A thread about the Denis Villeneuve-helmed reboot of DUNE

they were suddenly talking about "spice" as this valuable commodity.

Considering how much of sci-fi is a reworking and rehashing of good old Terran colonialism and the Age of Exploration (and Exploitation), there's plenty of historical precedent for "spice" being a valuable commodity. Herbert was just dipping into the common pool of historical material.

https://x.com/humanoidhistory/status/1764552798882890201?s=46

Considering how much of sci-fi is a reworking and rehashing of good old Terran colonialism and the Age of Exploration (and Exploitation), there's plenty of historical precedent for "spice" being a valuable commodity. Herbert was just dipping into the common pool of historical material.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Monday, March 4, 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Sure but when the term is used on a Star Wars TV show made in the 2020s that takes place on a desert planet, I think they're just ripping off Dune.

spice has been a thing in star wars forever! “what are we going to do! we’ll be sent to the spice mines of kessel” is said by c3po right before they evacuate the ship at the very beginning of the first star wars movie release

that is to say, they ripped that off dune from the drop

Depends on whether they're talking about Dune "spice" or black pepper, nutmeg and cloves.

in the star wars universe it was originally a drug but disney has gone back and forth on whether they’re going to change that

the only movie to visit kessel was Solo, where a mining operation was extracting something that could be used as fuel

so spice in Star Wars is either a psychoactive drug, or a fuel that facilitates travel through hyperspace. in Dune, spice is a psychoactive drug that facilitates travel through hyperspace.

Herbert was apparently a big psilocybin enthusiast, that must have been a significant influence on his writing to say the least.

that video of timothee chalamet and zendaya with the popcorn is one of the more sinister things ive seen recently so of course i added the annihilation music to it pic.twitter.com/URPsTfBRFx

— zach silberberg (@zachsilberberg) March 4, 2024

No cut scenes to be released it seems. And Tim Blake Nelson still can’t say who he was playing.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/dune-2-deleted-scenes-1235842178/

is that because he might appear in the third one?

The article speculates as much, in re the character I was guessing he’d play.

this was interesting: https://reactormag.com/the-muslimness-of-dune-a-close-reading-of-appendix-ii-the-religion-of-dune/

I was just reading about the apparently (and I don't doubt it :( ) antisemitic inclusion of Actual Jews in the sixth book :o

That’s when I stopped reading the books, unclear why I didn’t stop after God Emperor Leto explains how lesbians grow out of it when they get pregnant

It's been forever since I read the last two books but Actual Jews do show up, though I honestly can't remember much about them as characters. I think one guy gave off '1930s Manhattan rabbi' vibes but that's about all I can recall.

Anyway I do like how I'm seeing a couple more pieces lately in the wake of the success going "There's a franchise for sure! But uh...are audiences going to really going to go with EVERYTHING coming up?"

HBO is doing a series as well, right? I think it's already done.

Yeah the series is in post-production now. I suspect if the Dune Messiah movie gets made, it will probably throw a bunch of people off the franchise, as the book did to me

Thought this movie did well with the material, but unsurprisingly had to rush through a bunch of stuff. So I probably still prefer the first movie overall, but I would watch a whole movie set on Giedi Prime

What is the HBO series? Is it offshoots of this story, or a different take on the same adaptation?

"Set 10,000 years before the events of the 1965 novel Dune, the series follows sisters Valya and Tula Harkonnen as they combat forces that threaten the future of humankind, and establish the fabled sect known as the Bene Gesserit."

Ah ok. I don’t know my Dune literary universe very well - is that summary based on existing books or is it prestige fan fiction ?

idk it very well either but my understanding is that the vast majority of the dune series (that is everything written after frank died) is prestige fan fiction

The last few books read kinda like fanfic too tbh “Duncan Idaho is back!”

I read the series when I was probably too young and mostly remember of Heretics that “Duncan Idaho is back, and he fucks”

that's the plot m/l

lol

The most powerful of these forces are the Honored Matres, a violent society of women bred and trained for combat and the sexual control of men.

they currently owe brain rent to every gop male

saw this last night. i think i preferred the first? i'm trying to decide if it was because it was more faithful to the book, or because it had less plot to cover and was more able to dwell on the weird far-future cultural stuff that really makes the series special.

austin butler was fun. was trying to figure out what he reminded me of, and it turned out to be christian bale's performance in that 4th thor movie.

