s frustrating about the criticism – there’s no point anywhere in the book where Diamond says anything remotely close to ‘colonialism was accidental/natural/inevitable’ or what have you. The closest it gets (if I’m being charitable to those critics) is a general statement that ‘stronger’ nations have tended to dominate their ‘weaker’ neighbors through history, but it’s a big leap to get from that to ‘accidental conquistadors’ (a phrase concocted by one reviewer to summarize Diamond’s attitude towards colonialists).Most critics of the book that point that out scoff that Diamond must simply not have known the seemingly self-undermining implications of what he was putting to page,Yep. Again, if I’m being extremely charitable and reading between the lines of some of the criticisms of the book – some of the arguments could perhaps be summarized as ‘social organization/ideology/pre-colonial beliefs played SUCH a huge part in the advent of colonialism that whether or not geodeterminism played a part is a moot point.’ But, again, that seems to miss the point of the book – it’s not about why these nations enacted colonialism, but why they were able to enact it, and whether or not those conquered nations (e.g. Native Americans or Africans) would have been able to do so had their social organization been any different.
2) that it therefore serves as colonialist apologia by making colonialism seem like a natural outgrowth of the above.Isn’t this objectively true throughout the course of human history? Roughly 70,000 years ago Neanderthals went effectively extinct while Sapiens flourished. Interbreeding was a factor, but most anthropologists agree that Sapiens developed language that allowed them to dominate their hominid rivals. There are countless examples since then of groups of people with technological or cultural advantages dominating groups of lesser advantaged people, and even if it’s natural, it doesn’t mean we haven’t come to a point where we can understand that it’s wrong and stop doing it.
What Frank said. If you are interested in a counterpoint to Guns, Germs, and Steel that’s less determinist, I would suggest Kenneth Pomeranz’s “The Great Divergence.”
Seriously, I’ve tried reading that book three or four times. I want to read it. I’m genuinely interested in the content. But every time I try to read it it puts me to sleep.
I’ve got you beat. I started in 1981.
In the interim, I have managed to read every science fiction story I could find by Philip K Dick (which is 36 novels and 5 collections of short stories) – though technically not A Maze of Death which I read in 1984. The very first of his books that I read and coincidentally the one I still think is the best of them all (against some very stiff competition, though).
I love PKD, but some of those 70s books are a chore.
Like them or hate them, PKD books are short.(Big plus point!)
Yeah, I bought it during one of my sci fi phases and never made it very far despite the enthusiastic recommendation of lots of people I respect.There was a pretty funny NPR review of the film that said something to the effect of, “If going back to the glossary every couple of pages takes you out of the story too much, Dune is not for you.”The older and busier I get, the more I respect writers who can make a lasting impression despite economizing language.
That’s interesting. The first PKD book I read was The Man in the High Castle. I’ve read some but not all of his other novels, and none of them even comes close to High Castle for me: the style especially seems different from his other fiction, maybe because the I Ching was his co-author. But it makes sense that the first book you’d read by him would stand out compared to the others.
I’ve also been re-reading the first page of “Gravity’s Rainbow” since 1981.
Last year I made it through 78% of Gravity’s Rainbow before it defeated me. My best effort so far.
Sounds like you gave up around the big corprophagia scene maybe?
I admire you calculating it exactly.
hahaha I’m reading it on my Kindle and it shows me my percentage complete. Each time I’d slog through a page I’d look down to see if the number went up.
was that the shit eating kabalah angel part?
It’s a good first page!
Aa someone who limped through the whole thing, I can assure you that the opening few pages with the bananas are the best and easiest to read in the whole wretched tome.
You should finish it, its a great book. There is mind controlled squid and penis rockets galore
I made it about 3 pages into Gravity’s Rainbow before I gave up, then talked to a friend who suggested I start with The Crying of Lot 49 since it was a bit of an easier read. So I gave that a whirl, and sure enough he was right…I made it about 6 pages in before giving up!
I’ve read it a couple of times, and to be perfectly honest, it does not improve with each reading. It just gets sillier. That said, I’m stoked for the movie, and I loved the Lynch adaptation. Silly reads can make great movies.
Wait, there’s a David Lynch adaptation of Guns, Germs, and Steel?
In some universe, yes, and it’s riveting.
Its a bit of a slog. Lots of sand.
Gets everywhere.
But, I don’t like sand…
I know, it’s coarse and rough and it gets everywhere!
I love sand. It’s soft and grainy, and it gets everywhere so you keep finding it like a souvenir.
And where there’s sand, there’s Jews. I hope we get to see the space Jews.
I hate sand. It gets everywhere.
I read it through, start-to-finish, in three days. It was a slog. But I made it to the end, at least, which is more than I can say for The Lord of the Rings – I have never, ever finished the first book, let alone the series, because of Tom motherfucking Bombadil.
Lord of the Rings is a good narrative with a really interesting tone, but Tolkien was not a prose stylist. If you know who the characters are and where the plot is going (which the movies establish very well) it’s a lot easier to skim big chunks of the novels. For example, “In the House of Tom Bombadil” is a slog, but the very next chapter “Fog on the Barrow-Downs” is a highlight of the whole trilogy.
When reading LotR, skip the Tom Bombadil chapter, along with any and all songs wherever they appear. It’s a great read without them.
Same. I loved the movies and my brother bought me a really nice complete set of the books for Christmas. I was really excited to plow through them. Then Tom Bombadil happened. Put it down and never picked it up.
I always struggled with the book, so I used the Villeneuve movie as an excuse to listen to the audiobook version. Highly recommended.
Amen, I like sci-fi and was told by everyone how awesome this is, but this is one of those books that definitely is NOT a page turner. This is one of those “classics” you are better of just reading the wiki summary so you get what it is about and can discuss it if it ever comes up. I made it about halfway through before giving up.
Pfft I bought the Iliad when Troy came out, because I thought I could handle deep literature.
I’ve only made to page 3 so far.Maybe one day I’ll try again?
Reading The Iliad can be a real odyssey.
I’ve been reading that since it first came out…
I made it about halfway through the Iliad during a 5 hour stay in the ED waiting room at my local hospital but never got around to finishing it at that point. Still to start on the Odyssey and no-one’s finishing the Aeneid.
I’ve been working on Naked Lunch for nearly 30 years, and last tried about 20 years ago. I got through Dune in the 80s because I was too young and stupid to not get frustrated checking the glossary every other sentence.
I remember in high school I got really into the Beats. I read Junky and liked it well enough. I was then exposed to The Cut Up trilogy and decided I would read all three books simultaneously a few pages at a time. Experimental reading for experimental literature. It did not go well.
I read all of Naked Lunch in college because it was just so profanely bizarre. I surprised myself, though. I didn’t think I would make it.
When I read it at 13, I actually read the glossaries first. That way I knew the world I was getting into. Not sure that is the best way but it worked for me.
I was 15 or so, and I don’t remember if I liked it or not, I was just glad to get through it. I guess I liked it well enough but not well enough to read the sequels.
