As ridiculous as it seems, actually a really clever idea; you want your trailer to trend as much as possible, so you want as many people watching it as soon as possible after upload. Which means you need to let people know the trailer is coming.
I liked the first one enough so hopefully the second part does not dissapoint. I wonder if they will eventually release the rumoured 4 hour version of the first part? I think it was Momoa talking about it?
As ridiculous as it seems, actually a really clever idea; you want your trailer to trend as much as possible, so you want as many people watching it as soon as possible after upload. Which means you need to let people know the trailer is coming.
What a world we live in?
I suggest we all just be thankful that YouTube’s algorithm no longer pushes “reactions” to a trailer over the trailer.
I really liked the first one. Never read the books, I vaguely remember watching the original movie as a child and never got into the sci-fi series. I did read alot of wiki's on the Dune universe.
Spoiler:
Are they trying to surprise the unaware with not showing Dunan Idaho, or does "he" show back up in the later books that this movie doesn't cover?
I really liked the first one. Never read the books, I vaguely remember watching the original movie as a child and never got into the sci-fi series. I did read alot of wiki's on the Dune universe.
Spoiler:
Are they trying to surprise the unaware with not showing Dunan Idaho, or does "he" show back up in the later books that this movie doesn't cover?
Spoiler:
Duncan Idaho (played by Jason Momoa) dies near the end of the first film. He won't be back unless they do an adaptation of 'Dune Messiah', the second book in the series.
FWIW, Villeneuve has said he'd like to do Dune Messiah in order to complete Paul Atreides' story. I suspect this one will make enough bank for the studio to get behind it.
Shadow Walker wrote: I liked the first one enough so hopefully the second part does not dissapoint. I wonder if they will eventually release the rumoured 4 hour version of the first part? I think it was Momoa talking about it?
They definitely need an extended edition like LotR. I feel like it was missing a few too many vital scenes for people who haven't read the books.
Shadow Walker wrote: I liked the first one enough so hopefully the second part does not dissapoint. I wonder if they will eventually release the rumoured 4 hour version of the first part? I think it was Momoa talking about it?
They definitely need an extended edition like LotR. I feel like it was missing a few too many vital scenes for people who haven't read the books.
I really want to see the banquet scene, it’s one of my favourites from the book.
Although from the new trailer it looks like part 2 is going to include the gladiatorial combat, which is cool. Wondering if that’s how they’re going to introduce Feyd?
Finally got around to watching part 1 on a plane flight this week. Really enjoyed it. I'm not well versed in Dune, but I enjoyed the visuals and the scale of everything.
On topic: is this the final chapter or will there be a third film?
Not clear. It’s the final part of the adaptation of Dune, but the director has expressed an interest in adapting Dune Messiah, the sequel novel, and if that were to happen this would effectively be part 2 of 3.
Just really excited for this.
I reread Dune every couple of years and I was very pleased with the first movie though I'd of course like an extended version with even more Dune'age. I have high hopes for the second installment.
I hope it does well. There was some spectulation that it was considered a success for surpassing Covid expectations but might have had a harder time achieving financial acclaim in a non-covid setting.
On topic: is this the final chapter or will there be a third film?
Not clear. It’s the final part of the adaptation of Dune, but the director has expressed an interest in adapting Dune Messiah, the sequel novel, and if that were to happen this would effectively be part 2 of 3.
I've heard the same. A 3 parter like that would be a neat and tidy little trilogy. However less or modest success for #2 would probably put off a 3rd and lots of success for 2 might well power on towards more than 3 Dune films. Unlike most other sci-fi franchises, Dune hasn't yet been heavily exploited.
I really dislike the lack of color. It's excessively bleak and I don't think that fits the setting or even reflects human condition. I'm pretty sure the majority of petty tyrants, dictators, monarchies, etc, throughout history have been fairly ornamental assuming they could afford it and the technology was there.
trexmeyer wrote: I really dislike the lack of color. It's excessively bleak and I don't think that fits the setting or even reflects human condition. I'm pretty sure the majority of petty tyrants, dictators, monarchies, etc, throughout history have been fairly ornamental assuming they could afford it and the technology was there.
I don’t think I feel quite as strongly, but I did find the modern / minimalist look a bit disappointing (certainly for Caladan and Arakeen); I’ve always imagined the imperium in Dune to be far more ostentatious and baroque. But I guess then you might leave unfamiliar audiences confused as to why everyone’s using clockwork in the far future?
The clockwork is an important piece of visual storytelling, though. It tells the audience exactly how advanced the Dune tech is. See, everyone in the audience knows the progression of technology goes:
Clockwork
Steam
Diesel
Atomic robo
1999 edge
Apple Store
Clockwork-but-black
Nano
Crystal
Clockwork-but-glass
Dirty fabric with wires
Bio-gooey
Energy squid
Clockwork-but-glowing
BobtheInquisitor wrote: If he makes Dune Messiah, I hope he takes the next step and adapts Children of Dune.
I doubt it happens, honestly. By the time Dune Messiah would be released, it'd probably be what, 10 years of his life devoted to that world? You only get so much lifespan in which to direct movies and I suspect he'd want to move on to other projects. Producing and passing the torch to another director sounds more likely to me.
Watched this interview with Denis Villeneuve recently, where he is talking about the Paul/Reverend Mother/Gom Jabbar scene (where he puts his hand in the box). You got the sense the film was such a labour of love (he has wanted to make the film since he was 12 or 13 and first read the book), it's worth a watch. I liked the comment about Timothy Chalamet being a bit intimidated by Charlotte Rampling (who is known as having such a reputation and history in theatre and acting) and that feeding into the scene.
Looking at the cast list on IMDB, it looks like they are completely leaving out Count Hasimir Fenring, which feels like a mistake considering they do have Lea Seydoux in there playing his wife IIRC.
ZergSmasher wrote: Looking at the cast list on IMDB, it looks like they are completely leaving out Count Hasimir Fenring, which feels like a mistake considering they do have Lea Seydoux in there playing his wife IIRC.
Neither were in Lynch's film, whereas Wikipedia states the following for Margot Fenring:
Though Margot was not included in the 2021 Denis Villeneuve film Dune, Léa Seydoux will portray the character in the upcoming sequel, Dune: Part Two. Margot has been described as a critical character and vital ally to Paul Atreides in the film.
Well, that means this will be a year of me not going to the pictures, that was the only thing I was wanting to see this year. Oh well, at least we are still getting it.
Im very much looking forward to it. Part 1 is one of the few films I find myself watching over and over again in the background. Theres so much untapped potential for Villeneuves take on the setting, im surprised that nobody has yet tried giving it the Song of Ice and Fire Miniatures Game style treatment.
chaos0xomega wrote: Im very much looking forward to it. Part 1 is one of the few films I find myself watching over and over again in the background. Theres so much untapped potential for Villeneuves take on the setting, im surprised that nobody has yet tried giving it the Song of Ice and Fire Miniatures Game style treatment.
That would require a deal with Herbert Properties LLC and there's no way to tell if they would be interested in such a deal or what it would cost any potential game manufacturers.
I dont know the specifics of the Dune license, but licensing is not typically so straightforward. Usually when a movie studio gets a license to produce films based on existing IP, it also gets derivative licensing rights or a forked license to produce licensed merchandise based on said film, often which often does not require much (if any) approval from the umbrella licensor. This is (or at least was) the case with GW/WB New Line Cinema and the Tolkien license for example, likewise the Game of Thrones license based on the HBO series is a separate license from the Song of Ice and Fire license based on the books. In other words, its entirely possible that a miniatures game based on the film (which is really what I would prefer) could be licensed via Legendary/WB without involving Herbert Properties LLC, likewise its possible to license a game like that based on the books via Herbert Properties LLC without the involvement of Legendary/WB.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I do know some idiots bought an NFT version of a Dune book, labouring under the misapprehension they were therefore buying the entire copyright.
I had forgotten about that little bit of history. That was quite a nice bit of schadenfreude for everyone else.
There are multiple board games clearly based on the film, and another more based on the book. Doesn't seem like it's too complicated or prohibitively expensive.
gorgon wrote: There are multiple board games clearly based on the film, and another more based on the book. Doesn't seem like it's too complicated or prohibitively expensive.
Board ganes and miniature wargames are a bit different. Much like MESBG, they would have to dig into books other thsn just Dune in order to have enough variety for a miniature wargame.
Pretty sure GW made up a good amount of the stuff in MESBG without digging into the books at all. Theres a number of characters, unit types, and concepts that don't appear in the films or the books, etc.
gorgon wrote: There are multiple board games clearly based on the film, and another more based on the book. Doesn't seem like it's too complicated or prohibitively expensive.
Board ganes and miniature wargames are a bit different. Much like MESBG, they would have to dig into books other thsn just Dune in order to have enough variety for a miniature wargame.
Dune Imperium is very clearly based on the movie, yet has expansions for Ix and Tleilaxu. Again, it doesn't seem like the IP is overly problematic or that the rights holders are anti-game. It may just be they haven't been pitched on a miniatures game yet, or haven't liked the pitches they've received.
chaos0xomega wrote: Pretty sure GW made up a good amount of the stuff in MESBG without digging into the books at all. Theres a number of characters, unit types, and concepts that don't appear in the films or the books, etc.
What miniatures specifically? Because I didn't see anything that didn't appear in the books or movies in their line.
chaos0xomega wrote: Pretty sure GW made up a good amount of the stuff in MESBG without digging into the books at all. Theres a number of characters, unit types, and concepts that don't appear in the films or the books, etc.
What miniatures specifically? Because I didn't see anything that didn't appear in the books or movies in their line.
It is focused on you creating your own House and your own characters for the House. Then, you go out and do things for the benefit of your House.
It uses a Meta-currency that passes between GMs and players. It is a relatively abstract game mechanics designed to lean into the narrative. It uses Modiphius 2d20 system.
It is nothing like D&D, so you can't think about it in the same paradigm. It is much more abstract than that.
chaos0xomega wrote: Pretty sure GW made up a good amount of the stuff in MESBG without digging into the books at all. Theres a number of characters, unit types, and concepts that don't appear in the films or the books, etc.
What miniatures specifically? Because I didn't see anything that didn't appear in the books or movies in their line.
Possible offhand mentioned in some book. Not biggest lotr experts.
Just go through most of the Easterling model range and army list, almost all of it aside from the basic infantry and khamul is made up by GW in some capacity. Same with half of the other units and characters in the game
chaos0xomega wrote: Pretty sure GW made up a good amount of the stuff in MESBG without digging into the books at all. Theres a number of characters, unit types, and concepts that don't appear in the films or the books, etc.
What miniatures specifically? Because I didn't see anything that didn't appear in the books or movies in their line.
Possible offhand mentioned in some book. Not biggest lotr experts.
Just go through most of the Easterling model range and army list, almost all of it aside from the basic infantry and khamul is made up by GW in some capacity. Same with half of the other units and characters in the game
I mean, I guess but at the same time they are reasonable extrapolations that fit entirely in the setting.
Easterling Cataphracts are just easterlings on horses. Ballista are common medieval weaponry, no reason dwarves wouldn't have some.
Its not like they came up with entire factions wholesale and i feel like everything fit just fine. Even those derpy half-trolls from Harad are given some mentions in the fluff.
I suppose it is made-up in the sense that those names aren't necessarily used, but its hardly complete fabrication to come up with some Tolkein sounding names for elite units and such.
Its not. Though I would be hard pressed to get more than... 4 factions out of just Dune.
Depends on how the wargame is structured, is it a massed battle or a skirmish game(prob skirmish).
You could probably have House Atreides, House Harkonen, Fremen, and Sardaukar if you limited yourself to just the original book.
Doable, but a stretch and you'd really want to expand and get a couple more, and would probably end up having a mercenary mechanic as well for some stuff.
I respect D.V.'s desire to increase Chani's role but Zendaya is not doing it for me. She was fine in the Spiderman MCU and great in Euphoria, but she's not working for me in Dune. Zoe Saldana is probably too old for the role at this point, but I think she would've fit better with D.V.'s vision.
The visuals are still too bland. Lynch's movie may have been 'bad', but I like visuals more.
Grey Templar wrote: Its not. Though I would be hard pressed to get more than... 4 factions out of just Dune.
Depends on how the wargame is structured, is it a massed battle or a skirmish game(prob skirmish).
You could probably have House Atreides, House Harkonen, Fremen, and Sardaukar if you limited yourself to just the original book.
Doable, but a stretch and you'd really want to expand and get a couple more, and would probably end up having a mercenary mechanic as well for some stuff.
You have the Houses Major and the Houses minor of themselves, CHOAM (Which is a combined merchant guild-thing, that ALL of the houses and parties are part of - Like a UN, but concerned more with the mercantile aspects of society), the BG, the Ixians, the Tlielaxu and the Spacing guild. You also have the Sardaukar, which are ostensibly the army of the Emperor (who is also the largest shareholder in CHOAM). In addition to those, you have smuggling guilds- because there are taxes and levies to move goods legitimately charged by CHOAM, on top of the fees paid to the spacing guild to move them - and where there are taxes and levies, there are people who choose not to pay them and to move goods another way (bribing the guild is also a thing).
You could probably make a very nice skirmish game, kinda like Infinity out of it. A bit of overlap with some factions being able to be taken by others and such.
chaos0xomega wrote: There's like a dozen other houses mentioned in the books. You can also do choam, the tleilaxu, and ixians
That's basically what Westwood did with Emperor Battle for Dune (a game I really wish would get remastered, but sadly I suspect its stuck in licencing hell/limbo)
They fleshed out one other house to a full army to give them 3 (I think it was Orlock or Orlaz or something like that). Then they added forces like the Navigators, Fremen, tleilaxu, and ixians as sub-factions that you could ally into your main force. I think you could have 2 allied forces at any one time and they basically gave you 2 additional specialist units to make use of. Or it might have been only 1 ally at a time. Game hasn't worked on a PC for me in utterly ages so its years since I last tried it .
They're doing an early screening on Sunday, but the theater near me was sold out. However, I already have tickets for March 1 to see it on 70mm IMAX. One of only 12 theaters nationwide.
