Denis Villeneuve's Dune

Since I’m on it, I started the mini-series. The first part… was great, honestly. The introduction was weirdly short and Paul starts out as an arrogant little shit, but after that it only gets better. The Emperor is just as unintimidating as in the Lynch film, but the choice of giving his daughter a prominent role right off the batt is refreshing (I don’t know it was the case in the book?) She’s easily one of my favorite characters.

Vlad’ is more or less a middle ground between the over-the-top cartoonish villain of Lynch and the cold, imposing calculator of Villeneuve. I like this take. Although, err… isn’t he a bit too much… into his nephew?

Everything Fremen in this film is awesome. They really immerse you in their culture and I honestly wish Jamis’ funeral and… water-draining ritual? was in the latest film. Ending Villeneuve’s Part 1 on Paul adopting his new name would have been fitting too. Maybe that’d be the first scenes of Part 2.

Now the CG effects are… pretty bad, lol, and some of the costumes look pretty goofy. Like, what the hell are you wearing, Reverend Mother? What the hell are you wearing, mighty Sardaukars? >.>

Regardless, I really like this version. I’ll watch part 2 tomorrow.

OMG , that's super great to hear! Thanks so much, love hearin' feedback on my beloved Miniseries! (I'll try to keep in mind that this isn't the thread to go all in on Miniseries talk; but I'm sure that with comparisons to the new movie, we can stay on track)

Yes! Quite a weakness of this adaptation, although it makes his serious-and-badass-transformation quite cool; which is no doubt what the makers were goin' for... but still, the quite-doubting-but-still-dignified Villeneuve version we have now is clearly better from the start.

Super amazing to hear! Yes! I love it too! And no! In the book, Princess Irulan (and her Dad!) only appears for the first time in person literally on the last few pages of Book 1 (Although, as I'm sure I'll be corrected, yes, she is the chronicler of the first Dune Saga Part, and provides many quotes from her historical works throughout the book, at the start of chapters)

But yes, love her big subplot that they made up wholecloth for her! By far the biggest book deviation in the Miniseries, or any Dune adaptation ever, pretty much

He is among my favorite things in the Miniseries, yes! Gotta say, just having more Harkonnen scenes, especially featuring him and his glorious hamminess, is something I prefer in the Miniseries compared to the new movie

And, I am unsure if attraction to Feyd specifically is in the book, but attraction to young boys in general, that's absolutely book-accurate. (The new movie shows us two child slaves in his chamber for one tiny second, at least...)

Agreed 9001%! Paul's new name and the funeral are super important and will absolutely be super soon in the second movie! (It's weird that this new movie shows us the Muad'dib mouse twice, but nothing comes of it in this movie!?

You forgot to mention the iiiinnnnnfamous Butterfly Outfit for Irulan!

Awesome. You haven't read the books, right? So this version will be your first time experiencing the finale of Dune, just like it was for me waaaayyy back! Super looking forward to your reaction! And then onward to Children of Dune! (which will be even better!!)

Edited by FellDeedsAwake on Oct 8th 2021 at 11:27:59 AM

Well, I saw the finale in the Lynch movie, but that was more of a summary. >.>

In other news, the film has passed the 100M$ mark in it’s third week!

Looking to be a pretty big success then if it hasn't even hit wider markets and has broken that milestone.

Very promising!

Hahaha, indeed Well, you can look forward to a loooot more time spent on this second half, including a hugely impactful event regarding Paul's personal life that the Lynch movie just ignored. Also: no idiotic screamy-shooty-handguns!

—

Now, here's an important retraction/clarification about something I made a big deal about several pages ago! (I finally understood it after watching a video from two Dune newcomers! Someone in this thread also got it right!) I wrote that Paul had several visions of someone I assumed to be Pardot Kynes, who is very friendly to him and gives him kinda-cryptic-mystic advice about survival in the desert. Answer: It's Jamis! A Jamis from a very different timeline, obviously. A really cool additional possible future to the one where Jamis kills Paul, which we also see.

It's embarrassing for me to not have understood that having seen it twice. But anyway, this is a really cool visualization of the way that Paul's foresight/visions work... it's possible futures, and he has to be super careful with his choices in order to navigate this. But also, he can use visions of alternate versions of people in his life to learn things!? That's freakin' amazing!

Just watched Part 2 of the mini-series and, err, yeah, stuff happens.

And that’s where I’m starting to get what I heard about the story being a subversion of the White Savior. Paul doesn’t look heroic near the end, he looks downright scary. That scene with everyone chanting his name with low-angle shots screams "this is not gonna end well."

And even though I found Aila hilarious in the Lynch version, I realize just how difficult it is for a kid to play a nigh-omniscient adult in a kid’s body. Good luck finding a child actor that pulls it off for Villeneuve’s part 2.

Otherwise, I like how casually Vlad chastises his nephew not for trying to kill him, but for sucking at it. As for Rabban, well… Let’s just say I wasn’t sorry for him.