A friend of mine was nearly finished reading it for the first time last month and I commented on how helpful the glossary is. He asked what glossary. He was reading on a Kindle so had no idea it was there.
The first 100 or so pages are definitely the most accessible so…
Oh that’s concerning news given I’m just managing about a chapter a day to get to Page 136 so far.
Yeah. I guess my view is that the first part of the book is a fun space fantasy story set in an intriguing world. After that, it becomes increasingly philosophical and odd. Still fun and exciting, but I always blazed through the first bit as a kid only to get bogged down later. My own first few reads of Dune involved a lot of skimming in the middle bits.
I just read it again for the first time in 20 years and commented that the first half is a great Sci-Fi epic which then descends into a religious and environmental doctrine. I still love the book (and both movies) but I have a feeling there may be a lot of people excited after Part 1 who won’t be fans by the end of Part 2.
Game of Thrones for me. I’m a third of the way through Song after nine years.
I just started reading it and that’s exactly where I’m at as well. So far it’s kept my attention. I think having seen Lynch’s film has helped me, because I understand the basics of what’s happening.
At the risk of “just another subscription service”, sign up for an Audible trial & just let the audiobook roll over you.It’s helped me get through several dozen titles I didn’t have the attention span to sit still for.
I’ve actually read it before (once), but like you, I had a number of failed attempts first. I’m re-reading it now, just passed page 100.I saw Lynch’s Dune in the theater when it came out. I enjoyed it at the time as a 13-year-old, but of course I didn’t understand half of what was going on. I tried re-watching it yesterday, and I just couldn’t do it. It just seemed like a cheesy ‘80s Dino DiLaurentiis sci-fi production, but with admittedly fantastic production design. I just couldn’t stand the liberties taken with the story. The “weirding module”? WTF?
Lynch’s version is fucking horrendous.
You’ll get no argument from me.
“I’ve been trying to read Dune since 1986.”It’s not that hard to read. I read it and Dune Messiah when I was in junior high school.
I read it in the womb!
Sounds like me and the Divine Comedy. Thought I should read it, and have tried repeatedly, but just can’t manage to get more than a few dozen pages in.
Dune the book and this movie both share the same flaw. You have to get through the rough opening chunk(an hour in the movie, 100 pages of the book) just to get the core story. I would say when Paul and his mother go out in the desert, you are getting to the core part of the first book. For the movie, that means a very rough opening hour or so. Maybe a bit more.
I started the book in 1984, in anticipation of the Lynch version, which opened when I was halfway through the book. I have no memory of finishing it at that time, but I picked it up again (same copy) a few weeks ago and finished it just the other day. Triumph!
I am on my 6th and most successful attempt to get past the first 100 pages of Dune. I would not have believed it last month but the story does get going and I am into it now. I felt less alone yesterday when I read that one of Frank Herbert’s rejection letters also said that nobody could get past the first 100 pages.
I’ve read all six. I don’t plan to read the ones written by the son Brian Herbert.
It only took me three tries, all in the last 20 years. Finally made it this year. I liked it, but I didn’t come away from it thinking “NOW I see what all the hype is about!”For the record, same story with LotR, except that one I did eventually get it.
That’s funny, a friend suggested it to me in 1981 (when I was 13,) and that’s just about where I stopped, too.
Much like “A Hundred Years of Solitude,” which I later got a little further into, I can’t claimt to understand either of them, because there was just too much stuff going on and too many people to keep track of. (And yes, I have ADHD.)
So I’m looking at this as a new way to “get it,” and I love most of what V has done so far, so I’ll go see this. Looks like a movie you want to see on the big screen, covid and all.
That’s funny, a friend suggested it to me in 1981 (when I 13,) and that’s just about where I stopped, too.
Much like “A Hundred Years of Solitude,” which I later got a little further into, I can’t claimt to understand either of them, because there was just too much stuff going on and too many people to keep track of. (And yes, I have ADHD.)
Dune is way overrated. The real object of the allegory, which was absent from the review of the movie, was about a natural resource that is essential for long-distance travel, but can only be obtained in a desert inhabited by people who speak Arabic, and how that supply bottleneck will affect society as a whole. Maybe back in 1965 that was something of an eye-opener, but even in the 1980’s (when I first read it[*]), it was hard not to roll my eyes at the obviousness of the metaphor. As someone I know with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies once put it, “It’s as if your neighbor with an amateur interest in the field gave you a one-hour lecture on ‘Pre-Islamic Arabia,’ and then you went and wrote a novel based on what he told you.”[*]If it makes you feel any better, I tried to read the first sequel, and gave up after the first chapter.
I don’t disagree with what you are saying, but that is just one thread of the Dune story. The strength of the novel is that it deals with several concepts in the same story. It may not do any of them perfectly but the combined effect is a great accomplishment.
Read it in 1975 for a high school book report. One school week, every night before going to bed. Maybe audiobooks?
Better than my 6 months to get about halfway thu Ch. 2 of Brave New World. I know somewhere people who exist who have got thru all the Dune novels but I think they are very few.
more progress than i have with Foucault’s pendulum…
It’s good! I hope everyone is really clear that it’s just half the first book so it does end kind of weakly. But it’s still light years more coherent than Lynch’s film. Lynch’s version does have some amazing imagery though.
A B from Ignatiy, so it’s amazing
It sure is a spectacle, but a hollow one. My eyes were awed but my brain was sleeping, and so was my heart. I had so little emotional connection to anything happening on the screen, and while the pace is slow I felt it very rushed with how much had been left unexplained or left out altogether.Could we please take a break from Zimmer? His music is always a hammer, without restraint, without leaving the audience space for feeling instead of spelling out what they should be feeling by intent of the creators with enormous, imposing notes.Why were the costumes so uninspired and plastic-looking? Why the colour palette so boring? Why the buildings though imposing, yet also just all blandly brutalist? I could go on.But yes, every single frame was perfectly photographed.
How did you (and others) see it already?
I saw it at an Odeon members preview.It’s sooooooo slow. There’s about fifteen minutes too much slow-motion Zendaya doing nothing in flash forwards, or dreams, or prophecies, and so on. The knife fights are numerous and top-notch though. Ferguson and Momoa are very good, Chalomet is OK, and I have no idea if Zendaya is any good, that’s how little she’s usefully in the movie.The biggest crime is the absence of a “Part One” on the movie posters. It’s clear intent to deceive.
A friend saw it in Hong Kong in mid-September. He just told me to avoid this movie like the plague.
My thoughts exactly. I think alot of viewers are going to be disappointed that the movie…after hours of sloooow buildup, simply ends rather anticlimactically just as the story is getting interesting. I thought the movie was going to be a big peter jackson sized adaptation of the entire first book too.
I would say Zendaya is pretty distracting. She doesn’t come across as a mysterious and strange portent; more a lurker on your instagram. (and for the record I like Zendaya) The overcasting with stars in general is somewhat distracting. Why exactly cast Brolin? Not that hard to find someone to play the “grizzled sargent”.
I’ve seen old retirees move faster in a pool than this movie did.