I don't know how Villeneuve does it, but he can make a $200 million budget look like $400 million. It's stunning to watch.
Overall, I'm not sure how it could have been adapted for the big screen and general audiences better than this. There will be some that will complain loudly about certain changes -- including those around Chani, who has far more agency than the book. But IMO it ultimately makes her a better character.
I just came back from the theatre. I loved this film, but they changed so much of the story I'm not sure I could really call it the story of Dune.
Visually it's quite the spectacle. Denis has a great eye for beautiful shots. The action is well done, I was never confused about what was happening or who was where. The final confrontation at the end has some of the best fight choreography I've ever seen. Very few cuts so you can really appreciate all of the work the stunt guys put in. The beauty of Arrakis is on full display here, especially in a touching scene with Paul and Chani.
The soundtrack is killer. Hans nails that pseudo-biblical vibe so well. It fits the film like a glove.
The cast was exceptional, especially without Jason Mamoa sticking out like a sore thumb. I actually think my favourite character is Stilgar, Javier Bardem really understood the assignment. Everyone did a great job with their characters, even the ones who end up quite differently from the book. I have to give a special shoutout to Austin Butler, he turned in an amazing performance.
Which brings me to spoilers!
Spoiler:
I felt the absence of Count Fenring hard in this movie. Without him advising the Baron to get off Arrakis and set up Rabban as a scapegoat for the abysmal harvesting of spice after Leto's death, the political situation is just very different. The Baron appears to be on Arrakis for the whole movie with the exception of his nephew's birthday, which was also quite different.
In the book, it's Feyd that tries to get rid of his uncle but the movie flips this on its head. The gladiator fight remains the same, it just isn't a ploy for Feyd to discredit the Baron's slavemaster. I actually didn't mind this change, as it makes the Baron seem more competent than he was in the book.
Chan is like... a completely different character in this movie. Like borderline unrecognizable for anyone that's read the book. That being said, I think I actually prefer the film version. She's way less submissive and I really dig that. She challenges Paul a lot and is practically the only Fremen that isn't afraid of Jessica.
I really don't mind the changes though. Dune is a pretty old book and this very much feels like a modern day rendition of the story and I'm good with that. I really hope he makes another.
creeping-deth87 wrote: I just came back from the theatre. I loved this film, but they changed so much of the story I'm not sure I could really call it the story of Dune.
Visually it's quite the spectacle. Denis has a great eye for beautiful shots. The action is well done, I was never confused about what was happening or who was where. The final confrontation at the end has some of the best fight choreography I've ever seen. Very few cuts so you can really appreciate all of the work the stunt guys put in. The beauty of Arrakis is on full display here, especially in a touching scene with Paul and Chani.
The soundtrack is killer. Hans nails that pseudo-biblical vibe so well. It fits the film like a glove.
The cast was exceptional, especially without Jason Mamoa sticking out like a sore thumb. I actually think my favourite character is Stilgar, Javier Bardem really understood the assignment. Everyone did a great job with their characters, even the ones who end up quite differently from the book. I have to give a special shoutout to Austin Butler, he turned in an amazing performance.
Which brings me to spoilers!
Spoiler:
I felt the absence of Count Fenring hard in this movie. Without him advising the Baron to get off Arrakis and set up Rabban as a scapegoat for the abysmal harvesting of spice after Leto's death, the political situation is just very different. The Baron appears to be on Arrakis for the whole movie with the exception of his nephew's birthday, which was also quite different.
In the book, it's Feyd that tries to get rid of his uncle but the movie flips this on its head. The gladiator fight remains the same, it just isn't a ploy for Feyd to discredit the Baron's slavemaster. I actually didn't mind this change, as it makes the Baron seem more competent than he was in the book.
Chan is like... a completely different character in this movie. Like borderline unrecognizable for anyone that's read the book. That being said, I think I actually prefer the film version. She's way less submissive and I really dig that. She challenges Paul a lot and is practically the only Fremen that isn't afraid of Jessica.
I really don't mind the changes though. Dune is a pretty old book and this very much feels like a modern day rendition of the story and I'm good with that. I really hope he makes another.
Oh, I think it's definitely recognizable as Dune. To me, a lot of the stuff that changed either wasn't that important to the story, or was easily understandable from a filmmaking perspective.
Spoiler:
To wit, I don't care about Leto I not being present & dying. Paul doesn't need more reason to seek revenge. Count Fenring might be one character too many. And Alia not making it out of the womb avoids having the 5 year old actor with dubbed voice thing that Lynch did in his movie. I don't know that it'd really work well, and it was weirder to keep her a fetus for now. But how about the surprise casting there?
The Spacing Guild being a non-factor is kind of a shame, but that feels to me like Villeneuve is saving them for Dune Messiah along with the Bene Tleilax. Kinda like how he saved Shaddam and Irulan for Part Two. It's not a bad approach to keeping things tighter but still eventually filling the universe out. I was glad to see there were more references to the ecological dreams of the Fremen in this one. It's really important.
Chani is a lot different, but she's basically a lovesick puppy in the book who just goes along with whatever Paul wants -- and it's a lot -- without questioning. I know...'history will call us wives'. And Paul was faithful. But to me her reaction to Paul marrying Irulan is much more human and feels more like something from a strong Fremen woman. And I dunno that even book Chani felt like someone who'd just shrug at the whole little jihad thing. Those things realistically would feel like betrayals.
I agree the performances in this are really good. Chalamet raises his game for this one, and you really do see Paul change during the course of the film.
For anyone wanting to see it, I HIGHLY recommend rewatching Part One. Part Two is really like Episode Two...it picks up right from the end of the first film, and there are certain shots and ties back to the first film that really make it feel whole, but might be missed if you haven't watched the first part recently.
It was absolutely amazing. Quite undeserving of the literally empty theater I saw it in.
I think it could do with a LOTR treatment and get some extended scenes in there, so hopefully we get that at some point just to flesh it out even more.
I watched the film yesterday. I’ll let you all extrapolate my feelings on the matter by way of outlining what I feel needs to happen as of today.
A team of highly trained individuals should be gathered and fly to Denis Villeneuves home in helicopter in order to extract him to a location suitable to start work on filming part 3 immediately. Mr Villeneuve and any requested cast members, technicians etc are to be given any and all requirements to complete this task.
All reasonable people everywhere are to submit to this ruling and provide full support to Mr. Villeneuve and co.
Failure to comply results in immediate banishment from your social circle and the wearing of a dunce hat.
"We only made a $500 million profit on Dune 2, which is disappointing, we're pulling funding for Dune 3 and canceling the project."
Actually, the opening looks like it's going to beat the studio's projections. It's not going to touch the Barbie opening, but matching the Oppenheimer opening should be doable. It's going to beat the first film's opening by a good bit, and the stellar reviews and strong word of mouth should give it good legs. It'll be a profitable venture for the studio.
It's kind of incredible that the film was apparently made for $190 million! I've seen $250 million films that didn't look 25% as good.
"We only made a $500 million profit on Dune 2, which is disappointing, we're pulling funding for Dune 3 and canceling the project."
Actually, the opening looks like it's going to beat the studio's projections. It's not going to touch the Barbie opening, but matching the Oppenheimer opening should be doable. It's going to beat the first film's opening by a good bit, and the stellar reviews and strong word of mouth should give it good legs. It'll be a profitable venture for the studio.
It's kind of incredible that the film was apparently made for $190 million! I've seen $250 million films that didn't look 25% as good.
To be fair you’re on point there, it’s going to be a slam dunk.
I’m just glad we all got a big budget film with both style and substance for once. I’ll be watching it again next weekend, even going to take the old man.
Going to see film on Tuesday. Expecting it to be very much a visual spectacle and I am looking forward to it. Like, they should get this man to make the next Star Wars films or any 40K project. The filmmaker has a gift.
My only concern is that the film is going to continue acting as if Paul Atreides is a flawed protagonist. “Oh he’s like Luke facing serious moral choices and this is all edgy thought provoking stuff.”To me he’s a villain who isn’t being called out.
As if the characters in the narrative are blind to the really evil things he does and his immoral motivations. He’s evil, not morally grey at all and we’re given literally no reason to like him at all. So I hope he is called out on this. If Paul died I would feel nothing and would see that as him getting what he deserved. He’s a horrible human being and he is a “weak man”.
I wanted very much to see this notion pushed too and I felt it was there but not quite as well crafted as I would have liked.
That said, I quizzed my partner after we watched it to see if she picked up on Paul being less than heroic and she stated flatly ‘he went bad’ so maybe my worries about it being too subtle are unfounded.
Well, allow me to kill the hype off somewhat.It felt like watching entire run of Game of Thrones: it's awesome, engaging, groundbreaking, then the ending sequence is compressed into absurdity, and feels like nothing. It had incredible buildup, and very anticlimatic ending.
It was two hours of 5-star movie, and 45 minutes of 2 star movie. Call it a 3.5 stars overall.
Visually, though - and in terms of immersion - near perfect. Avatar what?
Backfire wrote: Well, allow me to kill the hype off somewhat.It felt like watching entire run of Game of Thrones: it's awesome, engaging, groundbreaking, then the ending sequence is compressed into absurdity, and feels like nothing. It had incredible buildup, and very anticlimatic ending.
It was two hours of 5-star movie, and 45 minutes of 2 star movie. Call it a 3.5 stars overall.
Visually, though - and in terms of immersion - near perfect. Avatar what?
Interesting take. I think I know what you mean by ‘compressed into absurdity’ but, having sat on it a while, I no longer feel that way. If you are talking about what I think you are, and I think you are, I feel the idea was to demonstrate the complete inability of those around to anticipate the strategy of such a mind.
Keeping it vague out of respect for those who have yet to see the film.
It's definitely one of the best movies in recent years. Not the absolute masterpiece some like to call it, but still very, very well made.
They managed to assemble a great cast and deliver some of the most stunning sci-fi visuals I've ever seen. The design was spot-on, especially regarding how alien things looked. Harkonnen are human, but their depravity and visual language made them truly uncanny. That sequence on Giedi Prime, so intensely illuminated by the unnatural light of their black sun, was fantastic.
Where the movie took a dive for me is the final third/quarter, where things seemed rushed, or rather compacted in a way that diminished the experience for me. I also missed some of the more intense dialogues that were the highlights of the book. I understand why they decided to cut count fenring, but I was really looking forward to his interaction with baron harkonnen. Gurney killing Rabban also felt shoehorned in for a cheap pay-off that didn't land at all. I feel some of the fremen scenes could have been taken out in favour of more relevant dialogue, exploring the political situation of the Harkonnens vs. the Emperor and the intrigues of the Harkonnen dynasty. Also no Thufir -.-
So overall very enjoyable, visually stunning, well cast, but with some unfortunate decisions in terms of plot and pacing.
Totalwar1402 wrote: Going to see film on Tuesday. Expecting it to be very much a visual spectacle and I am looking forward to it. Like, they should get this man to make the next Star Wars films or any 40K project. The filmmaker has a gift.
My only concern is that the film is going to continue acting as if Paul Atreides is a flawed protagonist. “Oh he’s like Luke facing serious moral choices and this is all edgy thought provoking stuff.”To me he’s a villain who isn’t being called out.
As if the characters in the narrative are blind to the really evil things he does and his immoral motivations. He’s evil, not morally grey at all and we’re given literally no reason to like him at all. So I hope he is called out on this. If Paul died I would feel nothing and would see that as him getting what he deserved. He’s a horrible human being and he is a “weak man”.
Hes not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.
To sort of answer your question,
Spoiler:
Yes and no.
Yes, he is engaging in a moral struggle where he doesn't want to be the messiah, at least not in a way which takes advantage of the Fremen and because he doesn't want his visions of genocide to come true.
Then in desperation he drinks the water of life as they begin losing their fight. This completely eliminates his moral waffling and he goes full Messiah.
I suppose the only flaw in their storytelling is that Paul has yet to do anything actually villainous, but he isn't not being called out. Chani is, unlike the book, not onboard with whats going on and I suspect that she will be a moral foil for him going forward.
My guess is that Dune Messiah is where we will see our new God Emperor go full villain mode.
I do feel like this movie will benefit greatly from an Extended edition to add another 45 minutes or so of scenes to it to fully develop the last third of the movie.
It's definitely one of the best movies in recent years. Not the absolute masterpiece some like to call it, but still very, very well made.
They managed to assemble a great cast and deliver some of the most stunning sci-fi visuals I've ever seen. The design was spot-on, especially regarding how alien things looked. Harkonnen are human, but their depravity and visual language made them truly uncanny. That sequence on Giedi Prime, so intensely illuminated by the unnatural light of their black sun, was fantastic.
Where the movie took a dive for me is the final third/quarter, where things seemed rushed, or rather compacted in a way that diminished the experience for me. I also missed some of the more intense dialogues that were the highlights of the book. I understand why they decided to cut count fenring, but I was really looking forward to his interaction with baron harkonnen. Gurney killing Rabban also felt shoehorned in for a cheap pay-off that didn't land at all. I feel some of the fremen scenes could have been taken out in favour of more relevant dialogue, exploring the political situation of the Harkonnens vs. the Emperor and the intrigues of the Harkonnen dynasty. Also no Thufir -.-
So overall very enjoyable, visually stunning, well cast, but with some unfortunate decisions in terms of plot and pacing.
See, to me most of that falls under very understandable decisions.
In my opinion, the political situations you describe a) won't be that interesting to general audiences, b) will likely affect the film's pacing, and it's already a long one, and c) are ultimately irrelevant since the Corrinos and Harkonnens aren't truly going to matter anymore as soon as the credits roll. Better to spend more time with the Fremen, whose politics will still be relevant in the next film.
Totalwar1402 wrote: Going to see film on Tuesday. Expecting it to be very much a visual spectacle and I am looking forward to it. Like, they should get this man to make the next Star Wars films or any 40K project. The filmmaker has a gift.
My only concern is that the film is going to continue acting as if Paul Atreides is a flawed protagonist. “Oh he’s like Luke facing serious moral choices and this is all edgy thought provoking stuff.”To me he’s a villain who isn’t being called out.
