[ContrarianMalazanReader]

Part 2 officially confirmed.

[LinearPhilosopher]

Really tired so ill go more in depth later.

But this film is a masterpiece adaptation. Denis pulled it off.

[ContrarianMalazanReader]

I wonder if part 2 will feature Count Fenrig.

If Count Fenrig appears, my crazy casting choice would be Elijah Wood.

[ContrarianMalazanReader]

I'm surprised this thread has been quiet despite part 2 being confirmed.

[LinearPhilosopher]

Shocked as well... It's been a hell of a week to say the least... Though i think i read a headline that he wants to make a third film.

THe thopters was a definite highlight.

I think Denis did a good job in creating a movie that only gives as much exposition as is needed and it's done quite organically. The costumes all look great, and there's tons of little nods to the books here and there.

I think we got ourselves the best version of the baron ever.

I was bummed there were a few lines from the books that were omitted but that's a minor gripe and not really something to get in the way of the film.

Also liet kynes being gender swapped changed nothing in the way the story was told so glad that whole controversy was much ado about nothing.

This post has been edited by LinearPhilosopher: 01 November 2021 - 01:19 AM

[ContrarianMalazanReader]

IMO Baron Harkonnen wasn't as morbidly obese as I imagined him to be when reading the book. The episode of House M.D. in which they treat a morbidly obese patient played by Pruitt Taylor Vince is the closest to how I picture Baron Harkonnen. He's also described as having a deep basso voice instead of Stellan Skarsgard's raspy voice. Many are also commenting on how intimidating the Baron felt but I didn't feel intimidated, rather he gave me a bad feeling.

On second viewing I must confess that I thoroughly dislike gender-swapped Liet Kynes. Sharon Duncan-Brewster delivered her lines as if she was just reading them out loud, thus giving a very wooden performance. I also hate how Kynes is often condescending towards outsiders which greatly contrasts with book Kynes who is very deferential to avoid suspicion. And for those insisting the gender swap doesn't matter, well since she's the Imperial ecologist and is thus under the Imperium's supervision, wouldn't conceiving a Fremen child raise a lot of suspicion from someone who is pretending to not be a Fremen? Male Kynes would have no such problem concealing the fact that he's fathered Fremen children from the Imperium. Finally, Kynes's death felt like they were telling us "Look how badass she is". I much prefer his death in the book, where he is left to die in the desert without his stillsuit and spent his last moments reflecting on the planetary ecosystem and having an imaginary conversation with his father, one of my favourite parts of the book. So yes, I absolutely hate this one change.

[Tsundoku]

I'm flabbergasted they didn't make the whole lot at once, a la LOTR.
Surely whatever extra costs and shoot/production times they would have incurred would have made it back in coin and not having to work in with people's insecure schedules and increased costs later?

I'm sure they had their reasons, I just can't seem to find what they were.

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 01 November 2021 - 08:56 AM

[blackzoid]

I saw it yesterday.
1: The design is indeed quite "sterile" looking. Odd. It doesnt look like much of a "lived-in" place does Arrakis.
2: The music pretty much ruined the film. I hated the Bwaaammmmm. It was the worst I have ever seen. Everything has to be so LOOOOUDDDDDDD. This film is epic people!. You want a quiet moment, fuck off. EPIC we say. BWAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. Fuck you for anything "non-epic" sounding or any stillness! Lets throw some slow-motion in there too with that Bwammmmm. Cos its epic on top of epic!

The music destroyed the film for me. I loathed the whole experience by the end.

This post has been edited by blackzoid: 01 November 2021 - 10:22 AM

[ContrarianMalazanReader]

I actually enjoyed the music and sound. It's hands down my favourite part of the movie.

[QuickTidal]

ContrarianMalazanReader, on 01 November 2021 - 03:34 PM, said:

I actually enjoyed the music and sound. It's hands down my favourite part of the movie.

This is and was always Zimmer's read job. When he became a composer he's always looked at getting to compose for Dune as the jewel in the crown of his career.

I have not seen the film, but I adore the score!

[blackzoid]

Different strokes I suppose. For me it was excoriating. All NOISE and no melody.

[Malankazooie]

A sprinkling of brrreeerrrruuuuuuummm! here and there goes a long way to hide lazy film making. It really amplifies the tension and dramatic moments. Two thumbs up.

[amphibian]

I saw the film. I generally liked it and to some degree, I think some parts were very well handled and other parts not so well handled.

