A thread about the Denis Villeneuve-helmed reboot of DUNE

Finally got to watch this Saturday night, I liked it quite a bit. There probably could have been 20 minutes shaved off, mostly in the slo-motion dream sequences, but the set design was fantastic. Watched it with my 10 year-old, who loved it - especially the 'thopters and the way they showed the shields, and my wife, who (with no previous experience with the book or the 1984 version) found it confusing, but mostly enjoyable.

Had fun with this but still really hard for me to turn my brain off during sci-fi battles in any franchise where insane technology exists but people still fight and die in battle where they should just use robots/drones or whatever. It's one of those things I can't get over. That hang up goes further than the super common "why swords" question specific to Dune, and even accepting that premise there is no logical answer to "ok but why not also have sufficient armor under the shields"? But the overall human/alien soldiers logic issue, no matter how much fun sci-fi battles are, is such a discrepancy it drives me nuts.

people still fight and die in battle where they should just use robots/drones or whatever

Robots = a.i. = the Dune universe's big no-no.

Why not? I'm new to it all tbh.

Also it could be remote controlled robots (drone robots). All the actual soldiers working from home, mouse & keyboard FPS robot army.

computers and a.i. are banned in dune because of a bad thing that happened long ago

also people fight with swords because dune universe scientists designed a shield that causes a nuclear explosion if it were to be hit by a laser

Which in the movie makes the two laser uses kinda...dicey? Like how were the Sardaukar sure that anyone on the other side of that door wasn't shielded? They had just fought and killed a guy who was!

(Obv I'm well aware they have lasers in the books, but they're always clear about limited/specific use because of that minor potential issue.)

-Thanks

-Right I've heard the nuclear explosion thing but I was going beyond that to ask "ok but why not also have sufficient armor under the shields", but I haven't seen a good answer. Usually the real answer is "look, accept that there isn't a good explanation, it was an attempt to write a sci-fi universe that also has sword fighting for some reason and it's not perfect" and sure, fine. So I might as well apply that acceptance to the entire genre (in regards to my why-soldiers-at-all frustration), but it still bothers me because everything else about the universes of these franchises are so thought through, and we have to ignore this big genre plot hole in order to keep space battles as exciting as possible and for no other good reason.

xxxp

no matter how much fun sci-fi battles are

Battles are always the most boring parts of these films to me

The shields in the lynch version are cool, & it’s kinda classic that you don’t actually see them used at all after that one training scene (iirc, my mind wanders in the battle scenes because see above)

there's some brief shield action during the Harkonnen attack, but not much

I like it when Big Dunc just yells at a bunch of lads and they back off looking disinterested and not very up for it

haha, I noticed this. No one really wanted to deal with him getting on that 'thopter.

Had to check i hadnt wandered into the prem league thread for a sec tbh

everything else about the universes of these franchises are so thought through

citation needed lol

Well, they are literal universes, so there generally is a lot of detail to establish! A lot of worlds building you know.

m y guess is that herbert was resting a heavy foot on the idea that you wouldn't get the feudal structure he was interested in here with a post-feudal battle technology -- and then treating spaceships as if they were even less of a technological disruption than sailing ships were in the 1500s (which is a massive handwave, but i guess the "known space" get-out clause ensures they're not encountering unknown diseases or the economic chaos that the discovery of the new world created)

the various forbiddings (no computers, no robots, no atomics) are world-bulding axioms that don't need explanation in themselves -- imagine a far-future universe which once had these and now doesn't and we're not going to say why, you have to imagine that

I mean if you quibble here what movies do you actually get through, is my question

the practice of SF is "let's see what we get when we propose this and ban that"

what movies you get is what you're finding out

a thing i found out from rereading the wormbook is the perhaps unstartling fact that a person in a stillsuit entering a normal room absolutely stinks lol

the smelly jihad

Conquest of the universe carried out via gas warfare.

it's basically a fancy colostomy bag that you drink out of

A quick check tells me the movie has hit almost $300 million worldwide so far, which in all kinda tells me that whatever Villeneuve may want for how to see the film, Warner Bros/Legendary made a good bet: HBO Max allowed people to take in a 'new' franchise at if they were subscribers however much that may have cut into the initial box office, there's a groundswell of interest that's resulted, and now pursuing a path where they have the Bene Gesserit series for streaming while keeping the next film solely theatrical at the start, assuming that's how things will be shaking out for everyone in two years, leaves them sitting pretty.

I think a major part of it is just that when Dune or Star Wars were written, the technology generally was inspired by what-if space age equivalencies to technology in the real world. I suspect the current reliance on drones and the prevalence of desktop gaming rigs that feel similar etc. were just a step outside of the imagination of the time. Sci-fi from every generation is usually pretty blatantly "us and the things we have, but more advanced and in space!". But again, the important thing is that the pure drama of actual combat is preferable to watching/reading about drone armies controlled by giant LAN parties (like the biggest CSGO tournament ever), or a cold war with lots of political debates and tension involving whole planets instead of the continents on one. Less at stake or more at stake but boring, respectively.

had no idea there was going to be an HBO series

Yup, Spaihts was going to be the showrunner but some months back he bailed to concentrate on the second film, so Diane Ademu-John has taken over. I've followed her on Twitter for some years and I think she's a great choice.