As if the characters in the narrative are blind to the really evil things he does and his immoral motivations. He’s evil, not morally grey at all and we’re given literally no reason to like him at all. So I hope he is called out on this. If Paul died I would feel nothing and would see that as him getting what he deserved. He’s a horrible human being and he is a “weak man”.
Hes not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.
To sort of answer your question,
Spoiler:
Yes and no.
Yes, he is engaging in a moral struggle where he doesn't want to be the messiah, at least not in a way which takes advantage of the Fremen and because he doesn't want his visions of genocide to come true.
Then in desperation he drinks the water of life as they begin losing their fight. This completely eliminates his moral waffling and he goes full Messiah.
I suppose the only flaw in their storytelling is that Paul has yet to do anything actually villainous, but he isn't not being called out. Chani is, unlike the book, not onboard with whats going on and I suspect that she will be a moral foil for him going forward.
My guess is that Dune Messiah is where we will see our new God Emperor go full villain mode.
So regarding Dune Messiah...
Spoiler:
If it's anything remotely like the book, it's not going to have Paul in 'full villain mode'. At that point the jihad grows well beyond his ability to control, and he wrestles with how to put it back in the box without leading humanity down an even worse path. And then he still fails at the latter even if he succeeds at the former.
See, to me most of that falls under very understandable decisions.
In my opinion, the political situations you describe a) won't be that interesting to general audiences, b) will likely affect the film's pacing, and it's already a long one, and c) are ultimately irrelevant since the Corrinos and Harkonnens aren't truly going to matter anymore as soon as the credits roll. Better to spend more time with the Fremen, whose politics will still be relevant in the next film.
I agree, these cuts are understandable, but that doesn't make their absence less frustrating. There may be a good reason, but the product is worse for it.
See, to me most of that falls under very understandable decisions.
In my opinion, the political situations you describe a) won't be that interesting to general audiences, b) will likely affect the film's pacing, and it's already a long one, and c) are ultimately irrelevant since the Corrinos and Harkonnens aren't truly going to matter anymore as soon as the credits roll. Better to spend more time with the Fremen, whose politics will still be relevant in the next film.
I agree, these cuts are understandable, but that doesn't make their absence less frustrating. There may be a good reason, but the product is worse for it.
I get it. TO ME, the bigger losses were in the first film. I think it would have been worth a couple minutes of screen time to see Thufir training Paul and Jessica sparring with Paul. And those scenes were filmed. The banquet scene's absence is the tragic one, although I trust Villeneuve a lot and obviously he just didn't see a way to make that one work. My understanding is that it wasn't filmed...might have been in an early version of the script but then cut. Gotta pour out a spice beer on the ground for that one.
I think my biggest gripe with the 1st part of the new dune film was how disconnected a lot of scenes felt. Each scent in itself felt good, but it just felt like there wasn't connections between the scenes. Ergo the natural flow of the story, events and film felt disjointed.
It's tricky to put my finger on it, but in general I didn't feel like I was watching a story but more seeing very choice scenes from a greater story.
Despite this movie being longer than the 1st one it still feels like it's not long enough. I think an additional 10 minutes sprinkled throughout might have helped. It's like they edited this movie down to the bare minimum needed to tell the story. Denis doesn't do extended versions though so I think for now we'll just have to cope with what we got.
I watched it on Sunday. I think it's about as good an adaptation as you could hope for, and a great sci fi movie too. First movie I've watched in the cinema since Dune part 1, and I think it's an improvement on that, as a film.
Spoiler:
The changes they made to Chani are improvements, adding a bit more depth to the Fremen culture and also giving us a POV on the changes that happen to Paul that makes Herbert's intended message a bit more clear. I think they did a good job with it.
I wonder what it would be like to watch it if you'd never read the books though - a deliberate choice is made not to explain stuff a good few times and I can see people scratching their heads. That said, I dunno how you could have explained some of it without painful exposition dumping or something, so it seems like the choice was made to preserve immersion in the movie over comprehensibility. For me, that was a good choice, but I wonder how non-book readers will find it.
What makes me saddest is the stuff they cut, but I think you've got to choose what to focus on in these situations. I'm a big fan of the ecological aspects of Dune and that doesn't really get much of a look in, unfortunately. I can see why they made that choice. Stuff like the Mentats and the Butlerian Jihad also get fairly glossed over, as well as some of the imperial politics and systems. Again, I think they made a choice to focus on what they could do well on film, and preserve immersion in this fantastical world over exploring every aspect of the novel.
I was surprised by how strongly the ending sets up another sequel. The novels quickly get pretty weird, so I wonder how many of them they'll do? Dune Messiah only, or all the way up to God Emperor of Dune? If ever a book was unfilmable...
chaos0xomega wrote: My understanding is that Denis only intends to go as far as Dune Messiah
Yeah, but thats still enough material for at least 2 more movies.
And the guy might not want to spend the rest of his carreer/life making just Dune movies....
I highly doubt Messiah will be two movies, since that book is less than half the size of the first book. That being said, we all know what happened with the Hobbit, so not counting it out entirely.
Yeah, he's indicated that it's one more film. But IIRC, he's going to shoot Rendevous with Rama before Messiah. The Bene Gesserit series can fill the gap somewhat in terms of having some Dune content, although it's set long before Dune.
Really looking forward to seeing what he does with Rendezvous with Rama. It also gives the actors a chance to work on other projects and to age a bit into the twelve-year time jump for Dune Messiah.
Actually one of my big questions about Messiah is about the time jump. Because Alia...
Spoiler:
...is still in the womb at the end of Dune. And we have that role cast already. So it has to be more like a 16+ year jump, right? ATJ can play younger, but not a 12 year old, especially when they probably won't start filming for another 2-3 years.
And 16 years seems like a stretch for the rest of the cast, although I guess he can just chalk a lot of it up to the geriatric qualities of spice.
Ok, just got back and I enjoyed that, but also found it really interesting. There’s a number of plot changes at the end that make it different to the book, yet actually reinforce the overall theme (messiahs and unquestioning authority are bad). And the way they’ve filmed it, it’s very solidly set up for another film, whilst still feeling relatively complete just in case that doesn’t happen.
There’s still a tiny bit of me that regrets that it doesn’t quite capture the atmosphere of the Imperium from the books (Louis XIV Versailles court IN SPACE!!!), but I think it’s about as good as we’re ever going to get as a mainstream adaptation. And for all that, I loved the look and feel of the Fremen culture, they did a really good job there.
It'd be criminally negligent if some gaming company didn't acquire the license to produce fremen vs harkonnen plastics. The visual design of the movies is excellent.
We could definitely use a TV show to fill out some of the missing exposition from the films and expand the setting a bit. TV shows are a little better for managing exposition that would drag a movie down.
Except where the film deviates/misses out/changes/alters content from the book. Which even if you're doing a really faithful adaptation there are going to be some changes in cutting a large book down into just 2 films.
Grey Templar wrote: We could definitely use a TV show to fill out some of the missing exposition from the films and expand the setting a bit. TV shows are a little better for managing exposition that would drag a movie down.
The Sisterhood show will explore the early years of the Bene Gesserit. While that will only give so much insight into the chessboard circa 10191, I'd think it'd have to have some explanation of the Butlerian Jihad, and maybe give us a glimpse of the founding of other schools.
You never know if they'll start drawing up plans for a second series if Part Two does really well. That's one of the things they want now at WB...synergies between their movies and TV.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Regarding deleted scenes, Villeneuve said this to Collider:
“I’m a strong believer that when it’s not in the movie, it’s dead. Sometimes I remove shots and I say, ‘I cannot believe I’m cutting this out.’ I feel like a samurai opening my gut. It’s painful, so I cannot go back after that and create a Frankenstein and try to reanimate things that I killed. It’s too painful. When it’s dead, it’s dead, and it’s dead for a reason.”
Tim Blake Nelson was apparently cut from the film. The role kinda had to be
After the disappointing first film I went in with low expectations, and found myself enjoying it. There's much better action this time around and the changes made are at least as interesting as those in the 1984 film.
As an adaptation of the 1965 classic book its still as bad as the 1984 movie. Where that one skimped on Paul's time with the Fremen, and changed the ending, this one removes the guild entirely and it amounts at best to a backwater skirmish than a war that threatens the fate of the universe. The Sardukar are eyewateringly crap and the Corrinos feel like tourists who wandered onto a WB's set by accident. And Zendaya got so upset that she stormed off the set and called a cab...
"Drive me off this picture!".
Still a good slice of sci-fi action and worth seeing on the big screen.
I was reading the comments on Mark Kermode’s review the other day (he thought Christopher Walken was a bit empty and didn’t fit the role) and a lot of people were suggesting that that’s the point. The Emperor is just an empty mouthpiece for others*, so the fact that his character doesn’t have agency and doesn’t really do anything is actually the point.
* In the book, this is the guild, in this version they’ve made it the BG.
Also, while I’m not as harsh on it as SamusDrake, now that I think about it, they have kind of lost the “he who controls the Spice, controls the universe” element; it’s much more about the Fremen just being kick-ass fundamentalists than the fact that they literally control all of intergalactic travel and commerce. They talk about it a couple of times, but it’s not really the hammer at the core of the plot like it is in the book (probably tied to minimising the guild’s presence in the film).
I dunno. The mention how big of an issue it is that the Fremen are constantly destroying/cutting spice production and how it's causing a cascade of issues for everyone else.
The Emperor doesn't show up to feth with the Fremen. He shows up to put the Harkonens in their place for failing to meet the needs of the empire. Paul just uses it as the opportunity he needs.
Dune (the book) has a LOT of factions, characters, and themes. The job description for these films was to adapt the book in 5-ish hours of cinema that will attract general audiences.
Viewed through that lens and knowing that things had to be streamlined...I have a hard time making a strong case for the Guild getting more screentime. They're more of a behind-the-scenes power in the story, and not a direct antagonist to Paul.
I'd lay money that Villeneuve "saved" the Guild screentime for Messiah. We'll likely get the named Navigator character from the book in that film -- who does present as more of an adversary -- and that'll help audiences get their heads around that faction.
I'm not going to go over what has already been discussed I will just say that I feel they did the Sadaukar dirty. They are supposed to be an elite and dangerous force but in the film(s) they are incredibly basic, both aesthetically and in fighting. They never really feel like a threat and just seem to be jobbers.
Yeah, I would agree with that criticism. It seems that the director just wasn't really interested in showing any military aspects - I found most of the direction for soldiers and battle scenes to be lacking, despite every other thing in the two movies looking great.
This one was better than the first one in that regard, but it does make the Sadaukar look like chumps.
I'm not going to go over what has already been discussed I will just say that I feel they did the Sadaukar dirty. They are supposed to be an elite and dangerous force but in the film(s) they are incredibly basic, both aesthetically and in fighting. They never really feel like a threat and just seem to be jobbers.
In the part one they were shown to be a threat at the very first fight, when they quickly killed Atreides force like they were nothing, after multiple failed attempts from Harkonnens. Later, in the movie they were sadly like you said.
Their intro, with the throat singing and drinking blood from crucified prisoners was pretty epic.
But they needed a more distinct look. They had beige armor and that was about it, while the Harkonans with the their pasty white skin and black leather were very distinct. Maybe they could have been more barbaric looking.
Ah well, it may have been too much to do. Honestly I'd have rather had the Navigators.
One thing I'm definitely handing to this film - the Harkonnens. Rabban is quite a coward and Feyd is actually lethal and scary. Even the Baron had some good moments in this one. But the Sardukar want their grav-suits back...
Da Boss wrote: Yeah, I would agree with that criticism. It seems that the director just wasn't really interested in showing any military aspects - I found most of the direction for soldiers and battle scenes to be lacking, despite every other thing in the two movies looking great.
That's kinda true to the source material if I remember correctly though. The actual "campaign and final fight" take up like an insanely low number of pages in the book and are kinda beside the point.
I'll say this, more than anything this director seems to have understood not just the material but the authors intentions and he's brought that to the masses which after the disaster of the 1984 movie is impressive.
In fairness, it doesn't matter how good your soldiers are at stabbing things if a dozen vacuum cleaner kaijus and 10 million zealots who grew up on a planet's whose atmosphere is 5% combat stims/Forced Evolutionary Virus by volume come charging at you and your shields dont work.
Da Boss wrote: Yeah, I would agree with that criticism. It seems that the director just wasn't really interested in showing any military aspects - I found most of the direction for soldiers and battle scenes to be lacking, despite every other thing in the two movies looking great.
That's kinda true to the source material if I remember correctly though. The actual "campaign and final fight" take up like an insanely low number of pages in the book and are kinda beside the point.
I'll say this, more than anything this director seems to have understood not just the material but the authors intentions and he's brought that to the masses which after the disaster of the 1984 movie is impressive.
Yep!
I see people online say that Lynch's movie was truer to the book, and then I think of heartplugs and weirding modules and kitty milking and Paul making it rain and a bunch of other stuff that really has nothing much of anything to do with the book or its themes.
I think Lynch nailed the atmosphere of the setting with his film. So much so even the new film has to play some homage to the vision in that film.
The fact that a few things like Heart Plugs and the Weirding Modules feature and are so much a pat of the film that people easily forget that they weren't part of the book, is honestly quite impressive and I think shows how well it captured the feeling of the book.
In much the same way that Lord of the Rings films nailed it and will likely define how those characters, setting, world and all look for a very long time.
I would say that the opening and up until the Freman part the Lynch film feels better paced and sequences better between scenes. The new Dune feels like a few political groups also act differently and the pacing feels off between scenes to me at least in the first film. The use of 2 films gives it far more time and certainly he Lynch film suffers from having to basically skip huge chunks of the Fremen part of the storyline and compress what they do show into a rush for the final fight.
Overread wrote: I think Lynch nailed the atmosphere of the setting with his film. So much so even the new film has to play some homage to the vision in that film.
The fact that a few things like Heart Plugs and the Weirding Modules feature and are so much a pat of the film that people easily forget that they weren't part of the book, is honestly quite impressive and I think shows how well it captured the feeling of the book.
