is it really possible that we don't as yet have a thread about DAVID LYNCH'S DUNE?

how does that happen? how does this film happen?

new incomprehensible answers.

I think about this movie a lot; really a very beautiful film and so close to being great. The first 10 minutes or so are fantastic.

Saw this on Bluray recently. I think it's a lovely film, even if it is a poor adaptation of the book.

it is a "haunting" film

Where was it shot?

Churubusco Studios, Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico
(studio)

Estudios Churubusco Azteca, Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico
(studio)

Imperial County, California, USA

Samalayuca, Chihuahua, Mexico

Imperial County - I drove through there last week

http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~joel/g148_f09/lecture_notes/colo_desert/algodones_dunes03.jpg

Wonder about that parallel universe where this turned out great and was a big box office smash and Lynch was doing big Hollywood stuff for a few more years.

TS: universe where this was a success vs. universe where Jodorowsky version exists vs. universe where Lynch directed The Return of the Jedi.

Love this interview with Lynch from right before the movie came out - he was already working on the script for the sequel!

http://www.davidlynch.de/duneinttrans.html

This was great, when i finally saw it, it was like "What's the fuss all about? This isn't a bad movie at all!" Maybe the boils were too much for people.

love this movie - altho when I saw it as a kid the pacing seemed totally off to me. but there's too much great stuff in it to dismiss it.

Jodo version probably would've been even better.

is it really possible that we don't as yet have a thread about DAVID LYNCH'S DUNE?
how does that happen?

ASK MAUD'DIB (FORMERLY KNOWN AS CAN WE TALK ABOUT DUNE, DEAN?)

The Jodorowsky probably would have only worked with a 300 million dollar budget.

"Maybe the boils were too much for people."
boils are fine; it's baron spitting a big phlegmy ball of spit on vanessa redgrave's face. did he save up for that loogie?

The Jodorowsky probably would have only worked with a 300 million dollar budget.

sounds great to me! Hollywood's spent larger sums on infinitely worse crap

like a scenic drive at 100mph, definitely needed more time or better editing

is the movie or the book closer to the video game?

it's just an unfilmable book in a 2hr time limit, isn't it? Everyone has tried and failed. That's why Jodorowsky's initial plan was a 7hr movie or whatever.

Yeah, Lynch's version was as faithful as a feature-length adaptation of Dune could've possibly been. But still incoherent. But also great to look at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFTS5-cIHgQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvCeLzC2sNs&feature=relmfu

I am watching an extended version of this tonight, just short of 3 hours. Not sure if it is the David Lynch approved cut or the version that he requested his name taken off. Not arsed tbh because it is still very good.

Watched this a couple times last year - turns out it's great! Love the special attention paid to dogs, Picard brandishing one as he charges into battle. Der Schtingle. The sleeper has awakened!

I adored this as a 12 year old. The inscrutability of the plot made it seem thrillingly mysterious and grown up. Not sure I've really revisited it since.

Minneapolitans Swede this POS movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIzTat3OD3w

i just saw this for the first time a few weeks back. not as bad as advertised (though what could be that bad?) but yeah not exactly a triumph either. but of course there's that lynchian je ne sais quoi that makes it worthwhile--there's something tactile about the world building in this that's missing in other similar movies (maybe it was all that puss, haha). wish he'd made another movie like this with more freedom.

Has anyone been to a screening of this yet?

http://jodorowskysdune.com/index.html

was about to ask the same thing

There are so many cool ideas and great (expensive) props and costumes and sets in Lynch's film. I always think of the one shot where Kyle Maclachlan shouts at the floor with his ~weirding~ powers and punches a dent in it - it's so sudden and intense and ~weird~ and at that moment you get "yeah, David Lynch is perfect for this material." But what gets left by the wayside is a lot. The most interesting things about the book to me - the long-term eco-planning Gaia hypothesis stuff, and Paul's burden of knowing he's in a messiah plot that can only end in tragedy - are brushed over or just can't come into their own as themes. Kind of into watching it again though.

best part of the movie is where kyle maclachlan says (or rather, thinks out loud, like many of the lines in the movie) "Where are my feelings??"

And a great post here from Ron Miller

http://io9.com/i-made-the-spice-flow-my-work-as-a-concept-artist-on-l-1509730566

Nice read! I'm always charmed by old fashioned positive accounts like that.

Has there ever been a rapper nerdy enough to reference this with "Make it rain like Paul Atreides"? Google says no so just adding it to the internet here. "Make it rain like Muad'Dib" doesn't work as well.

I got the dough, got the flow down pizzat
Make it rain... KWISATZ

nice.

there are so many ridiculous/great moments in lynch's film

Is there any place online to watch that 3 hour fan edit (DUNE SAGA)?

there are so many ridiculous/great moments in lynch's film

^^^

I feel like the film's underrated because it splits the difference between Lynch's sensibility and the source material, which results in some jarring narrative leaps and shifts in tone. These things don't bother me so much when stacked against the film's best moments - the Baron, the opening sequence with the emperor, the worms, "fear is the mindkiller", the creepy sister etc.

http://i60.tinypic.com/ad2m2c.png

the moments don't really add up to any sort of narrative whole, it's more like stuff just happening left and right

and a pug

That photo is amazing.

https://twitter.com/Kyle_MacLachlan/status/765390472604971009

pretty accurate iirc

Lol

now I need an emoji of kenneth mcmillan's face from this.

hahahaha

shaddam iv: "bring in the floating fat man -- the duke!"
not quite sure why this^^^ description needed qualifying, but i guess it does suggest quite what dopes the padishah emperor has surrounded himself by

SO MUCH exposition and inner whispered monologue

this film reminds me more of STINGRAY than i quite expected (also TREMORS and THE KEEP but that is less surprising obviously)

i need to rewatch this. i saw it once, 25 or 30 years ago, and never since. has it aged well in any kind of weird way? and the lynch version is still preferred over the extended cut?

Lynch version is definitely better. Is there any good quality DVD or blu-ray release of this? The copy I have is letterboxed into oblivion.

The extended cut is garbage

there is no "good" version of this movie but every cut is fascinating in its own right.

One very obvious way it's aged is that the green-screen (or blue-screen or whatever) SFX of the early 80s is now just beginning to edge towards the kind of datedness you become less sneery about and more fond of and indulgent towards. The space effects are all pretty terrible -- even by 70s Dr Who standards, let alone Star Wars -- but it's much easier to just take it as it had to be, given the technology. Various props look much more evidently plastic and flimsy than called for (some red kettledrums being played during the Maud'dib/Feyd-Rautha fight, for example).

There's such a strange gradient between the thought put into the look of various early set and scenes -- notably (and famously) the one where the Guildsman arrives in his big personal train to meet the Emperor -- and much the later stuff, which feels hurried and sketchy, as if they used up all their budget AND imagination in the first 20 minutes. Basically I think the Arrakis desert-scenes and the Fremen were just so much not Lynch's kind of material, visually or psychologically. The worms are 70s Dr Who-level in terms of realisation (which is not the worst thing, and Lynch has -eraserhead form w/regard to getting you to feel creeped out by such stuff) but you can feel yourself adjusting your expectations down. There's some good foetus-work.

Apart from the Harkonnens the casting is uniformly weedy. Thufir Hawat and Alia aside, The Atreides -- family and household -- are all super-bland (which is a problem inherited from the book). Maybe the right lead could have been found for Paul: it's definitely not Kyle M (who apart from anything was just too inexperienced on-camera to play it with anything but a "what me worry?" grin). Also you have to worry about how much of Bene Gesserit witchcraft he's expending to keep his hair so perfectly processed in the desert. Lynch is a director with a longstanding and adirable gift for deploying character actors well, old-school and almost-lost Hollywood-style, as minor but super-memorable figures: Freddie Jones and Bard Dourif, the two mentats, don't have to do much more brandish their amazing eyebrows, to step ahead of nearly everyone else, even if their specific role in the book's plot is barely sketched in the film: as mentats, viz human calculating and remembering machines, in a culture where computers are forbidden (not sure that the "Butlerian Jihad" is even referred to in the film) (to be honest it's a fairly under-explored element in the book…)

The Harkonnens are inspired -- they're cartoons, obviously, but there's just so much glee and energy there, primarily bursting out of Ken MacMillan as he hurtles around in mid-air, plump distillate of cackling and pustules. Beast Rabban is minor, but there's a mutual joy in his evil-doing -- the Baron is just agog with love with the georgeousness of his nephews, whether in deed or body, and Sting (in his one good film performance?) has hit on the exact method motivation, playing Feyd-Rautha as a quivering penis of a warrior. Even Jack Nance -- stood at the back carrot-topped and always appalled -- is great: he is just constantly open-mouthed in horror at what his employers are up to (whether Harkonnen or Lynch).

But the moment they're off-screen -- until little Alia arrives (also a Harkonnen, of course, and in subsequent books actually possessed by the spirit of the long-dead baron who she executes) -- everything that isn't a nutso action set-up,constantly slumps into exposition or whispered inner-monologue, and the announcement of characters you don't have time to learn why you're to care for them beofre they die (even Dean Stockwell's treacherous Yueh is weak tea: and you literally end up with no idea why Halleck or Idaho or Kynes or the Shadout Mapes have been given names you're meant to remember).

