Dune

The story of the first Dune novel is pretty simple: The young heir to a powerful family flees into the desert when ruthless rivals kill his father and attempt to kill him. There he makes new allies and develops his powers, and returns to avenge his father and take his rightful place on the throne.

So, basically, it's the same plot as The Lion King. Yeah, Herbert put a lot of complex worldbuilding into the novel, but how much of that is actually necessary in order to tell the story?

edited 23rd Nov '16 1:24:45 AM by RavenWilder

There are only seven basic plots, after all. But anyone going to see a movie titled Dune is going to expect some of that political and social complexity, even if they acknowledge that you have to take some liberties to squeeze it into a film.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

The basic plot is not the attraction of Dune. It's the world-building and religious themes that have made it a classic.

Just off the top of my head, here are things that could easily be excluded:

1) Mentats. As far as I can recall, Paul being raised to be a mentat doesn't end up being that important. You can keep the whole "no computers in the future" thing, but there's no real need to go into the backstory about why that's the case or how they've made up for the loss of computers. Just don't show any computers on-screen, and, given the whole Feudal Future thing the story has going on, people will probably not even notice their absence, since it will fit with the overall aesthetic.

2) Dr. Yueh's conditioning. It's enough simply to say that someone the Atreides believed to be loyal was subverted by House Harkonnen because they threatened his wife; it's not necessary to say they thought it was physically impossible for Yueh to betray them.

3) The life-cycle of sandworms. You do need to keep the part where sandworms are the source of spice, but there's no need to get into the details about how they excrete it or their larval forms or anything like that.

4) Many of the Bene Gesserit powers. Being able to access their ancestors' memories is vital to the plot, and they need to be extremely skilled spies and warriors, but stuff like their mind control Voice never really amounts to much in the book, and the story would actually make more sense with it removed.

5) Pretty much everything that happens outside Arrakis. It's enough to know that there's a spacefaring empire that's dependent on spice from Arrakis, that Atreides and Harkonnen are two rival houses in that empire, and that the Emperor's taking Harkonnen's side. That's about all viewers need to know.

Mentats aren't that tough to explain in the first place. "Some people get a lot of training to enable them to think logically" is about it.

But without his conditioning Yueh becomes the obvious suspect. If you don't include it then people will be saying "why weren't they suspicious of the doctor"? Which indeed people said about the Lynch movie, where the imperial conditioning was apparently insufficiently explained. If they go on to make movies of books after the first one it will become important, but most of it wasn't in the first book anyway. Jessica and Paul's use of Voice is what allows them to survive being captured by the Harkonnens. Without it, they would have ended up dead with their bodies dumped in the desert.

The fact that Jessica could choose the sex of her child and did so against orders is pretty important to the story too.

That's about all that's in the book too.

edited 23rd Nov '16 1:34:58 PM by Bense

In fact, the placement of Yueh as the obvious suspect is key to the Harkonnen plot. He's so clearly the one in the best position to betray the Atreides that only his supposed Suk conditioning places him above suspicion, and the Baron uses that bit of reverse psychology to devastating effect. Otherwise it's little more than "loyal retainer betrays the family" as a clichéd plot that audiences will groan at.

It is important to remember that Dune is fairly isolated in terms of its approach to galactic politics compared to the later books. It's very much a self-contained story that can serve as an introduction to the larger universe without getting mired down in it. Part of Paul's apparent Marty Stu-ness (however much I despise that term) is an intentional setup for his calamitous fall in Dune Messiah, and is indeed essential to that plot. It explains, in part, why every single political faction in the universe is gunning for him.

edited 23rd Nov '16 1:56:05 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

How does a desperate orphan son of a Duke and a witch dropped in a desert in the hottest spot in the Imperial Galaxy, by heritage a danger and pariah, grow up to be a hero and messiah?

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Are you asking that rhetorically?

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

More like lyrically.

I was hoping that others would pick up and we could build a parody song together.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Yueh's conditioning is supposed to make it impossible for him to betray the Atreides the way he did, yet Baron Harkonnen circumvents it using the oldest bad guy trick in the book. Having Yueh simply be someone who's worked for House Atreides a long time and is like family to them would accomplish the same result without having to explain about special mental conditioning that ends up not actually mattering.