In much the same way that Lord of the Rings films nailed it and will likely define how those characters, setting, world and all look for a very long time.
I would say that the opening and up until the Freman part the Lynch film feels better paced and sequences better between scenes. The new Dune feels like a few political groups also act differently and the pacing feels off between scenes to me at least in the first film. The use of 2 films gives it far more time and certainly he Lynch film suffers from having to basically skip huge chunks of the Fremen part of the storyline and compress what they do show into a rush for the final fight.
I really don't agree much with most of what you're saying here, but to each his own.
David Lynch is one of my favorite directors, and Dune is one of my favorite books, but I just don't think it's a very good movie or Dune adaptation. There's some good visual design work there, but that only goes so far. And these films will be far more defining and influential over the long run. General audiences actually like them.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: Yeah an update of the Navigator and Emperor scene would have been great.
Honestly I felt like Christopher Walken was kind of wasted as the Emperor
So some opinions probably not really spoiler heavy but i'll spoiler tag em anyway as well as a bunch of spoiler heavy things.
Spoiler:
Christopher Walken as the Emperor seemed funny as the Emperor and out of place.
I was actually really disappointed with how they humiliated Dave Batista's character in this movie. He loses every fight in less than like 5 seconds (including one fight where he kisses his brother's foot), has a massive breakdown fit and fails at everything he does in this one. I don't know the books but in some ways i feel like this would've felt insulting for Dave Batista to play this role for this movie but i don't know. I suppose it could've been worse.
The other harkonnen basically succeeded at where his brother failed at aside from a disappointing Birthday Fight where he fights two drugged guy and owns him and one not drugged guy which actually put up a pretty good fight against him. I mean he still lost and died to Paul in the final fight but he really made him work for that win. I suppose he also cleared the Northern half of the planet but to an extent there wasn't many Fremen up there and they fell back anyway and later launched a big attack against the capital which felt a bit insane but it had a cool battle. He also reminds me of that slender fay villain from Zelda: Skyward Sword (which i only watched not played).
I didn't have as many problems with this movie as i did the last one. All i could think about the last hour or so of the film is i hoped i could go to the bathroom after the 3 hour or so movie. Jeez that movie was long.
Got in to see it yesterday. First time my wife and I have made it to a cinema in a very, very long time, so was a good excuse to get out.
Loved it, although it didn't seem quite as polished as part one. Agree with the earlier comments about it feeling more disjointed, like too much was trimmed along the way. A few changes from the book, but nothing that we had issues with, although Stilgar being used for comic relief once his fanaticism kicked in was a bit odd.
I was actually really disappointed with how they humiliated Dave Batista's character in this movie. He loses every fight in less than like 5 seconds (including one fight where he kisses his brother's foot), has a massive breakdown fit and fails at everything he does in this one. I don't know the books but in some ways i feel like this would've felt insulting for Dave Batista to play this role for this movie but i don't know. I suppose it could've been worse.
Spoiler:
In the book, Rabban's role, as planned by the Baron, was to act as a tyrant and grind the populace of Arrakis down, but to fail at actually fixing any of the problems, so that when he was replaced they would see Feyd-Rautha (Rabban's replacement) more favourably. His failure at pretty much everything is exactly how it was supposed to play out... and so the way the movie deals with Rabban is pretty appropriate, and from interviews Bautista seems to have really enjoyed the role.
Denise Villeneuve's Dune Cinematic Universe is better than Star Wars.
Innovative and original movie trilogy (and then some less great movies) versus two adaptations that fundamentally change the story because apparently Dune wasn't good enough as written.
trexmeyer wrote: ...versus two adaptations that fundamentally change the story because apparently Dune wasn't good enough as written.
Movie adaptions of books will always change stuff, for a whole slew of reasons that have nothing to do with whether or not the original story was 'good enough'.
And that's not inherently a bad thing. To paraphrase Sam Raimi, if you're just going to tell the exact same story, what's the point? You already have the original story.
So I went to see it for a second time yesterday (an exceptionally rare thing to do for me) and have reached a conclusion on how I feel about this film.
I feel this movie represents a new benchmark in science fiction film-making and is worthy of sharing the company of some of my most beloved and cherished examples of the genre (Alien, Aliens, The Terminator, Predator, The Empire Strikes Back, Blade Runner)
I’m shocked I feel this way as, being a lifelong fan of films in the genre, it is a very rare day indeed such a film rolls around, but after watching it a second time this is indeed the case.
Taken as a whole these two movies do so many incredible things in such a new and refreshing way I really can’t see anything coming along in some time that will represent a similar moment. The originality of the filmmaking here is significant and in particular the thing that impressed me the most both times was the manner in which alien, science fiction concepts were given such a feeling of grounded authenticity that I found myself never once questioning the world of giant worms, antigravity soldiers and psychic shaman warrior prophets in which I was engaging. It all seemed… perfectly reasonable.
THAT is a major win for a film like this.
Furthermore, although I agree with many of the gripes in this thread, I think the central story and its themes were handled with intelligence and grace and the gravitas of the story was palpable. It provokes genuine moments of reflection.
Denis has crafted a science fiction epic of considerable force here. This is a rarity. I am very curious how he is planning on wrapping this up. I cannot quite see how a third film is going to do anything other than depress most people given where we all know Paul’s journey is heading.
What are your thoughts on how he’ll handle the next film people?
Regarding the Sadukar. I’ve only read the first book, and if I remember rightly the best that can be said of them is that Stilgar says they put up a good fight. But they still all die.
They seem worse than Stormtroopers in the regard of being built up to be dangerous but suffer from getting so easily beaten.
Souleater wrote: Regarding the Sadukar. I’ve only read the first book, and if I remember rightly the best that can be said of them is that Stilgar says they put up a good fight. But they still all die.
They seem worse than Stormtroopers in the regard of being built up to be dangerous but suffer from getting so easily beaten.
We see the danger of the sardaukar in the first film, when they annihilate the Atreides. The Atreides army was generally more than able to fight off the Harkonnen troops, but the Sardaukar were a different matter altogether
To be honest what I got from the second viewing was the relatively brief nature of the spectacle at the end of the movie was in order to cement in the audiences minds the idea of how utterly and absurdly overwhelming Paul’s assault on the Emperor and his Sardukar, and the Harkonnens, actually was.
They basically had no idea whatsoever of how much force was about to be brought to bear in that situation and were so effectively overrun and surprised that it wasn’t a fight at all; it was a massacre.
The first signs of the brutality of the galactic jihad is also nicely demonstrated in the scenes of the gunships mercilessly gunning down the stragglers as they scramble around like ants..
I just think it all serviced the notion that Paul was indeed an utterly new type of military and strategic mind, and they were doomed before they even started, but couldn’t conceive of it.
insaniak wrote: To paraphrase Sam Raimi, if you're just going to tell the exact same story, what's the point? You already have the original story.
Strange quote. The point of a movie adaptation is not to tell a story, but to visualize it.
Visualizing a non visual medium will inherently require change(s). If one is going to take the time to adapt from one medium to another it is a fool's errand to try and make it exactly the same. Even this thread shows that a film can adapt while being different. I thought the films were great but they don't replace the book(s) as each fulfills a different desire.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: Tangentially related, Syfy's Dune is on the 'Tubes.
The mini-series might not have the big-screen budget, but its the best adaptation by far. It was a great time for sci-fi and fantasy as LOTR was just about to kick-off and we also had the SW Prequels and The Matrix trilogy on the go. To have Dune as well - granted, on the small screen - was a treat, as it worked very well in three episiodes, with minimal changes to the original book.
insaniak wrote: To paraphrase Sam Raimi, if you're just going to tell the exact same story, what's the point? You already have the original story.
Strange quote. The point of a movie adaptation is not to tell a story, but to visualize it.
Visualizing a non visual medium will inherently require change(s). If one is going to take the time to adapt from one medium to another it is a fool's errand to try and make it exactly the same. Even this thread shows that a film can adapt while being different. I thought the films were great but they don't replace the book(s) as each fulfills a different desire.
I think it's fascinating that anime can do very accurate adaptations of manga, but for some reason western media magically can't.
Yeah buddy, that totally excuses completely rewriting Chani, dropping Alia, dropping the Spacing Guild, changing the Feyd-Paul duel, etc.
The lengths y'all go to defend having a work of art getting gak on are truly stunning. It's like Dennis has your family held hostage.
Such a bizarre take. The film is a reinterpretation of the original by a different artist. The original is not being gak on because a new artist has done their version differently. Also, totally bizarro how you can't seem to fathom the idea that other people legitimately like something that you dislike.
And again, you can recreate a Manga in an Anime literally shot for shot since they are identical mediums. And usually the author is both alive and maintaining creative control over the anime adaptation. A lot of Western media is based on books whose authors are long since dead.
Books are just words on pages which then interact with the reader's imagination, movies are sound and visual scenes. Add in that its a very dense book from many decades ago and it would be tough to fully bring it in. For even the bare minimum of what you are talking about would probably add another 4-5 hours.
Not saying that wouldn't be amazing. It would, but it would also be extremely difficult given the current environment of film making. We should be glad they came out as they did and weren't a total disgrace like so many recent movies. They were true to the message and feel of the setting.
Whilst manga and anime are both drawn, the mediums are very very different. The closest you can argue is that the manga can be more directly used as a storyboard and the nature of it means that you can also lift the character designs almost perfect from one to the other if you wish.
Whilst with book to film you've always got a layer of visual interpretation which goes on all the time and you have to create your own storyboard.
That said the ability to adapt the story word for word is still the very same. You can adapt a manga and change everything. Indeed this has oft been done when the anime ends up out-pacing the manga. But as noted sometimes authors do change things entirely - Nausicaa the Anime and the Manga are very different stories.
That said I think that the main difference is that Anime can be either or. Creators can either follow the original word for word or deviate.
Meanwhile a lot of USA productions are often changing everything very readily. Getting an actual faithful adaptation is honestly rare. Heck even when they adapt already created anime for the market they have been known to chop and change entire storylines. The first round of translated Ghibli films are entirely different from the original stories and the translations we have today.
Another issue is there is a lot of very blatant "market research" and "focus group feedback" elements going on with the USA side that people dislike. It's not changing the story to better present it on a different medium; or to follow a tangent storyline or such but because Producers think that they want X things in them because of studies.
Eg it would not surprise me if they'd do a Lord of The Rings and make Sam into a Samantha and then add another one or two women to the Ring Bearers group etc....
On the other hand Dune has already been a faithful and successful adaption, over two decades ago. It also led to Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, likewise. And on a far lower budget and schedule I might add...
A Star Is Born has been made four times and each is a good film that encapsulates something about the time they were made. How many times has Macbeth, or any other Shakespeare play. been adapted? The Odyssey?
The problem isn't retelling or re-imagining stories, we've done that since we could tell stories, the problem is doing it half assed or badly.
The SYFY series is twenty four years old and the Lynch film forty years old. A whole new audience is being exposed to Dune in a good way and I think that is a positive thing. Because a sixty year old saw Lynch's film in the theaters when they were twenty isn't a good reason that current twenty year olds shouldn't have a version as well. For those that did watch the older ones they aren't being taken away you still have them you just have another one to consider. If you don't like the newer one fine, you lost nothing, and you still have the one(s) you do like.
Souleater wrote: Regarding the Sadukar. I’ve only read the first book, and if I remember rightly the best that can be said of them is that Stilgar says they put up a good fight. But they still all die.
They seem worse than Stormtroopers in the regard of being built up to be dangerous but suffer from getting so easily beaten.
We see the danger of the sardaukar in the first film, when they annihilate the Atreides. The Atreides army was generally more than able to fight off the Harkonnen troops, but the Sardaukar were a different matter altogether
I believe it is also something of a theme brought up in Dune Messiah that the Sardaukar had become a victim of their own success by the events of Dune. Like many "mythic" fighting forces before them, their reputation was pulling a lot of the weight by the time they meet their match in the Fremen. They had grown accustomed to easy victory, and complacent as a result.
I think it's fascinating that anime can do very accurate adaptations of manga, but for some reason western media magically can't.
Take a look at Miyazaki's Naussaca and Valley of the Wind some time, Manga and anime by the same person, very different works.
What works on paper may not work on film, film adds voices, music, actors that will be different from what's on paper.
Two different media, even with the same creator.
Hell, look at adaptations from the stage to film. Just going from a live theatre to film experience requires vast changes to how you approach a project because the engagement of the audience is different when seeing actual people on stage versus a movie.
The stage musical of The Producers is possibly the funniest show I have ever seen. Every single joke lands. The film version of that same musical is worse in every way, even jokes which work impeccably live just fall flat when they are 1 to 1 translated into film.
So even when you go from an audio-visual medium to another audio-visual medium you need to make changes.
Overread wrote: Whilst manga and anime are both drawn, the mediums are very very different. The closest you can argue is that the manga can be more directly used as a storyboard and the nature of it means that you can also lift the character designs almost perfect from one to the other if you wish.
Whilst with book to film you've always got a layer of visual interpretation which goes on all the time and you have to create your own storyboard.
Yeah, and a film is a little more than a 'visual interpretation' of a book also. There are enormous length and pacing concerns with moviemaking. Dialogue may need to change drastically -- not just because of what 'works' and doesn't on film but because books capture inner thoughts and descriptions and exposition that may need to be adapted differently. Moviemaking is also a very collaborative exercise. Actors' decisions and performances are a much a bigger factor than a lot of fans realize. The actors may improvise, or the actor and director may try different approaches to a scene...and this process often does improve what's written in the script or book. All of this and much more impacts the storytelling quite a bit. It's a completely different medium, and I don't know how anyone arguing in good faith can really think movies can be shot simply by recreating book scenes in order and word for word.
And sometimes the storytelling in a book can just be improved upon.
SamusDrake wrote: On the other hand Dune has already been a faithful and successful adaption, over two decades ago. It also led to Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, likewise. And on a far lower budget and schedule I might add...
