A thread about the Denis Villeneuve-helmed reboot of DUNE

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

Things I liked less:
- Too long

i think ive come to what might be an obvious realisation but nothing that is good is too long and nothing that is bad can be short enough.

this wasnt long enough.

To me the dichotomy with Feyd is his extreme vulnerability for which he compensates with ferocity. He is a monster but so is Paul, in a different way. They are both products of a breeding program intended to bring together a wide variety of characteristics into a single person. Thus both are complex and flawed, layered and conflicted, but he doesn’t get the screen time that Paul gets to really work through that and arrive anywhere. Despite being coddled and showing off in sham fights on the regular, he is not a coward when it comes to a fair fight. I’m not saying he’s a great dude, the story demands that we hate him and consider him evil. But there are nuances to him- look at how easily he was led, like a wide-eyed child, into a trap by the Bene Gesserit. And then he survived the gom jabbar, so there is something deeper to him, though implied only by his survival- his intellect can overcome his baser instincts when it comes down to it.

book-feyd is not at all a developed character! (character development is not really herbert’s wheelhouse)

but epistantophus's point -- that in terms of millennia of BG breeding programme FR is indeed the mirror of paul (the back-up plan in fact, since jessica went rogue: she was meant to birth paul as a girl, to marry FR) -- is v correct, and it's good that the film somewhat manifests this (and amplifies what's bad abt paul having to unleash his inner harkonnen to win)

in general i think villeneuve does good work faintly beefing up some of herbert's always cardboardy secondary characters (not just chani but also irulan, for example) -- plus also injecting the idea that fremen politics has more than one wing (which he then kinda renders two-dimensional again, by overuse of the word "fundamentalist")

Great points, tho I will soften my "Feyd is a lovable teddy bear" stance, I did forget about the flamethrower scene.

Having Stilgar pray to Arrakis Mecca on a prayer rug was bold.

I mean, his second-last line's about how he is going to torture Chani, and the ones before that are about how he killed his mother - I am concerned about your bar for 'evil'!

maybe it's fine

He’s perfect and I won’t hear a word against him

Thought this was solid and looked cool. Props to my wife for sitting through it despite not seeing the first one, or having read the book, or having any idea what it was it about.

Got to praise Bautista again for really seeming the Anti-Rock in routinely playing tough looking guts who get their ass kicked by a smaller dude

guts? guys

i dunno, if villeneuve ever brought berserk to the screen i could see bautista playing guts