Supposedly the series is meant to be a prequel effort of some sort, which is probably both good and bad since I can see Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson going "Okay so what REALLY happened is" etc.

Yes, it appears to be based in part off one of the new books

spoiler: the butler did it

just vibes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMQ5iQ-NbFA

while we're worrying about lasers and armor etc, why aren't there more of those drilly dart things flying around?? WHY FRANK

How come we dont hear everyone complaining about getting sand in their underwear

It keeps taking me out of the movie not to hear this why villeneuve why

xxp

Paul says the hunter-seeker operator must be nearby so perhaps the hunter-seeker regs have transmission range restrictions etc.. etc

in an extremely high-tech solution in the book the hunter-seeker's operator is in the cellar bricked into a cairn

*mentat thufir hawat gazing at a cairn in a cellar*: ok that's very normal and not at all sinister or weird

fwiw, on my own part, I wasn't trying to ask why two distinct notes came from the same rib (some kind of magic xylophone?). Was somewhat carefully trying to highlight a larger criticism that was brought to mind via the confusing apparent technology discrepancies of Dune warfare.

xp

lol what a bizarre set up. I guess the cairn could have been pre-built with a small opening and enough bricks inside for the operator to brick themselves in from the inside. But what a lot of faff when you could find a quiet spot somewhere, do the deed and then try and blend in with the other staff rather than waiting to be discovered inside a cairn with the incriminating remote control.

Saw it last night it, liked it, not sure that many aspects of it could have been done better but... though very visually arresting it seemed strangely light on content, the whole plot could easily be summarised in three sentences which seems pretty thin for a 2 1/2 hour film, many 25 minute tv shows manage more. Lots of important meetings and conversations dispensed with in under a minute, lots of thinly sketched relationships (we know leto and idaho are besties because they do a couple of running bear hugs). But I'm not sure that loading it down with ponderous political conversations or bro love scenes would have improved it. And immediately after getting home I wanted to see it again, which is something.

saw it on imax this time, and maybe I was just feeling bad after some travel misery, or maybe I just don’t really like imax all that much. also can’t say I’m zimmer’s biggest fan.

it’s this second viewing that really clarified what an influence malick is on villeneuve’s vision — but bereft of the romance, and substituted with doomsy late marvel/nolan/even star wars “darkness” in a way that I think steamrolls a lot of the humanity. it’s an almost grotesquely brutal movie, both aesthetically and emotionally. (jason momoa is the exception)

it’s an almost grotesquely brutal movie

It's a pretty grotesquely brutal book!

xp

there are absolutely some very Malick moments throughout the film! Of course, real headz know that the ultimate cinematic realization of Malick's vision is Spring Breakers.

My wife said last night that a lot of the shots of Chalamet in the first half brought to mind Caravaggio.

you mean the great painter or Jarman's Caravaggio?

The former, sorry.

HBO Max allowed people to take in a 'new' franchise at if they were subscribers however much that may have cut into the initial box office

OTM. I'm sure the studio would have preferred the up-front money from a pre-pandemic theater run, but in the long run that may be more valuable overall.

Dune book sales are through the roof and any number of moments have escaped into wider memedom, and while they're going to have to explain a LOT of shit in Part Two for those who remain nonbookreaders ("So Alia is, well, it's complicated," etc.), a wider audience now is much more aware of what the deal is in general. Reminds me of nothing so much as when LOTR first hit (almost twenty years ago now!).

an almost grotesquely brutal movie, both aesthetically and emotionally. (jason momoa is the exception)

I guess I'm the only one who really liked Brolin in this? I wanted to give Gurney Halleck a hug.

Also, in that video breaking down the gom jabbar scene, Villeneuve said that Dune is about the triumph of the human spirit?

??

I mean yes it came up in the context of the Buterlian jihad but his statement was ... broader.

as someone who only read the book for the first time late last year, i highly recommend giving it a whirl to anyone considering checking it out

obv theres the requisite names of things/people/entities that takes some getting used to, but the way he cranks up the plot almost immediately, and being so inspired by ecology & psychology (and psychedelics) … it is kind of wild to see how it all sprang from his brain so clearly (and so cinematically!)

Literally the only thing I don’t like about the book was how much it propelled you into needing the sequel - basically a cliff-hanger … and then how completely he dropped the ball on said sequels.

It’s as if the LOTR went straight from the ending of the two towers to the epilogue.

PAUL: “Here we are, on the verge of launching a holy war that will consume the universe! Let all the children …”

FREMEN JIHADI: “Boogie!!”

*Intermission*

*curtain riaes*

NARRATOR: 12 years later, having successfully executed said holy war, our hero broods. “Should I have done such a thing?” he asked himself

and so on