The care put into the very first scene -- including unnamed bit players, like the Guildsman's crowd of monkish acolytes -- does kind of get you thinking that a 3 or 4 hour version might have ironed out some of these issues. But ppl's responses up-thread suggest that the extended cut does not bear this out? (Or is it just that Lynch is no longer involved -- I guess I'd like to see it, just in case it has any deranged mini-scenes not used in the Lynch cut, but I think you are telling me I will be disappointed…)

I enjoy that the nosepieces of the stillsuits makes all the Fremen look as if they all have little Hitler mustaches -- a semi-inadvertent BOYS FROM BRAZIL effect that lets you in on a secret abt the story's underlying politics? I like to think Lynch did this deliberately but who knows…

there is no "good" version of this movie but every cut is fascinating in its own right.

What he said. (Extended version does provide Patrick Stewart's Pat Metheny impression so there's that.)

Great thoughts by mark s of course. I'm surprised I hadn't mentioned this before -- an absolute must-read is Ed Naha's The Making of Dune book, released in conjunction with the film. It's no Devil's Candy in terms of start to stop history -- it's an official tie-in release, the spin is by default positive and it ends riiiight before the team goes in the editing room to start winnowing it down, which is where it all fell apart a bit. But even given the built-in puffery of the enterprise, it's still an engagingly detailed read with a slew of details that pretty much haven't surfaced elsewhere since I still think there hasn't been any proper documentary/look-back on the film. Naha's definitely looking at it all with an eye of 'okay how is this huge book AND this director all going to work with Dino de L. behind it all?' It also gave me a bit of a feel for the history of Churubusco Studios and working in Mexico, and he does a reasonable job of looking at numerous elements of behind the scenes work -- costumes, practical visual effects, design and so forth.

You can get it for pennies on Amazon and I do recommend it if you have any interest in the film or Lynch at all:

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Dune-Ed-Naha/dp/0425073769/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474211729&sr=8-1&keywords=ed+naha+making+dune

I had this book and the official film storybook to hand from the start. And got the soundtrack. Which for all the Totoness does have a couple of good moments -- the main theme is short but memorable -- and it was the first time I'd ever heard anything by Eno, so hey. Had actually read Dune for the first time a year and a half before the movie came out so I was kinda primed.

lol yes, i'm half way through the 3-hr fan-cut right now (it's here: https://yadi.sk/i/kciUCmMSiRhHS ), so just watched everyone sat listening to gurney halleck's baliset solo -- i like the way paul just bursts into this wide joyful grin at every moment of halleck's artistry (poems or music), either becasue he can't believe how talented he is or how awful he is

most of the extra scenes are yet more leaden-paced exposition (at the start over paintings, possibly the art director's sketches of sets and costumes), but there's a good confrontation between jessica and the shadout mapes , plus feyd-rautha gets to torment leto (sting opens his mouth so the quality of his performance drops quite a lot)

also a good pug-in-the-palace moment as the atreides compound is being destroyed

There's probably fanfic about the pugs...somewhere.

sting opens his mouth so the quality of his performance drops quite a lot

Imagining a cut where he just carries that cat around, all while wearing the jockstrap, and saying nothing.

are the "weirding modules" in the book? i don't remember them at all

Invention for the film. In the book the 'Weirding way' is a martial art form via the Bene Gesserit. Brief breakdown here:

http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Weirding_Module

https://twitter.com/fireland/status/773690179299053569

the weirding modules were the best invention of the film and also provided a sample-rich scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4PeZ6YsbQ8

the pugs are the best invention of the film

the flip side, Deep Sleep, mines Paul's waking dream and the Prophecy Theme by the Eno bros and Lanois:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSsjugznEJY

ok, further additions in the 3-hr fan-cut version: water rites and duelling in seitch tabr, thufir hawat's death scene

that's kind of it -- except for the scene w/mapes and jessica maybe the best bits were genuinely all present in the original: the sietch tabr stuff helps a little with pacing and scene-setting perhaps, but none of it is remarkable (also the acting in it is p dull and one-note)

IIRC the issue with Paul isn't so much in the acting as the script, which barely even sketches out the most interesting thing with the character in the book - the constant awareness that events and his 'narrative' are leading inescapably towards galactic fanaticism and slaughter. Without that he's just a plucky youth who suddenly becomes a superbeing beyond our comprehension or interest.

The weirding gizmos are dumb imho - if you're gonna punt the supernatural/ESP stuff, do it consistently. Feels like the original concept of Wolverine as a guy with claws in his gloves, so anybody who gets the gloves would be Wolverine. Silly.

saw this pic today and it blew my mind:

https://68.media.tumblr.com/312a31ec6f5365a31750d73bcbf423a8/tumblr_om0ekxnf3Z1vy747uo1_500.jpg

can't believe it's taken me this long to realize the baliset is really a modded Chapman Stick

there's a scene with gurney playing it in the extended version and it sounds like a steve hackett instrumental

the new, extended Dune ultimate edition, featuring a 16-minute chapman stick solo by Tony Levin

Don't try your powers on me. Try looking into that place where you dare not look. You'll find Tony Levin there, playing a 16-minute Chapman Stick solo.

LOL

I'm a lynch stan but both times I watched this I fell asleep. Just has that effect on me for some reason. I don't hate it or anything, maybe it would help to read the book so I start off already invested and knowing all of the many names given to each thing. Paul who is the moaddib who is the quidditch haddock (I find it funny that his actual name is "Paul", not sure if it's supposed to be funny). I love the simple fact that all these people are in a film together anyway

btw I know I keep missing the whole middle of the movie but I always find the last line a little weird: "he IS the quiznos hatchback!" It's like... we know. You told us at the beginning?

it's a callback to John Wayne in The Greatest Story Ever Told

Lol mebbe

The acting does feel to me like it's from an earlier era at times

Lynch seems to find the whole experience painful to think about but if anyone were ever able to coax him into making a long directors cut id def watch

can't believe it's taken me this long to realize the baliset is really a modded Chapman Stick

― Moodles, Monday, March 6, 2017 9:09 PM (yesterday)

there's a scene with gurney playing it in the extended version and it sounds like a steve hackett instrumental

― clouds, Tuesday, March 7, 2017 4:38 AM (five hours ago)

There's a reason I made a Pat Metheny crack a few months back!

yeah it's pretty deliberately arch i think

nostalgia for old movies is a big part of a lot of SF movies in the post Star Wars era

sadly I think Lynch has said that the rumour of hours of unused footage aren't true

A few years back I attended a lecture by Lynch -- it was on his TM stuff rather than film but I figured 'eh, it's Lynch, it'll be weirdly entertaining' -- and he was introduced by the MC who ran off a list of all his films in order, except Dune. So in the Q&A someone had to ask about that, and there was both general applause from the audience and Lynch seemed pretty comfortable talking about it. It's kind of a comfort-zone botch now.

i think a bunch of ilxors have been to one of those TM lectures! mine was in Philly i'm almost positive.

Reading through the thread mark s's review seems about right (maybe it's the whispering that's lulling me to sleep) - I thought of the keep as well, another interesting "butchered" film that almost certainly doesn't make any more sense in the 4-hour cut

For that matter, Patrick Stewart is really just a modded Tony Levin:

https://img.discogs.com/z5RU0QNghN4msT9GMSV92Xhfnrw=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/A-256225-1144684281.jpeg.jpg

I wish Lynch would make more SciFi films

Reading through the thread mark s's review seems about right (maybe it's the whispering that's lulling me to sleep) - I thought of the keep as well, another interesting "butchered" film that almost certainly doesn't make any more sense in the 4-hour cut

― wins, Tuesday, March 7, 2017 1:15 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

man i want 4 hour keep so bad

I want a 4 hour cut that has literally no expository dialogue or narration

but would settle for 90 minutes

highly recommend the book wins, much superior work

the best thing about dune (the novel) is the deep-ecology philosophy but that doesn't really carry into the film

Yeah I need to read it

Love these:

https://68.media.tumblr.com/c6d0423d60034645a7e24f51baa34845/tumblr_op2re29zEX1tvemm6o2_500.jpg

https://68.media.tumblr.com/441e22399b529c2e8dc50acea9a96594/tumblr_op2re29zEX1tvemm6o3_500.jpg

https://68.media.tumblr.com/28c979094c349feb4c7977f117b9e872/tumblr_op2re29zEX1tvemm6o1_500.jpg

omg yes

nausicaa meets dune!

The third one especially

Sign me up for the HideakiAnno-directed anime miniseries.

Just watched this for the first time in like fifteen years last weekend. I still love it for all it's flaws, but good gosh the last 45 minutes is so rushed. You can just tell it was ruthlessly cut to get it under two and a half hours.

Also the triumphant ending with a noble race of warriors rising up out the desert to conquer civilisation can't help but feel a little uncomfortable in light of more recent world events. I understand Dune Messiah deals with the consequences of the Fremen jihad getting out of control but as Lynch never got to film a sequel, what we get is "PAUL IS GRATE AND SOLVES EVERYTHING the end."

Now I'm watching the Sci-Fi Channel miniseries from 2000. God, it's so threadbare. Awful costumes, cheap looking sets, lousy CG special effects. At least the new film, if it ever happens, couldn't possibly look this shabby.