I live in Singapore, opened weeks ago. The only fun I had during the movie was mocking the dialogue and my embarrassed wife telling me to be quiet (large, almost empty theatre, in my defense, and I wasn’t loud I thought)
It came out outside the US and China last month.
The screener leaked over the weekend
It had preview screenings across the UK yesterday, but it has been out in large swathes of Europe for weeks.
I have loved pretty much everything Villeneuve has done (BR2049 brought me to tears), but I agree with this wholeheartedly.
It felt…lifeless. Granted, I’ve never read the books, so I was coming in blind except for comedic reviews of the Lynch version, but there was nothing about the movie that moved me. I’m not one to complain about slow movies, but the the best way I can describe it was “so much of nothing”. There was so much going on, but it signified absolutely nothing.
It proved to me that Villeneuve is at his best when he’s either not adapting something (Sicario and Prisoners), or when what he’s adapting is rather focused (BR2049, Arrival). I think Dune is too broad and too open to the interpretation, so it allows for the few weak spots that Villeneuve has to shine through (too much reliance on visual spectacle; dialog that’s a bit stilted).
In fact, for most of the time when I was watching it, I was thinking to myself, “This really seems like a Ridley Scott movie.”
Seconded, heartily. Every character besides Paul was stripped of every trait apart from their love of Paul. They couldn’t even bother to show Leto and Jessica as being in love. The Harkonnens are just a bunch of dudes who don’t like the Atreides.It’s like an adaptation of a plot synopsis.
I felt exactly the same way and I was sooooo looking forward to this movie. Everything was so colorless and lifeless. Technically brilliant, yet lacking in vibrancy. I mean, where did all the color go? 3 planets and all of them monochromatic? Are you kidding me? By the end, I was longing for some camp, anything to get it going…Sting in a winged speedo would have been a welcome sight after 2 and a half hours of blah. And the Zimmer score kept me thinking I was in a Christopher Nolan joint with all the BWAAAAAAAHMS! coming out of the speakers…
It sure is a spectacle, but a hollow one. My eyes were awed
but my brain was sleeping, and so was my heart. I had so little
emotional connection to anything happening on the screen I rarely felt excited or scared for anyone, and while the
pace is slow I felt it very rushed with how much had been left
unexplained or left out altogether.Could we please take
a break from Zimmer? His music is always a hammer, without restraint,
without leaving the audience space for feeling instead of spelling out
what they should be feeling by intent of the creators with enormous,
imposing notes.Why were the costumes so uninspired and
plastic-looking? Why the colour palette so boring? Why the buildings
though imposing, yet also just all blandly brutalist? I could go on.But yes, every single frame was perfectly photographed.
The longer director’s cut fo the ‘84 movie is much better. I am Big fan of the book but my passion fizzled before the end of the original books. ( try not to pick up books by the sons of better authors trying to make money off of dead fathers like Christopher and Brian….) There is more anti white savior stuff in the books than they are pro white savior.
There is no director’s cut of the 1984 movie. There’s an anti-director’s cut that Lynch had nothing to do with and objected so strongly to that he had his name removed from the credits.And Christopher Tolkien doesn’t deserve to be mentioned along with Brian Herbert. Christopher confined himself to editing his father’s unpublished works, devoting his life (perhaps somewhat pathetically) to an eccentric project that pleased the hardcore fans but hardly maximized the commercial potential of the IP, treating his father’s manuscripts with something like the religious reverence of scholars studying the Dead Sea scrolls. Brian, on the other hand, has hired a hack to help him churn out endless cheap Dune imitations with complete disregard for quality, coherence, or any of the themes of the original series.
Sorry “extended version”
How did a preference for the extended edition become so prevalent among Herbert fans? If there is any reason to watch the 1984 adaptation, it’s in the mood created by the weird alchemy of Lynch’s offbeat vision and the DeLaurentiis machine. One needs to sink into its lush visuals and sound design and gorgeous, weird humans, which I would have thought would be easier for series fans, who already know who and what everything is and means and therefore need no exposition. Counterintuitively, it seems that so many fans of the Dune series prefer the cut that doubles down on airless, tortured, highly unnecessary scenes and one of the very worst slogs of an introductory exposition I have ever had the misfortune to watch. I always understood their fandom of the cheap, boring TV minserieseses as a perfectly understandable function of faithfulness to text (and the same goes to their great distaste for Jodorowsky’s plans within plans), but seriously, you’d rather have the utter portentious bullshit narration throughout to whatever otherworldly Lynchian tone the director managed to marry with the source? I really don’t get it.
I remember when the 84 version came out. I was into science fiction and fantasy as a high school kid. People just did not get enough information from the theatrical cut. the tv edit seemed to provide more details and story to try to explain more so people were not lost. The strangeness, visuals and look of Lynch was not yet appreciated. Many fans just liked seeing more of the story. Watching people’s reaction to a movie now 37 years later and how the movie was thought of at the time are very different. I even remember the dune action figures and battery operated toy vehicles being on the discount shelves in toy stores because the movie was a flop.
It was such a flop! And there was so much media hype at the time over it being a flop! I had forgotten about those discounted action figures. Thanks for reminding me of them!
At the time i remember being very impressed that they made one of the toys 4×4 when they really did not need to
While not a “director’s cut”, there is the fanedit titled “Alternative Edition Redux” which is essentially an extended cut that adds scenes from various sources and cleaned up some unfinished effects shots (e.g. blue spice eyes were previously intermittent).It’s an absolute masterpiece and the only way to watch the 1984 version.
I read part of one of Brian’s Dune books. Can’t remember which one, but it read like high school fan fiction.
Lonestar: Just one more Dune to go.Barf: You said that three Dunes ago!
It’s really not better, either. A bunch of semi-finished scenes, with no music score or atmospherics is just dumped into the rest of the theatrical version, and you can feel the difference. You can hear the echo of the soundstage (and practically hear grips farting, etc.) in the extra scenes. Also, the “old man narration” intro is distinctly inferior to Irulan, IMO. Give me all the deleted scenes as an extra with a copy of the theatrical version any day, thanks.
If you have to start your film with an extended narration, Lynch at least had the good sense to put it in the hands of 22-year-old Virginia Madsen, delivering it directly to the camera with just a backdrop of stars. Beats a slideshow any day.
The extended edition is really a lesson in the power of editing. The theatrical cut has its issues and a few jarring cuts but it has a certain flow, it feels polished and like it has something of a shape. The TV cut is clearly edited less well and feels choppy as Hell even with all the extra footage. Like it’s clear from the get-go that Universal were always worried that nobody would understand the movie, so they pressed hard for the inner voice narration and such in the theatrical cut, and when that flopped, whoever was putting together the TV version was told to add even more stuff. So you get the longer narration, but also like, whenever a character goes from one planet to another they show a spaceship heading towards a place (specifically they show the Harkonnen ships approaching Arrakkeen, and at one point use footage from the scene where Paul and Jessica are being taken to the desert. You can kinda see them lying in the foreground!) All of this adds to the clumsiness. It is interesting to see the stuff that isn’t there and I do kinda wish it was available for that reason, but yeah.