As for the Voice, the problem with it is not only do you need to explain how it works, but it's such a Story-Breaker Power that every time it's not used to defeat whatever opponent Paul and Jessica are facing will require further explanation. Given the pretty minimal importance it has in the story, simply removing it would streamline things nicely. That means Paul and Jessica wouldn't be able to use it to escape into the desert, but all that really matters there is the fact that they escape; the details of how they do it can easily be tweaked.

And I'd recommend a film version of Dune leave out the mentats because, as a general rule of thumb, fantasy and science-fiction movies should keep the number of new words the audience has to memorize to a bare minimum. Mentats exist mainly to explain how this high tech society functions without computers, but that's the sort of in-depth backstory that a movie doesn't really need to get into. Any use of mentat abilities in the story can simply be chalked up to the characters being really smart, or getting intuitive knowledge thanks to the spice, without needing to explain this whole other thing called mentats to the audience.

edited 23rd Nov '16 6:49:30 PM by RavenWilder

I don't want a Dune film to be a generic piece of sci-fi schlock; it should at least attempt to explore the complex ecological, socio-political, and religious themes that Herbert packed into the books. Probably asking too much.

I have to say that the visuals in the Lynch film were brilliant. I just wish the acting had been better.

edited 23rd Nov '16 7:14:25 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Agreed. And long as that movie was, I could've lived with a longer one if it had meant showing the things that the interminable narrations kept info-dumping. (I realize, of course, that budget/marketing concerns probably made that impossible.)

I feel like a high-budget TV show - like Game of Thrones, but with only one season - would be better suited to Dune than a movie. It would give more space to delve into the different concepts and political intrigues, and let the plot breathe.

Why just one season? Adapt the whole series!

Except for the prequels'n'shit.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

It gets really weird after the first book, what with incest and stuff. (Given the kids' ages, adapting Children of Dune might be outright illegal.) And by book 2, I think the audience would be pretty unable to sympathize with a protagonist who had committed genocide via galaxy-wide jihad.

The first book is the good one.

edited 26th Nov '16 8:08:26 PM by Galadriel

Hrm? Leto II and Ghanima never commit incest in Children of Dune, nor do Paul and Alia in Dune Messiah, and those are the only two relationships where it's at issue. In both cases, their enemies attempt to use it as a ploy to discredit them due to the outrage it would cause, but that's it.

I imagine that an adaptation of Children would do an age-up on the two leads just to make it easier to find actors to portray them believably. Didn't the miniseries do that? I haven't watched it.

edited 26th Nov '16 8:20:14 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

The miniseries used older actors, but I don't remember if it was Dawson Casting or an age-up.

After Children of Dune, I found it hard to care about what was going on.

You mean the books? God Emperor is a pretty big leap; it took me quite a while to give it a try. When I did, though, I wasn't disappointed. You just have to recognize the different approach the series takes.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

God Emperor is probably where any adaption should stop, however. It's the conclusion of the story begun by Paul's actions (or refusal to act) in Dune. The last two books Herbert wrote didn't finish the story arc he started with Heretics of Dune, and the whole thing seemed superfluous to me anyway.

Author Existence Failure will cause that sort of problem.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

If the miniseries proved anything it's that Dune NEEDS something of that length to really cover the whole story. The first book has enough material for a trilogy, one movie for each part.

Additionally, it's a shame that movies typically don't show thoughts like anime does. About half the plot takes place in the characters' thoughts as opposed to spoken dialogue.

edited 4th Jan '17 8:10:02 PM by shiro_okami

Western media generally don't show a character's thoughts, AFAIK; those that do without involving a telepath either listening in or being not in control of their power are the exception to the rule.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Sherlock is a pretty great example.

Theater does that fairly often, especially Musical Theater. "I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory..."

edited 5th Jan '17 4:12:53 AM by TheHandle

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

That is the purpose that soliloquys served in Shakespearean drama. It depends on the media, too. Books show thoughts, comics have thought balloons or caption narration. It's difficult, but not impossible to do it in film (harder to pause the action,I would imagine). David Lynch's film version of Dune did a decent job of incorporating the characters' inner monologues.

edited 5th Jan '17 12:16:07 PM by Robbery