I always thought of that version as essentially a stage play that was filmed.

the "non-director's cut" three-hour version is p much just as rushed in the final hour

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxgDk2I_bSc

relive ALL the excitement and adventure

Isn't the book like that? It's been decades now (oh god) but I remember a huge amount of Paul's edification followed by womp bam boom insurgent takeover

Maybe the film colored my memory of the novel - but it certainly didn't ruin my idea of what an ornithopter should be (but by god, they tried)

the book (which as you recall is VERY LONG) spends quite a long time on the desert stuff where the film has already begun to hurry

also iirc one of paul's principal dilemmas/heroic struggles is with how to overturn the existing political status quo without unleashing a "jihad" that would bring violence and destruction to the universe at large. though i can't really remember why that would have seemed so likely a proposition. kinda interesting in that it was written a decade and a half prior to the iranian revolution which to my limited understanding sorta took the global powers-that-be by surprise...? idk

also btw just gotta say i am very very late to the party on this but for those who appreciate the long-term terraforming aspects of Dune the novel, i am finally reading RED MARS, the first part of kim stanley robinson's MARS TRILOGY and it is fucking incredible on this and several other points.

Do we have wormsign?🐛 #dune pic.twitter.com/Gh8Hqf4CIf

— Kyle MacLachlan (@Kyle_MacLachlan) July 16, 2017

Usul has called a big one!

Those drawings above have to be Ryoichi Ikegami (Crying Freeman, Mai The Psychic Girl, Sanctuary).

I avoided watching this for years because Lynch seemed to hate it, I thought Sting was the main character, I don't like deserts and the only clips I had seen were of the big brain creature and the baron.

Wasn't expecting much, but HUGE HUGE HUGE surprise! There's a lot wrong with it but damn, there's a lot of great looking stuff in here, Toto are surprisingly great, Kyle MacLachlan and Sean Young look amazing, most of the special effects and settings look better than sci-fi films today, the worms emerging from the sand look convincingly massive, love all the whispery and dreamy scenes.

I like this better than Bladerunner, Metropolis, 2001, Star Wars, Alien films and any big sci-fi film I can think of right now. But it's hard to experience some of those films as fresh as I got Dune, they're weighed down by their pop culture legacies.

I actually don't think Jodorowsky's version would have been better, it would probably be an even bigger mess with fewer good parts (although the soundtrack probably would have been better).

Keep thinking of Jack Nance playing an instrument. Very funny.

I recently watched the first half of this and found it pretty enjoyable; didn't understand why it had acquired such a bad reputation. Then I resumed the second half later and thought, "oh, I see."

I read the script the other day and thought to myself "this is really one hell of a stupid story"

however I do like the movie mostly for the visuals and weirdness

did you feel that way about the book's story, too?

i haven't read dune since high school. i've always thought of myself as a general "supporter of dune", but even back then, during a time when my critical radar was completely non-existent and i pretty much devoured and loved whatever i read or saw, dune was underwhelming.

(response idea: 'no you're underwhelming'

but now i guess i'm the kind of jerk who wonders if dune is the most overrated book of the 1960s

this thread is about the film, not the book (another response idea)

however I do like the movie mostly for the visuals and weirdness

same. and certain parts are undeniably gripping and unforgettable. the "fear is the mind killer" scene is so good.

The book isn't overrated. It's the first space opera that incorporated the scope of Tolkien, having an old fictional world with borders extending far beyond the present action, and ideas from the nascent science of ecology about the sandworm/spice lifecycle. However, filming it as a messiah/Muhammed story misses all of that. You might as well film Stranger in a Strange Land if you want SF spiritual heroics on a budget.

However, filming it as a messiah/Muhammed story misses all of that

There's a pretty big dose of this in the book, tbh

yes i'm unconvinced a tolkien-style epic is the best lens for "ideas from the nascent science of ecology" tho i can see how a multi-generational approach might come in handy. but it gave the ideas a good pulpy hook i guess

also, nascent? ecology p much begins with haeckel in the 1860s (when it was still called "oecology" lol), so "burgeoning" is probably a better word, bcz it was a BIG NOISE in the 60s: it hugely overlapped with my dad's job and he read dune and enthused abt it to me (age 10-ish i guess). the problem looking at it now is that the ecology is soooooooo basic. it's a one organism eco-system: does anything native to arrakis use the spice to tell the future? (the only other animal i can even remember being mentioned is the little mouse that goes "pip pop"). if not the spice only has ultra-planetary (and thus anti-ecological) function?

there are enough Dune stans around here to get into the top 10 of our spec fic poll, but I definitely prefer the movie, warts and all, myself.

idk if the scope of Dune is really that unique, although certainly it gets brought up a lot. As far as time scales and space epics go, Foundation predates it and I'd be surprised if there aren't other examples.

as far as ecology in the genre goes, I prefer the Word for World Is Forest (which, granted, was later)

for me what was eye opening about dune was that it was sci fi about human potential not technological potential

ie the deadliest person in the story wasn't the person w/ the biggest blaster gun but the female monk who had spent the most time strengthening her fingers on the digit mill

olaf stapledon also does the generational thing i think ("first and last men" was another book my dad recommended to me, but i never read it so i might be wrong)

i think sanpaku's right tho that dune is early on the tolkien-as-space-opera jag -- foundation is surely too early to have been able to be trying to be that (i think it's quite unlikely asimov had read him or even knew he existed when foundation was being written: LotR wasn't big news until the 60s). either way, foundation isn't a foray into the same kind of cosplay territory

(also it's terrible)

Foundation is def terrible in a way that Dune is not

I think I read somewhere that halfway through the film D Lynch was like "I dont care about this anymore"

Interesting to note that at the time they offered return of the jedi to lynch - now that's something id like to see
there are so many endless sequels too - the story goes on and on and on

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/patrick-stewart-didnt-know-who-sting-was-dune-1104219

was nto aware of this but yawn, of course reboot eberything

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/dune-reboot-two-movies-two-years-denis-villeneuve

The thing that’s interesting about dune (book) re: messiah shit is that it’s clearly conveyed as a constructed thing, not real, something seeded by the bene jesserit over the millennia, a conscious plot to regain power... it’s based in real power dynamics not magical prophecies

And it leads directly to the galactic genocide of billions

d'oh

The sense of vast history is something that the book really excels at -- by presenting the then-present of the book's publication not even as a blip but as something antique and lost in a much wider swathe of lost history in turn, and rendering the organization of human society as such as a mutated amalgamation of past histories in turn, the book constantly touches between something that feels familiar and something else that feels utterly strange. It's not as distanced as it might be, but that makes concrete details -- like when the Atriedes soldiers are joking with each other like, well, young soldiers, until one of them notices Duke Leto -- all the more important, and in turn makes you think of what the concrete details of our own vast lost history really were like.

yeah turns out genetically engineering the ubermensch totally backfires xp

(i think it's quite unlikely asimov had read him or even knew he existed when foundation was being written: LotR wasn't big news until the 60s)

I think this quite likely as LOTR wasn't even published at the point that even the first book (let alone original stories) was published. I think Foundation influence on Dune probably greater than LOTR's, but I concede Foundation is pretty terrible (finally got around to reading a couple of years back).

it gave the ideas a good pulpy hook i guess

http://imgur.com/BQbu1q1l.png

lol i actually looked up the dates of foundation (which i hadn't really known) and didn't bother looking up the dates if LotR (which i thought i did know)

if you'd quizzed me pre-look-up i'd have got them both wrong: Foundation 5-6 years too recent, LotR 5-6 years too early)

I just love how much mushrooms frank herbert was doing when he wrote the book and how much it comes across

https://www.dailygrail.com/2014/07/magic-mushrooms-were-the-inspiration-for-frank-herberts-science-fiction-epic-dune/

Asimov on Tolkien

It was back in 1967, I think that I read J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings for the first time. I liked it - moderately. I felt it went on too long; that there was too much irrelevant detail; that the battle scenes were a bit wearisome.

I have since read it four more times and have just finished the fifth reading.

Each time I liked it better than the time before and on this fifth occasion I clamored restlessly against having it end at all. Far from thinking it went on too long, I bitterly resented Tolkien's having waited so long to start it that He ended with only time to write half a million words.

Tolkien on Asimov (from a letter written in 1967, oddly enough)

I read quite a lot – or more truly, try to read many books (notably so-called Science Fiction and Fantasy). But I seldom find any modern books that hold my attention.*

*There are exceptions. I have read all that E. R. Eddison wrote, in spite of his peculiarly bad nomenclature and personal philosophy. I was greatly taken by the book that was (I believe) the runner-up when The L. R. was given the Fantasy Award: Death of Grass. I enjoy the S.F. of Isaac Azimov.

tolk: right abt eddison, (very) wrong abt azimov

he would put a few weathered chanterelles in a 5-gallon bucket of water, add some salt, and then, after 1 or 2 clavs, pour this spore-mass slurry on the ground

"clavs" must surely be a robot transcriber's error for "days"

if you squint it looks right

every once in a while i encounter someone with the surname 'mapes' and it is disconcerting

New sales guy at my office is named Feyd-Rautha Rabinowitz, so I know what you mean

The sense of vast history is something that the book really excels at -- by presenting the then-present of the book's publication not even as a blip but as something antique and lost in a much wider swathe of lost history in turn, and rendering the organization of human society as such as a mutated amalgamation of past histories in turn, the book constantly touches between something that feels familiar and something else that feels utterly strange.

