Dune

I agree, obviously ... but a theatrical release is what we're getting, and that's all there is to it. So let's look for whatever silver linings we can find.

Just for one thing: Villeneuve is a darned good choice for director. With Arrival, he's already shown that he can fit a lot of abstruse ideas into a popular movie that draws good box office, and can make them seem organic to the story. There's still a lot of ways it could end up a mess, of course ... but I have a few scintillas of hope for his adaptation that I wouldn't with most other directors.

I'll say this one more time: the plot of Dune is really pretty simple, and a lot of the stuff that makes the book so complicated can be left out without really affecting the story. So I don't get why people see a film adaptation as such a bad fit.

You can keep saying it, but I don't think we're buying it.

It's been argued earlier that the worldbuilding and the more esoteric bits are the very reason Dune is considered a classic, and dropping them to just "tell the rather conventional plot" would be leaving out the reasons people read Dune in the first place.

The thing about worldbuilding is, it's all about the information itself. Once you know all the various facts and theories about how the Dune universe works, whether by reading the books or browsing a wiki devoted to Dune, why would you particularly want to see that same information repeated in a different medium?

Clearly you have major differences in opinion with the rest of the thread on the purpose of both adaptations and worldbuilding. I don't see a way to reconcile, so I'm not going to bother arguing further. I would recommend the same to the others, but maybe they can think of a better way to explain our views.

But couldn't the same be said of the plot? If I say "the son of a duke avenges his father's murder with the help of natives who believe he is the chosen one," then you know the plot, right? Now what's the point of reading Dune?

There are serious arguments among literary critics that there are only 36 plots. Or even only 7. This whole wiki is a catalog of ideas that get used in stories over and over again. The appeal of stories is in how they are told - the particular mixture of things you've seen before, and that they are told well.

Naturally adaptations have to make decisions of what to include and what to leave out (or what to do differently), but take out too much of the "how" a story is told because "it's just worldbuilding" or "it's not important to the plot" and you remove the reason anyone was interested in the first place.

The point of an adaptation is that seeing the plot unfold is a different experience from reading a detailed description of it. If you've read the book, you know that Dr. Yueh is going to betray the Atreides and help Baron Harkonnen destroy them. But seeing that betrayal acted out onscreen, seeing the expressions on the characters faces, hearing the emotion in their voices, and actually witnessing the Harkonnen attack, it produces a different emotional reaction than simply reading it.

But if you've read the book's explanation of, say, the Buterlian Jihad backstory, or better yet, listened to the audiobook describe that backstory, does seeing an actor on screen recite the same information change the experience in any way?

Well, if seeing the betrayal acted out is different than reading it, and therefore the reason to see the adaptation; then why aren't seeing Mentats, Dr. Yeuh's conditioning, the life-cycle of the sandworms, the Bene Gesserit powers, and the scenes set off of Arrakis equally important reasons to see the adaptation? Those are all aspects you said could/should not be in a film adaptation.

But actually seeing Geidi Prime, for instance, is potentially a very good way to introduce the Baron and his cronies. You can instantly know a lot about someone by looking at where they live. Lynch made them cartoonishly evil in his version, so over-the-top EVIL as to be unbelievable, but it could be done much more subtly and effectively.

Kay, but that's where cinematography kicks in. The sheer exoticism of Dune's setting, the details in the households, the organic technology, the decorations and micro technology, that's beautiful stuff onscreen. It's up to a good director and designer to bring these flourishes that make the Duniverse so appealing to life without having to spend pages and pages explaining this to the reader.

The big problem with Dune is so much of the plot is mental sparring and communicates a lot of philosophy through characters' minds, a lot of which is usually cut out of filming.

They'd almost need to film scenes in character mindscapes to get some of this across, especially when it comes to the pre-born and the Kwisatz Haderach.

