A thread about the Denis Villeneuve-helmed reboot of DUNE

the movie sort of hints that the atreides are justly popular and admired, but the harkonnens aren't just brilliant and cruel but extraordinarily rich (and likely have their own huge base of support) and have been manipulating the spice market instead of handing it all over to the emperor and the guild, i guess?? or something?

like youre all thats crazy the space witch is just going to kill the heir to a major house what, then you realize its just some cool shit

on the other hand a brief perusal of history will confirm that during the era where there were monarchs and great houses they were constantly doing completely insane bloody schemes

but also maybe the witch was just bluffing, feel like that might be overthinking it tho is what im saying

maybe lynch was the perfect director for this impressionistic intrigue, too bad they didnt give him three movies to do it

what spoils the lynch version is DL's very evident dislike of sand

and catamites

Tolkien stated “I dislike DUNE with some intensity,” but he did not give a reason why

^^^found in quora while looking for answers to questions ITT

lol drama

sand must play havoc with those old bolexes

Now that I think about it, I'm not sure I remember any sand in Lord of the Rings.

or catamites

My only major disappointment with this film is the lack of "mood is a thing for cattle and loveplay."

"im in the mood (for cattle)"

this known universe needs a jihad

https://c.tenor.com/O9fwyX_poqkAAAAC/joker-jack.gif

i never really got why the most important planet in the universe is handed over to feudatories to run instead of being held by the imperial house directly. lagoon otm

The Emperor dirty his hands with mere COMMERCE? Tsk.

guild wouldn't allow it

bc the emperor controls like 56% of CHOAD or whatever and the landsraad holds the rest and control of the fiefdom of arrakis is a power-sharing compromise

guild is definitely who keeps arrakis obscure and unknown, this is explicitly noted

why doesn't the guild seize the monopoly themselves? bcz they peeked the future and saw it held catastrophe

their best bet is putting pressure on emperor and landsraad to enact "insane bloody schemes"™️ at one another

guild is definitely who keeps arrakis obscure and unknown, this is explicitly noted

Wait so the general galactic public doesn't know spice comes from there?

lol i just read a thread on a wikifan site where various contributors were screaming at one another abt how much or how little is generally known abt spice

it sometimes gets called "geriatric spice", which i guess does suggest that routine public knowledge abt its uses is limited

Tolkien stated “I dislike DUNE with some intensity,” but he did not give a reason why

man you're supposed to skip over writing political economy entirely, not half-ass it!

maybe JRR just hated his language. "kwisatz haderach" is some clunky shit.

kwisatz durbatulûk, kwisatz gimbatul

i always assumed that chakobsa was some native american tribe or tongue but no:

Chakobsa is a Northwest Caucasian (NWC) language (possibly in the Circassian subgroup), also called "shikwoshir" or the "hunting language". It was originally a secret language used only by the princes and nobles, and is still used by their descendants. Jacob Reineggs (1796, p. 248) was the first to record any Chakobsa: a list of 19 words. Though the overall appearance of these words seems to be NWC, they have no cognates in any language of that family or any other. In the Bzhedug dialect of Adyghe the language is called /šʿˊakʾ°abza/, literally "hunting language" (/šʿˊakʾ°a/ "hunting" + /bza/ "language"); the modern name "Chakobsa" is based on an earlier form of the word, */čʿˊakʾ°abza/. An informant has asserted that Chakobsa is based on Circassian, encrypted by reordering words and changing phonemes, rather like Pig Latin but more complex. Although not yet confirmed, this seems a reasonable hypothesis.[1]

"rather like Pig Latin but more complex"

top work there frank, no wonder tolkien was disdainful

more: https://languagehat.com/chakobsa/

cmon i think we all know why tolkien didnt like dune, lets just say the man is not a fan of jihad

FH shd have called them sandwyrms

Wait so the general galactic public doesn't know spice comes from there?

They know, but the unknown/obscure part is due to a massive bribe the Fremen pay the Guild to basically say "Yeah we've checked around Arrakis and there are some tribesmen but it's mostly just sand and worms, plus weird storms." In the meantime the Fremen are all 'Okay our generations-long ecological conversion project can continue unhindered.'

and the guild keeps the planet satellite free as part of that, the bribe is paid in blackmarket spice iirc

since the top layer of known space is is feuding space feudalism plus the super-secretive navigators guild plus the bene gesserit plus no computers (so no google or wikipedia) i'm guessing the ordinary galactic citizen is actually p poorly informed abt spice or indeed anything else

the jihad will have been a shock to them

paul keeps saying "arrakis! dune! desert planet!" to himself, "desert power" is actually an improvement on this device imo

I watched the lynch one last night & I swear they say “desert power” in that as well so is that not from the book?

The other question I have about the new one after watching the old one is: at this point in the story should we not have seen GUILD NAVIGATOR by now?

there is some suggestion (viz by max read) that the gathered fellows in golden helmets with occluded visors were extremely guild-adjacent

we don't see one in the books until dune messiah (he's called edric)

these lads:
https://i.imgur.com/NnCuNkx.jpg

last year one of the design people who worked with Villeneuve said he designed a guild navigator but confirmed it won't show up till Dune 2 because he wanted to make the story smaller to do it justice.

Yeah having the Guild Navigator appear in the story strictly out of the gate was a Lynch decision. There's a couple of Guild folks at the end of the first book but aside from heavy spice addiction per their deep blue eyes they're otherwise human.

"Desert power" as a phrase is in the book.

So those would be like the guys who wheel the big tank in and mop up the stuff. I’m all about those kinds of bits

I had this weird book of alien concept art as a kid called Barlowe's Guide to Extra-Terrestrials, the Guild Steersman was in it, and this is what I had in my head for years, even before I saw the Lynch movie -

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a7/32/50/a73250f6dfc97f9261120789a5b314eb.jpg

man i spent hours flipping thru that at B Dalton as a kid

speaking of kids

https://kotaku.com/dune-s-timothee-chalamet-was-once-an-xbox-youtuber-1847946368

the gathered fellows in golden helmets with occluded visors were extremely guild-adjacent

I assumed they were guild navigators 'in training' - still recognizably human but in the process of mutating - their helmets keeping them immersed in spice gas.

smoke spice every day

The Guild Navigator scene in the Lynch version always made me laugh. Those guys in the long plastic outfits with large squee-gees cleaning up whatever that icky watery residue is on the floor left after the capsule reverses out the door, but not actually doing it properly at all, so weird.

I actually kinda love that touch. Like they care...but not really.

A love touch?

I just view that whole scene as whatever it is they are doing is simply incomprehensible to our primitive brains