― Ned Raggett

yeah i really enjoyed herbert's dissertation on historiography (i.e. god emperor)

that came out sounding sarcastic but it's not! great book

I gave a book report on god emperor of dune in 8th grade like the fucking world class nerd that I am. I assume it was incomprehensible.

I gave a book report on god emperor of dune in 8th grade like the fucking world class nerd GOD EMPEROR that I am

*bows down*

what I find implausible is the idea that after 3500 years of genetic screwing around humans would be at all recognizable psychologically like humans from the 60's - it seems like they would be more inhuman with stranger motivations

tbf paul's son turns himself into a worm and lives for several thousand years

"In Heretics of Dune, Reverend Mother and Imprinter Lucilla is charged with the seduction-imprinting of the Duncan Idaho ghola so that the Sisterhood may assert some control over him; he ultimately avoids her. Lucilla also mentions the hundreds of sexual positions and variations she knows. In Heretics, the Honored Matres have themselves refined this ability to such an intense level that the targeted male becomes completely enslaved. "

TRUE

the worms seem a bit phallic

tbf paul's son turns himself into a worm and lives for several thousand years

#goals tbh

let's call it what it was - a worm human hybrid

HE BECAME A HUT

He went to live on Tatooine with George Luckas

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Leto-become-a-worm-in-Dune

i like dune

agree that the messiah plot is more its center than the ecology, tho the latter was certainly a big part of its success+influence. what mark s points out as counterthematically simplistic, indeed ridiculous, thru an ecological lens-- a near-dead planet whose dominant organism's life cycle revolves around the rebirth of humanity from stagnant intergalactic feudalism-- makes more sense as mythic element in story about historical motion, its violence, the weirdness (psychedelia) of its inevitability. the lynch movie actually isolates this theme v successfully imo-- without change, something sleeps inside us-- and if you watch a version incorporating some of the cut material (the tv cut lynch took his name off is m/l unwatchable, but there are fan cuts w some sense of style) you even get a hurried hint of the theme d-40 describes (prophecy-- historiography-- as consciously constructed organizing force passing out of the control of its constructors). lynch's use of princess irulan as narrator also a nod to the book's use of her (in chapter epigraphs) to cast the story as depersonalized past history even as you are reading it-- tho lynch doesn't actually use her like this himself.

recently watched the scifi channel miniseries lol (i like dune). perplexing in many ways. its whole premise, from pushy title (FRANK HERBERT'S DUNE) on, is faithfulness to the source text, thru reverence and thru having the space to do it right (special features on the cheap dvds i got include a lot of producer talk about the ~power of the miniseries format~). but right off the bat it has her reverence gaius helen mohiam test the young paul atreides in a brightly lit white room the designers of the enterprise-d would disdain as bland; and when h.r. g.h.m. orders the lady jessica out of the room she exits via a door that goes whoosh. the book clearly says this stuff happens in a dank drippy feudal castle and this is exactly what the supposedly irreverent lynch delivers-- to (km otm) terrific effect. the series takes pains to accurately reproduce the political machinations of the emperor, the guild, and the council of nobles it has too little faith in you-the-viewer to call the landsraad (presumably also the reason it won't call the spice melange)-- but it doesn't even try to recreate the actual tone and vibe of strange medieval space opera that is so key to the historically slippery quality ned describes. (at the same time it takes lynch's camp harkonnens as absolute canon-- has the baron, whose "suspensors" in the book only support him the way a cane would, flying around the ceiling and everything-- while stopping only to make them even gayer.)

anyway. first and last men def a precedent in terms of future-historical scale. the clearest descendants are book of the new sun and the wheel of time, but i think the most mature+beautiful use of this kind of palimpsestic historical sweep is in leguin's stone masterpiece always coming home, in which historical motion is both theme and structuring metaphor-- like gravity's rainbow a book obsessed from title down w a specific curve. dune is pulp by comparison. but i love its deliberate fairytaleisms: a story about a duke, a baron, an emperor, a guild, witches, free men. the most likable quality it shares with LOTR is that this whole vast glossaried invented history is tangibly ginned up from a bedtime story. well and that it's clearly by a guy who likes going for walks.

booming

(applause)

Nikki MInaj with Dune reboot!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMymSXUN9nQ

Well done indeed d.l.h. — and to expand on the last point, I recall at least one early summary or book jacket flap I encountered via a library or something where it took clear pains to frame the story in that vein, where it could almost have been a medieval adventure. Sugaring the pill (or spiking the spice). Similar was done for _Watership Down_ in a couple of corners, framing it as the story of exiles searching for a new home and leaving the fact it’s rabbits unstated/understated. (Also a book about history/myth/mishmash of the two — not to mention breeding programs!)

It seems almost like Idiocracy in that respect - like the humans have long since forgotten how to do anything but use their mentats and bene gesserets and just pompously romp about seeking power and pride.

The mixture of medieval and high tech always makes me think of He-Man's odd world - why use a sword when you have access to laser guns?

holtzmann effect iirc

well put DLH

I recall at least one early summary or book jacket flap I encountered via a library or something where it took clear pains to frame the story in that vein, where it could almost have been a medieval adventure.

ha yes my mouldering library-sale first edition has this across both flaps:

The duke must exchange his lands. Instead of his own lovely domain, rich and well-watered, he and his wife and son must move to and accept a barren desert, where a drop of water is worth its weight in platinum.

Why? The all-powerful Emperor fears Duke Leto-- fears his strength, his popularity, his growing wealth. And the Duke has other enemies, notably the great rival house of Harkonnen, led by Baron Vladimir, the living symbol of evil.

A page of medieval history? Not quite. Duke Leto Atreides is moving from a planet, which he owns, to another planet, which he has been given in exchange. The Emperor, Shaddam IV, is Emperor of the known Universe, not a country. And Duke Leto's son, Paul, is not a normal noble heir. In fact, he is so little normal in any way that he happens to be the possible key to all human rule, power and knowledge!

The Duke's lady, Paul's mother, is unusual as well. She is the creature of the Bene Gesserit, the strangest religious matriarchy ever conceived, whose aims are also universal rule....

Meticulously worked out, marvelously detailed, frightening, exciting, baffling, challenging, Dune will never let the reader go. A book as universal as time, brilliant in scope and dazzling in narrative style, Dune will be long discussed as the penultimate in writing of the distant future, the example of what can be done when a skilled writer turns his eyes forward into history rather than back.

love the (unintentional?)_mysterious foreshadowing of "the penultimate in writing of the distant future", v apropos.

the emperor isn't just emperor of a country-- well i should hope not

haha yeah that's some shitty writing

I always think its a mistake to say Ruler of the Universe - that's too big - a local supercluster maybe - the universe probably has trillions of planets that can support life! too many extras!

Also if water is so scarce on Dune and you have big fucking spaceships that can fold space just bring a bunch of water with you - Dasani

Ha, thank you d.l.h., that was exactly it.

Anyway, play the game! Though I suppose this should go on the other thread.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/dune-is-getting-a-tabletop-rpg-just-in-time-for-denis-1828355349

i like that shaddam's title implicitly but specifically leaves to barbarians and dissidents the realm of the unknown

I still have my copy of this one, it's not particularly fun though

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_0PJR9xmE9zE/TLpx6D7TzdI/AAAAAAAAAPw/5kCeKlk1U0I/s1600/dune_contents.jpg

ooh a combat wheel

It's pretty true to the books in terms of complexity and the amount of actual excitement it generates.

"When a challenge is made in a territory, combat takes the form of hidden bids with additional treachery cards to further the uncertainty."

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/121/dune

FRANK HERBERT'S DUNE RULES
FRANK HERBERT'S DUNE RULES
FRANK HERBERT'S DUNE RULES
FRANK HERBERT'S DUNE RULES

I do remember encountering the action figures in toystores and thinking they were shit

http://nerdbastards.com/2014/01/12/toys-we-miss-dune/

counterpoint:
http://www.dallasvintagetoys.com/images/products/detail/baronharkonnen0630.jpg

I like how is head is one skin-color and the rest of his skin is another color

LeGuin's Hainish Cycle books are an interesting contemporary with Herbert - a lot of similar weaving in of contemporary political and ecological concerns within a vast scale of galactic history, albeit without the overarching messiah framework and much more loosely related plot-wise. Definitely better written.

head is one skin-color and the rest of his skin is another color

not unlike our presidetn

I... had to do an image search and of course

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.boredpanda.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F12%2FPSMix_2016-12-01-12-17-52-584071207336c__700.jpg&f=1

omg

Moodles, having never played the game, its considered a classic of asymmetric multiplayer game design. Your copy may be the rarest edition (AH "Sting" cover (1984)), and copies in relatively good condition regularly sell for $130+.

I should start a bidding war on ebay

https://78.media.tumblr.com/e234b3e0a114bffa1cbfb852282da94b/tumblr_ovie1p1euH1tpdqt1o1_1280.jpg

OMG!