The official name of it is the Alan Smithee cut of Dune, because when the director disowns your movie, Alan Smithee is the director (or at least was—I think DGA retired the name).The funny thing is, I kinda enjoy the crazy hand-drawn powerpoint presentation that starts the Alan Smithee version. It comes complete with elaborate drawings of production stills to tie the material that they drew from scratch with the content of the film, and it’s weirdly fun even though a) I can absolutely understand why this would be the last straw that got Lynch to tell the producers to go fuck themselves, and b) I’m pretty sure the audience I watched it with on release would’ve rioted and/or walked out if the movie started with a damn slideshow. The extra history is interesting if you haven’t read the books or just want a refresher, but it’s also a gigantic no-confidence vote in Lynch’s storytelling. And it’s a brutal way to start a movie.
It reminds me of how, on the Lord of the Rings Extended Editions, there’s an animatic of an alternate opening for Fellowship, which also gives way more backstory than is strictly needed- they go into the rise of each race of Middle Earth and more into specific names of people who didn’t make it to the main story, and you can tell at some point they worked out that we don’t need all of this.
The version you want is the Alternative Fan Edition Redux(which can be easily found online from a number of sources), not the rubbish TV edit with the storybook prologue. It’s a much better cut that reinstates much of the character stuff excised from the theatrical version and cuts back on the unnecessary voiceovers. Probably the most complete version of Lynch’s film we’re likely to see.
The ‘extended version’ (Which is not a director’s cut, btw…the director literally had his name struck from that version of the film.) is bad. Like, bad-bad. It’s interesting solely for its prologue which should honestly be a DVD extra on the ‘real’ version, because it provides historical exposition the movie never fully delves into. (Hell, as I recall, some of it you don’t even get from just reading the first book!) The majority of the cut footage is bad, adds nothing to the scenes, and in a lot of cases you can tell why it was cut. (Often subpar acting and simply unnecessary lines or actions!)They also did some utterly bizarre overdubbing of dialogue for god knows what reason… (Attempt to dumb it down? Wouldn’t surprise me as my understanding is this version was meant for television broadcast.) An example would be the Emperor discussing his plan with the representative from the Spacing Guild… For some reason they kept overdubbing “The Atreides” and “House Atreides” with “Duke Atreides” and did the same with mentions of the Harkonens.
And they’ve made a kickass space epic despite effeminate Timmy cast in the lead…amazing.
What’s he going to do? Cut his own beautiful face off?
I’m going to get HBO Max for a month just to watch this, even though I’m concerned I’ll be bored shitless by it. But I want to try.
Watch Succession while you’re at it!
I don’t need fictional terrible rich people to know that real rich people are terrible.
Succession is much more than “rich people are terrible.” It has the best writing on TV since Mad Men.
Succession is much more than “rich people are terrible.”
True. SUCCESSION is pretentious, boring and terrible. Not one likeable character (sorry, Greg!), no fun. Combined with HBO’s similar themed INDUSTRY it could be shown infinitely to torture anti-capitalist protesters. (I really liked MAD MEN though.)
That’s the spirit!
I enjoyed the book as well as both the Lynch and TV adaptations. Looking forward to this new one, though I’m worried that people will not tune in or turn out, as it’s a smart, deliberately paced sci-fi epic instead of a fast-paced, joke-a-minute Marvel movie.
I’m trying to finish this movie. I keep pausing it and getting back to it when I finished doing other things that kept my attention better. Visually it’s awesome. And like Blade Runner 2049, I can see Denis Villeneuve putting in the same effort and passion into this. It’s being clever on world building and which details to put focus on that could translate well visually or through clever dialogue and which details to leave out that would come off boring and unnecessary on film. Sadly just for me, the story, the characters, and the execution of the plot is just not fun. I guess like some people joke about eventually finish reading Dune book 1, I’ll eventually finish watching Dune the movie part 1.
so many ringers in this cast, I’m not surprised there isn’t time to mention them all, but man this is Rebecca Ferguson’s film from start to finish imo. absolutely mesmerising performance, which is only fitting given Jessica is the most interesting character in the book too
Yeah, I recently re-read the novel, and the thing that struck me is that Jessica is the true protagonist of the story. Where Paul is swept along by concerns of destiny and prophecy, Jessica is constantly evaluating the ever-shifting landscape, making carefully-considered decisions, and then acting on them. Sometimes it works for her, other times it blows up in her face. However, it’s really her choices all along the way that truly advance the story.
yeah, while I understand the need for Paul to be the protagonist, he is frankly kind of bland (maybe by design) compared to the characters around him, Jessica is fascinating because she’s so divided – between her loyalty to the Bene Gesserit, her love for Leto and Paul and her need to survive at all costs. it’s pretty heartbreaking what the character goes through just to allow some prophecies to come through, and Ferguson plays it remarkably well
I feel that Paul only becomes interesting after he starts to realize the prison his future vision is creating for him but before he gives up on ever escaping. (So the end of Dune, parts of Children of Dune… and done)
Leto II was always more compelling.
It could be argued that Paul failed the Gom Jabber – he became trapped by his visions and fled into the desert to avoid them. Leto II entered the trap willingly for the benefit of his fellow humans.
What’s such a bummer is the movie strips out most of those supporting characters’ characterization to focus more exclusive on Paul and his family. But once pop dies and mom loses relevance, all you’re left with is boring ass Paul (and his tendency to murder the local people of color he has come to save).
Good to hear. Jessica is the best character.
Rebecca Ferguson is good in so much stuff (I especially liked her as Rose the Hat in Doctor Sleep). Glad to hear that she shines in this as well.
Yes! She was fantastic in Dr Sleep (and she wasn’t bad in Mission Impossible, everyone just tends to get lost in those movies) and she is every bit as good –probably better–in this.
She was great, but for me Oscar Isaac was the standout (though honestly there wasn’t a bad performance in the bunch).
Having seen it now, what’s incredible is how little screen time most of the supporting cast receive. All of their characters are drastically cut back, it’s almost like they’re not even real people, but just cyphers necessary to kick the plot forward.Even Baron Harkonnen is barely in the movie.
Agreed. I just wish Herbert hadn’t given her the most generic female name possible.
I’m a fan of her as well but what I was happiest about was that she is a good runner (assuming it wasn’t a stunt double). It’s a nitpick of mine but the amount of movies where an actors lack of running ability just ruins a scene.
What did they decide was 1/2 of the book? Did they cut it where Analog did?
It ends right after the fight with Jamis, so a good deal after the Analog break, a little over halfway into Book II of the novel.Some of the test screenings reportedly carried the story to the end of Book II. I wonder if they’ll use those scenes in Part Two (assuming it happens) or go straight to the time jump.
Thank you.