In fairness, the Harkonnens are cartoonishly evil in the books, too. What Lynch did was more along the lines of establishing depravity than evil.

edited 10th Feb '17 1:23:32 PM by Fighteer

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

Because if a film adaptation used those elements the same way the books did, we wouldn't actually get to see them; we'd just get to see people talking about them. We're told that certain characters are mentats, we'rd told what being a mentat means, and we're told the history that led to the creation of mentats, but we never see the mentats do anything that they'd have to be a mentat to pull off. We're told that Dr. Yeuh's conditioning makes him incapable of violence, but there's no instance where he or anyone else with the same conditioning is put in position where they want to commit violence but are unable to do so. And, as far as I recall, the characters really only interact with the adult, gigantic sandworms, not the sandtrout, so they probably wouldn't show up on screen, either.

We do get to see Jessica use the Bene Gesserit Voice once, but my reasoning for not wanting that included has more to do with it being a Story-Breaker Power; when one of your main heroes can control people with her voice, it can be hard to explain why they don't use that power to solve all their conflicts.

The Voice isn't all-powerful, and if the Bene Gesserit overuse it, they'll get vilified by everyone else. They play a delicate balancing act to gain political influence without being seen to pull the strings.

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

Yeah, but for most of the book Jessica's gone rogue from the Bene Gesserit, so their rules aren't really her concern. I mean, when the Fremen go on raids against the Harkonnen, why doesn't Jessica go along shouting "Drop your weapons!" at their enemies?

Paul might be able to do that, but Jessica's control is more limited. The Voice requires that one study the behavior of the subject so as to perfectly modulate it. Doing it in a battlefield situation against people you haven't had time to analyze is futile.

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

@ Raven Wilder: You are off the mark. The word building isn't the problem at all. The problem is that the plot of the standard novel is longer than the plot of the standard movie, and Dune is no exception. Hence why some book adaptations are getting two-parters. I've said this before, that the three-part mini-series covered the plot at the same pacing as the novel proves that you can't have a single movie work without a Compressed Adaptation. I doubt that cutting out the world building would really save that much time. And while you might be OK with compressing the plot and cutting out other stuff, others are not.

edited 11th Feb '17 5:26:12 PM by shiro_okami

Baron Harkonnen thought it was necessary to send deaf soldiers against Jessica so that she couldn't use the Voice on them, so clearly using it against unfamiliar opponents in a combat situation is something Bene Gesserit are supposed to be able to do.

Virtually every film adaptation of a novel trims some of the plot, gets rid of a few minor characters, and generally streamlines things. Is anyone really upset that the film version of The Godfather didn't include the plotline where Sonny has an unusually large penis that's just the right fit for his girlfriend's unusually wide vagina, until she later has a relationship with a surgeon who performs a procedure to tighten her up down there?

That's not entirely accurate. Deaf-mutes are used as tools to prevent Bene Gesserit use of the Voice, because they are supposedly immune to it. If someone attempts to use Voice in their presence, they will note that it is being done (their compatriots are acting irrationally) and take appropriate action — usually, killing the "witch".

The Voice is a precision weapon: it can be used in a more general sense, to cause someone to hesitate or falter, but it's most effective when its user has time to study the target. When Jessica and Paul are being taken into the desert by the Harkonnen soldiers, there's a deaf-mute among them, and Jessica is gagged. But she doesn't only have her voice as a weapon, and Paul is able to speak. So Jessica uses body language to make herself seem irresistible to the soldiers, who decide that nobody will notice if they get a little rape in before the executions. Paul, in turn, uses his fledgling Voice to order the one who can hear to remove Jessica's gag. She then uses the Voice to get them to unbind Paul's legs, and to fight each other over her. When one kills the other, Paul kills him in turn. To reiterate, it is a precision weapon.

Voice has no real use in a battlefield, because the opposing soldiers aren't going to stop shooting long enough for you to get in conversational range and make demands of them. Even if you could, without time to study them, the best you could do would be to make them hesitate for a moment — possibly long enough for your soldiers to get an advantage, but it's hardly a decisive weapon. Also, possibly due to the anti-computer prejudices of the Dune universe, nobody seems to think to use electronic loudspeakers to project the Voice, even assuming that such would be effective.

Edit: Worth noting is that melee combat is all the rage in the Duniverse, at least until Leto II changes the social structure, so it's certainly possible to make use of Voice when confronted with individual opponents. For example, in Paul's duel with the Fremen man, he considers whether Voice would put him at an advantage, but decides against for practical considerations (it wouldn't be seen as "fair").