In regards to the actual characters on-screen, I felt that Thufir and Gurney got shorted on "what makes them different than Gruff Military Character #17" scenes and what Jessica's story arc was missing was the conscious decision to give Leto Atreides the son + likely Kwisatz Haderach they both wanted. Thufir got the Mentat thing and no real development further than that. Gurney got asked for a song, told Paul he's gotta be a hard man, and then did a bunch of near-violence + follow the protocols talk + yelling. Not showing or telling Jessica's decision to create the Kwisatz candidate kinda weakened the reasons why she's so torn up about Paul potentially failing the gom jabbar test and why she's so scared for him throughout. It's more than motherly and that may have been tweaked to make her more likable - which is a story decision I don't necessarily agree with.

I'm responding to Stone Monkey's comments because I thought they were interesting:

stone monkey, on 23 October 2021 - 11:01 PM, said:

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.

I think the visuals Jodorowsky + Moebius brainstormed are completely wrong for Dune and kinda remove the characteristics that make Dune so effective. The grandeur of human achievement in Dune is narrowly channeled into corporatism and feudal lords - everything is brutalized, removed from the common person (who is often imprisoned through circumstance or servitude to the systematic machines/monsters). Moebius had too much going on in terms of costuming/personal touches for that to come across easily and I believe that Lynch went a bit overboard too. (Recall Sting in the spiky diaper, please)

I do think the heat was not well conveyed in the movie. There were multiple scenes of helmet-less Paul walking around and not sweating immediately or squinting due to the heat. That could have been better handled even if he's supposed to have magic powers that convey a pseudo-white savior set-up.

Speaking of the white savior thing, I think a lot of people misread the books and think that Frank Herbert actively encourages white saviors to succeed in transforming colonialist/colonized dynamics. He doesn't and spent a considerable amount of time setting things up carefully to knock down the savior narrative of Paul's (Paul fails in almost everything he wants to do and then walks away, leaving Leto to take the next and super-long + brutal steps to save humanity across the galaxy). Herbert also suffused all levels of society on the colonialist and colonized sides with Islamic mythologies, names, cultural rituals, and barely hidden references to Pan-African or Arabic recent events of the 1960s.

Herbert absolutely failed in terms of creating a compelling Fremen set of characters that he spent time with - instead going with Leto II and Duncan so many times that it was actively bizarre. That removes some agency from the Fremen and makes what Herbert was doing somewhat Orientalist (a bad thing here) despite some generally good intentions. I'm worried that the film-makers and writers are trying to de-Orientalize the story without understanding what they are taking away and why they are taking it away - the screenwriter Jon Spaihts has given a few interviews in which he shows that he actively does not understand what he's dealing with in terms of the Arabic/North African culture that's infused in the books.

Haris Durrani has written about this in extensive detail here: https://www.washingt...luences-erased/

Durrani has been absolutely gold to follow on Dune for more than a year. His essays on what Herbert was doing, the failings, the successes, and the connection he feels as a MENA (Middle Eastern/North African) Muslim to the books for trying so hard to get things right have been fascinating. I can link those essays/tweets or the Washington Post essay if people cannot access them.

I did really like the Liet Kynes is a woman who gets a story arc thing - although I think moving her from "I can do nothing" to riding in an ornithopter with Duncan Idaho needed a scene to explain how she decided to risk that biscuit.

The removal of Irulan as narrative framing device and Shaddam the Emperor from this half was interesting. I quite liked the insertion of Irulan's somewhat jealous/biased re-framing of Paul and his history after he treated her so badly and her (fictional) need to sorta embed his brutality and overthrow of the old system into a narrative that produces an "approved and still powerful for her" modified version of a similar system with different people atop it. But in the books, she and Chani needed more screen time and never got it. I hope that changes for the movie.

I hope Spaihts and Villenueve bring in MENA writers to work on the second half - which seems like it will build heavily on the Mahdi/Sufi mythologies and Sunni/Shia mythologies to allow Paul to conquer.

Also, the actor who plays Jamis is Babs Olusanmokun. I took a couple Brazilian jiu jitsu classes from him in 2011 when he was at Alliance NYC. He is a *very* good BJJ black belt and a fine teacher. I've bumped into him a few times since and it's lovely to see him onscreen in a huge tentpole movie. That was a great surprise.

[QuickTidal]

blackzoid, on 01 November 2021 - 04:34 PM, said:

Different strokes I suppose. For me it was excoriating. All NOISE and no melody.

Absolutely fair. I loathe the score to Nolan's INTERSTELLAR....but most people seem to genuinely love that score.

[ContrarianMalazanReader]

A lot of online articles are popping up about how despite borrowing a lot from MENA culture, Villeneuve's adaptation is practically devoid of MENA people, and I kinda agree with that. For instance, I always imagine Chani as very middle eastern looking and much prettier than Zendaya, whom I don't find the least bit attractive.

[amphibian]

I hesitate on the Fremen being the spot to put in MENA people because everyone there is an immigrant and interested in the spice for their own purposes. The difference lies more in the power differential.

