Oh, bother.
The Bene Gesserit would then go on to actively try to prevent the appearance of future Kwisatz Haderachs.
Disgusted, but not surprised
Lost in Space
It takes Leto II to break them of that desire. Even as late as Children of Dune, the BG are trying to gain control of an oracle.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Redmess
Yeah, that makes sense, and it also seems rather futile. I mean, once you have succeeded in breeding a superhuman, it would be hard to keep their children from being superhumans as well.
Optimism is a duty.
Lost in Space
Better: pre-born superhumans. And that's all I'll say about that, since it's a bit of a spoiler for the later books.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Lost in Space
The trailer
for the December 2020 release of Denis Villeneuve's Dune film adaptation dropped today. Visually, it looks great. The all-star cast is a bit distracting. The voice tracks are a bit mumbled. I love the shield effects.
There's a forum thread specifically for the film, so discussion should mostly move over there.
Edited by Fighteer on Sep 9th 2020 at 10:05:57 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Redmess
Oh, look, I already was following this thread.
Well, lets give it a bump by saying that I've started on the actual book, and discuss Dune here so we don't have to spoil it all for those who have only seen the Villeneuve movie of the first half of it.
Optimism is a duty.
I've yet to read the rest of the book, though I did read the first act. Various things have come up that have kept me from reading.
Edited by theLibrarian on Oct 27th 2021 at 2:44:44 PM
Redmess
Just from the first chapter, now I understand why there is so much whispering in the Lynch version. Herbert really enjoys inserting character thoughts.
He also kinda jumps about from one character's head to another in the same chapter, which is a bit of a writing no-no. Like, this first chapter is clearly from Paul's perspective, but then suddenly we have two sentences of Jessica's thoughts.
Too early to say how well Frank pulls that off, though.
Optimism is a duty.
Lost in Space
Given how massive the Dune universe is, I'm not sure how the first few chapters could have been anything but exposition dumps. The gom jabbar scene stands out as one of the most intense in the book and really helps set the audience's expectations for what happens next. It's placed very well.
After all, the first act is basically all politics. It's not inaccurate to talk about this story as a sci-fi Game of Thrones.
Edited by Fighteer on Oct 27th 2021 at 3:51:32 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Yeah, that's what I've termed it as to explain it to people, sci-fi Game of Thrones. Lots of court politics and quiet scenes with the few battles in it being really meaningful ones that often also aren't shown.
Redmess
It's interesting how the pain box does not even have a name. It makes it seem very secretive, which is fitting, considering it is a trade secret, apparently.
It is also a very difficult scene to convey on film, and I don't think the Villeneuve scene quite does it justice. The scene ends with Paul feeling like his skin is charring and curling off his hand.
Another thing I noticed is that that scene was apparently set in a well-lit room in the morning. That seems a shocking contrast to the brutality of the event, and would perhaps have been an interesting choice on screen.
Optimism is a duty.
Lost in Space
The Lynch film shows a prop hand literally burning and melting. I'm relatively happy that Villeneuve didn't choose to replicate that exactly.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Redmess
True, though it is an effective way of conveying the horror of the scene for Paul.
Optimism is a duty.
Yeah, the symbolism of a hand missing a finger or a piece of wood being turned to ash by heat helped get the point across, to say nothing of the noise.
Lost in Space
Weird how we went back to discussing the film after talking about moving the conversation to the literature thread... :-D
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Redmess
Haha, very true, but we'll be moving on to other topics soon enough, I'm sure.
Optimism is a duty.
Lost in Space
I liked how the film shows Paul at first shocked by the pain, but as it gets worse he gets more in the zone and focused on resisting it. I wish it had focused more on the degree of training he received as a child so we understand why that is a big deal, but the scene works well enough.
Edited by Fighteer on Oct 27th 2021 at 5:38:15 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
We do at least get some indication of his Bene Gesserit training in the breakfast scene before the Herald of the Change arrives. That's more indication of his training than we get in the book.
Redmess
Indeed it is, Frank kind of throws us in at the deep end.
Also, kind of odd to see so many pseudo-Arabic terms, then suddenly see "landsraad" pop up (Dutch, if you're wondering).
Optimism is a duty.
Lost in Space
The future of Dune is an amalgam of many different cultures, expressed incredibly elegantly through language and architectural cues. For example, the Atreides are Greek.
Edited by Fighteer on Oct 27th 2021 at 6:04:21 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
And the Orange Catholic Bible is apparently the end result of a lot of mixes of more futuristic versions of Christianity and Islam, and there's apparently a lot of other current religions that survived to that point as well.
Only if you forget that CHOAM stands for Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles.
And Padishah (as in the Padishah Emperor) is probably derived from the Persian shah.
Edit for typo
Edited by KnightofLsama on Oct 27th 2021 at 5:19:58 AM
Lost in Space
Heretics of Dune also shows us that a sect of Judaism has survived almost intact throughout tens of thousands of years.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Yeah, the whole society in Dune is some huge cultural mishmash of the Holy Roman Empire crossed with Arabic and Islamic influences.
The Bene Gesserit are an incredibly complex entity in the books. In Dune, they are portrayed as manipulative schemers, but their mastery of mind and body is absolutely genuine, and terrifying. Theirs is the practice of politics. They do not seek power of their own, because they know they would be vilified as witches. Rather, they seek to hold the reins of power in secret.
They seek to breed a perfect prescient, someone who can guarantee their political control by anticipating every possible future event. In their hubris, they fail to anticipate that this individual would outthink and subsume them. By coming too early, Paul trumps their plans.
Their core motivation is their observation that humanity is too driven by instinct and emotion. Political stability in the galaxy is subject to the whims of its least stable leaders. Everything depends on the spice, yet control of the spice is tenuous and could be lost by accident, dooming humanity to extinction. They want to force us to mature whether we like it or not.
The thing is that they are right, but their vision of the solution is too narrow. That is what Paul steals from them: the right to control that vision.
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 16th 2020 at 9:13:30 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"