I suppose a lot of hebert's inspiration for Dune was the middle east and the spice is really crude oil

Also still sad thinking about how feces was processed in the thigh of the stillsuit - couldnt they just have taken a crap through a chute onto the desert sands? Gross Fremens!!

Uh, then the human poop would get mixed in with the spice (worm poop). Bad plan! Drink that shit!

Their feces belongs to the tribe!

pee is stored in the balls, faeces is processed in the thigh

this is canon

water discipline

usul is worth ten times his weight in poop

tell me of the waste treatment facilities on your homeworld, Usul

usul has called a big one!

irl lol

so they drink the processed pee in a straw from the suit - is there a compartment that produces snacks somewhere from the shit that they eat?

It makes protein bars for those long desert hikes

Fremen Bars

Stilbars, surely

Stilgars Bars

had never seen this movie before last night. i loved it, it looks so cool

Saw a big chunk (most since '84) in a bar (w/o sound) last night. Tot forgot Linda Hunt and Jose Ferrer were in it.

Very conventionally structured/edited. I'm amazed Lynch wanted to do it.

I can understand why he wanted to do it, but he never relinquished final cut again after his very negative experience with Dune. It's a shame because I'd love to see him do more sci fi. The new Twin Peaks had some of those elements, but I want more.

The space travel and various dream/spice vision sequences are the most obviously Lynchian in terms of editing.

I know he didn't have final cut, but then again I hate the novel.

A lot of the beet parts of the movie were things that weren't in the book at all. I re-read it recently, and was struck by how much Lynch added.

no doubt he leapt at the opportunity to work with toto

I love the way my old DVD of Dune looks. The non-anamorphic image is too wide at 16:9 so it's like you got to a packed cinema late and have had to sit right at the side, while the low resolution encoding gives it the grain of VHS. Perfect.

(Cross-posting from ILF which probably nobody reads.)

I've just now been reminded of a perfect story: friend of mine years back talked about the time she was watching this on TV with a friend, dropping acid, and eventually turning the volume down so they could play Dead Can Dance. (Why yes they were Total Fucking Goths.) Apparently right at a perfect moment when they were peaking, the DCD was particularly dramatic and some of the more mindblowingly weird visuals were onscreen, the roommate of the second friend came back and was being all loud and dumb, causing my friend to say "You shattered my crystal palace!" A phrase I immediately borrowed and have used since.

How have I never put it together that Stilgar was also Big Ed Hurley?

now any time I think of this movie my first thought turns to Patrick Stewart's Chapman Stick, with my second thought given over to his battle pug

Haha, the Stick is the best, with all its little glued on embellishments.

Makes sense that it was the only instrument to survive the Butlerian Jihad.

guys i am watching this for the first time

what fuck am i watching
https://giphy.com/gifs/dune-harkonnen-1aV5srMYOFkhVHCJvP

https://giphy.com/gifs/dune-harkonnen-1aV5srMYOFkhVHCJvP

An incredible cinematic achievement

some called it the "isthmus of history", because it was the infraction point of history, that scene

no one said anything in this entire thread about how that guild navigator ~pooped~ timetravel

you all owe me an apology

Entire series hinges on various creatures pooping things

dont sit there and act like that wasnt the stupidest thing you’ve ever seen

Stupid fresh

u_u

I don't care how bad this movie is, I love every stupid moment of it and will watch it over and over.

the experience of watching this makes my entire skeleton want to leave my body

Now that's folding space

I must not poop.
Poop is the mind-killer.
Poop is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my poop.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the poop has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

ok lol

highlight so far

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/16/6c/1a/166c1adeb5e18be8f55c1594d6e8fadd.jpg

oddly, as with the book, Veg your posts are making me really wanna watch this again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ7YZXeI54s

usul has called a big poop

Strictly speaking that's supposed to be the Guild Navigator's mouth -- however it looks -- so you could say he vomits space travel instead.

well you could’ve fooled me...

it was was prob a mistake to watch the movie so soon after reading the book

i did really like the inclusion of the Emperor & Reverend Mother at the beginning to save heavy lifting later on & there’s some great casting, like Von Sydow as Kynes & Linda Hunt as Mapes

but i’m baffled by the bizarre additions esp w the Harkonnens

Kyle McLachlan has the dumbest look on his face all the time, it’s like he was already prepping for Dougie even then. Which is maybe why he’s so good as Dougie & so bad as Paul

https://i1.wp.com/thegameofnerds.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/304-coop-thumbs-up-sonny-jim.gif?resize=540%2C250&ssl=1

and I am a fan of Lynch generally so i was expecting to enjoy it somewhat

it feels very choppy so it doesnt feel v Lynchian it also feels very forced & intense so it doesnt feel like Dune either

to me anyway

lynch has never made anything as terrible and terrifying as the baron. some have read that depiction as extremely homophobic, which i think is interesting and worthy of critique but i don't think it was intentional.

but the weirding modules

and yeah, as a whole the movie doesn't really work. but the fucked up parts stick in the craw of your mind forever. if i had the choice i'd probably go back in time and never see it because the baron really is a creature of nightmares.

and I am a fan of Lynch generally so i was expecting to enjoy it somewhat

it feels very choppy so it doesnt feel v Lynchian it also feels very forced & intense so it doesnt feel like Dune either

to me anyway

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, November 3, 2020 9:56 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago)

An astute observation and precisely why his name doesn't appear as director of the film any longer, replaced by Alan Smithee:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee

Are you gonna watch the Sci-Fi network miniseries vg?

iirc here was (is?) a fanmade supercut (with deleted scenes) that tried to salvage both pieces into something better...

I could be making this up, remnants of a feverdream...

Actually there are multiples!

https://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/7gcs67/dune_which_fan_cut_is_best/

i might investigate the syfy series - though that includes a sequel or two right? i havent read the sequels yet so that might be on the backburner

also lol the fucking weirding modules
SO DUMB

three-hour fan-cut here: https://disk.yandex.com/i/kciUCmMSiRhHS

one of them anyway

longer review upthread, short review it doesn't solve any of the problems (but there are more pugs and sirpatstew plays a steve hackett instrumental)

yeah i dont think a fan edit is going to solve Baron Harkonnen SHOUTING ALL HIS LINES and showering in blood

shouting is better than whispering (which there is much too much of)

true

when i was reading the book that was something that struck me - no matter how enticing the visuals may be, how on ~earth~ do you translate all that internal monologue into a film

whispered voiceover clearly not the answer lol

Thanks for posting that mark s!

his name doesn't appear as director of the film any longer

His name still appears on the theatrical version releases, just not on the extended TV version.

yeah but he'd take it off if he could - the TV version just enabled him to do so

Will never forget the day my day sat me down as a little boy and said "you like Star Wars right? Then trust me, you'll LOVE this" and pressed play on the Dune VHS. The fucker.

UGH "my dad", not my day.

wow - how old were you?

couldnt have been older than 12. but in that day, i aged a lifetime

hugs for u

pinterest is somehow being 12-yr-old one eye open's dad at me at the moment, it will not shut up abt dune

lol I had a similar experience. The first two movies my dad played on our first vcr were Star Wars and Dune. I mostly liked Dune tho, still do.

kind of sad but mostly lol @ One Eye

this movie rules

like if Flash Gordon but fuuuucked up

Ok I finished it - second half marginally better than the first half but still p much hot garbage

Alia using the voice on Rev Mother was worth the whole movie loooool that was hilar I died laughing

https://youtu.be/SpEyluHxD6o

she sounded like Linda Blair i was half hoping she’d tell the baron that his mother sucked cocks in hell

fwiw i first watched this having no clue whatsoever and a friend explaining things to me (iirc some theaters passed out cheat sheets?). ended up still having no clue, but there is pleasure in watching a cast of actually pretty good actors *all* go completely over the top

i mean they got the turkish jailer from midnight express to play rabban; that is incredible

'the servant waits while the shadout mapes'

some fared better than others
imo dean stockwell shit the bed completely

fair

really wonder who the also-rans for paul were

sting looked fuckin ace as feyd but idk if i liked his perf or not

oh no he was good

I remember being totally entranced the first time I saw it, probably on the sci-fi channel in the early 90s? I was already a fan of Tom Baker era Dr Who so the sketchy effects and affiliated silliness were all fine by by me. I remember finding young Kyle MacLachlan thoroughly striking and I thought his choice to not exhibit any feelings except extreme pain seemed appropriate to the role.

