Dune is getting a reboot. I got psyched when I first saw the trailer, but more because it sparked writing ideas in the form of images than the trailer itself. Now that I watched again I am curios because the trailer is leaving out the whole melange-drug out of the spotlight. I am also wondering . . . why do people living in the future, capable of traveling into space, use swords to fight?
In the case of the DUNE-iverse, a combination of the use of personal and larger-scale shield technology and the Butlarian Jihad. Shields reflect any kind of light weapons, thus no phasers, lasers, or blasters, and they also repel objects moving at speed. The faster the object, the greater the resistance, thus, as Gurney Halleck teaches Paul, it is the slow blade that finds its mark. The Butlarian Jihad created a proscription against anything that resembles or attempts to imitate the human mind (computers). Anything weapons-related in that direction is also off the table in the DUNE-iverse. Instead, Mentats and the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, and the Bene Tleilax (Tleilaxu) and their axolotl tanks and golas. ETA: Also, the original book was published in 1965. Sword & Spaceship was still having a moment. It's one of the more notable parts of the whole of the series. Herbert covers vast swaths of time in the series and the feel of things changes from quasi-Fantasy in the first book, to a more cleanly Science Fiction feel. In the last of Frank's books, Chapterhouse: Dune, the era of Paul Atreides is likely a million or more years in the past. In God Emperor of Dune (book #4), there is a scene right at the beginning where a Fish Speaker (sect of all female warriors devoted to Duke Leto II) is making use of a thing that feels blasphemously like a computer to receive communique. She has a small ongoing crisis because computers are forbidden, but this one came to her via the God Emperor himself.
My pedant drives me to correct this - shields don't reflect lasers, but rather, if a laser hits a shield, it causes an explosion similar to a nuclear bomb - taking out everyone in the area. I thought about this, and there seems to be some drawbacks if someone aims a laser at you from a distance, but shields are only used in personal combat. I really, really hope they just stick to the original Dune saga and not the novels by Kevin Anderson. But Virginia Madsen as Irulan...
Clearly you haven't heard of Warhammer 40 K. I would really like to see the weird crazy version that they were working on, before the one we got originally. It had all kinds of crazy cool visuals and concepts. Sure would have been a wild flick.
it sounds pretty cool, and just what I needed! I was looking at explanations why some weapon/magic would not want to be used, but not just because too powerful. This movie seems to be more on the lines of what I imagine "epic" to look like at the moment, but I don't find that necessarily reassuring, perhaps I am falling into becoming cliche. Still I know I will enjoy it, so looking forward to going to see it. Lynch's movie made epic in a different way, but I didn't like it. I prefer other movies by Lynch.
The trouble for Lynch was that some of the things mentioned in Dune aren't easily translatable into a movie format. The Voice is the prime example. This is the Bene Gesserit ability to induce reactions in people - a sort of Pavlovian reaction - by subtly altering the tone of their voice. For them to do it, they need to be able to "read" a person to understand them. To anyone listening, it's just normal speech. Lynch cut this out and replaced it with "weirding modules" (IIRC), a voice powered weapon. The Sci-Fi Channel series depicted it as a sort of ghostly, electronic Darth-Vadery kind of effect. That, for me, really ruined it. So long as they don't descend to the level of using the term "Bene Gesserit mind trick" every five minutes, I'm reasonably looking forwards to it. "Ho, ho, ho, your Jedi Bene Gesserit mind-tricks do not work on me!"
I find it really awkward in Lynch's movie that their thoughts are made intelligible through what sounds like whispers, as if talking slow and in a low voice wouldn't make it audible to others. In a sense it is like when as a child you might come to believe that if you don't move people won't see you. Of course in Dune what we hear are the characters' thoughts, they are not speaking, but the camera work makes it look to me as if they were whispering. Hope this makes sense. That doesn't work for me. PS: is Dune's release being moved to 2021?
In the original narrative of the book, so much - and I can't stress this enough - of the story takes place inside people's heads. It's a narrative of thoughts and sentiments, ideas and observations. I would say the phenomenon you mention was Lynch trying to engage that inner landscape.
I'm a big fan of the Lynch film. It has its flaws but if you just take it as a stream of images and textures, loosely inspired by the book, I think it's a great work of art. Its atmosphere is unmatched. Enjoy it as a hallucination, a nightmare, and try not to get worked up about plot, characterization, etc. And I think Toto made the perfect Dune soundtrack. Plus it's got Patrick Stewart charging into battle with a pug. I'm excited about the Villeneuve film but from the trailer I suspect it will not imprint itself so deeply on the psyche- very bland sets and color palette.