In the end, my main disappointment is Chani’s character, who’s obviously an improvement over Lynch (since she was a prop there) but never really grows beyond the "dutiful wife" role and comes off as rather one-dimensional as a result. Maybe that changes in the sequel. Also, the film provides one last WTH, Costuming Department? with Paul’s Karate Kid headband.

…On the real world side, Paul’s speech about how he could destroy civilization by stopping Spice production made me imagine what would happen if we suddenly stopped the production of rare-eath metals. Those things are used in pretty much every high-tech object you can think of nowadays − smartphones, computers, batteries, even wind turbines… − but their extraction and refining generates insane amounts of polution; yet we can’t stop exploiting them because we’d be screwed if we did. They really are our Spice.

Oh, yeah, Aila. I wonder how the movie is going to pull that off. And also Ghanima and Leto II. Children with, well, I'll not spoil it, but they are only children in body. I don't know who you cast who is both a child and capable of acting like that.

Every savior is someone else's doom-bringer. One of Herbert's goals in writing Dune was to deconstruct the savior-hero. Saviors bring change on a large scale, and that's always going to be good for some and bad (often really, really bad) for others.

@Lyendith: Awesome! And yes, there is no Saviour nonsense of any kind in Dune. Even if Paul himself were a perfect angel, which he's not, the sheer mass of what he unleashed is way bigger than him and unstoppable. Really super looking forward to your reactions to Children of Dune! The opening scene alone (which is unique to the Miniseries, although the events in it are referenced in the book) should give you a nice idea of the horrors of this "saved" galaxy.

Alia has to be cast perfectly, or the movie crumbles... but I have faith in Villeneuve.

The big Part 2 Harkonnen subplot of the book, with their schemes against each other, is amazing in the book! Also involves a captured Thufir Hawat, who, in contrast to his pathetic cameo in the Lynch version, and his non-existence in the Miniseries, actually gets to do quite a lot! Please, please, Denis, give us that!

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm, that's difficult. Denis has made big announcements that Chani's role in Part II will be gigaaaantic (bigger than Paul's!?!?), which has many people worried, including me. What additional things will they have her do?

Lye, what did you think of the huge thing that wasn't in the Lynch film, what happens with Paul's first son? That's a pretty huge event!

—

Ghanima and Leto, if we ever get that far in this new film franchise, are brutally impossible to bring to film as children. I defer to my beloved Miniseries, which gave up immediately and made them older teenagers (including a young, shirtless James McAvoy, if anyone here didn't know already ), and it worked fine!

Edited by FellDeedsAwake on Oct 14th 2021 at 11:50:04 AM

One Pragmatic Adaptation change they could do with the twins is to make them more overtly creepy rather than subtly-creepy-because-they-act-like-adults, which might go over the audience's heads in a visual medium anyway. Every so often someone will luck in to casting a genuinely talented child actor who can up the scare factor, with Isabelle Fuhrman (Orphan) and Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things) probably being the biggest recent successes. So I wouldn't write the kids off just yet.

Box office tracker: international haul now at $117M. Japan will screen it this week before it finally heads to the US and China on the 22nd. (So close, and yet so far...)

Edited by Synchronicity on Oct 13th 2021 at 11:16:00 AM

Uh, yeah, the birth and death of their son is a pretty big overlook. >.> Then again, the second half of the Lynch version was so damn rushed that that part would have been blink-and-you’ll-miss-it at best.

Anyway, watched Children of Dune! It sure was… a wild ride. First good point, the costuming department was no longer on strike. The CG effects still look a bit goofy though (hello, James "Roadrunner" McAvoy !)

I was surprised to realize at the end that the movie was "only" 3 hours long; it was so densely packed that it felt like 5 hours (in a good way). Many sad things happen, from Chani’s death and Muad’dib’s loss of faith to Alia’s descent into madness, all while people mindlessly worship a man who doesn’t recognize himself in those icons.

I think it’s the first time I see a Green Aesop where the protagonists want to save the desert against the water and vegetation instead of the other way round. It’s a warning against humans trying to adapt the environment to them instead of adapting themselves to it.

Now, while Leto tries his best to not become a new Muad’dib, I’m not sure what will prevent Ganimah from becoming another Alia. I guess not having her prescience (from what I get?) helps. Also… what happened to the sandworm captured by the Corrinos? It’s kinda forgotten by the end, even though it could be a game changer…

Still, it was really enjoyable.

And to go back to Villeneuve, it’s interesting to note that Paul’s vision of the Holy War waged in his name only makes sense in the context of the sequel, so it’s a safe bet that Denis intends to adapt Messiah at least.

Also, incest.

Edited by Lyendith on Oct 15th 2021 at 6:07:13 PM

Yaaaay! I still have such awesome memories of when I first watched it, when it was first on TV... they have A BUDGET now for sets!? And costumes and effects!! And f&%$§ing good music... oh! Lye, I hope you loved the song in the birth/death montage?? Sooo good.

Yes! The Anti-Green Aesop is really important! Knowing this made me a bit nervous when a lot of the pre-release signaling of the Villeneuve film focused on environmentalism!? Really wrong place here.