It’s a very long novel. I was recently rewatching the Lynch version and was struck how the last third of the movie is literally reading Cliff’s Notes at us — “Jessica’s daughter matured at a frightening speed. Meanwhile, Chani and Paul’s love grew”. Like, don’t show us any of this, just talk at us! But it was the only way to fit the whole book in. As it is, the movie is two hours and 15 minutes, which was considered overlong in 1984, before we learned to love three hour movies.
The book doesnt show you much of those things either, though.
The book leaps ahead about 4 or 5 years at that point. Alia is born and then she’s a kid already.
Sci-fi going back to its original pre-Star Wars un-fun roots.
Very much looking forward to this, in a cautiously optimistic way, but seems like Villaneuve really dropped the ball with his generic-villian depiction of the Harkonnens and Giedi Prime. Both are described in the books as tacky and self-indulgent, with a veneer of fake luxury over shabby underpinnings, not this cliched nightmare dark and sinister. The Baron is described as wearing bright colors and gaudy rings, his quarters are full of tacky art, and the brief description of Giedi Prime makes it sound more like a sad, seedy casino town than Mordor. Plus, the Harkonnens are described as regular people, some of whom are very physically attractive, with valuable genes. Also, based on the trailers, the cheesy Hollywood blockbuster dialogue gets rather cringey at times. I’m hoping the rest of the movie overshadows these two major flaws…
The film clearly wants to remove all the campiness that was present in the portrayal of the Harkonnens in the previous adaptations and portray them as a deadly serious threat. Both the Lynch and the TV adaptation made them too much of a joke, and Villeneuve is taking an effort to avoid that, along with the omnipresent homophobia that the source material was riddled with concerning the Baron. It seemed to me that Villeneuve was working with an idea that non-Earth-like planets would produce distinct breeds of humans, apart from our modern ethnicities, probably inspired by the Spice-altered Fremen. Giedi Prime is heavily polluted so and industrial, so its people end up becoming pallid and hairless, whereas Salusa Segundus is so harsh that the people who manage to prosper there become almost orc-like brutes.
I dunno, making them generic one-dimensional Darth-Vader-y villians seems too boring, they’re much more interesting as depicted in the book where they’re sort of a negative mirror reflection of House Atreides — amoral instead of ethical and honorable, tacky and base instead of sophisticated, self-indulgent instead of disciplined, yet part of the same overall aristocratic structure, bound by the same rules and playing the same game. The two houses share a culture and a background and House Atreides could have as easily gone down the same path as House Harkonnen, had they not been steered by more noble people. None of that is feels present with this depiction. And, without spoilers, the two houses share more than just culture, which is going to be a stretch to make work on any subsequent Dune movies with this interpretation of the Harkonnens…
The Harkonnen were cartoonishly evil in the source material, too. Villeneuve just removed the “cartoonish” part. Everything else that you describe is still intact, and can still be used for the sequel. I don’t see why the connection that you mention wouldn’t be usable. The only complaint that I have about the portrayl of the Harkonnens is that the Baron’s intelligence and the sophistication of his plan isn’t conveyed very well, but that’s because Villeneuve chose to give the viewpoint to Paul and avoided telling what Paul wouldn’t know as much as he could while still staying true to the storyline. But even for that, the sequel can fix much.
Personally, I enjoy a bit of cartoonishness in my villians, but I’ll admit I could understand the need to tone it down a bit. But nonetheless, I still want to see the Game of Thrones-style house rivalry and palace intrigue of the book, not just a Lord of the Rings-style brave humans battle icky monsters narrative. Haven’t seen the movie yet, so hoping my interpretation of the trailers is wrong…
I’ve seen it, but since you haven’t I don’t dare to spoil it too much. But rest assured, it’s made clear that the Harkonnen and Atreides are rival noble houses in a greater empire, both subject to the same Emperor, not forces of fundamental good and evil in conflict. The Atreides are portrayed as the unquestionable good guys compared to the Harkonnens, but they’re still obviously privileged and paternalistic towards their “lessers”. And Paul’s visions hint that greater moral ambiguity will be explored more in the sequel.
In the comments on the last Dune article, people pointed out that the Harkonnens in the book are basically Trumps in Space, the only major difference being that the Baron is actually a very shrewd, calculating character.I think this movie’s version of them works fine for its purpose—the Harkonnens are sinister and menacing with very little screen time—but their evil is more of the cold supervillain kind than the sordid appetites of deeply defective people that the book portrays.And yes, I do think it’s hard to really see the Harkonnens and Atreides as springing out of the same culture. The film does not attempt to establish that Gurney and Duncan actually come from Harkonnen provinces, much less the other connection you’ve alluded to. Villeneuve really plays up the distinctions between the planets/peoples, to the point where I don’t think it would have made sense in the movie’s world.
Exactly. I understand the logic behind Lightice’s argument about distinct breeds of humans evolving in the Dune universe, but seems to me the Atreides and Harkonnens would be of the same breed. The more “alien” breeds would be those on the fringe of the empire and outside the noble houses of the Laandsrad, like the Tleilaxu and the Ixians.
He also removed any intelligence from the Harkonnens. The Baron didn’t do what he did only out of hatred for the Atreides, nor did he do it out of love for the Emperor. He was pursuing his own agenda to put a Harkonnen on the throne. This was completely excised for the movie, presumably to show more silently floating ships and a grand ceremony that in no way advances plot or character.
That’s a premature argument to make before the sequel comes out. Villeneuve elected to focus the film on Paul’s perspective, and only departs it when it is absolutely necessary for the plot. Baron Harkonnen’s plans within plans aren’t featured because they’re not something that Paul could know or deduce from the facts known to him. More than likely, the sequel which’ll introduce Feyd-Rautha and the Emperor will also reveal more about the Baron’s designs.
Cool. I’m sure someone will enjoy it, like some people enjoyed this piece of crap. Me, I don’t go back for second helpings of a bad meal.
That was one of the things I liked about the movie. I felt like I didn’t know much more than the characters did. There wasn’t a lot of, “okay everyone, here is the plan,” which made me genuinely curious about what was going to happen next.
Te movie specifically mentions (through the Baron) that the two Houses are blood relatives – he calls him cousin.
I have a feeling we’ll see more nuance from them in part 2…
It seemed to me that Villeneuve was working with an idea that non-Earth-like planets would produce distinct breeds of humans…Well, that does fit with Herbert’s themes about environmental determinism.
No, no it doesn’t. The dialogue remains dedicated to cringing. Thankfully the acting is just stiff and wooden enough to fit.Not a good movie.
Yeah, Villeneuve went full on Bald Of Evil here.
Villeneuve’s homage to Colonel Kurtz was a mite short of plagiarism. The pontificating as he wiped beads of sweat from his bald head was pure Brando
I saw Dune in the theater in 6th grade and boy howdy the Harkonnens were not campy to me after the heartplug scene.