Where MENA representation matters most is in the writing and visual design, especially with the mythology and culture of MENA being so important to the rise of Paul and the goals/successes/failures of CHOAM, the Fremen, and Shaddam.

CHOAM is indeed a metaphor exploring oil production and global consumption, but interestingly enough, it's also about spice control as the balances of power/rise of European centric colonialism in the 1500s came as control of the actual spice trade shifted to them.

But Spaihts probably doesn't know that and he and Villuenueve need help with that kind of layering to deliver on the stone cold classic they're trying to deliver.

[ContrarianMalazanReader]

Now that you mention it, CHOAM is wholly absent from this movie. I guess they will save it for part 2.

In the meantime we should have some fun speculating about who would we like to see in certain roles.

As previously posted, my crazy casting choice for Count Fenring is Elijah Wood, should he be featured.

Previous adaptations have cast older actors in the role of Emperor Shaddam IV, but I hope Villeneuve finally stays true to the book and casts an actor in his late thirties to early forties. My picks are Michael Fassbender, Damian Lewis and Domhnall Gleeson.

For the role of Princess Irulan the actresses I have in mind are McKenzie Davis, Elizabeth Debicki, Ana de Armas, Sophie Turner, Florence Pugh or Elle Fanning.

I doubt Count Fenring's wife Margot will appear, but my hope is that she does and should be played by Charlize Theron.

Finally my casting choices for Feyd are Dane DeHaan or Thomas Brodie-Sangster.

[LinearPhilosopher]

ContrarianMalazanReader, on 01 November 2021 - 02:50 AM, said:

IMO Baron Harkonnen wasn't as morbidly obese as I imagined him to be when reading the book. The episode of House M.D. in which they treat a morbidly obese patient played by Pruitt Taylor Vince is the closest to how I picture Baron Harkonnen. He's also described as having a deep basso voice instead of Stellan Skarsgard's raspy voice. Many are also commenting on how intimidating the Baron felt but I didn't feel intimidated, rather he gave me a bad feeling.

On second viewing I must confess that I thoroughly dislike gender-swapped Liet Kynes. Sharon Duncan-Brewster delivered her lines as if she was just reading them out loud, thus giving a very wooden performance. I also hate how Kynes is often condescending towards outsiders which greatly contrasts with book Kynes who is very deferential to avoid suspicion. And for those insisting the gender swap doesn't matter, well since she's the Imperial ecologist and is thus under the Imperium's supervision, wouldn't conceiving a Fremen child raise a lot of suspicion from someone who is pretending to not be a Fremen? Male Kynes would have no such problem concealing the fact that he's fathered Fremen children from the Imperium. Finally, Kynes's death felt like they were telling us "Look how badass she is". I much prefer his death in the book, where he is left to die in the desert without his stillsuit and spent his last moments reflecting on the planetary ecosystem and having an imaginary conversation with his father, one of my favourite parts of the book. So yes, I absolutely hate this one change.

I really didn't have an issue with the delivery. And if we had to contrast the other baron harkonnens, we had the lynch era pustule ridden harkonen, and in the mini series we had a baron that just looks like a fop. Compared to those two we've got a clear winner as far as stage presence is concerned.

With regards to the red part, I very much doubt she has to show up every day to the office wearing baggy clothing. Did frank hebert specify how often liet kynes had to report in and the manner in which he does? Considering the original liet kynes was able to dissapear to the sietches for months on end without too much issue this really doesn't seem like a problem.

While i can understand the gripes re:the death, it looks like its something that got left on the chopping block. They did as well as they did to the cover the material they did, while making some tweaks that were neccesary. Don't forget their shoving half of an incredibly dense book into 3 hours and said book contains appendices because theres just so much to this wolrd. And I think it worked honestly, you can't transpose a work from one medium to another without something being lost, and something being gained.

RE: Zimmer. I hate Zimmer but didn't find him overly obnoxious in this film(that and the throat signing section for the sardaukar intro was awesome). While Zimmer obviously knows how to use the brass and nothing else, modern western movie composers leave much to be desired as an aggregate. (A whole rant for another thread), so zimmer being zimmer isn't enough to ruin it for me.

This post has been edited by LinearPhilosopher: 02 November 2021 - 02:25 AM

[ContrarianMalazanReader]

BTW, am I the only one who found the Doctor Yueh examining Paul incredibly soothing? I guess that's what they call ASMR.

[ContrarianMalazanReader]

Somewhere else someone has pointed out one aspect of Yueh’s treason that breaks suspension of disbelief and makes the Atreides forces, one of the best in the Imperium, look inept in retrospect.

Did Yueh really disable the entire Arrakis defence grid all by himself?