On subsequent viewings the trivial nonsense fades into the background but the EPIC nonsense rises to the occasion, and you find yourself doing fist pumps when they siege the fortress with sandworms and the guitars fly in on top of Eno’s theme. The duel with Sting is a great button on everything, bringing a galaxy-spanning conflict down to a one-on-one knife fight. And Kyle is way better looking than Sting, so of course he wins.

the only weak links were the characters who might, under different circumstances, have exhibited some nuance. i can't even blame kyle mcl, the ostensible hero, from succumbing when absolutely everyone else was chewing the sietchery

this is the scifi movie equivalent of Showgirls (NOT IN THE GOOD WAY) and yr all nuts

bringing a galaxy-spanning conflict down to a one-on-one knife fight.

a tip of the cap to A West Side Story (1961) starring Richard Beymer & Russ Tamblyn who Lynch would cast in Twin Peaks six years post-Dune.

c'mon no way kyle is better looking than sting

uhh he’s TOTALLY better looking than sting though?

they're both hot and both still hot imo

80’s sting is one thousand times hotter than mclachlan

sting = kelvin
mclachlan = some lower form of heat measurement

that’s a decent reason to not like the movie I guess.

feel bad for kyle but his chin/mouth is that of an unloved elderly great-aunt

i think maclachlan brings off paul well. the howdy doody uncanniness of his performance in the first half i think comes from (lynch, and) his being so much older than paul is in the book at that point. he is playing a sheltered teenage princeling and always seems to be simultaneously taking everything extremely seriously and grinning like an idiot. nothing rly lands on him, until it does. the miniseries, which also has a paul who is too old, tries instead to convey his coming-of-age by making him start out pissy and rebellious, which is the wrong kind of callow for paul i think.

anyway, for me somehow the single most ridiculous thing in the movie is when paul's talking textbook shouts at him THE BARON HAS SWORN TO MURDER THE DUKE AND STEAL HIS DUCAL SIGNET RING FOR HIMSELF!!!!!!

i love that we are discussing this right now. so much

have to say, book or movie, pretty weak shit relying on yueh's conditioning being unbreakable. i mean everyone in the galaxy knew the whole thing was a trap, maybe examine your fucking priors thufir howat

you'll make a formidable duke!

mookie otm

put this on the fortune cookie slip in my ashes

i mean everyone in the galaxy knew the whole thing was a trap, maybe examine your fucking priors thufir howat

mclachlan’s Paul goes through NO tangible changes in character except that his eyes go blue and he frowns (slightly). Oh and he yells.

he is meant to go from inquisitive teen to stone cold uncaring junior despot & the only way the movie achieves that is making it windier &!adding more Toto guitar shredding to the soundtrack

sure, but

Oh and he yells.

lol a big moment!

yr not wrong prob but as tombot indicates wind and toto isn't nothing. anyway his awkward kid scenes are dear to me by themselves.

well speaking of dear to me, full disclosure: my preferred fan edit is the "alternative edition redux", by "spicediver". (cuts most of the voiceover!)

Paul goes through NO tangible changes in character except that his eyes go blue and he frowns (slightly)

pretty sure this was by design, unfortunately. (tbf, i can imagine the toto-enhanced paul-comes-to-terms-with-stuff, mostly athwart-sean-young, being extremely bad)

in this movie, yeah probably

i think maclachlan brings off paul well

😏

fnar

I may be reliving childhood trauma but the performances in this are all so bad, lol. Its incredible to watch some of the scenes and imagine someone going "cut, print, great take, i think we got it".

I know the line on this one is that Lynch was under pressure from the producers and didnt have final cut and etc etc, but a lot of the problems with this fall squarely on Lynch imo - his awful script, bad casting, performers seem completely undirected and lost at sea. The best thing about it is that it prevented Lynch from doing Return of the Jedi instead.

I wish david lynch had directed every star wars movie

bcz then there'd only be one, hurriedly "completed" two-thirds in -- plus all all jedis wd have insanely vast eyebrows and there'd be no fkn robots

lynch did the butlerian jihad, this is canon

this film is awesome wtf is wrong with some of you?

if anything there's isn't *enough* whispering

Lynch's Jedi would've been awesome imho. remember that he'd only have been taking up the Richard Marquand role --- storyboarding and directing the dialogue scenes while Lucas led up the setpieces/VFX. (at least, this is the reading i have on that film's production.) so like, same basic beats, but maybe some more oomph and creepiness around the edges --- i like to imagine more of the nightmare cave vibe from Empire. hypothetically he could have even exerted some influence on the shape of the story - e.g. one can project all kinds of hopes on a diff director to fix Han and Leia's lack of much to do.

maayyyybe... but for me, with Dune as a test case, i would not say that influencing the shape the story and directing the dialogue scenes were two things that Lynch exactly excelled at there

i felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and then whispered non-stop thru the rest of the picture

i will never shut up abt the whispering

xp
(roy orbison song)

It's very uneven but I kind of love this film. Kyle looks extraordinary, as does quite a few others (call me uncultured but I honestly had no idea until recently that Sting was considered hot in this). The sets are amazing. Jack Nance is hilarious.

It's probably my favorite space opera film, faint praise I know. Original Star Wars trilogy is so ubiquitous that I find it hard to assess them and have no desire to see them again, so Empire Strikes Back might be better. I've still never seen Flash Gordon and I probably should.

Oh yes, you most certainly should

you should

Yes you should.

[Ming the Mercilless appears]

YOU HAVE THRICE SUMMONED ME

this thread is beautiful

Amazing that Max von Sydow was in Flash Gordon, Dune, AND Star Wars.

AND Strange Brew

aka Canadian Star Wars

Flash Gordon was my friend's get stoned and repeatedly watch movie in the Summer of 1992 and I probably saw it about 27 times.

hash gordon

I have a deep abiding fondness for Flash Gordon that I do not yet share for Dune

u need to to see it 26 more times iirc

Dune is the only good Lynch movie, and Brian Blessed in Flash Gordon puts in a tour de force performance!

he earned his wings

theory: if Dune is yr fave Lynch movie then imo perhaps you do not actually like Lynch

xp as a guy who thinks alien 3 is the only good fincher movie i respect that take

well I used to like a few of his when I was younger but they have haven't aged well with me, but tbf I haven't aged well either!

lol fair

Dune was the only one I saw at the cinema when I was 13 and it was quite a trip. The mawkish Elephant Man pisses me off these days. I saw Blue Velvet so many times I don't know what to think - the rest just sort of blur together and go on too long!

The Straight Story is pure tedium

If Kiarostami had made a version The Straight Story it would have been good!

these posts are causing me physical pain

nah Straight Story I great as is! I mean it's very "inspirational family story" but it's one of the most human and thoughtful entries i've ever seen in that genre. saw it on the big screen early this year and was really touched.

*is great as is

it's no Lawnmower Man

i smell challops

sorry, I've had a few!

Straight Story might be my fav Lynch, lol

straight story is the only one of his films I haven't seen and it sounds right up my alley. might torrent it the night.

I don't like this film, which I saw two decades before reading the book, which I loved.

i am reereading dune messiah which i shall later challops as better than dune, which it also in fact is (and wd be a good film)

dune iii: i am methuselah wormboy ? better still

in the shadow of young worms in blow

xp as a guy who thinks alien 3 is the only good fincher movie i respect that take

until a few months ago, Alien 3 and The Game were the only Finchers I'd seen

now I've seen the assembly cut of Alien 3 and yeah it's probably the only good one

alien 3 is also the only good alien film

you've got to love Brian Glover giving it some with his transatlantic Barnsley accent in Alien 3. When he is shouting: Sit the fook down!

a prison planet dull of the scum of the galaxy = they are almost all brits

full, dull, bull, cull

= they are almost all brits

they are mostly the cast of Withnail & I

does this thread just give everyone bad opinions or

Zodiac is the best Fincher wtf with this Alien 3 bullshit

and Alien is the best Alien movie I HATE THIS THREAD

You have so many right opinions, it's jarring to see youso wrong about Dune!

Veg 2024: Right on Everything, Right on Dune

Aliens is the best alien film. 80s Jim Cameron 4eva

^^^ think that’s where i am tbh.

ffs VG otmfm itt

lol at VG getting trolled by mark's main schtick

Alien > Aliens > Alien (novelty alt cut) >>> Aliens (director's cut) > Alien: Resurrection (alt cut) > A:R (theatrical) > Alien³ (assembly cut) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Spaceballs >>>>>>> Alien³

thank u

no PROMETHEUS no credibility

also I recently watched the Prometheus sequel (after completely forgetting I'd seen it before!) and it was so bad, Prometheus just makes me want to root for the aliens.

Like the film that is its namesake, this thread has become a journey beyond reason, beyond imagination, that is also a mixed up zany mess

Alien: Resurrection is a skidmark on the universe I can't wash away

let’s get back to how Dune movie is terrible & there is clearly issues w latent lead poisoning among positive respondents

I recenlty rewatched the film, and the two dune series, and I thought they were all pretty good.

Alien Resurrection is a) about as decent and fun as a fourth installment in Hollywood non-creator IP servicing can be relied on to be, and b) totally as well as you could expect a Jeunet & Caro experiment with Hollywood (on their third feature!) to go

Perlman + Pinon (continue to) make a good team, the Winona vs Sigourney emo tension plays, the underwater chase is dope, shrug emoji

Alien > Aliens > Aliens3 and I haven't seen the rest.

also that year Hoyts were doing super-cheap Tuesdays so a group of like 12 of us saw Alien: Resurrection and Spice World* as an ersatz double feature for less than the price of one film

* #thespicemustflow

lol way to get back on topic

the best Dune film tbh

although they could have pulled a plug out of Meat Loaf's chest and danced in the fountain of blood that resulted

the A:R underwater chase is 11 / 10, rest of film is –9 / 10, net score 2/10
Also I recently rewatched Dune via the surprisingly great German bluray I picked up in a thrift store here, all of the effects looked SO MUCH BETTER than every other version I've seen, and the film was still a hot mess, perhaps more revelatory of its director's psyche than even Jodorowsky's would have been. It's ghastly and great and I love it.