“Both are described in the books as tacky and self-indulgent, with a veneer of fake luxury over shabby underpinnings, not this cliched nightmare dark and sinister.”Considering the previous four years of American government, a textually accurate take on the Harkonnens might have come across like deliberate parody…
As a big fan of Dune, and having watched the movie, it works. The campy overtones of the Harkonnens always stuck me as strange when I remembered they were there or was reminded of them, as they are a deadly serious threat, and I think cutting that overtone and just casting them as pure threat works for a movie adaptation, especially when you really don’t have that much time to spend on Giedi Prime since you need to get through so much on Arrakis (in fact my main complaint with the movie was that it felt like it rushed the Atriedes’ time on Arrakis.
This seems oddly late for a review… Great movie, loved it when I saw it a month ago. 😀
Maybe because it hasn’t been released in the US yet?
Thanks, Ignatiy.It’s.. quite good. I still don’t know why people keep trying to film this book… but I appreciate every attempt, just for the interesting takes each director brings.Which is how one should read it. I’ve done it three times and come away with three different reactions. It’s astouding. This movie is no exception, and I’m so happy to have seen it.
I keep seeing the sentiment among some people that even though they are fans of Dune, they don’t want to commit to seeing this because Warner Bros hasn’t committed to a full slate of films (WB wants to see how this does first). Don’t you realize you’re contributing to what you fear? If you want more films, go see this. What’s the worst thing that can happen? They don’t make any more Dune movies, you’re out of 10 bucks, and about 3 hours. Far worse ways to waste time out there.Go see this movie.
Fear is the movie killer
Fear is the sequel killer
“However inconclusive as a story, the resulting film is a rarity among
the overlong effects-heavy blockbusters of the last decade: One actually
wishes it didn’t have to end so soon.”Really? I hope I agree, because Arrival and BR2049 were both gorgeous, but overlong.
BR2049 is too short change my mind
I did feel like the ending was a little rushed, but I wouldn’t exactly add a lot more to the running time, maybe 5-10 minutes.
I could watch a ten hour cut. It wouldn’t have much more dialogue or plot, just add in all the walking, driving, flying, etc. between scenes and give more of the score and vibes.
I feel like Arrival was just as long as it needed to be, in order to make the third act’s significant beats feel earned and not rushed. I’m biased here, mind you, since it’s really my favourite Villeneuve movie and up there with my very favourite sci-fi media.
This looks good
So…does Sean Young make a CGI appearance?
Asylum snagged her for their Planet Dune mockbuster. Fair dos to her for cashing in on her role in the original.
Villeneuve needs to remake Young Doctors In Love next, to complete his “Early 80s Sean Young Movies” trilogy.
Re-watched the Lynch movie the other day; the big surprise this time was how sheerly inert it was, with so little in the way of the kind of “Lynch, you sonofabitch” content. This of course is no impediment to dozens of lengthy and intensely fawning comment-section praises for it under its review on this site, but while my eyes glazed over from the lugubriousness after only one or two of them, it did warmly remind me of a time when that kind of near-orgasmic positivity about a cult object was more commonly expressed, when people would write “GODLY” a lot and always with all caps, tease great hidden meanings which wasn’t their job to explain, but ours, apparently, to arrive at on our own.
We see that all the time now, but more in the bitter, hateful worlds of politics and conspiracy, while this kind of enthusiasm as applied to movies is usually in the service of showing us everything wrong with it, how COMPLETE its CINEMATIC FAILURE is. Even as I chuckled at the ebullient fanboying, I found myself missing it, considering what we’ve had since.
What
They got five whole stars for that comment, too…
I have no interest in watching a Lynch movie with a plot (and waning interest in anything Lynch does that isn’t Twin Peaks related), but the bit of this review that gently takes Villeneuve to task for being less psychedelic than Jadorowsky and less oneiric than Lynch seemed strange – Lynch’s movie is both an unsuccessful adaptation and an unsuccessful Lynch movie, and also Jadorowsky’s movie DOESN’T EXIST.
I understand the impulse to “what if” dream projects, but movies that weren’t made outnumber the movies that actually were made by a factor of literally infinity. I can’t imagine a whole movie about people sitting around telling us what they totally would’ve done being anything but the wankiest thing ever.
I was going to use this moment to throw some shade at Alejandro Jadorowsky, but I’m much too distracted by the fact that notifications link to replies again. I’m flabbergasted.
Those are observations, not criticisms. The review is not kind to Lynch’s Dune at all. People are aware of those other attempts at Dune and the review is just identifying their characteristics and saying the new movie isn’t like either.
I would say the part where the Duke’s captured mentat has to milk a cat to live is pretty damned Lynchian. There’s nothing like that in the book.
And the Baron Harkonnen in the book didn’t have pustules and boils popping out all over his face — that’s also very Lynchian.And though we didn’t know it at the time, so’s Kyle MacLachlan.
Also the “Third-Stage Navigator,” the Lynchiest thing in Lynchburg.
It’s funny, because “lugubrious” is exactly the word I’d use to describe the new movie. So. Fucking. Slow.
Huh, this is a considerably more middling review than every other one I’ve seen so far.
Maybe you just haven’t seen many? The (top critic) fresh reviews at Rotten Tomatoes are all pretty measured; almost exclusively 3/4 stars (depending on their system), with a few outliers above and below.
I’ve seen a minimum of a dozen or so, all the others glowing (most not giving numerical or metered ratings).
Should of replaced Chalamet with Anya Taylor-Joy.
Wow, this is sure putting a lot of meaning into a colonial narrative about a white guy coming to save Middle Eastern brown people who are not played by a single person from the Middle East. I know the later books are supposed to subvert the narrative, but whatever, the first one doesn’t.
I mean, the first book still made it clear that the savior myth was cynically planted by missionaries to suit their own purposes, and that the “savior” himself knew this when he cynically exploited it to gain support for his mission of vengeance, but sure.
Right, now I remember the part where Chani says, “Oh wait, you’re a selfish punk, not our messiah” and shoves him off the sandworm before leading her people to freedom.
There is such a thing as subtlety. The story makes you want to call out the white guy who sets himself up as the Messiah of the religious natives in order to get a revenge on his enemies and claim the ultimate authority in the universe for himself? Not a coincidence or an accident, you’re supposed to be bothered by Paul’s actions and motives. He’s the main character but he’s not a hero.
Lol it doesn’t do that, especially in the first book. All it does is give every white male kid the chance to live vicariously through Paul.
I realize almost every major work of fiction nowadays spells out its themes in neon letters so as not to be misunderstood but it is in fact possible to critique colonialism without showing the colonizers overthrown completely.
Well, you can write that story, but “self-proclaimed ‘messiah’ becomes vicious authoritarian tyrant” is also a valid narrative structure that gives the same message about people who brand themselves as prophets.
This is right up there with Donald Trump’s (mis)read of Citizen Kane–if only Charles Kane had a different woman, things would have been just fine for him.
The entire point of the book is undermining the Great Man theory of history, arguing that all messiahs/leaders/prophets were just people who happened to be at the right intersection of major cultural movements.
You assume the Fremen are dark and the nobles are white. There is nothing in the novel that would lead you to believe that. And it was a superhero not a white man that was predicted and showed up.
