[ContrarianMalazanReader]

In retrospect that's another thing that bothers me about previous adaptations of Dune now that amphibian mentions it. The Fremen, who are clearly modeled after the Bedouin tribes of the Middle East and North Africa, are played by a bunch of people of Northern European ancestry.

BTW amphibian, what do you mean that what happens to Alia, Ghanima and Chani is not well handled and that Herbert did terribly in his treatment of women?

[amphibian]

Chani goes from the daughter of Liet Kynes to a romantic ideal of Paul to a dead lady because of a completely insensible and extremely weird "poison the pregnancy" plot Herbert slapped together rather than give Irulan and Chani screentime to have a developed conflict. Someone who is the surviving daughter of Kynes, becomes the partner of the second most important person in the universe's history, births the most important person, and had a whole life and plan pre-Paul should have more screentime and be a developed character. Instead, she's visions, an ideal, a womb, and then a dead body to be mad over.

"Abomination" was initially used by Herbert in some sort of weird mental illness. It was a sort of setup that affected 99.999% women because Paul and Leto II were the only males to ever convert Water of Life and get access to genetically encoded personality/memories of ancestors. So this is basically a long string of women going insane due to genetic predestination + their one awakening attempt, doing "dangerous to the plan stuff", and then being brutally murdered by their peers.

Alia's deal with Harkonnen made no sense, was poorly handled in the books, and her end by suicide was a waste of a decent set-up for plot.

Ghanima got very little screen time and I can barely remember anything of note she did - even in the shadow of Leto II, she was initially a near equal partner and mover of things.

Instead we got 1700 Duncan Idaho clones, so many genetic revivals of personalities and memories, and a bunch of sex-suasion of dudes to do things until the one magical dude manages to sex-suade the ultimate sex-suader.

I am leaving out the Tleilaxu women. Or womb machines, more accurately.

There's just so much ground to cover about how Herbert treated his women characters that I kinda gotta leave it here or start pointing to academic style papers on this.

[ContrarianMalazanReader]

Chani's fate doesn't bother me at all considering she was always a supporting character, but I agree about Alia allying herself with Baron Harkonnen, it makes no sense whatsoever, and yes, Ghanima being discarded halfway through CoD and then reduced to an afterthought in subsequent books after being introduced as Leto's equal in all aspects felt like such a narrative cop-out.

[polishgenius]

Werthead, on 02 September 2021 - 09:37 PM, said:

so they went in and changed that pretty sharpish when they started work on the TV show and that seems to have been much more widely accepted.

To be fair that seems to be as much because nobody these days seems to actually like the Foundation books.

[amphibian]

ContrarianMalazanReader, on 03 September 2021 - 03:50 AM, said:

Chani's fate doesn't bother me at all considering she was always a supporting character, but I agree about Alia allying herself with Baron Harkonnen, it makes no sense whatsoever, and yes, Ghanima being discarded halfway through CoD and then reduced to an afterthought in subsequent books after being introduced as Leto's equal in all aspects felt like such a narrative cop-out.

Are you familiar with "women in refrigerators/fridging"?

https://en.m.wikiped...n_Refrigerators

[ContrarianMalazanReader]

amphibian, on 03 September 2021 - 11:49 AM, said:

ContrarianMalazanReader, on 03 September 2021 - 03:50 AM, said:

Chani's fate doesn't bother me at all considering she was always a supporting character, but I agree about Alia allying herself with Baron Harkonnen, it makes no sense whatsoever, and yes, Ghanima being discarded halfway through CoD and then reduced to an afterthought in subsequent books after being introduced as Leto's equal in all aspects felt like such a narrative cop-out.

Are you familiar with "women in refrigerators/fridging"?

https://en.m.wikiped...n_Refrigerators

Yes I am, and fridging most certainly applies to Ghanima now that you mention it.

[ContrarianMalazanReader]

https://youtu.be/DqquKCvOxwA

OK, first review is up. Looks like this will be a worthwhile adaptation after all.

[Tsundoku]

85% on RT.

https://www.rottento...com/m/dune_2021

https://www.news.com...dfb5cfbe0459230

[amphibian]

It was essentially ready for release last December. People have seen this already.

[Gorefest]

5-star review by the Guardian as well: https://www.theguard...e-film-festival

Looking very promising.

[Malankazooie]

Villeneuve said it demands being seen in a theater, preferably one with all the tech bells and whistles. It's supposed to be next level. Take that with a grain of salt, as he has some personal skin in the game for this to make waves at the box office. But yeah, gonna blow some minds methinks.