Two points there. I'd argue that some parts are faithful to a fault, as some scenes drag...and that even that one makes changes. Irulan has a very different story, Paul makes a river appear, and Duncan's death is different, just off the top of my head.
A Town Called Malus wrote: The stage musical of The Producers is possibly the funniest show I have ever seen. Every single joke lands. The film version of that same musical is worse in every way, even jokes which work impeccably live just fall flat when they are 1 to 1 translated into film.
So even when you go from an audio-visual medium to another audio-visual medium you need to make changes.
Off topic, but I had the chance to see it on Broadway with Broderick and Lane. I don't think I've ever been part of a theater audience that laughed that hard.
I think the trailers made a lot of people think this was going to be an action movie. It isn't. The action is mostly to drive the plot and off-screen. This is not a criticism. The guy a few seats down from me actually fell asleep!
I think the Lynch version did a few things better, but oh my Denis gave us a treat with this. No doubt these are two well-done films that both work. I look forward to watching them back-to-back.
I for one am excited for the supercut of both films which restores Thufir Hawat (and whoever the heck Tim Blake Nelson was supposed to play, my money is either Count Fenring or a spice smuggler) and other relevant material. I was surprised at some of the choices they made in this adaptation but overall enjoyed this version of the story.
Spoiler:
Part of the reason their changes to Chani's arc make sense is that they shortened the timeline. Alia hasn't been born yet which means Paul and Chani have known each other less than eight months - they haven't had the bond of two years and the loss of a child that they have in the books. So why should Chani stick around after Paul becomes engaged to Irulan? I don't blame her for being pissed off. In the book Fremen marriage dynamics are a bit different what with Paul taking on Harah after killing Jamis. For the story that was being told on the screen, the characters behaved in a way that was consistent with the world the movie had established.
A funny moment from a crowded theater: after the film ended, hitting basically all the major plot beats and resolutions from the books and even the 1984 film, I heard the person behind me say to their friend, "that was such a cliffhanger ending! They didn't resolve anything."
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Villeneuve said extended cuts won't happen. I think Nelson had to be Fenring. And I completely agree with your take there in the spoiler. In addition to what you said, their relationship is also different...it was very unconditional in the book and it really isn't in the film.
In fairness I suspect most directors will never announce that they will do an extended cut when a film is having its main theatrical release.
It's the same as how every interview and release documentary and so forth on the film will right now be glowing with positivity and praise for everyone involved and so forth.
It's just good marketing.
One the theatrical releases is over and done with and the first wave of DVD/Bluray is sold; then is the time when they might talk about extended editions and so forth.
Two points there. I'd argue that some parts are faithful to a fault, as some scenes drag...and that even that one makes changes. Irulan has a very different story, Paul makes a river appear, and Duncan's death is different, just off the top of my head.
Of course changes are to be expected; Harrah and Thufir were easily cut altogether or killed off sooner for example. We don't need Gurney upset that Paul denies him Feyd's demise. Even you and I could sit down together and chop things out and we'd do no harm. But this is boasting to be the most faithful adaptation and "no one but Denis could have done better", but yet better has been done. It was a success for the syfi channel and was well received for being a very close adaptation.
Dune is what it is, and it's a masterpiece marvelled as much as Lord of the Rings. I'd much rather they'd gone for three films and did a proper job - like they did with the mini-series and graphic novel adaptations - than rush to get to a sequel story that could easily have waited.
If you love this as an adaptation then it's done it's job and I'm happy for you. If Denis gets awards and his Dune films become as legendary as LOTR then I'm also happy for him and those who appreciate his effort. I don't dislike his take on Dune as they're still good sci-fi movies in their own right, but being honest it felt like a wasted opportunity as an adaptation.
The thing is, 'faithful adaption' doesn't mean '1:1 copy'. It just means that the adaption maintains the message and tone of the original. Villeneuve did that, along with crafting a gorgeous visual spectacle, and the fact that some of the details are different doesn't change that.
It's not perfect, but it's (IMO) miles better than any of the previous adaptions.
gorgon wrote: Sorry to burst your bubble, but Villeneuve said extended cuts won't happen. I think Nelson had to be Fenring.
Alas! A true tragedy for Tim.
Overread wrote: In fairness I suspect most directors will never announce that they will do an extended cut when a film is having its main theatrical release.
It's the same as how every interview and release documentary and so forth on the film will right now be glowing with positivity and praise for everyone involved and so forth.
It's just good marketing.
One the theatrical releases is over and done with and the first wave of DVD/Bluray is sold; then is the time when they might talk about extended editions and so forth.
I'm saying its not an impossibility, but you will be looking at years before they do them and even then perhaps years before they think of doing them and have to go hunting for bits to make them.
It's not like Lord of the Rings where the Extended versions were almost pre-planned into the design process.
Overread wrote: I'm saying its not an impossibility, but you will be looking at years before they do them and even then perhaps years before they think of doing them and have to go hunting for bits to make them.
It's not like Lord of the Rings where the Extended versions were almost pre-planned into the design process.
Lol no worries I figured. A man can dream.
I for one am eagerly awaiting Greta Gerwig's contribution to the cycle, "Dune 2.5: How Chani got her Dune Back"
Overread wrote: In fairness I suspect most directors will never announce that they will do an extended cut when a film is having its main theatrical release.
It's the same as how every interview and release documentary and so forth on the film will right now be glowing with positivity and praise for everyone involved and so forth.
It's just good marketing.
One the theatrical releases is over and done with and the first wave of DVD/Bluray is sold; then is the time when they might talk about extended editions and so forth.
And yet... Snyder did just that for Rebel Moon before it even came out.
I don't think a directors cut would result in a different film, if one is expecting something closer to the book. Unlike the 1984 film, they didn't lack for screen time and Denis intended to tell Dune in a very different way, exploring exploring alternatives.
Directors cuts can make a big difference - look at Alien 3. However you are right the core of the film will remain the same; some parts might flow smoother as they add in or lengthen parts that were dropped for time constraints and sometimes those can make plot holes in the story vanish. So its more a refinement than a rebuilding of the whole film .
Overread wrote: Directors cuts can make a big difference - look at Alien 3. However you are right the core of the film will remain the same; some parts might flow smoother as they add in or lengthen parts that were dropped for time constraints and sometimes those can make plot holes in the story vanish. So its more a refinement than a rebuilding of the whole film .
There is no director's cut for Alien 3. The Assembly Cut had no involvement from David Fincher.
Funnily enough, the "Director's Cut" of Blade Runner is also not a director's cut, it was done by the studio albeit using notes provided by Scott (this is also the case of the Alien "Director's Cut"). The "Final Cut" of Blade Runner is the actual director's cut.
Overread wrote: Directors cuts can make a big difference - look at Alien 3. However you are right the core of the film will remain the same; some parts might flow smoother as they add in or lengthen parts that were dropped for time constraints and sometimes those can make plot holes in the story vanish. So its more a refinement than a rebuilding of the whole film .
There is no director's cut for Alien 3. The Assembly Cut had no involvement from David Fincher.
Funnily enough, the "Director's Cut" of Blade Runner is also not a director's cut, it was done by the studio albeit using notes provided by Scott (this is also the case of the Alien "Director's Cut"). The "Final Cut" of Blade Runner is the actual director's cut.
Scott was directly involved in the directors cut of Alien. That version, even in it's theatrical release, had an opening little interview with Scott where he discusses the reintroduction of the previously cut film to create the directors cut.
The biggest impact I have seen from theatrical to directors cut is Kingdom of Heaven. The directors cut reintroduces an entire character that drastically changes the motivations and impact of a large swathe of the movie. It's a case study for how editing some stuff out can still create a cohesive movie but fundamentally an entirely different one.
Overread wrote: Directors cuts can make a big difference - look at Alien 3. However you are right the core of the film will remain the same; some parts might flow smoother as they add in or lengthen parts that were dropped for time constraints and sometimes those can make plot holes in the story vanish. So its more a refinement than a rebuilding of the whole film .
There is no director's cut for Alien 3. The Assembly Cut had no involvement from David Fincher.
Funnily enough, the "Director's Cut" of Blade Runner is also not a director's cut, it was done by the studio albeit using notes provided by Scott (this is also the case of the Alien "Director's Cut"). The "Final Cut" of Blade Runner is the actual director's cut.
Scott was directly involved in the directors cut of Alien.
Ah, you are correct. He did actually make that one himself. However he has said that his actual preferred cut is the theatrical cut.
Hey guys, I didn't find the proper Dune 2 thread so I'm posting here. I have a question about the beginning of the movie, about the scene in which the Harkonnen soldiers got on the rocky hill and got snipped one by one. I know that shields cannot be used on Arrakis in general because it attracts worms, but in this scene, we can distinctly hear one shout "Shields !" And another answering something like "doesn't work" or something like that. In addition, they went on this hill in order to be protected from the worms, which mean that the main reason not to use the shields don't apply there. So, were the fremen using shield-piercing ammo or what ?
Thanks !
IIRC the "shields" "no don't" (or whatever it was) happened at the base of the rock formation, before they climbed to the top. Once they were on top they probably should have been able to activate their shields but they were I think relatively quickly sniped faster than they could respond.
I think it was more of a "don't, it'll attract the worms!" cry, but IIRC the sand storms of Arrakis also flat out disable/interfere with shields to an extent(we see this at the final battle on the Emperor's ship) so they may not have worked at all too.
The real oversight with Dune weaponry is that logically everybody should be basically invulnerable except on Arrakis where shields are useless, and then only to ranged weapons.
Because shields make you immune to ranged weaponry and a good chunk of melee too. Such that only slow cuts can pierce shields. So why doesn't everybody wear power armor in addition to a shield? Heck, even a basic chainmail hauberk would pretty much make you immune to being killed. Let alone a suit of gothic plate with some sci-fi additions like temperature control, servos, etc...
Sure, you could theoretically still be stabbed through a joint, but it would be rather impossible in a practical sense so fights would be reduced to wrestling on the floor ineffectually trying to force an ice pick through joints which are still covered by protective material.
Arrakis would still disable your shields, but regular armor would still work. So logically, Arrakis should be dominated by ranged weaponry while the rest of the galaxy is reduced to lobbing nukes at each other.
Seems like flamethrowers and landmines could also exploit weaknesses in the shields. Also, someone in shields can be knocked down, so grenades, artillery, and light cannon should still be deadly in a blunt trauma kind of way.
The real oversight with Dune weaponry is that logically everybody should be basically invulnerable except on Arrakis where shields are useless, and then only to ranged weapons.
Because shields make you immune to ranged weaponry and a good chunk of melee too.
This was ultimately a part of the deliberate setup by Herbert to create a setting where everyone used knives. The only ranged weapons that are ever mentioned, IIRC, are lasguns (in the first book, at least), and shooting a shielded target with a lasgun has the potential to create a massive explosion. So lasguns are just not used other than in very specific situations, as the potential presence of a shield makes them too great a risk, and even on Arrakis they still have shields, even if they're not generally turned on in the deep desert.
I believe the first book also has the Harkonnens using antiquated artillery cannons, and eventually the Fremen using some kind of slug-throwing small arms.
The Harkonans do use old school Artillery when making their initial attack on the capital city. The Baron even makes a point of highlighting how he resurrected the old technology.
I was surprised we didn't see it in the new film, but then again they are going for a more space Blitzkrieg effect.
I think the standout part is seeing an Ornithropter in action. Because I think until the new Dune film, most Ornithropters in fantasy and sci fi were always shown as rather pondering or at least only fast in a straight line. Never really the kind of thing that banked, rolled, tumbled and appeared to be the perfect fusion of a jet fighter and helicopter in one .
Because shields make you immune to ranged weaponry and a good chunk of melee too. Such that only slow cuts can pierce shields. So why doesn't everybody wear power armor in addition to a shield? Heck, even a basic chainmail hauberk would pretty much make you immune to being killed. Let alone a suit of gothic plate with some sci-fi additions like temperature control, servos, etc...
Well I believe they have mono molecular tech, so presumably the cutting edge of weapons defeats those materials (insert enough handwaving to ensure the intent isn't lost).
Those given they have suicide troops and remotes - clearly remote lasers are the way to go to constantly try and trigger nuke explosions, especially for insurgents. You would have to heavily regulate lasers...
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insaniak wrote: The only ranged weapons that are ever mentioned, IIRC, are lasguns (in the first book, at least),
Did they not have slug/dart throwers that were regarded as fairly useless?
Pretty sure Dr. Yueh used some sort of shield-penetrating dart gun. If you were fast enough, you could knock it away from the shield before it penetrated though.
Overread wrote: I think the standout part is seeing an Ornithropter in action. Because I think until the new Dune film, most Ornithropters in fantasy and sci fi were always shown as rather pondering or at least only fast in a straight line. Never really the kind of thing that banked, rolled, tumbled and appeared to be the perfect fusion of a jet fighter and helicopter in one .
"And the academy award for best supporting actor goes to...the Ornithopter!"
Overread wrote: The Harkonans do use old school Artillery when making their initial attack on the capital city. The Baron even makes a point of highlighting how he resurrected the old technology.
I was surprised we didn't see it in the new film, but then again they are going for a more space Blitzkrieg effect.
I just returned from the theater after watching Dune second part, and the line about resurrecting artillery is said though out of it's proper place on the aftermath of the Atreides massacre.
The shields are just set dressing and get completely ignored. Missiles go straight through them and none of this slow blade as people just lightly tap one another or make swipes. No thought went into how this would change the combat and make life difficult for the Fremen.
The Fremen do a human wave attack that should have been cut to pieces by artillery and machine gun fire. One shell into that mass would have killed and wounded hundreds.
All the Harkonan planes and artillery either disappears in the final battle or are even shown shooting toward the Fremen but not having the result of them being mown down like canon fodder which is what should be happening as the Fremen are entirely unshielded and just mindlessly throwing themselves at the enemy strongholds.
If nukes are a thing why doesn’t the Emperor nuke the worms and the Fremen army? Or why given the centuries they’ve been on Arrakis have they not invented a weapon that can kill one? They are not that big and why would they land on Arrakis if they know giant unkillable worms are there?
