A thread about the Denis Villeneuve-helmed reboot of DUNE

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

I agree with the second post. It is unnecessary to make this. A lot of these remakes, reboots feel like shameless attempts to cash grab and squeeze whatever's left of the intellectual property. Like the Beetlejuice 2 trailer came out a couple days ago and I'm just rolling my eyes. I don't even know if it's a bad thing because people seem to enjoy them, but I can't be bothered watching stuff like this anymore.

Dune has never had a very good screen interpretation. I'm glad when they remake films that didn't work out well the first time (as much as I like a lot of it, Lynch's Dune did not work out), rather than remaking things that were good. This is a very good interpretation of the book.

XP

generally agree with that except for a case like to this. I watched the first half hour of the Lynch Dune last night and as much I like pretty much everything else Lynch has done that movie is terrible. It's ok to remake or readapt bad movies

Yeah, we watched Lynch’s dune last week and hoooooboy. I have a pretty high tolerance for bad movies, esp if they’re interesting / quirky / offkilter (which this was) but my god, I just kept wishing it would be over.

Always makes me laugh when people cover for Lynch's Dune with "but he didnt have final cut!" as if that was the main issue

I feel like Lynch's Dune serves as a bit of a rebuttal to the obsession with Jodorowsky's "lost" version. Like, you can imagine a scenario where the Lynch one got scrapped and all that remained was some production design images and there would be this whole, "Imagine what David Lynch's Dune would have been like!"

i think the backlash to jodorowskys dune vision and the work in putting it as far as it went is gone a bit far mainly because the documentary and documents that do exist and the stories around the entire effort seem to me to be more than enough output/justification

jodorowskys dune did get made, in the same way that lost in la mancha is gilliams don quixote

good take

in the same way that lost in la mancha is gilliams don quixote

Didn't his Quixote movie finally come out though?

it did and absolutely no one watched it. i have no idea if it's any good or not.

I stopped paying attention after he turned into a total crank old man. Shame he disappeared and never made any more movies

Shame he disappeared and never made any more movies

Brazil was a hell of a note to go out on, though.

i got time for parnassus actually

but he as a persona i could do without pretty much from day 1

it did and absolutely no one watched it. i have no idea if it's any good or not.

it was bad. but even if it had been good, it would have been redundant next to lost in la mancha anyway

to live and die in la mancha

parnassus was alright, I didn't like some of the CGI effects but I thought he worked around Ledger's death in an interesting way. Zero Theorem was dire. I never got around to watching Tideland which had awful reviews, but the one person I personally know who actually watched it really liked it.

Btw I haven't seen new Dune and I'm not really dying to, and I don't always love Hans Zimmer scores, but I thoroughly enjoyed this podcast on the process. Seems fun to have an unlimited budget to hire musicians and engineers to create bespoke sample instruments for your every whim!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI28oowy4Dc

tideline execrable in more ways than i have ever found any piece of creative work and ill never watch a gilliam movie again as long as i live after it

xpost Relatedly, a pretty good promo VF bit from here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGLEVXJoetU

i am stoked for this to stream, so i can watch it again. i feel that i surely missed something. or i'm like, too dumb for its fine points.

The spice is oil

Coconut oil

cocaine oil

shai and muad’s trap hole

i am stoked for this to stream, so i can watch it again. i feel that i surely missed something. or i'm like, too dumb for its fine points.

lol thx. kind or mock-kind i can't say but still-- this seems like a lot of work for a heavily referential pile of-- not that much?-- that is like, very overly emphasized?

Mental oil

btw, I think I asked before, but how is this guy about to make such convincingly tactile and lived in looking FX when most movies can't come close?

I think because I've seen so many Marvel movies I kind of forgot that VFX can actually look good. It's crazy that so many other huge budget movies look so terrible when it's clearly possible to do it right.

doing it right:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJokEW5WAAAQDtb?format=jpg

(courtesy twitter's @drawbrandondraw aka bluesky's @drawbrandondraw.com )

I suspect both Dune movies had longer post-production time than a typical Marvel movie these days, probably a big help re refined vfx. Maybe the realism of the actual muad'dib demonstrates this as well as anything.

It's not really dealing with many 'improbable' or 'magical' fx either though (Emperor's ship and the fire effect around it excepted) and nothing radical or OTT (apart from the infrared aspect Giedi Prime looks p boring). Most MCU films are trying to show actual 'magical' powers, 'aliens' and creatures etc. and with a kids appeal. Guardians 3 did all that pretty well.

Tideland which had awful reviews, but the one person I personally know who actually watched it really liked it.

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Monday, March 25, 2024 9:44 PM (six days ago)

Did it have awful reviews? I recall a bunch of people saying it was one of his best films (I think it is). I like Zero Theorem too

yeah, 31% positive on Rotten Tomato's critic tally

I know it was hardly a hit but I recall people being enthusiastic about it, definitely worth trying if you like Gilliam, I've cooled on it a bit but I still think it's among his better films

The plot summary for Tideland makes it sound horrifying.

There's horrible things but the naive viewpoints of the girl and young man take the edge off

nope

gilliams lens makes it worse than the plot tbh

it was horrifying and i’ll never watch it again but it was an interesting contrast to pan’s labyrinth in that both dealt with children dealing with unimaginable horrors, but tideland really felt like it was _her_ story told by herself (i don’t know if it would be tolerable told in any other way) while labyrinth felt very much like an adult telling the story.

There's some fun in it too, I recall Jodelle Ferland being good in it (she will be 30 this year, how is that possible? I'm turning to corpsedust)