This is an old, uninteresting argument that misses the point of the book by a mile (or a parsec, if we have to be sci-fi about it).The funny thing is that there is a “white savior” in Dune, but nobody notices him.
The funny thing is that there is a “white savior” in Dune, but nobody notices him.
neither did i! who are you thinking of? (honestly curious)
Liet Kynes. He’s the Imperial Planetologist, he shows up and tells the Fremen they can turn Dune into a paradise if they do as he says, and they re-orient their entire culture around his dream. And of course he is adopted as a full Fremen.
Well that was actually Pardot Kynes, Liet’s father, who started the process of turning Arrakis into a paradise. He taught Liet who carried on his work.
If people who never read the book misunderstood its meaning any more it would be called “Lolita 2″. You’ve got “Dune” completely backwards. Ask a grownup to explain it to you.
“… like Lynch’s version, for instance, the new Dune opens with extended expository narration.”
BWAHAHA no one learned a fucking thing
They did, actually. Who they gave the narration to and what they’re saying will come as a surprise.
Also, I didn’t think it was all that long, all told. Especially given how much information needs to be imparted across the film. Some background stuff from the books is omitted entirely anyway, like The Butlerian Jihad (and indeed any explanation about the lack of computers) and what the deal really is with those lasers and shields.
As I understand it, all references to any “jihad” have been removed for obvious reasons.
That makes perfect sense. I suppose they could have kept the concept and called it something different, though.
On the one level I totally understand and accept and agree that there’s a good reason it’s different — but also, it’s weird that if they called it a Crusade instead of a Jihad, it would be less offensive. Because it would be less offensive.
yep, I noticed this especially when talking to friends who had seen the movie (and liked it) without having the read the book. It’s difficult to grasp what exactly the deal about the spice is, or the lack of technology, only from what the film shows you.
Having Cate Blanchett tell us about the origin of the rings of power was an odd choice, though.
Well her character was around at the time, so it makes sense. It was either her or Elrond.
I meant having Blanchett’s Galadriel open Dune with the exposition about the ring. That was weird.
“one for Shai-Hulud on his dark throne…”
Did she ever get around to explaining WTF was the big deal with that crystal skull, though?
You know what, I got back home from seeing this in the theater an hour ago and I’ve already completely forgotten the opening.That may certainly say more about me than the movie, but still, I don’t know if that’s a particularly good sign.
At least they didn’t have the opening narrator say “Oh yes, I forgot” this time/
I’ll give Lynch’s movie one thing, the opening exposition explains far more that the new version does.
They better film the second one.
George R R Martin assures us they are already working in it.
https://www.fiverr.com/web_ashiq2019/design-wordpress-website-with-divi-avada-child-or-any-theme
“In an odd way, the movie feels like an update of a Cinemascope epic, with impressive vistas, an overall sense of exotic grandeur, and a deliberate pace.” Translation: There was a lot of sand
There was one element to me that didn’t quite work, partly due to the format, and that was the Emperor’s plan.Removing the Harkonnens from Arrakis and placing the House Atreides in charge is a good first step – set those uppity Atreides up to fail, sow discord between two of the most powerful houses so they can’t unite against you, etc., all well and good.However rather than wait for Atreides to fall behind on Spice production and provide a pretext for attacking them, it seems like the Emperor throws in his lot with the Harkonnens *immediately* by providing them with legions of his best troops.In the book, as I remember it, these troops are disguised as Harkonnen soldiers and are only discovered when Duncan and/or Gurney fight them. In the film, the Harkonnen forces are just blatantly reinforced by the Empire. It’s like the Emperor concocted a really elaborate plan to ensnare the House Atreides, then was all like “aw fuck, lets just kill ‘em all now”. I think maybe the Empire Soldiers disguised and Harkonnen angle might not have come across so well on screen.
As someone who’s not familiar with the book, that didn’t seem weird to me, as I read it as the Emperor having launched Plan A (replace the Harkonnens with House Atreides to sow discord between them) and the Bene Gesserit having taken it upon themselves to pivot to Plan B (loan the Sardaukar to the Harkonnens to wipe out House Atreides) for their own purposes. If that’s inconsistent with the original story, I’m not sure that inconsistency was clear from what we saw on screen, unless I missed something.
I think they tried to explain away the lack of disguise by mentioning that no one would be able to transmit news of the Empire’s involvement off the planet.
You’re remembering incorrectly, except that you correctly perceive the attack as being rushed. It was. The book spends almost no time on Caladan and the Atreides have time to get at least more comfortable living on Arrakis.I won’t go into the Harkonnen plan in detail (apart from noting that the movie strips all complexity from it), but it is to destroy the Atreides after hating them for generations and put themselves in a position to take the imperial throne, either through marriage (Shaddam has no sons) or uniting the Landsraad by revealing the use of Sardaukar in the destruction of the Atreides.Again, no worries though since Denis Villeneuve has decided no character motivations matter unless they directly relate or belong to Paul.
I was very confused by that. I haven’t read Dune and I feel like in the movie it did come across as basically – emperor replaces Hakkonen with Atreides, then immediately teams up with Hakkonen to take out Atreides. I was like, why bother?
Yeah, this was my big issue with the film. I haven’t read the books in 30 years or so, so I don’t remember the specifics of the plot from there, but it just didn’t seem to make much sense in the film (whether or not that lines up with the books). It would have made more sense if the Atreides were struggling with spice production for a while due to subtle sabotage from the Harkonnen. Then the Harkonnen start making the case that they should get Arakis back, while the Atreides dig in and say they need more time and the Emperor to crack down on Harkonnen subterfuge. When the rest of the great houses start getting frustrated with the spice supply, then the Harkonnen have political cover to go in and wipe out the Atreides.
From the emperor’s perspective, I think the idea is to humble Atreides but then also put Harkonnen in their debt by loaning them use of the Sadaukar. But I haven’t read the book in ages, so I could be misremembering.
One of the things this movie absolutely nails is the wedding of medieval aesthetic to high technology. My personal favorite are the battle scenes. Thanks to personal kinetic shielding making small-arms projectile weapons essentially obsolete, nearly all fighting between individual grunts has to be hand-to-hand. This transforms battles between armies to a combination of high-tech vehicles like ornithopters duking it out overhead to poor bloody infantry forced to fight each other with swords and bladed weapons like samurai or knights. And it looks magnificent…
Goddammit, I hate Kinja. Trying to follow a simple discussion where people discuss three different books is fucking impossible.
I found it to be a huge improvement on Bladerunner 2047. Maybe it was down to the plot already being laid out, but the film managed to tie fabulous visuals with a story that actually went somewhere at a reasonable pace.
I’m keen to see it again as soon as I can, just to take more of it in. Hopefully it’ll do enough business for the sequel, because I’ll be on board for that.
Villaneuve’s sandworms are ugly? I beg to differ!
this just felt like a classy TV pilot. hate to say it, plus a bit boring. plus why was there no humour in a 2hr+ film?