Again, hundreds of thousands of Fremen should have died if Paul decided to do a human wave attack and use them as his canon fodder. But the film very much framed this as Uber man Fremen killing hundreds of enemies apiece and not losing a single man. You do not get the impression at all that he is throwing their lives away to achieve his own power and I don’t see any reason not to have done so apart from not wanting to undermine the Fremen.
They also decided to make the Sardaukar Stormtroopers which is a real shame given how strongly they were introduced in the first film. Going through audiobook, maybe that is true to the story; but I am not a fan of building something up just to tear it down to make the other guy look cooler.
Fortunately there isn’t that much combat in the film and the scenes they do have a fairly brief with good music behind them. But what’s happening in them is about as silly as anything in Flash Gordon.
I forget, but does the movie even mention the Weirding Way, the Bene Gesserit martial art Paul teaches the Fremen that allows them to defeat the Sardaukar? Because desiccated footsoldiers winning a siege without magical space Kung Fu is just not realistic.
The shields are just set dressing and get completely ignored. Missiles go straight through them and none of this slow blade as people just lightly tap one another or make swipes. No thought went into how this would change the combat and make life difficult for the Fremen.
The Fremen do a human wave attack that should have been cut to pieces by artillery and machine gun fire. One shell into that mass would have killed and wounded hundreds.
All the Harkonan planes and artillery either disappears in the final battle or are even shown shooting toward the Fremen but not having the result of them being mown down like canon fodder which is what should be happening as the Fremen are entirely unshielded and just mindlessly throwing themselves at the enemy strongholds.
If nukes are a thing why doesn’t the Emperor nuke the worms and the Fremen army? Or why given the centuries they’ve been on Arrakis have they not invented a weapon that can kill one? They are not that big and why would they land on Arrakis if they know giant unkillable worms are there?
Again, hundreds of thousands of Fremen should have died if Paul decided to do a human wave attack and use them as his canon fodder. But the film very much framed this as Uber man Fremen killing hundreds of enemies apiece and not losing a single man. You do not get the impression at all that he is throwing their lives away to achieve his own power and I don’t see any reason not to have done so apart from not wanting to undermine the Fremen.
They also decided to make the Sardaukar Stormtroopers which is a real shame given how strongly they were introduced in the first film. Going through audiobook, maybe that is true to the story; but I am not a fan of building something up just to tear it down to make the other guy look cooler.
Fortunately there isn’t that much combat in the film and the scenes they do have a fairly brief with good music behind them. But what’s happening in them is about as silly as anything in Flash Gordon.
The audiobook has talked a little about the shields but no fighting has occurred so I can’t judge how consistent they’re going to be and if it’s an improvement over the film. But it comes across more as the author wanting a hard reason for people to be using knives. As opposed to people using flamethrowers or as the film has it where the shields do not work at all and rockets and shells pass straight through them along with quick jabs or slashes of blunt knives.
Also the anti technology vibe is massively more present in the books where they mention the Butlerian Jihad a lot and so the absence of computers is being noted. But, that’s only to push the idea that the human mind can achieve so much if we stop relying on machines and just light up a few instead. So I am not holding my breath that the book will be better in addressing this as there an obvious bias within the text. If the author believes that people taking drugs gives you superpowers I can’t exactly expect him to understand a 50 cal machine guns destructive potential. The Boxers and the actual Mahdists didn’t have a good time relying on willpower and faith to deflect bullets. But that’s just what happened versus him making stuff up about technology being a crutch.
It’s slow going because I am rolling my eyes a lot.
Using atomics on other houses is illegal, if I recall correctly. The Fremen were fighting under the flag of House Atreides.
Paul gets away with it because he argues that he didn't use them on anyone, but rather on the terrain.
As for why not kill the great worms of arrakis? Because you don't mess with the ecology of the only planet in the galaxy that produces the drug that allows for the safe and reliable interstellar navigation that allows your empire to exist.
How does the Dune Audiobook work? Do they read you the appendices ahead of the story, or do they stop the text periodically to fill you in on background and glossary information, or do they just toss you in the deep end?
A Town Called Malus wrote: Using atomics on other houses is illegal, if I recall correctly. The Fremen were fighting under the flag of House Atreides.
Paul gets away with it because he argues that he didn't use them on anyone, but rather on the terrain.
As for why not kill the great worms of arrakis? Because you don't mess with the ecology of the only planet in the galaxy that produces the drug that allows for reliable interstellar navigation.
Why? The characters don’t strike me as particularly ethical. The Emperor and Harkonans already broke custom so why not nuke some barbarians and their worms?
The film doesn’t explain that so it creates a weird scene where it looks like he missed. Although it does mean all those Fremen died of radiation sickness not long after so is some positives.
They don’t need to kill all the sharks, just the big ones trying to sink the boat. The battle presents a problem where they can’t kill the worms and they’ve had plenty of time to develop weapons that should be able to do that. Also, why have the Fremen never tried using the worms in war prior to that scene in the film if they’re that effective and there isn’t a counter to them.
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BobtheInquisitor wrote: How does the Dune Audiobook work? Do they read you the appendices ahead of the story, or do they stop the text periodically to fill you in on background and glossary information, or do they just toss you in the deep end?
Well the one on audible seems to have unique voices for the various characters which is quite good. You can select chapters if you want so I am guessing you could go to the glossary if you wanted. There is a central narrator voice and then they either put on a particular voice or the person who is assigned to be the Baron does their lines. Not sure if it gets a little jumbled up later since the POv characters have been seperate so I am not sure if Jessica is the main POV she has to put on Paul’s voice or if they keep it consistent and change out the voices entirely. For example the Baron sounds like Darth Vader which is quite funny.
To be honest, there is a lot of background thrown at you early book. Choam, the Butlerian Jihad, the Houses, the Sardaukar. There is a lot of info dumping going on. Some of which like Choam isn’t covered by the film which does make it even clearer that House Atreides are scum. They’re literally just shareholders in a company trying to get their margin up and squeeze a dividend out. So it makes their appeals to nobility come across as even more insincere and delusional. Like I was surprised how unsubtle that red flag was being waved about.
For the same reason the USA didn't just nuke North Vietnam and the Soviet Union didn't just nuke Afghanistan, because breaking such a taboo would make open season on nuclear war between the houses and result in the total mutual destruction of the empire.
The Fremen haven't used the sandworms in war because they haven't been in open war and have been hiding their full capabilities and numbers until their messiah arrives to lead them.
The audiobook has talked a little about the shields but no fighting has occurred so I can’t judge how consistent they’re going to be and if it’s an improvement over the film. But it comes across more as the author wanting a hard reason for people to be using knives. As opposed to people using flamethrowers or as the film has it where the shields do not work at all and rockets and shells pass straight through them along with quick jabs or slashes of blunt knives.
Also the anti technology vibe is massively more present in the books where they mention the Butlerian Jihad a lot and so the absence of computers is being noted. But, that’s only to push the idea that the human mind can achieve so much if we stop relying on machines and just light up a few instead. So I am not holding my breath that the book will be better in addressing this as there an obvious bias within the text. If the author believes that people taking drugs gives you superpowers I can’t exactly expect him to understand a 50 cal machine guns destructive potential. The Boxers and the actual Mahdists didn’t have a good time relying on willpower and faith to deflect bullets. But that’s just what happened versus him making stuff up about technology being a crutch.
It’s slow going because I am rolling my eyes a lot.
So they have what amounts to las rifle technology. You see it a bit in the movie when they use that laser to cut through the door. That type of weapon can be up and down scaled from pistols to ship weapons. The issue is the shield technology advanced a lot too. And the two do not mix well. An anti personal las rifle shot into a personal shield results in what amounts to a nuclear explosion. Complete and utter devestation that leaves nothing left to be fighting over. Projectile weaponry like bullets are also useless against those personal shields. So they have long since stopped being produced. The tech just isn't in the universe. Those penetrating darts that hit a shield and stop but continue to attempt to push through is some of the closest things to effective projectile weaponry on a personnel level. But those darts are extremely advanced and expensive. And, if you hit in a spot where someone can reach they can be disabled/removed before they penetrate the shield. More a precision weapon of assassination than a warfare type thing.
Which turned a lot of the trained combat to hand to hand combat and close quarters knife fighting. It's kind of a basis for a bunch of 40k stuff. We have the best guns. But we also have the best armor that makes most guns useless. So we put chainsaws on swords instead. etc etc...
They don't hunt the worms because the worms make the spice. Without the worms you got no spice.
They don't develope whole new technology to hunt the Fremen because they vastly underestimate their numbers and the potential threat they pose.
The new movie doesn’t explain the balance of the power very well. Nor the stakes, the scale, the particulars, the history nor the interconnectivity of the setting. It doesn’t show the Spacing Guild or CHOAM, both of which would level serious consequences on anyone who tried nuking the worms. Even the emperor doesn’t mess around with the Spacing Guild.
One thing I always found a bit odd was how the book makes it a hue revelation that the Worms create the Spice and how its some huge secret with many thinking the worms just protect/hunt around the spice fields.
It felt like one of those "wait surely everyone who harvests and works should really know that!"
Then again I think it reinforces how Arrakis is very under-studied by many. Most Great Houses don't care how the spice gets there or about the native peoples - they just want Spice and the Space Guild tells them do NOT hurt the worms so they don't (because you do not anger the only faction that can move your people and resources and trade around the galaxy and risk being isolated).
The point about reaching out and building relations with the Fremen makes a lot of sense though; a faction hiding its true potential, esp whilst under the rule of the Harkonnans who have no care for others. It's also not just numbers but intelligence and technology that the Fremen hide along with relations with the Navigators as well. A big aid is that you aren't allowed to study or put satellites around the deep desert regions, which greatly helps the Fremen hide. The Navigators happy to oblige because they get paid in even more spice for the service.
In the film they have guns which we see used in the second film. This includes side mounted swivel guns on the copters. It’s just in the final battle they stop killing Fremen because reasons. Literally, all they had to do was gun the unshielded Fremen off the worms and then proceed to mow down the brain dead human wave charge. It was just a silly scene when a handful of heavy machine guns would have swept them away like chaff.
I think the book has an agenda and bias so it’s not presenting a reasonable scenario. It wants to make the point that technology can get you a bind and completely dismiss 500 years of Western history where technology is a central part of that. No society will peg itself to one technology then have all else atrophy into ritualised warfare that allows it to be beat by barbarians. It’s a fanciful case study when you have example after example of peasant militia being annihilated by modern weapons. The actual Mahdists of Sudan charging Maxim guns went really well for them.
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A Town Called Malus wrote: For the same reason the USA didn't just nuke North Vietnam and the Soviet Union didn't just nuke Afghanistan, because breaking such a taboo would make open season on nuclear war between the houses and result in the total mutual destruction of the empire.
The Fremen haven't used the sandworms in war because they haven't been in open war and have been hiding their full capabilities and numbers until their messiah arrives to lead them.
Because the Harkonans are evil and how would the Emperor know if they used dirty bombs to sterilise the natives? Why would the Emperor care if a race outside the Empire which are attacking his forces are destroyed? Also, Paul just fired a nuke at them…
They never state they are hiding their true numbers in the film. The prologue sets the stage of them in open total war with the Harkonan. In fact they are shown fleeing the North on the Sandworms they never used but that prove unstoppable in the final battle.
As suggested above they were used on terrain, not forces. But also? With the Emperor overthrown, and Arrakis being the sole source of the spice melange, it’s pretty safe from retribution. There’s nothing left of House Atreides to strike back against, as it’s a fallen house. So to respond in kind means hitting Arrakis itself. Which is a really bad idea.
As suggested above they were used on terrain, not forces. But also? With the Emperor overthrown, and Arrakis being the sole source of the spice melange, it’s pretty safe from retribution. There’s nothing left of House Atreides to strike back against, as it’s a fallen house. So to respond in kind means hitting Arrakis itself. Which is a really bad idea.
Why? The Sandworms are deep underground. A nuclear strike would kill the population and allow the planet to be mined.
Plus in the film Paul sees a vision of Chani with her skin gone from radiation poisoning so this IS explicitly shown as a possibility in the film.
@TotalWar1402. I recommend you watch the David Lynch version of Dune. The big battle is just as dumb, but it’s less of an issue once the electric guitar riffs kick in.
Because the Harkonans are evil and how would the Emperor know if they used dirty bombs to sterilise the natives? Why would the Emperor care if a race outside the Empire which are attacking his forces are destroyed? Also, Paul just fired a nuke at them…
Because the Emperor has an agent on the planet who reports back (or is supposed too). There's also loads of spies and covert operations going on. You just can't, as a Great House, get away with using nukes without being spotted. Just like in today's world you can't just fire off nukes without being spotted.
Plus don't forget the Harkonans know the Fremen are a threat, but they have no idea of their actual numbers nor their main powerbases or settlements. Within the book its detailed how much of the world is understudied and not monitored by order of the Navigators. So even if they had nukes to use they don't really have any target to use them upon in the main desert; with a higher risk that they harm the worms or damage spice production.
Basically they cannot use such vast devastating weapons - the only real target worth hitting is the main spaceport settlement; and the risk of harming spice production is too great; plus it would quickly be known that they'd used them and before they'd know it they'd have trade and transport sanctions; the Emperor's armies attacking them and their powerbase of Arrakis forcefully taken from them.
The Great Houses have a lot of power, but they are like lords in a medieval court. They each have power, but they also rely on each other and no one can challenge all the others. Over them you've got the Emperor with his legions and the Nagivators with their ships
Because the Harkonans are evil and how would the Emperor know if they used dirty bombs to sterilise the natives? Why would the Emperor care if a race outside the Empire which are attacking his forces are destroyed? Also, Paul just fired a nuke at them…
Because the Emperor has an agent on the planet who reports back (or is supposed too). There's also loads of spies and covert operations going on. You just can't, as a Great House, get away with using nukes without being spotted. Just like in today's world you can't just fire off nukes without being spotted.
Plus don't forget the Harkonans know the Fremen are a threat, but they have no idea of their actual numbers nor their main powerbases or settlements. Within the book its detailed how much of the world is understudied and not monitored by order of the Navigators. So even if they had nukes to use they don't really have any target to use them upon in the main desert; with a higher risk that they harm the worms or damage spice production.