Now, Paul, once he becomes the Kwisatz Haderach, learns a much more powerful use of Voice, and Leto II has it as well, but they are of course superhuman and not bound by the general rules of the Bene Gesserit.

edited 12th Feb '17 8:40:38 AM by Fighteer

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

We all know that adaptations have to adapt - that is, exclude some things and change others. I suppose it boils down to what is essential to keep the appeal of the original story and what isn't. Your answer is that many of the most unique elements of the Dune novels are not essential, while most of the other posters here seem to argue the opposite.

My own opinion is that the fundamental appeal of Dune is mostly in the details, and that any adaptation should be very careful what it is going to leave out.

Also, since the movie's a thing now, we should probably launch a thread in the Live Action Film forum to discuss any adaptation-related issues further. From here on, might be best to reserve this thread for the plot, characters, etc. of the Herbert books.

edited 22nd Feb '17 10:41:46 AM by Jhimmibhob

My personal Dune canon is Dune through God Emperor of Dune with The Dune Encyclopedia (which I was lucky enough to find at a used book store a dozen years ago). I feel the story is complete at that end of God Emperor, and that Heretics and Chapterhouse were superfluous. I have never checked out the Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson sequels/prequels either, but word of mouth has not been kind to them.

Agreed. I won't try to dictate what is/isn't canon, but will observe that its flaws notwithstanding, God-Emperor reads like the natural, final culmination to any ideas that the first book raised. Even someone who likes the later books might grant that the series would've been thematically complete as it stood.

In terms of organizational structure, Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune form a trilogy detailing the life and death of Paul Atreides. God Emperor of Dune could be considered a distant sequel to that trilogy, a standalone novel, or the start of another trilogy depending on how you look at it. Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune are clearly intended as a continuation of Leto II's legacy, exploring the direct and indirect consequences of God Emperor and giving us a new set of characters. Had that series been completed, we might have understood more clearly what Herbert was driving at. Unfortunately, he died, so we're left guessing.

And I won't even discuss the Brian Herbert novels in the same breath.

edited 23rd Feb '17 12:41:51 PM by Fighteer

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

True, God Emperor is quite different from the rest. I can see someone deciding that the story is effectively over with Children of Dune too, with Paul and Alia both dead. But then, God Emperor does answer "what did Leto do with his power? And what was the destiny that Paul rejected but he accepted?" I find it a pretty satisfying answer too.

It also ends the story of all the characters from the trilogy (with Leto himself being the last survivor).

edited 23rd Feb '17 12:39:49 PM by Bense

I should point out that there is a continuity character from God Emperor to Heretics, etc.: Duncan Idaho. Notably, in Heretics, the latest ghola clone of Idaho recovers the serial memories of all of his past lives, becoming something analogous to Paul/Leto in terms of his story role. Not quite prescient, and not quite a Kwisatz Haderach, but possessed of similar access to knowledge.

The Bene Gesserit, for their part, have dedicated themselves to extricating humanity from the domination of prescience, exactly as Leto II intended them to. The message is that prescience is the ultimate existential trap, dooming all caught in its web to be incapable of acting out anything other than the path that the oracle foretold.

The biggest problem with that series is that Chapterhouse got so damn weird toward the end that I couldn't make heads or tails of the message it was trying to convey. Are we supposed to believe that the ultimate evolution of the Bene Tleilax' efforts at creating a prescient ghola was a super-ghola mind that could encompass all known galaxies in its capacity for observation?

edited 23rd Feb '17 12:49:06 PM by Fighteer

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

Yes, there's another Duncan Idaho, but it's not the same Duncan that was in God Emperor. Obviously it's not the same Duncan Idaho that was in any of the first three either, so he's not really the same character. My point being that there's no real continuity of character. Sure you can always clone another Duncan and give him the old one's memories, but it's not physically the same guy.

Wasn't Leto's purpose of saving humanity from prescience already accomplished by the end of God Emperor? The epilogue indicates that Idaho's and Siona's descendants were extremely numerous, were in fact invisible to prescience, and had scattered along with the rest of humanity at the termination of Leto's empire.