Winona vs Sigourney emo tension

also v good to have female-focused emotional arcs at the centre of the film after the general masculinity of the male/female cast first two, and 99% dry male cast of #3

David Lynch's Dune: good? bad? would be a fun poll imo

i shudder to think at the result

fear is etc

lol

I remember as a kid being surprised that he was giving the 'fear...' speech from the Earthworm Jim cartoon.

https://youtu.be/FML9u0W8G98?t=31

sic otm: A:R is disposable but very watchable - it's really the only "catch it on cable and keep watching despite commercials" movie in the series. and the cast, and all the jeunet designy stuff, are really fun imo.

It really bugs me that I can't seem to find an explanation for the Doctor and his brief excursion into beat poetry when he's treating the Baron, "Put the pick in there, Pete, and turn it 'round real neat."

"catch it on cable and keep watching despite commercials": no this is alien3 sorry if this offends

the Alien 3 assembly cut is decent though it drags, the most interesting aspect to me was how warm the usually dastardly Charles Dance's presence was, and how much it alters the mood of the movie when he gets got

I appreciate a lot of things about Alien3 but its ability to hold my attention when frequently interrupted by detergent and car-insurance ads is not one of them. for me personally! it's such a mood piece, and a very specific mood at that. Resurrection is like channelsurfing into Demolition Man or something.

i feel like DAVID LYNCH'S DUNE would also pass this test btw but i cannot say that i have ever noticed it in any cable listings ever

first half maybe, second half is simultaneously too compressed and too draggy

Dune would definitely be improved by watching it as a long basic cable sunday afternoon showing with lots of commercials. Possibly with "popup video" style trivia blurbs popping up occasionally.

it's no Lawnmower Man

― calzino, Wednesday, November 4, 2020 5:09 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

lol, brutal

popup-video-style trivia blurbs but they're all quotations from the princess irulan's histories of mau'dib

might substantially improve the film, if i'm honest. more expository narration! more lost internal monologue!

If lead poisoning facilitates recognition of teh awesomeness of Dune we have to ask, is lead poisoning really all bad?

you haven't watched lynch's dune until you've watched it on whippits

i definitely see how that would help

you haven't watched lynch's dune until you've watched it on whippits

― @oneposter(✔️) (Karl Malone), Thursday, November 5, 2020 9:43 AM (one minute ago)

whippets or pugs?

you haven't watched lynch's dune unless you are a dog on whippits

all Alien movies are good except for the AvP ones which are actually Predator movies and not judged as Alien product

i remember 3 or 4 being pretty bad but i can never remember which one it is. i think the david fincher one.

3 is fincher and very dark and orangey-brownish. prison planet, charles dance, charles s. dutton, shaved-head ripley.

4 is jeunet and much brighter and greener. winona ryder, dan hedaya, ron perlman, weird clone hybrid alien.

can we put a pin in this alien derail & go back to Dune

the spice must flow

I might have said it upthread but what I like about the sets so much is that everything looks so heavy and you hardly ever see that, love seeing that big container being rolled into the room and it looks like it weighs tons. Just gives everything more presence and reality when people actually build proper sets for films, money well spent.

yeah that Navigator traincar thing was p dope

can we put a pin in this alien derail & go back to Dune

"everyone please talk about this movie that you like and I hate!"

i hate derails more than i hate Dune movie

they pushed that big container thing into the room on de rails

Need a gif of Jack Nance working that contraption (what was it?), I love that

xpost SUGGEST BAN

if steampunk actually looked like this movie instead of fucking pocketwatches and stovepipe hats I'd have gone that way.
On that note does burning man ever have Dune shit out there because that'd be tite.

steampunk needs more pustules

steampustule

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpkfjDAF-Ks

Just a still, not the gif unfortunately
https://www.agonybooth.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/dune1984.0803.jpg

I think he’s playing semuta music, but I don’t know the name of the thing

this is finally getting a high quality 4K UHD release via Arrow Video at the end of August, pre-order is available now

Arrow had teaser flyers for tucked in their new releases like a year ago so I knew this was coming but still: yessssss

Indeed! Here's a link to the region free UHD in particular

https://arrowfilms.com/product-detail/dune-limited-edition-uhd/FCD2175

'Indeed!' is a big trouble reference; get it straight ned

See here, you

4K UHD versions are shipping now

I've still never seen Flash Gordon and I probably should.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, November 4, 2020 8:14 PM (nine months ago)
Oh yes, you most certainly should

― Mr. Cacciatore (Moodles), Wednesday, November 4, 2020 8:20 PM (nine months ago)
you should

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, November 4, 2020 8:23 PM (nine months ago)

Yes you should.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, November 4, 2020 8:23 PM (nine months ago)

Aside from the automatic spectacle of Blessed, I'm sorry to say it didn't do much for me. The documentary about the aborted Roeg version was pretty good though.

like if Flash Gordon but fuuuucked up

― sound of scampo talk to me (El Tomboto), Wednesday, 4 November 2020 01:40 (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

on uk netflix now and tombot otm - at least as a way of appreciating some of its more outré moments. not going to hash over any of the particularly good or bad decisions made except when i saw the standard bearers running into battle, and then patrick stewart carrying the pug, i thought 'lol you all deserve to die'.

why is gen x like a dromedary
because we came of age between two dunes
(needs some work)

lol

As posted by Chaki

This was the wrap gift for the crew in Lynch's Dune. pic.twitter.com/qnGA9zijbr

— Chaki (@ChakiFunkWizard) January 21, 2022

This piece of shit

I'm reluctant to watch the new one just because I don't want to be so disappointed yet again.

what's wrong with you? they are both ace!

I saw the Lynch version when it came out. I was enraged. He made a mockery of the book.

or improved upon it?

Only problem is the abrupt wrap up montage

It's even very abrupt in the extended cut - but what can you do

The tooth, The Tooth, THE TOOTH!

Rewatched this on Netflix back in December and although I know they tailor the selection image based on your DNA (or whatever) I couldn't understand why they were using a pic of RABBON for the first few weeks.

(RABBAN!)

rewatching the the normal cut of this grand and very silly movie

TS: running into battle armed with some giant flags vs. running into battle armed with a pug.

amazingly (i had forgotten this) the guild navigator closes the grand opening scene info-dump -- where he arrives in a MASSIVE BLACK TANK ENGINE with 30 acolytes sweeping the floor round him -- by saying "i did not say this! i am not here!"

https://c.tenor.com/QAZBtFY78eEAAAAC/you-aint.gif

noting mentat eyebrows in that gif

now I’m imagining the navigator saying “this week, I are be mostly wearing … ISSEY MIYAKE!”

paul (sleeping): "arrakis! dune! desert planet!"
feyd-rautha (grinning): "i will kill you!"
paul (sleeping, excited ): "THE SECOND MOON!"

is the fact of a second moon ever mentioned again or even slightly plot-relevant?

muad'dib is the second moon of arrakis, named after the shadow of a mouse on its surface, no?

... but other than him picking that name, no.

oh fair enough, i will look out for the callback

in the meantime:
https://us.v-cdn.net/6030345/uploads/editor/on/z9dpy6c2lk3r.jpg

god i love this tremendously goofy movie

it has nearly no momentum at all (every exciting scene broken up by three difft ppl whispering at themselves)

In that respect it is true to life.

[chapman stick solo]

a thousand chapman stick solos are not enough for levin

lol jessica actually says this line (re yueh) exactly as they reach safety with the signet ring and the stillsuits

seems a bit ungrateful!

(in the book it's like a children's song after paul becomes emperor, quoted in one of irulan's histories)

a million publications are not enough for princess irulan

callback klaxon: the second moon is again discussed (in whispers)

stillsuit noseplug fremen are like
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6f/The_Wizard_of_Oz_Bert_Lahr_1939.jpg/220px-The_Wizard_of_Oz_Bert_Lahr_1939.jpg

i think this may have the highest exposition-action ratio of any film made

fremen will literally expound the narrative instead of going to therapy

shaddam iv: "bring in the floating fat man -- the duke!"
not quite sure why this^^^ description needed qualifying, but i guess it does suggest quite what dopes the padishah emperor has surrounded himself by

― mark s, Saturday, 17 September 2016 10:29 (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

fremen will literally expound the narrative instead of going to therapy

BREAK!!!!!!!!

Yes please. Like, immediately.

https://nerdist.com/article/oral-history-of-david-lynch-dune-masterpiece-in-disarray-max-evry/

would read

"In our modern era of cookie cutter blockbusters, Dune stands as a glorious oddity worthy of reconsideration."

No it doesn't, fuck you.

True, it's simply a classic film that should be studied and used as the basis for an exciting new era of Lynchian sci-fi blockbusters.

I suddenly have the feeling I have lived too long.

to be clear, i hate the movie but i would absolutely read about the making of it

"Ridley's out. Who else we got?"

there are some amazing, memorable bits from it

I don’t think the producers gave Lynch the support he needed, having not tackled anything of that scale, and it shows. but the visuals, casting, and scenes that work are cool

And just an update that the oral history is now out and my copy arrived today, looks amazing. Direct order link:

https://www.1984publishing.com/bookstore/a-masterpiece-in-disarray-david-lynchs-dune-an-oral-history

!

https://www.wired.com/story/david-lynch-dune-sequel-script-unearthed/

"bring in the floating fat man -- the duke! "

Yes yes but this story I've linked.