Basically they cannot use such vast devastating weapons - the only real target worth hitting is the main spaceport settlement; and the risk of harming spice production is too great.
In the film Paul sees a vision of Chani dying of radiation poisoning. Clearly if he saw that as potential future then it was on the cards that Arrakis would be nuked to kill the Fremen? Which makes sense since the film never mentions a mandate against using nukes and all the factions seem pretty evil so we could expect them to not care.
Again, I am not at that point in the book. But if Arrakis is that high stakes then this is the moment to be breaking rules and using nukes. This is Chinese tanks on the Whitehouse lawn level of threat. Why would this hyper conservative rules obsessed society not view Paul as a rebel and outlaw for trying to launch a blatant coup?
Use of atomics is grounds for planetary Annihilation by the Imperium using Stone Burners (not-atomics that would rip the planet apart). That's the punishment. For reasons mentioned before, they won't do that to Arrakis, and Paul bypasses the Convention by not using it to target people so no other punishment gets meted out.
Atomics in the Dune era are relatively non-radioactive/clean. Specifically they are pure fusion devices, and as such don't produce radioactive isotopes, whereas in the modern day we use fission devices to induce fusion, which is the source of radioactivity in thermonuclear warheads. Sorry but your radiation poisoning hypothesis just won't occur - though Stone Burners do release radiation (despite not being atomic weapons, they are atomic-powered), which may be the vision of Chani Paul sees in the film. It's not the atomics that irradiate her, but the Stone burner used in retribution to destroy Arrakis in a hypothetical future.
Nobody in the deserts of Arrakis are using shields. Well, slight overstatement, but the majority are not. Shields (specifically the Holtzmann field generated by them) drive the worms crazy, they will travel for many miles and cross into neighboring worms territories to destroy the source. It's basically a worm magnet. As such, nobody in the deserts of Arrakis uses shields because it's akin to committing suicide. It's normally safe to use shields within the area of the shield wall (which despite its name has nothing to do with shields) because until Paul blows a hole in the wall with the family atomics, the worms can't get there due to it being a rock basin. However, Paul times his attack to coincide with a coriolis storm over Arrakeen. The storm overloads and disables the shields of the defenders, thus robbing them of any protection whatsoever.
Projectile weapons are not common in the Imperium. The Harkonnens basically revive long dead primitive technologies and put them into use on Arrakis to fight the shieldless Fremen after they retake the world from the Atreides. They thought they were fighting a total of 50k Fremen on the entire planet, needless to say that the adoption of these weapons wasnt widespread and that they certainly had nowhere near enough to stop or even challenge the hundreds of thousands/millions of Fremen who launched the attack, especially when you consider the advance infiltration that was conducted to disrupt the sardaukars ability to take up defensive positions. That's before you even get into the fact that the Harkonnens are basically disarmed by the Emperor at this point in the film. He's there to call Baron H to task, under the belief that he knows that Maud'dib is Paul and has been lying to him about events on the planet, you don't land in the face of another army, threaten their leader, and let them keep their guns and other weapons pointed at you while you do it.
The Sardaukar don't have projectile weapons available to them as a result, they just aren't ready for that kind of a fight. The imperium at large relies on shields and slow blades. Projectile weapons are useless against shields, and the unshielded are typically targeted by lasers instead. All combatants within the Imperium are trained to fight in a manner that allows them to bypass shields with their blades, iirc anything slower than about 9 m/s can get through. For this reason most of the time/every time someone using a shield is killed it's with a slicing or stabbing action, as you can stab or slice through someone at very slow speed with a blade, whereas a thrust, cut, or a chop requires you to move faster than the shield will allow (turns out Denis V and co actually put a lot of thought into how shields would change combat and make it difficult for the Fremen, actually). Without the shields, the Sardaukar (and Harkonnens) are at the mercy of the Fremen who are experienced and trained to fight without shields and thus are at an advantage. It's not well addressed in the film, but in the book those who are experienced fighting with shields often slow their strikes when fighting against unshielded foes because that's how they are trained. Stellar assumes Paul is trying with Jamis because of this (kinda changed in the film), as he keeps getting the advantage over Jsmis but not executing a killing blow and giving Jamis time to counter. That basically sums up what happens to the Sardaukar when the Fremen attack. And that's befire you add in the fact that Paul and Jessica trained them in super-secret magic space-time bending martial arts that allowed them to dodge and parry the Sardaukars own attacks with relative impunity (not really shown in the film).
Technically speaking, the atomic-like reaction of a shield + laser isn't 100%, it's just a high probability occurrence, so lasers are still used though only very cautiously and against targets that aren't shielded, usually. Of particular concern is that the atomic-like explosion is indistinguishable of that of a typical family atomic, so the risk is less about the interaction killing a bunch of people, and more that you will be Annihilated for violating the Great Convention. Anyway, there are certain projectile weapons that do still get used commonly - maula weapons are short range spring-loaded projectiles commonly used by Fremen and assassin's, not really the type of weapon you use to gun down a human wave due to the range limitations and low rate of fire, and not in wodespread use as they are useless against shields. There are also slow-weapons which fire projectiles at a low speed to penetrate shields, like the Dart gun used against Leto in part 1, amd the Bombardment cannons used against the Atreides fleet. These are not really useful against a prepared opponent - again, they are slow. They are assassin weapons, or weapons used against static targets that can't get out of the way.
The worms are basically unkillable - their scales are made of metal and too thick to pentrate with conventional weapons. The imperium tried, failed, and gave up well before the events of the film. The only known way to kill them is to apply a high voltage electrical shock to each ring segment (each ring segment of their body is a separate organism, so killing one won't kill the whole), or poison them with water - you can also blast them with atomics but you'd need to catch the entire worm in the blast to rip the entire thing apart as they will otherwise survive if you don't kill all the ring segments. Of course doing so would risk running a foul of the Convention - and for that reason the Emperor didn't bring his atomics to Arrakeen, nor did he expect the Fremen to have ant in turn - d'oh! On top of that, atomic arsenals in dune aren't exactly large - the entire atreides arsenal is only 100 warheads, hardly enough to sterilize a planet or kill all the worms.
And yes, the Emperor would care - the Fremen are the Emperors subjects, even if they don't feel that way. He is still bound by the Convention, and even if he is fine nuking them, the Great Houses won't be. The Emperor is not all-powerful, he walks a delicate tightrope balancing his interests against those of the Great Houses. The threat of his ouster is always there if he takes actions that cause the Great Houses to take up arms against him, which they would if he took actions that demonstrated his willingness to ignore the will of the Landsraad and the Convention or in general threatened the status quo (by, say, nuking the only known source of Spice). That risk is checked by him having the single most powerful army in the Known Universe at his disposal which keeps the Great Houses in line, but even still he's no match for a united front against him. That is why the events of the film happen - he offed the Atreides because their army, while small, is even better trained than his Sardaukar, and Leto is beloved by the Landsraad and the other Houses and charismatic enough to win the support needed to lead a rebellion against him (not that Leto would until pushed to).
And yes, the Fremen are hiding their numbers, even as of the prologue. What you describe as "total war" is actually Paul and like a few hundred Fedaykin waging a Lawrence of Arabia guerilla campaign against the Harkonnens. The majority of the Fremen population are in the south, not fighting.
The shields are just set dressing and get completely ignored. Missiles go straight through them and none of this slow blade as people just lightly tap one another or make swipes. No thought went into how this would change the combat and make life difficult for the Fremen.
The Fremen do a human wave attack that should have been cut to pieces by artillery and machine gun fire. One shell into that mass would have killed and wounded hundreds.
All the Harkonan planes and artillery either disappears in the final battle or are even shown shooting toward the Fremen but not having the result of them being mown down like canon fodder which is what should be happening as the Fremen are entirely unshielded and just mindlessly throwing themselves at the enemy strongholds.
If nukes are a thing why doesn’t the Emperor nuke the worms and the Fremen army? Or why given the centuries they’ve been on Arrakis have they not invented a weapon that can kill one? They are not that big and why would they land on Arrakis if they know giant unkillable worms are there?
Again, hundreds of thousands of Fremen should have died if Paul decided to do a human wave attack and use them as his canon fodder. But the film very much framed this as Uber man Fremen killing hundreds of enemies apiece and not losing a single man. You do not get the impression at all that he is throwing their lives away to achieve his own power and I don’t see any reason not to have done so apart from not wanting to undermine the Fremen.
They also decided to make the Sardaukar Stormtroopers which is a real shame given how strongly they were introduced in the first film. Going through audiobook, maybe that is true to the story; but I am not a fan of building something up just to tear it down to make the other guy look cooler.
Fortunately there isn’t that much combat in the film and the scenes they do have a fairly brief with good music behind them. But what’s happening in them is about as silly as anything in Flash Gordon.
Most of these are explained in-universe. Some are valid criticisms.
1) Shields don't work on Arrakis. They attract the worms and are disrupted by the spice laden dust on the planet. Which is why the Fremen do make use of ranged weaponry more than the rest of the galaxy.
Yeah, if the Emperor/Harkonen's had brought real guns it wouldn't have worked. But weapons like that are pretty much useless archeotech in the wider galaxy. It does kinda boil down to "Frank Herbert wanted everybody to only use knives" if you think about it too much though.
2) Yes, nukes are a thing. A thing you do not want to use on the Galaxy's only source of Spice. Literally the only substance which allows for FTL travel. Control the spice, control the universe! This is why Paul's threat to use the Nukes on the spicefields causes the nobles to back off. Its the equivalent of if the real world's oil all came from a single spot on Earth and somebody threatened to nuke it. Yes, the person doing that would lose the fight, but the world would lose all oil and civilization would collapse.
3) You can't kill the worms. They are the source of spice. Humanity actually tried to move some worms to other desert planets so they could diversify spice production, but these attempts failed and so Arrakis is the only source of spice.
Ultimately, the setting of Dune is somewhat thin and poorly constructed from a world building perspective. Which is fine. If you want something which has a message AND solid world building go read Tolkien. Dune is geo-political commentary in a sci-fi wrapper with "good enuff" world building.
I'm not sure that the world building (in the films, at least) is 'good enough' though.
You can't use shields in the desert, but nobody but the Fremen seem to make any effort to adapt to the specifics of desert warfare.
Arrakis is super important, but nobody has ever bothered to actually deal with the Fremen problem.
There's a Fremen problem, but nobody has investigated the whole half of the planet where they're coming from.
You can't be nuking Arrakis, but there's no oversight to make sure that a families nuclear arsenal isn't just in a random cave on the planet
The Fremen are all about zero rushing their enemies with knives and hoping that the camera cuts away before they're all mown down, but somehow they're going to win a fleet battle in orbit.
Lasers can be used to destroy harvesters from range, but the Fremen tactic is still to hide under the sand and then melee infantry around the harvester first.
The houses maintain holdings across multiple worlds, but nobody from soggy Attredies home world seems to have noticed that everyone has died on Arrakis.
The Fremen, until Paul comes, are a bothersome rebellious population, but ultimately don't cause enough damage to actually threaten Spice Production for the Harkonans. They basically cause enough damage to be a problem but not enough to trigger a massive response to make it worth investing huge amounts into hunting them down over a vast desert that's basically extremely hostile on its own without the Fremen.
The Harkonans just build thicker walls and armour up their spice harvesting to resist and that's the level of investment they want to make. They don't want an all out war as that costs them and they are already saving up a huge amount for their war with another Great House.
The Fremen also don't threaten anything off-world. The social position of the Harkonans in the Great Houses, their home world, the space ships in orbit etc... They are a super local problem and whilst the world they are on is important, because their attacks are just small enough, they are not targeted in a big way.
They are a thorn whilst the Harkonans have bigger issues to tackle that they consider far more important.
I touched on the fact that the Fremen also pay the Navigators a huge sum in spice to basically help them hide in the greater desert; and because no one argues with the Navigators, this works.
The Navigators really don't care who mines the spice as long as it is mined. The squabbles of the Great Houses just mean moving more ships around for them. Though they also won't move against Great Houses on their own in case all the Houses challenge them (ergo they can't just wipe out Paul on their own).
I think one thing to grasp is that a lot of what makes Dune work are the internal politics and the "dance" of politics that characters make. These might seem like they just ignore very obvious and simple solutions, but its all part of how the social structure of the setting works. They can't just take the direct route and do X because of the ripples outside of the Dune region of space.
Arrakis is supposed to be the only planet in the galaxy that matters and its control vital for the Imperium. Not quite sure how they got to Arrakis before this but…okay.
So why is the Emperor making a joint stock company, leaving the planet unexplored and not garrisoning a trillion Saudaukar to keep it locked down?. Like that planet, if it was that important, would be absolutely under the microscope and you would never have such a flippant attitude towards the planet. If he can’t kill then he could just offer them a world with water and induce them to leave. So it’s silly that they would not bother scanning or exploring the planet and it’s very odd the Emperor would have allowed an insitituion to exist like the Navigators.
Also, there’s very many reasons you would still want guns. They have these things called bayonets where you put the knife on the end of a gun and have not only longer reach but also kill any idiot who has forgot to turn his shield on, is unaware because a gun can hit you miles away and not everyone can afford to buy this exploit.Plus, a shield doesn’t matter if your artillery collapses a building (or cave) on top of them or sends you flying a hundred feet into the air only to break your bones due to the fall and even that assumes the blast wave doesn’t pulverise you inside the shield.
A lot has to happen to make this not turn out like the Mahdists in Sudan or Boxer rebellion.A demagogue cannot simply whip up a peasant militia and overthrow a modern state; certainly not one that rejects modern technology entirely and are addicted to drugs. Even the most successful case like the Taiping eventually failed. It’s just outright a silly premise.
Plus I don’t care if there are a billion Fremen. A Galactic Empire should have far more resources and people than one pre industrial planet.
It definitely does not help that in the film I don’t think we ever see the shields work to prevent bullets and in many instances they’re shown as not working against shells.
