A thread about the Denis Villeneuve-helmed reboot of DUNE

'what is a gom jabbar'

i just started the book and am a little relieved I'm going in with some understanding already

Anyway, that's a headline.

https://gizmodo.com/dune-2-sandworm-dismount-denis-villeneuve-messiah-wb-1851306314

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 4 March 2024 20:43 (one week ago) link

is it going to be more dramatic than 'they just ride the worms til the worms get tired out and have a lil nap?"

saw this in 70mm 15-perf imax at the amc lincoln square. sat way too close which actually took away from the grandeur of it, i think. perfectly fine movie, altho i think paul's arc falls pretty flat to me - paul moving around the desert from event to event felt like villeneueve moving a chess piece to make sure he hits all the plot beats of the book but with a lot of heavy smear.

i liked walken's big flying disco ball. thought the final battle was going to be a lot more epic based on what i was seeing on twitter - like, fremen riding hundreds of sandworms and a much bigger city rather than the eight or so we got. i did like that villeneuve doesn't treat the battles as pornography - just as plot gestures - you never doubt that the battle is going paul's way - which is how it is in the books. altho, the shelling of sietch tabr then feels very perfunctory and hollow.

thought the fremen sand hiding could have been used to better effect. i like when they pop up in the middle of the harkonnen, less so when they pop up and then have to run 3 football fields to get to the baddies. what's the point of hiding, then?

in the book-version of sandworm-riding, sandworms have a favoured side*: the insertion of the hooks into the rings renders this potentially the itchier side, so the worms rotate along their central axis to keep hooks as high as possible and limit sand intrusion -- then when the hooks are taken back out, they rotate back to place their favoured side in contact with the sand, the fremen nimbly dropping off to dismount during the turn

but this entails worms riding entirely proud of the sand -- like basically on top of it, where this film suggests they travel *through* the sand, with only their top surface poking out above -- it makes for much more dynamic cinema (otherwise motionless fremen seemingly skating at tremendous speed across the desert surface) but renders dismounting way more of a problem (like at best jumping off a speeding vehicle)

*the favoured side is hornier!

yeah i kept on waiting for shots of the worms curling away from the sand - felt like the movie version was kind of tame

they definitely do talk about the worms getting tired and passing out in the books, don't they?

they do tho i think more in the context of long fremen trips in the southern hemisphere than in context of battle (which i'm guessing was actually a novelty manoeuvre at scale, since the sardaukar are completely taken by surprise)

herbert is very much in the "i know a lot of writers who use subtext and they're all cowards" camp

― the defenestration of prog (voodoo chili), Wednesday, 13 March 2024 21:19 (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

im not sure i entirely agree with this -- the reason he had to write dune messiah is that he felt the first volume very much underdramatised the implied and intended bleakness of the outcome, though it can be discerned if you read subtext into the many irulan chapter-heading quotes: that paul's victory necessitated becoming his hated foe (combination harkonnen corrino), with irulan's official deification of him the index of this

of course part of the problem is that he is kind of a one-note terrible (solemn & earnest) stylist, plus vol one was written at great speed (on mushrooms) -- so it's a skill issue (he's definitely attempting subtext but it comes across either blundery or opaque, with everyone constantly whispering "plans within plans within plans" to themselves, which is sad to say his version of irony)

enjoyed max's annotated version as usual https://maxread.substack.com/p/dune-part-2-annotated/

altho i disagree about chani - i prefer the book chani!

also still sorely missing the guild navigators... need more navigators...

a thing i've seen a few times is ppl complaining that deneuve's version isn't really weird enough

well ok but i don't think dune 1 the book *was* all that jam-packed with in-scene weirdness (that very largely arrives with messiah: when we see a navigator upfront plus the facedancers and the ghola, and the disconnect between all-present visions and what ppl can actually see)

the book's all-wise toddler assassin stuff did feel v weird on-screen (courtesy lynch and alicia witt's surviving performance) and definitely in the abstract it's a loss (tho i'm not sure it's a thing DV wd be good at, any more than lynch has a feeling for sand). but in the book it's more like a a teenage tomboy break with decorum than mushroom stuff: ppl keep saying alia scares them but she is mainly just cheeky and funny and rude (and the best character)

yeah i think the weirdness from the other 5 books cast a retroactive weird pall over the first book, which for example does not contain nor hint at a god emperor worm man nor intergalactic space farmers

but i wonder how much of the stuff in the first book that villeneuve did put in the movies comes off as weird to non-book readers. the pain box, the gom jabbar, the whole concept of the bene gesserit, big anus worms...

i also think people may be grimly anticipating all the cuts that villeneuve is going to make to dune messiah and/or shaping the story to make dune into a movie trilogy (i don't think he has the stomach to make it to god emperor)

and of course dune '84

was toying with the idea of printing some KEEP DUNE WEIRD bumper stickers

Keep Arrakis Weird, surley

xp to mark s, he definitely uses allegory, but what i mean is that each character’s motivation is explained in laborious detail with those paragraph(s)-long asides and he doesn’t really care much about surprising you. the ending of the first book is clear from the start, and he doesn’t try to fool the reader otherwise

indeed it probably was a skill issue, rather than a defiant rejection of the concept

the mst3k-esque multi passenger worm jamboree/parade shit was very wtf

also still sorely missing the guild navigators... need more navigators...

yeah but you see dune '84 had guild navigators, villeneuve's did not (maybe - nobody knows what the daft punk guys were). point for lynch

The 80s Emperor/Navigator scene is great, as much for the lavish imaginative set and a gaggle of pugs as anything. Villeneuve's depiction of Shaddam and his world was barely there - to at least contrast that with a Navigator design as wild or wilder than previous in a brief scene would've at least made an exciting contrast.