I agree. The heavy, super-saturated, baroque gravitas of the sets, costumes, and camera work in the Lynch film are forever the true colors of Arrakis for me.
I think the exploration of thoughts and observations is what makes Herbert's book a great novel (at least the first book). But the way Lynch translates that into screen just doesn't work for me, even though I can understand why he is doing it.
I absolutely hated the Lynch film, though I think a big part of that was production decisions from De Laurentis. If Frank Herbert had seen Barbarella I am sure he would have thought twice about selling him the rights. The screenplay was horrible. It seemed to cut Herbert's prose straight from the book for some dialogue, then stich it together with lame dialogue that made no attempt to match style. A character's IQ would vary a hundred points during the course of a scene. The one redeeming feature was a very good cast, that was none the less forced to vomit some less than inspired lines. An example was Lady Jessica, upon seeing her son surviving Gom Jabar, emoted her relief clearly, and wordlessly, only for the scene to be ruined by a voice over (My son lives!) stating the obvious, as if the audience was too stupid to read her expression.
Are you aware that the film Prometheus tips a hat to this original mock-up for the Harkonnen castle? The mythos of the DUNEiverse as imagined by Alejandro Jodorowsky is everywhere sprinkled across the Sci-Fi landscape. In Prometheus, it sees new life as the Engineer base.
Is it okay to continue talking about the Dune movie here? I feel like we don't need a second Dune thread, but I also don't want to get banned. I'm just gonna go for it. Watched this yesterday (first time in a theatre in two years!), and I liked it very much. Just a quick note that there's nothing special gained by watching the 3D version. What I loved most was that we were given a dark, moody science fiction epic that contains NO silly quips/one-liners for the trailers. NO jokey references to something from modern life. NO cringey comic relief. Thank the gods, I felt treated like the director actually respected me. It's also great that they didn't try to cram the first book into a single movie. There was only one thing that I did not like about it, and I didn't think about it while I was watching it, so it's not that huge a deal. Hours later I was reflecting on what I saw, and I was annoyed how the Harkkonens wore heavy white makeup and black clothing, and tossed in baldness for good measure, to make sure everyone knows who The Bad Guys are. Dude, we know. No visual cues necessary. The Baron on his own was creepy perfection, though. Very good film, looking forward to the next part in 2023!
Why should you get banned for talking about DUNE in a DUNE thread in the dedicated Entertainment section of the forum?
I'm not sure. I am new to forums and that seemed to be A Thing at one of them. An unwritten rule. They called it "necroing."
I agree that the Harkonnens were a little bit too mwahaha. While they've made their planet into an industrial hellscape they are not completely lacking in culture and color. I vaguely recall Feyd hanging out in a garden, for instance. I think the depiction of the Harkonnens owes perhaps a bit to the Lynch film where the villainy was even more cartoonish and a similarly drab, industrial aesthetic prevailed. Also, when Rabban asks the baron, "What do we do about the Fremen," and the baron says, "Kill them all," that seems rather silly since the baron's whole plan is to "squeeze" Arrakis with Fremen slave labor and then, after the Fremen have been sufficiently terrorized and exploited, introduce Feyd as their savior. I also thought the Sardaukar outfits were very underwhelming. They looked like baggy fencing suits or something. I'm not too fond of the black hazmat suits of the Lynch film either but at least those looked marginally intimidating.
Mmmm I saw it about 5 days ago. It was good, it felt to me, to be a bit closer to the 'feel' of the first book. But It's been long enough that I'm not certain it follows the original story exactly. I was under the impression Duncan Idaho dies well before the point where he dies in the movie. This is a story that may never be completely satisfactory as a film. There is SO MUCH inner thoughts and 'interior' dialog going on in the book, that any attempt to display that stuff visually will likely be quite unsatisfactory. I disliked the first film very much. The Mini-Series on the SciFi Channel was good, better than the first film and left me feeling 'not cheated', though I could see the issues with it. (A much bigger budget might have helped!) This new film is the best of the three, I think.
Necroing - is generally where someone picks up a years old argument and tries to continue it as a form of troll behaviour We don't want to see any of that shiz for obvious reasons it is however fine to wake up an old thread to discuss whatever that thread was about... its also fine to create a new thread if you'd rather (although if there are multiple threads on the same subject we may merge them whenever we tidy up)
So just use your best judgement kind of thing I suppose. I saw this was a year old, but didn't think we needed a second thread for discussing the same movie, even though it began as a trailer discussion.