Coming back to theaters!

https://www.fathomevents.com/events/dune-40th-anniversary/

Enjoy Sting's jockstrap in full!

New sales guy at my office is named Feyd-Rautha Rabinowitz, so I know what you mean

― mick signals, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 02:55 (five years ago) link

i am wondering how feyd-rautha rabinowitz is currently doing

oh, i see, that post was a jape following a post about the shadout mapes

"Japin' With The Mapes"

just a little shadout to all my mapes in tha house

Did not know this!

Frank Herbert was literally there in 1984 https://t.co/01okcAKwdP pic.twitter.com/7bweOzzoxH

— Motion Picture Potion Mixer (@mopipomixer) March 17, 2024

the servant waits while the shadout mapes

Did I write a piece for the latest issue of The Wire? I did:

https://www.thewire.co.uk/issues/486

Did I discuss Dune? Indeed I did.

Did I become likely the first person in the history of the magazine to seriously discuss the work of Toto as a result? Probably!

So for Mother's Day I took my mother the Bene Gesserit to see this. I'm not sure what sort of pregaming is necessary to make this...thing...work, and I wasn't prepared. I will say that the palaces are stunning--Senso as space opera, befitting the multiple De Laurentiises (De Laurentii?) in the opening credits.

"Homophobic" is not the word I would use; "homoerotic" is much more fitting. I don't associate that with Lynch, but I could be wrong.

From the beginning I said that Twin Peaks would have been better as a miniseries, giving the story and characters time and space to develop towards a definite conclusion. I think Lynch's Dune also would have been better in a miniseries format, but Lynch never really did decisive conclusions.

i: someone on BSKY is currently arguing at me that a plot hole untackled by herbert and also by villeneuve (= why did shaddam iv want to end the atreides?) is handily solved by the WEIRDING MODULES
ii: has veg grrl learned to love this movie (which i will hotly defend against all haters but never not mock to stans)?
iii: alien3 is the only good alien movie

My impression from the books and Villeneuve film is that the Atreides were getting too big for their britches and becoming a threat to his supremacy. They were seen as a popular leader that the various houses could rally behind. Of course, having a super-weapon would help with this.

The weirding modules were one of the better original ideas from the film and were the source of the dopest DnB samples

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4PeZ6YsbQ8

Yeah that’s how the books frame it. Still begs the question why he’d put the house into Arrakis as saviours if he was trying to take them down.

Rewatched this last year after the second Villeneuve movie. I didn't exactly "like" it more than previously — it's still just a mess, the narrative is rushed and incoherent, and unlike Villeneuve I get no sense of Lynch engaging with the material beyond a superficial skim. But it does have a lot of striking visuals and some good (or at least compelling) performances. And as a contrast to Villeneuve's somewhat portentous stateliness, it is pleasantly technicolor and bonkers. It'll always feel like vestigial Lynch to me, but vestigial Lynch is still Lynch.

the superweapon would help yes (tho herbert's version is that the unleashed fanaticism of the fremen's love of maud'dib is the actual super-weapon)

either way shaddam doesn't know they have such a weapon until long after it's too late

one of many weaknesses in the book is that landsraad politics is all tell no show: the atreides are being given arrakis (and its spice revenues) as a gift demonstrating great favoura that's also a poisoned chalice, while the harkonnens are being demoted yet at another more intricate level etc etc

(a fun element in many of herbert's books that's often also extremely laboured and boring is where a conversation is afterwards picked apart in "what did he really mean by that" mode -- FH is of course correct that high diplomacy and palace intrigue are full of such stff but he's not exactly lawrence fkn durrell so

many xposts to mark s

i can appreciate the movie as an oddity & i dig some of the visuals, music etc but if we’re talking purely as a Dune adaptation then my answer is still firmly no lol

more glaring plot hole (to me) in every version is that the atreides *absolutely knew* taking control of arrakis was a trap and did essentially nothing to prepare for it other than whispering vague shit about 'desert power'

'oh the emperor ordered them to' well are you a strong voice in the landsraad or would you prefer to put your head in a vice *and* make your former allies hate you for your 'good fortune'

the harkonnens were clearly mismanaging arrakis and running out of time; why not just say no thanks jose ferrer (loved u in the caine mutiny btw!)

and okay, a million deaths are not enough for yueh, but *everything else* went wrong too and now everyone has to milk cats

completely unserious House

it's been a long time since I read the book, but IIRC it wasn't clear that it was a trap in the sense of "Sardaukar gonna kill everybody", right? might have been more of a strategic play that would see the Atreides lose their power over a longer time period.

but leto was basically accepting death from the start by giving his signet ring to paul! like a sucka! there was never any sense of 'we're gonna make this work'

A recurring theme throughout the books is knowing exactly what is going to happen, but having to let it play out because there's no escaping fate.

agreed, but i find it unconvincing

(and uninteresting)

it's called suk medical conditioning bcz it suks

Dune is STar Wars if Luke turned out evil

Star… Worm?

Worms even!

Luke the Hut

counterpoint: Star Wars is Dune if Paul Atreides was inherently “good”

always check in when vg posts in case she's come round on this silly whispering eyebrowed masterpiece

I mean they literally do the sandworm in Star Wars already. Oh but hey anyone else ever notice the pain box is completely lifted for Phantasm? They even roughly quote Dune and say "Fear is the killer" or something like that.

and before you nip at me yes I'm taking about Return of the Jedi.

phantasm is abt what happens to you when you join a fandom

I never understood how Luke was supposed to be the Qwitazch hadderach but in the STar Wars sequels it seemed like everything sucked in the univere, hardly a golden age Luke brought

also princesss irulan v princess leia

xp

but was it better or worse than the cosmic genocide that Paul ushered in?

As mentioned back in 2012, David Lynch was asked by George Lucas to direct Jedi, but perhaps anticipating that he would been supervised to within an inch of his life Lynch turned the job down. Whatever his faults Dino De Laurentiis was at least willing to allow his directors to squander huge amounts on money.

Still, I would pay good money to see Lynch's Jedi. Just as there's a Jodorowsky's Dune. I imagine a film in which Darth Vader graphically crushes Moff Jerjerrod's head into a pulp while Jerjerrod screams in pain and fear, Jabba the Hutt is played by Dean Stockwell with a neat little moustache, and the ending involves the Emperor (Dennis Hopper) trying to force Luke Skywalker to eat creamed corn. Yoda's dying words would be "death bag, catch you he will". Jabba's band would be played by The B-52s. Admiral Ackbar would be a home-made prop composed of animal body parts. The film would single-handedly be responsible for the PG-13 certificate.

"Okay", said Han, "I want you to plant the detonators behind the control console. The control console on the table next to the hyperwave decoder. The hyperwave decoder that is currently decoding a transmission from the fleet. The one beside the power regulator. The one that the Imperials recently moved away from the plotting table. Not the smaller console, the bigger one. The black one. Plant the charges there."

excellent vision. I was recenlty thinking how can anyone take star wars seriously when admiral ackbar exists, our rubbery squid man

I also like to imagine that there exists, somewhere in the cosmic consciousness, Verhoeven's Jedi. It would be an R-rated take on the franchise in which the broad details of the opening scenes are similar, but Princess Leia's gold bikini is considerably smaller, and there's much more lapdancing. The behind-the-scenes featurette would explain in great detail how the puppeteers achieved the scene where Leia bites off Jabba's spaghetti-filled cock. Han would infiltrate the shield bunker by using an Imperial officer as a human shield. There would be periodic inserts of Imperial propaganda films. Darth Vader would be played by Michael Ironside.

Or alternatively there's Cronenberg's Jedi where the entire film is shot in Toronto, doubling as an alien planet, and it turns out that the Emperor isn't real - he's just a series of video recordings - and it all ends with a psychic battle between Luke and Darth in which all the veins on Mark Hammill's face explode and his eyes melt, but he can still see.

Godard's Jedi, where the whole film is stop-motion-animated using actual Star Wars toys, as a critique of commercial film-making. Etc.

My Dinner With Greedo

"You know, Greedo, when I was young all I thought about was art and music. Now I'm 36 and I just think about money."
"Chaski nya wich-yootzoo, Solo. Chaski nya."
"Everybody talks about how they want to leave Mos Eisley. They say they want to go somewhere else. But they never do. They just stick around. Sometimes I wonder if this place is a giant camp, constructed by the inmates, and we are the guards. I want you to give this to Jabba. It's the seed of a gloam tree. From the planet Gloam. It can move around. I want you to take it to Jabba and tell him-"

I got that bit of Greedo's dialogue from this transcription of the cantina scene, posted to Usenet in 1992:
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.arts.sf.starwars/c/3QPh3H2RsKY?pli=1

The discussion's final post is strangely melancholic, because they had so much hope back then:

>>What I heard a while back is that Lucas is waiting for computer technology
>>to get to where he wants it before starting on anymore SW trilogies.
>>
>>My hope/guess is he won't need wait that much longer (if T2 is any
>>indication).

Han Solo = Duncan Idaho