I saw a funny post from Paul F. Tompkins asking why these movies have all these fake Middle Eastern music cues, that they might as well be ragtime scores. And then I guess inevitably somebody replied with the trailer re-scored with ragtime.

has no one seen this yet?

oh i guess there was some opening weekend discussion that i gotta read

Saw it a few nights ago. As with the first, loved it compositionally, the vast spaces where intimate conversations happen. Didn't connect with it or care about it, but as a 2h45m oversized Taschen book never got bored. Thought Walken was retired, so was good to see him.

I enjoyed it but felt like it packed so much in that I need to see it again to really absorb it. My one gripe is that it didn't really give much explanation about what the water of life does to Paul and didn't show much about how his vision was altered and why that helps them. I really like the descriptions of his powers in the book and would have loved to see that translated onto the screen.

yeah villenueve is kind of like nolan in that even the dream sequences are realistic, not stylistic. he handled the visions and psychedelic aspects better in the first film i think

I agree. I particularly like how it hits Paul during the spice harvester scene.

I don’t think his visions of the future were altered, I think he saw everything in context: whether it’s destiny or not is irrelevant, he’s the result of thousands of years of political and genetic maneuvering. so he is either the cog in someone else’s machine or he takes control of the machine, which may be one and the same

it’s not that he decides it’s good to be a dictator, it’s that he understands someone will be and his fault is that he thinks his way is more benevolent. or the right people get killed

worshipping at his father’s skull seems very un-Atreides but if they have to worship someone…

saw it this afternoon and wooooweee that was cool as hell

so glad i saw it in the theater, it looked fucking incredible

austin butler was fucking terrifying (the black mouth! D: ), timothee had great hairography & zendaya’s micro-reactions were a+

great job everyone, thank you fremen, thank you shai hulud

Saw it a few nights ago. As with the first, loved it compositionally, the vast spaces where intimate conversations happen. Didn't connect with it or care about it, but as a 2h45m oversized Taschen book never got bored. Thought Walken was retired, so was good to see him.

This is where I’m at as well. I loved the set designs, costumes and stately spacecraft; I didn’t care about the action movie blockbuster battles and overall would have preferred more strangeness vs blowing shit up.

xp to mh

I agree with what you said. I mean his vision is altered in the sense that once he drinks the water of life he starts seeing infinite future paths all the time and can see through the eyes of everyone who ever lived. The movie doesn't really attempt to represent that or deal with it much at all, but it is a very large part of the later half of the book.

The book is so long vanished in my memory that I don’t clock what’s missing or different. I left the theatre gobsmacked. Little criticisms try to pop up but I quelch them — fuckit, like the LoTR films it’s a flawed adaptation but it’s hard to imagine there will be a better.

i just love seeing the things you imagined in yr head being realized in this grand scale & sure maybe different than what you pictured but gosh it’s thrilling that someone could even make it real yknow

missed from the book: the two-yr-old sassy sage-assassin (it's a very solemn book and alia is one of its few funny characters)
good additions: chani being a swimming truther
tiresome borrow from lynch: a lot too much whispering (DUNE 1 largely dodged this curse iirc)
good borrows from lynch: amniotic foetus-work, ear covered in ants
unfilmable: the voice (sorry but as the product of 10,000 yrs of the bene gesserit arts it's always like sudden-goblinsquawk-gets-good-results)

villeneuve loves to point a camera at sand and that's good in a a film called DUNE 2

anyway i enjoyed this lots for sound-design and look, explications were often a bit curtly on the nose but tbh i read the book WAY too often as a teen so i am literally maud'dib when it comes to knowing what happens next and why plotwise (herbert doesn't write good dialogue especially but he likes things to be sorta-kinda cryptic, ppl never stop muttering "plans within plans within plans" to themselves)

nb i did like the second one a lot but i prob would’ve liked it way more if i rewatched the first one right beforehand. think the movies will work best as two halves of a whole

Moodles — yeah, they don’t really do a lot of explaining that his vision is complete or what that might be. I didn’t mind it too much because it flipped the movie from exposition mode into “I know now why you believe in me, check out what we’re going to do now”

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C4JXmfWO9yi/?igsh=MWxnMmQwOGJvdnRhZQ==

Make Arrakis Great Again

unfilmable: the voice (sorry but as the product of 10,000 yrs of the bene gesserit arts it's always like sudden-goblinsquawk-gets-good-results)

i thought the voice ruled, loved it every time

i loved it too if that means "made me larf nonstop"

Jeet Heer and David Klion talking both films, also brings up things I’d forgotten about the books

https://www.thenation.com/podcast/culture/dune-and-the-allegories-of-empire/

Contains Jeet’s line: “the Spice is dialectical materialism”