I don’t think I would have enjoyed this film much at all if I hadn’t devoured the books. I watched it with my wife…me being the living Dune encyclopedia and her having absolutely no knowledge of the lore at all. I don’t know if this film did a whole lot to make her thirsty for a part 2, and I’m not sure it really communicated the core themes and values at the heart of the overall story.
If I could boil Dune down: diversity and free will will always be humanities greatest strengths, and the future is not something that just happens to us. We create it with our actions. We are not hapless victims of circumstance hurtling through space and time, just reacting. No one predicts the future, they create it.
I don’t think this film does a very good job of communicating these ideas, and if anything, betrays some of them in order to make Paul more of an archetypal hero and Christ figure, rather than what he really is…which tends to be more the opposite.
I did enjoy the visuals of the film, even the liberties taken with the other factions. Film is a visual medium, you need to be able to differentiate based on a silhouette. I particularly enjoyed the darkly mysterious portrayal of the sisterhood. Other elements, like the capital city of Dune, feel painfully underbaked. When the city burns, it doesn’t really connect how painful that moment is.
I hope enough people have the patience and curiosity to least make it through to the end, because if you didn’t like this film and aren’t familiar with the books….I can promise you this: the next 3 will films will be absolutely batshit-crazy compared to this. And after that….if they get that far…it’s borderline insane how bizarre and fascinating and violent this universe becomes.
I just now realized that awful New York Knicks poster was a parody of the Dune poster. Which doesn’t make it any less terrible.
The movie was astounding. A+. 10/10.Definitely the pinnacle of science fiction movie-making. And really – Star Wars ripped off Dune wholesale. This film is essentially the thinking person’s Star Wars.
One issue I had was that some of the Fremen looked too clean on the skin. Zendaya’s Chani for example her skin was flawless. No moles, scars or wear from the dry harsh environment.
The only thing I have to say is, prior to seeing it I was thinking “man, I hope they make the sequel” and towards the end when Shai Hulud arose from the sand, I found myself thinking “I would [expletive deleted] love to see God Emperor of Dune”
My reaction to “Dune” (2021) in four words:What’s long and brown?
Did anyone else find the early scene of Baron Harkonnen “bathing” and rubbing his head reminiscent of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse?
Yes! He very much had a late stage Brando look and dimensions.
I liked it, although I think I’m finally realizing I just don’t find the plot all that interesting. I’ve read the books multiple times and seen the previous movie and the syfy miniseries, but it’s kind of a boring story. I think somebody made the point that it’s really Jessica’s story and I think that is the part that holds up best, Paul’s journey doesn’t hold my attention as much as when I first discovered it.
Both Lynch and Villeneuve’s DUNE have their pros and cons and I honestly can’t chose one over the other.Villeneuve’s DUNE is certainly cleaner, more straight forward and certainly feels every bit as epic as the book suggests but it also, in spite of only covering half the story, doesn’t really add anything or expand on the story that we didn’t get from David Lynch’s DUNE, just a lot of visions and premonitions of the future and Zendya but ultimately, as I feared, lacks any charm and is pretty sterile-looking. Great cast though.
David Lynch’s DUNE, for all it’s weird production design choices, muddled plot points, still had a very distinct and memorable look and feel about it whereas every set on the new DUNE just looked like Niander Wallace’s building in Blade Runner 2049.
Lynch’s Sandworms looked better, imo and I’ll take ToTo’s score over Hans Zimmer’s remix of Wonder Woman’s theme any day. Seriously, that has got to be the most generic, overused desert theme I’ve ever heard.
There was an old Tyrell Corp. looking building in there too as their palace.
Speaking of Niander Wallace. I also noticed Lyutsifer Safin used the same designer for his island lair.
Just saw it tonight in theater. I was pretty pleased as it followed the book very nicely (loved the air machines). But. It’s not a done deal for part two? I mean, what’s the point then? I did not know it wasn’t already planned, meaning I really would not have seen it, cause like I said: what’s the point then? If there’s no part two it’s like a premature ejaculation. Not satisfying for anyone.
I started watching and had to stop, in the middle of the attack scene. This is not the adaptation that I wanted. None of the characters except Duncan and to a lesser Gurney had any life to them. Room after darkened room with no one in them; who the hell actually lives in these places. The Baron was just an evil-looking prop; I want to see the ruthless, scheming, alive monster in there. You can tell who and what Thufir is and does because at one point he does… basic arithmetic! Let’s cut another important scene for yet another vision of Chani. Dune needs an HBO multi-season treatment to work, with all of those wonderful, opposing political machinations duking it out. This thing is just boring. I may try again later, just to watch 19 Sardaukar die.
Among the many “huge movies” I’ve seen in IMAX this movie takes the fullest advantage of the format than the ones before. It’s majestic & grand to the nth scale. It’s a tough movie to love, but cinema lovers owe a huge amount of of gratitude to Villeneuve & Co. for bringing it to the huge screen.
Solid A for me. As a fan of the books (Frank Herbert’s and I also enjoyed some of the prequels books his son and Kevin Anderson wrote), the movie really captured the essence of Dune. No adaptation of any book, imo, will ever live up to the source, but Villenueve’s is the best thus far. The only criticism I have is I wanted more of everything (I did miss the Spacing Guild folding space-time). Can’t wait for part two.
Never read the books, but I’ve seen the original movie and know some story details thru pop culture over the years so that’s the background I had going into this movie.I loved it. I had a feeling I’d dig it because the cast is great, but this movie delivers the goods. I’m sure book fans will be disappointed that it doesn’t perfectly nail specific plot points and details, but without know that stuff in great detail going in, it doesn’t bother me one bit. It still tells a good story that’s easy enough to follow and pulls you in (even if its a tad clunky and confusing in parts ie the Emperor’s plan, etc). I actually think it could have been a longer movie too. 2:30 flew by. Normally I don’t like long movies, but I feel like a 3+ hr run time would be warranted here.
This new Dune was ‘aight, but I couldn’t get into it. And as someone who didn’t think Blade Runner 2049 was anywhere near as good as the original, Dennis is 1 for 3 in my book. Arrival was good, but methinks his standing as some “brilliant” sci fi director is a bit over exaggerated. The material tends to be too ambitious for its own good.
Did anyone else hate the movie because it was so loud? The bass vibrated my chest. It was so loud it hurt my ears. I’m not saying that to be dramatic. It really actually hurt my ears. Dune was a nightmare experience. The only reason I stayed to watch it was because the ticket was a gift from someone who knows I’ve read the book five times, and they were sitting next to me. I fucking hated sitting in that Imax Theater. It was miserable. I watched the movie with my fingers in my ears. I don’t want to see the second part. I’m going to watch it on HBO, and maybe it will explore the themes of superstition, human potential, history as a tidal force, and cultivation of religious ignorance that I loved in the book. I’ll keep an open mind. But I fucking hate everyone involved right now for trying to ruin my hearing. I mean fuck them. I want to punch Denis Villeneuve in his ears right now. If not him, then maybe the Imax operator. I fucking loved those books, and this movie hit me like a weirding module. (I know that’s a 1984 movie only reference.)