Oops; I forgot to put something mildly important in the first post: my liveblog of the precursor to this film. So, here, in case you want it.
Okay, update. Where we left off: Tall, Dark and Pretty and Tall, Dark and Handsome alone in the same ornithopter. Sounds like fun except for the autopsy part.
Alia and Hayt (or so they called him in the book; no one's used a name for him in this version) skip over the ride to the scene of the crime and examine the deceased damsel near the city's edge, during what appears to be a sandstorm.
Teehee; Hayt's Brummie accent. Not passing so well as the last guy. But he does identify the murder weapon as poison by just looking at the body's skin—astute as always, Mr. Holmes. And who would do such a thing? Well, rule of thumb: when in doubt, it's a Face Dancer.
Later, back at the palace—d'awwww. They skip the whole protracted Slap-Slap-Kiss thing. Except Alia and Hayt haven't even interracted previously in this film, so that would be odd.
But, at the palace, sure enough, the same woman who supposedly died appears to be alive across town—Otheym's daughter visits Paul. Her brother (the one who got the visit from Scytale), she claims, had a very unfortunate and most definitely accidental...accident. She—well, Scytale; it's obvious—asks Paul to come and talk to her father. Though Paul sees right through Scytale, he agrees to.
Later that night—okay. Since they're skipping through Dune Messiah so fast, they're already to the part with the stone burner. I can see why, though; most of the book was just people talking. I found the change of pace relaxing rather than boring, but I can see why it might not work onscreen.
But as Paul walks to Otheym's place, some guy in the shadows goes "There! He's walked into our trap! Go press the button, my young assistant!"
Not yet, though. Paul is led inot the house of his ailing military leader Otheym by his Scytale's three-foot-tall friend Bijaz. Otheym is supposedly dying of something he caught off-planet—Spitting Disease? That sounds like the most contagious thing ever.
Acting as the Almost Dead Guy, Otheym warns of a plot against Paul, and you should always believe the Almost Dead Guy. He tells Paul to take Bijaz and leave him to die—he doesn't want the last thing he ever hears to be some guy who says everything in rhyme. Hey, that scenario sounds familiar! Poor Piter DeVries—for some reason, they gave the Baron the same vocal tic in the first film.
Bijaz leads Paul not back to the palace, but into a dark and grimy alley, and before you could say "suspicious", Arakeen gets nuked down the street—except not. Supposedly, a stone burner doesn't do the same massive damage as a nuke, but it's like the sun turned up to eleven—if you look at it, that's it for your eyes. Well, even if they're no longer operative, at least they turn a neat black. Probably because the effect of one's eyes actually being absent would have dragged down the whole rest of the movie's budget to the level of its predecessor, and someone liked theatrical contacts.
It looks like Paul did not look away fast enough. However, he can use his prescience as quasi-eyes. With all the talk about prescience being dangerous, though...yeah.
The next day, Chani comes to visit, and Paul admits to her that he'd always known disaster was inevitable. They decide to have the baby back in the desert, in the sietch where they met...or, one of those they've lived in. There were a lot.
Elsewhere...someone's bowling! No, there's more than one ball—someone's playing pool! No, wrong equipment...some form of space pool bowling, Bijaz vs. Alia, who would prefer it if he stopped talking like that. Hayt watches rather than plays, wearing some absurd, restrictive black armor in which he likely found himself unable to throw a cue ball.
Later, Alia tell Hayt that she suspects Bijaz is up to something and is amused at how he channels Spock. He has no memory of his previous life, but the Tleilaxu did make him a mentat—of course he's going to.
"I see you in there. You can get your memories back."
"No, I can't."
She has a slight idea of what she's talking about, though—after all, she is pre-born (see other liveblog). She leaves him standing alone in the hallway—ah, now comes the UST.
And that's where I'm leaving off for tonight! brb sleep