I would've maybe also had one or two of those big pet spider things in the arena with Feyd-Rautha.

Best line from that excellent substack article:

Thufir Hawat is a mentat, a human trained for “supreme accomplishments of logic.” They are basically, like, what Scott Adams thinks he is.

lol yes

when you hear that yellow #5 will shrink your balls… the bene gesserit have been there

Finally saw it. Still awed by the overpowering visual / sound and I agree that although flawed, it was not likely we'd get an adaptation that would make sense of Herbert's mumbo jumbo and grab a wide audience. Overall remarkable.

Things I liked:
- Efforts at making the Fremen look like a real people and not shying away from the Muslim parallel
- Alia in the womb - appropriately chilling / disconcerting
- Zendaya's pretty pouting face, using the arrhythmic walk as a kind of romantic dance
- Generally checked a lot of boxes in a satisfying way: worms, mouse, sandstorm, harvesters, shields/gravity thing

Things I liked less:
- Too long - at some point it feels like everything is showed twice
- Elements being parachuted in the story - Feyd-Rautha, the Bene Gesserit, atomics
- Stilgar as a comic character
- He REALLY IS the Lisan Al Gaib
- The choice of black and white for the arena scene
- Gurney is useless - Duncan was also sketched in the first one iirc

Also got around to this this weekend. Overall I thought it was visually and aurally impressive. I feel like they sacrificed some aspects of the book in order to get some more action set-pieces into the movie, but I guess this probably makes a better movie.

- Too long - at some point it feels like everything is showed twice

This is true, but at the same time I feel like they really rushed through the whole last third of the movie.

- He REALLY IS the Lisan Al Gaib

I mean, I guess, but he's a super-human created through a 50 generation (or whatever it is) breeding program by the Bene Gesserit, who are also the ones who introduced the concept of the "Lisan Al Gaib" to the Fremen. I don't see how this negates Chani's notion that the "Lisan Al Gaib" is something that was introduced to the Fremen in order to control them. It's been close to 30 years since I read the books so I don't remember exactly how this was handled, but I feel like - barely remembered spoiler for Dune Messiah - Paul himself doesn't believe in his own cult and doesn't want to be a prophet and wanders off into the desert by himself because of this

it is not handled with clarity in book one! this is why dune messiah was needed as course correction (also the story needed more weird-ass gholas and facedancers)

Crosspost from worst writers thread but lol

https://www.thegamer.com/dunes-paul-atreides-is-not-the-good-guy/

I was still referring to Stilgar but actually yeah, that wasn't so badly handled. Paul is initially skeptical, then resistant, but eventually gives in (has no choice really); Chani remains faithful to his "human" side and to her people.
I've reread Dune and Messiah like three years ago and I have already been told that I don't pass the fan test cause I couldn't explain everything when we left the cinema lol.

Alia in the womb - appropriately chilling / disconcerting

imagine this happening to you and you're NOT a bene gesserit who has been raised in their culture. freaky-ass fetus

it was absolutely appropriate that she was chilling in the womb rather than running around murdering barons or what-have-you.

how can we make a creepy-ass child even creepier?

they should figure out how to integrate Alicia Witt back into Dune, though

i only just realized that was alicia witt in the first one; it's cute that Lynch has continued to cast her in stuff through the Return. Would love to see her show up in these films again. Would also no be opposed to a pug.

she could easily be evil aunt Alia in Children of Dune

https://www.gq.com/story/weird-dune-sequels

good summary of the 5 upcoming dunes by max

Ride the worm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E6AcXUKSVA

Saddest action blockbuster ever? Liked it much more than the first. Did not find it lacking in weird. Making Feyd sorta likable was surprising but worked great.

Making Feyd sorta likable

Like almost the first thing we see him do is immediately cut one of his servant's throats, so are you sure about that?

with a song in his heart

Denis has a weird thing about that, happened in Blade Runner 2049 as well

This is why I said "sorta". They make him a likable psychopath, e.g. the way he dies helps add to the oppressive weight of tragedy at the end.

i think charismatic is more the word i would use than likable

compelling

I think the main thing is you don't feel unbridled joy when Paul stabs him through the heart. You feel regret. Choosing power and revenge sucks, even if it's your only path to survival.

Can't...say I agree?

Fair. But Villeneuve could have used a beat somewhere in the character's last couple minutes to remind you how evil he is, and he doesn't. Instead you get "you fought well, Atreides."

What if Hamlet had taken mushrooms and they cured his indecision? Turns out the play still would have been a tragedy.

this was incredible

xpost lukas idk that you need to be ~reminded~ of Feyd being evil in that last moment, what with, idk, *sweeping hand motion* THE WHOLE MOVIE already establishing that?

if there's a bald person in a movie, i immediately assume he's evil

i dont take it for granted that we know enough about the servant/stabbing dynamic to judge the character tbh?

it seems a well established routine to me.

at worst id say he's the best of a bad bunch

obsessed with challoumi's kermit walk in this, so so good

otm