Well, it's complicated... He will certainly successfully avoid losing power over a giant galactic crusade in his name, like his Dad did... because he will absolutely lead it himself to a definitive conclusion, and even bigger and more brutal than Muad'dib did

Ah, this is where the books become so complicated that I'm uncertain if I can get you a good answer! But... as far as I understand it, Alia and the Twins are all afflicted with the same potential for prescience and abomination... but the Twins, because they were so hyperclose to each other, could protect each other from evil influences; and also the memories of their loving parents inside them protected them too, I think? Especially Chani did a lot, which is a nice touch.

Ahhh, yes, that That's actually book-accurate (the book actually goes much further, as the Guild and the Corrinos also spread sandworm larvae to all corners of the universe in addition to the one Worm.. but then at the end, Leto just casually tells Farad'n that he knows about all of this, but it doesn't matter because neither the Worm nor the larvae can ever survive for long enough on any other planet. So that's that (The latter books make that point... questionable...!?)

Lye, what did you think of the Tleilaxu? One of my favorite things in the Duniverse! Shapeshifters! Clones! Actually competent evil planning! They do get more and more important as the books progress. Related to that: the return of Duncan! I really liked this Miniseries version of Duncan; but now, Lye, you maybe understand why there were book fans who were so sceptical about the casting of Jason Momoa... he's not just a one-shot fun fighter character, but he has to return in a serious, nuanced role!

—

In movie news, gonna see it tomorrow with my parents! Bit nervous, but they hyper loved all of Denis' other films, and I made a two-page basic-universe-overview document for my Dad in preparation, so it should all be fine

Edited by FellDeedsAwake on Oct 15th 2021 at 11:29:15 AM

It is an environmentalist message, just a more subtle one than usual. A mix of "Don’t mess too much with natural equilibriums just because you think it’ll make your life better" and "Don’t saw off the branch you’re fucking sitting on."

I… don’t have much thought about the Tleilaxu? I do like that they were competent planners and that their mind tricks were just evil enough (even if they ultimately failed) but I found the rhyming guy a bit annoying.

Edited by Lyendith on Oct 15th 2021 at 12:21:53 PM

How long was the Children of Dune mini-series? Did it have enough time to fit all the important stuff in? Or did they have to axe a lot of stuff due to the run time?

Edited by WillKeaton on Oct 15th 2021 at 4:22:48 AM

My DVD said 180 minutes, so 3 hours total. I don’t know how faithful it is to the books but I didn’t notice any major inconsistencies as I watched.

That's a lot of stuff to fit into one film. I'm actually not sure- oh, wait a second, wasn't the Children of Dune miniseries an adaptation of Books 2 AND 3? Yeah, I think that if movies 3 and 4 each adapt just one book, we should be okay and not have to trim anything significant to achieve movie-length.

Correct. The first part of Children adapts Dune Messiah, which if I recall Villeneuve also wants to adapt after/if he gets to cover the second half of the first book.

Edited by DeadlyAssassin on Oct 15th 2021 at 5:55:29 PM

I think I remember reading on the movie's trope page on This Very Wiki that he was promised that no matter how the first one turned out he would still get part 2?

Huh, that's not a link anymore. Interesting.

Edited by theLibrarian on Oct 16th 2021 at 8:55:24 AM

…As long as it’s successful on HBO Max, wasn’t it?

WB didn’t lay it out in “yeah sure it’s guaranteed” terms, but that they would strongly consider HBO Max streams when passing judgement.

Dune Messiah is...weirdly short for that series. I have a trilogy omnibus of the first three books and the first book takes up almost 900 pages, Dune Messiah takes like 350 and Children of Dune is like 630.

Yup, Messiah is deliberately a Coda to the first book and a link to the huge third, not an Epic on its own. But, hugely, hugely important.

That is super high praise , makes me very happy. I remember feelin' the same way waaaay back, when I first watched it! It made sense, and ended in a satisfying way. As to the book faithfulness, well, that's always a difficult thing... there's technically a lot of stuff missing, since the book is so huge, but there is an astonishing amount of smart distillation and simplification going on! I would genuinely call it a masterpiece of an adaptation.

—

In personal Dune news, finally got my parents to watch it with me yesterday! (so, the third time for me) They obviously loved it - my Dad, who normally can lose interest quickly, was transfixed, unmoving, to the screen the entire time, forgetting to even take one swig of his water for the entire movie; absolutely fascinated. The first things they mentioned as their favorite things in the film: "the dragonflies!!" (ornithopters), and "the mouse!" (which, as I finally realized this time, is actually in three scenes in the movie, while still never being named as "muad'dib"... I still don't understand that... it had almost more screentime that Thufir Hawat )

Dad's favorite character: "the Mom" (Jessica). My stepmom's favorite character: "the pretty young lady at the end, with the amazing blue eyes" (Chani). For good measure, I asked my two best friends today what their favorite characters in the film were: one couldn't decide, the other one said "the Dad" (Leto). Those answers are surprisingly diverse, kinda cool.

In an "uh...okay" development, Dune is premiering a few hours early tomorrow on HBO Max. This at least matches early-release theaters.

I'm really trying to decide between theaters and HBO Max.

As I don't have HBO Max I'll be doing it in theaters.