Venice: Denis Villeneuve Makes Plea for People to Watch His "Immersive" 'Dune' on the Big Screen

*link is to www.hollywoodreporter.com

[ContrarianMalazanReader]

Unfortunately I won't be able to watch it on a cinema, due to circumstances beyond my control.

[Malankazooie]

Anyone get tickets for the midnight showing? I believe it's next Thursday.

[Gorefest]

Going on Monday to a UK preshowing. Fingers crossed it can live up to the hype.

[Gorefest]

Well, just got back from Dune. Part 1... that is a lot to unpack, need to mull this one over a bit. Those 2.5 hours just flew by.

Visually it is stunning. Content wise there are some interesting choices. There is a lot of stuff shown that you pick up and interpret as a book reader, but as a first time Dune introductee will go right over your head unnoticed and unappreciated. Not sure how I feel about that.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 18 October 2021 - 09:50 PM

[Not-So-Great-Raven]

Just saw the movie yesterday and liked it a lot. A slow tension-builder at first and not too much action like some scifi-movies tend to be.

I've not read the books though, but I am not sure whether I even want to. Some of the reasons are listed in this thread, and additionally I think it would be nice to first see all of the movies without "spoiling" them for myself and then read the books afterwards.

Or should I just order the books first and finish the movies later?

[Macros]

Just back from the cinema.
Have only read Dune once, so dont really know what all they changed. Don't really care, it was an awesome visual spectacle, with a story well enough pared back that it flowed well over the 2.5 hours. A bit heavy on the bwaaaammmm in places but overall soundtrack on the money for the feel of the whole film.
Wife enjoyed it well enough as well I think, with no knowledge of the source material at all.

[stone monkey]

It was a film that I saw. Villeneuve is very obviously not at all interested in some characters and concepts that are imo quite important to the books. It works well enough to take up 2.5 hours of my time without feeling that it was overstaying its welcome. The cast, all of whom were very well cast, didn't have all that much given for them to do to stretch themselves, and I thought Rebecca Ferguson's Jessica was given particularly short shrift. It looks pretty, and is shot nicely. The design was quite effective, while not to my taste in aesthetics; which is ironic, as I usually do actually quite like me a bit of tasteful brutalism. Zimmer was, as usual, doing his schtick on the soundtrack - he can probably write them in his sleep at this point - but it seemed appropriate for the tone of the piece.


Given the kind of money involved in its production I can see why it came out as "Dune for the Normies", because making a weirder and more thoughtful film would have scared off the mass audience they need for it to make any profit. I enjoyed it, but it's merely a competently well made, big budget film with vague pretensions of artiness. Which may be all it needed to be. I find myself agreeing with Alejandro Jodorowsky, in the documentary about his failed attempt to adapt the book, when he refers to it as "Industrial Filmmaking" .


I saw it in 3D, which may explain why the film seemed inexplicably dark in its daylight desert scenes - however much the characters spouted off about it, there was actually very little of the feeling of scorching sunlight and oppressive heat.

[Macros]

Yah, the brutal heat was not carried across at all.
I get it though, from a visual stand point, a full body still shit does not work for character identification.

[ContrarianMalazanReader]

OK, just finished watching the movie.

First of all the two things that didn't sit well with me based on the previews ended up not working at all in the movie itself. Namely, the desaturated colour timing which makes the movie look lifeless, and gender-swapped Doctor Kynes. I'm sorry, I just couldn't get behind it and she stuck out like a sore thumb, and I know many have insisted that it doesn't matter but this particular change simply didn't work for me.

Moving on. This particular adaptation felt like a highlight reel of the book which is fine. Timothée Chalamet is a very precise match of how Paul is described physically, a thin, wiry young man of shorter than average height.

I agree with stone monkey, and I myself have expressed a similar concern. In terms of aesthetics and design Villeneuve's adaptation is rather sterile-looking, with the Atreides Hawk sigil looking like some sports logo instead of the heraldic animal it's supposed to represent. I also feel the movie lacks viscerality. It's one of the few things the 1984 adaptation got right, the baroque aesthetics, the visceral feel and the inherent weirdness of the book.

In the book crysknife blades are said to measure 20 cm, but here they made them longer, which is a change I approve of because 20 cm isn't cinematically impressive.

If there's one thing that we will never see in a Dune adaptation ever it's most definitely the Sietch orgy.