Because it is much more valuable a tool of control to use it as a chip for the other houses to squabble over rather than focusing all their attention on the imperial throne.
You are thinking only in terms of brute force, and brute force does not hold a throne for long.
One thing to consider is that the Emperor isn't vastly more powerful than the other Great Houses. He has his shock-troop army that are elite and feared greatly and do give him the edge that let him become and stay as Emperor over the other Great Houses, but he's basically just another Great House faction; just the one leading the group.
The planet isn't under the Microscope because the Fremen pay the Navigators a fortune to stop that happening. The Naviagtors are happy with that because they get more spice and because it also helps to protect the status of the planet. You can't industrialise the world or develop it for fear that it will destroy spice's natural growth. You also kind of don't want other factions to learn how Spice is made incase they get the idea of exporting worms and producing their own.
The smothering of knowledge aims to ensure that the Navigators remain the only powerbase that can afford spice in vast quantities and use it to navigate space.
Also the Fremen don't want a world covered in water; they live on Arrakis. That is their home and that's all they want.
Also the Emperor doesn't allow the Navigators to exist; the Navigators allow the Emperor to exist. Without them he cannot command the Empire - the Navigators hold a LOT of cards in play and are happy for the Great houses to squabble over the power that remains and fight within themselves - within certain rules of combat.
Basically consider that many of the factions are in a delicate power-play with each other. It's like a super long cold war interspaced with periods of constrained hot-war as they battle for power. The backdrop is that the Nagivators allow this to happen and facilitate it, so long as these conflicts and powerplays never interrupt the flow of Spice.
Also the Fremen are not peasants nor pre-industrial. That's the impression many have of them and who dismiss them as that. That's the lie the Fremen have created about themsleves. They have larger settlements; they have industries and production capabilities that they've built up very slowly over time.
They are basically playing a very long game and all they required was a spark to set them into action and that spark was Paul.
Because somebody would talk and then the Emperor would have legal grounds to break up the Navigators monopoly on treason charges for illicitly trading with the Fremen and being party to a conspiracy. Teddy broke the Trusts, I think you’re overstating the power of big business here. If the state really wants you gone it can get that big stick out.
He can't just break them up. They've locked down the knowledge on how to create Navigators in the first place. Yes it requires spice in vast quantities and evolution/mutation of the human body but no one but them knows just how its done.
The Emperor is not all-powerful. His Empire relies upon the Navigators. Without them they have to go back to old-methods of space travel that take vastly longer and come with more risk. If the Navigators shut down the Empire collapses the same instant.
Heck the fact that the Emperors armies are trained on a specific world means the Emperor needs the Navigators just to move his armies around to do anything anyway.
The Navigators need the Empire to exist to justify their own existence and power; the Empire needs the Navigators to allow it to exist and function. The two are vast power bodies in the setting that rely upon the relationship between them. Neither one can destroy the other, though ultimately the Navigators have the edge.
Remember how 40k is a setting of technological and ideological stagnation. Dune is where that comes from.
Human society in Dune has stagnated for countless tens of thousands of years. Humanity has split into a few subspecies. Navigators, Mentats, the Bene Gesserit, and normal humans have intertwined but insulated cultures... The Navigators are the only people who can drive the FTL ships. Mentats are the only way to do any computer things because AI rebelled and got banned. The Bene Gesserit are religious leaders/have magic powers. And all of this is dependent on a resource that can only be harvested in a relatively primitive fashion from 1 world in very limited quantities.
When thinking of the Emperor power level in society, think less Roman empire and more Holy Roman Empire. The Emperor is a powerful man yes, but the ruling family got where it is because they bribed/bought their way to the top. People who get to the top that way tend to find they have little power left once they actually get there.
This does change with Paul and his son Leto II, but prior to this the Emperor was just the face of an oligarchical power struggle between a bunch of great houses. The reason this works is because Paul has religion backing him up as the Messiah so it throws the balance out of whack. And his son becomes the immortal God Emperor worm who rules it for 3500 years.
Yeah, there are a lot of plot holes if you dig down into the setting. But that was never the point of the setting.
Lance845 wrote: They don't hunt the worms because the worms make the spice. Without the worms you got no spice.
That wasn't a known fact by the first book, though, outside of the Fremen. The whole sand trout/sandworm life cycle was an unknown quantity.
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Totalwar1402 wrote: I think the book has an agenda and bias so it’s not presenting a reasonable scenario. It wants to make the point that technology can get you a bind and completely dismiss 500 years of Western history where technology is a central part of that. No society will peg itself to one technology then have all else atrophy into ritualised warfare that allows it to be beat by barbarians. It’s a fanciful case study when you have example after example of peasant militia being annihilated by modern weapons. The actual Mahdists of Sudan charging Maxim guns went really well for them.
Well... yeah. Herbert wanted to tell a cautionary tale about following messianic figures, and decided on the setting and its trappings to be able to tell it. that, plus a big hard on on the idea that harsh environments breed harsh peoples.
In Frank Herbert’s books, the Butlerian Jihad was not about AI rebelling against man. That was something Brian Herbert came up with. In the original Dune books it’s stated plainly that thinking machines allowed some men the power to dominate all other men, the power of almost absolute control. Thinking machines are outlawed because they are too strong a tool for tyranny (and stagnation, as FH had a real fixation on that) ever to be trusted again.
I think the movie pretty much covers everything you guys are chatting about within the dialogue, design, setting and context of the two movies.
The movies clearly explain and shows just about everything you need to understand what is happening. You don't even have to read the books or watch the 1984 version.
You may have to watch the films more than once though, because some of it can be a bit subtle, blink and you miss it, or hidden in the dialogue where if you miss a line or word you miss some key pieces of information.
Subtlety and nuance in film-making is a dying art, and the audience is killing it.
Agreed with Easy E. My gf never read Dune, even she gets all this stuff just from a single viewing of the films, no detailed encyclopedic companion required to explain everything, there's enough subtlety and nuance and context clues present in the film to help green audiences understand the background setting in pastiche with enough detail to get the basics and suspend their disbelief or make assumptions to fill in the blanks.
Arrakis is supposed to be the only planet in the galaxy that matters and its control vital for the Imperium. Not quite sure how they got to Arrakis before this but…okay.
So why is the Emperor making a joint stock company, leaving the planet unexplored and not garrisoning a trillion Saudaukar to keep it locked down?. Like that planet, if it was that important, would be absolutely under the microscope and you would never have such a flippant attitude towards the planet. If he can’t kill then he could just offer them a world with water and induce them to leave. So it’s silly that they would not bother scanning or exploring the planet and it’s very odd the Emperor would have allowed an insitituion to exist like the Navigators.
Also, there’s very many reasons you would still want guns. They have these things called bayonets where you put the knife on the end of a gun and have not only longer reach but also kill any idiot who has forgot to turn his shield on, is unaware because a gun can hit you miles away and not everyone can afford to buy this exploit.Plus, a shield doesn’t matter if your artillery collapses a building (or cave) on top of them or sends you flying a hundred feet into the air only to break your bones due to the fall and even that assumes the blast wave doesn’t pulverise you inside the shield.
A lot has to happen to make this not turn out like the Mahdists in Sudan or Boxer rebellion.A demagogue cannot simply whip up a peasant militia and overthrow a modern state; certainly not one that rejects modern technology entirely and are addicted to drugs. Even the most successful case like the Taiping eventually failed. It’s just outright a silly premise.
Plus I don’t care if there are a billion Fremen. A Galactic Empire should have far more resources and people than one pre industrial planet.
It definitely does not help that in the film I don’t think we ever see the shields work to prevent bullets and in many instances they’re shown as not working against shells.
The Imperium is a true feudal society (nowhere near a modern state as you seem to believe it to be - this isnt Star Wars and the Imperium is not Palpatines Empire), the Emperors power is far from absolute, if he becomes too powerful his feudal lords will rebel against him, if he isn't powerful enough then likewise. One of the ways the Emperor walks this tightrope is that every 100 years a loyal and trusted Great House is granted Arrakis as a quasi-fief to govern for a 100 year period in the Emperors name (the Harkonnens rule ended 20 years early and the planet was given to the Atreides as a fief-complete in place of Caladan as part of the Emperors plot). They have responsibility for resource extraction, local defense, etc of the world in addition to their traditional fief. This enables the house so blessed to become fantastically wealthy and powerful in the process, and the possibility of being selected is a carrot used to keep the Great Houses loyal and on their best behavior. As such, filling the planet with Sardaukar and operating under tight Imperial control is not really an option for the Emperor, and doing so would likely lead to a rebellion by the Great Houses.
As far as why the planet is relatively unexplored and untamed, etc, well aside from it being an incredibly hostile and dangerous environment, the Guild and CHOAMs powers exceed that of the Emperor himself, and their influence enabled that sort of thing to happen. The Emperor isn't going to arrest all the Navigators and disband the Guild on trumped up treason charges, he doesn't have a big enough army to do that, he doesn't have enough power to do that, doing that would destroy his own power as he'd be unable to maintain even the most remote semblance of control over the Known Universe without the Navigators, and the Great Houses would just straight up overthrow him at that point.
Shields work a bit differently from how you imagine them, they are non-inertial - having a boulder dropped on you won't transfer the force to the wearer. An artillery shell detonation next to you wont pulverize you with a blast wave. They are also cheap as chips and widespread, everyone has one, basically, with the exception of the Fremen due to environmental reasons. Guns are useless in this setting, even with a bayonet on it, which can only really be used to chop or thrust, and thus would be difficult to pentrate a shield with.
Your issues with the film/book seem to principally boil down to one-dimensional thinking and a total failure to comprehend politics beyond a binary equation determined by arbitrary and subjective interpretations of "power".
The shields are definitely a source of plotholes regarding ranged weapons and combat in general. If lasgun+shields really equals a nuclear detonation, then those small micro-drones should be outfitted with small lasers and used as suicide bombs. The user of the drone would be well outside the blast radius of a personal shield's detonation so they could simply use the drone to destroy anybody foolish enough to use shields with at least moderately limited collateral damage.
Alternately, if shields are so effective against even melee weapons such that "The slow knife penetrates the shield" is quite literally true, then melee should genuinely be useless with their technology level. Simply giving everybody chainmail armor would make melee combat a frustratingly futile thing. You swing hard enough to get through armor, the shield stops you. You swing slow enough to get through the shield, the armor stops you. So you'd be left wrestling on the ground trying to slowly drive ice-picks through each other. And that is only if you kept the armor medieval, let alone actually went for some power armor with sci-fi alloys which realistically should be impenetrable to some low speed jabs. And it really doesn't seem like their melee weapons are anything particularly special, they don't have power weapons or anything like that.
It really really is best to not get into the crunchy details of combat in the Dune-iverse. It's a moderately veiled in-universe justification written by someone who didn't really put any further thought than "shields cancel guns, fight with knives lol"
This doesn't make it bad from a story perspective. You just need to remember that Dune wasn't written as some grand escapist sci-fi setting. It is a rather overt message draped in just enough cool sci-fi drip to put it in the fiction instead of philosophy section of the book store. All the books are kinda at that level. At least till they start resurrecting Duncan Idaho and giving him weird sex powers, then I think its more of a kink fantasy...
Another point already covered is that the whole final battle is fought under the cover of the largest sandstorm seen in decades, so no shields, and no air cover for the bad guys.
But then probably DV thought that one sepia colored movie in his career was more than enough.
Grey Templar wrote: Alternately, if shields are so effective against even melee weapons such that "The slow knife penetrates the shield" is quite literally true, then melee should genuinely be useless with their technology level. Simply giving everybody chainmail armor would make melee combat a frustratingly futile thing. You swing hard enough to get through armor, the shield stops you. You swing slow enough to get through the shield, the armor stops you. So you'd be left wrestling on the ground trying to slowly drive ice-picks through each other. And that is only if you kept the armor medieval, let alone actually went for some power armor with sci-fi alloys which realistically should be impenetrable to some low speed jabs. And it really doesn't seem like their melee weapons are anything particularly special, they don't have power weapons or anything like that.
Yeah, it's kinda like that ^^
Fading Suns took the personal shield idea and removed the "lasers make them go boom", plus added a lower and upper force to them, so you could either try and do juuust enough damage to go "under" the shield or you could overpower it and shut it by applying enough force. Additionally, each category of shields allowed a specific amount of clothing/armor to be used at the same time.
Heavy shields with power armors were a tad difficult to deal with, but most people you found shielded were nobles with duelling shields and no armor or, at best, leather jerkins.
Grey Templar wrote: The shields are definitely a source of plotholes regarding ranged weapons and combat in general. If lasgun+shields really equals a nuclear detonation, then those small micro-drones should be outfitted with small lasers and used as suicide bombs. The user of the drone would be well outside the blast radius of a personal shield's detonation so they could simply use the drone to destroy anybody foolish enough to use shields with at least moderately limited collateral damage.
That is not the case. When the little needle seeker drone went after Paul and he avoided it the first thing they say is the controller must be close by. They found the guy hidden in the wall down the hallway. The range is not great on those things. And those explosions can be HUGE. They describe it as being anything from a detonation that kills 5-10 people to a detonation that wipes out both opposing forces on a battlefield. Then throw in that it looks like the atomics. If Harokonans leave and then a little drone outfitted with a laser nukes Paul and the entire building every great house, the navigators, CHOAM, and the Emperor would be forced to wipe the Harkonans from existence.
Alternately, if shields are so effective against even melee weapons such that "The slow knife penetrates the shield" is quite literally true, then melee should genuinely be useless with their technology level. Simply giving everybody chainmail armor would make melee combat a frustratingly futile thing. You swing hard enough to get through armor, the shield stops you. You swing slow enough to get through the shield, the armor stops you. So you'd be left wrestling on the ground trying to slowly drive ice-picks through each other. And that is only if you kept the armor medieval, let alone actually went for some power armor with sci-fi alloys which realistically should be impenetrable to some low speed jabs. And it really doesn't seem like their melee weapons are anything particularly special, they don't have power weapons or anything like that.
The "slow knife" isn't THAT slow. It's a particular speed that is drilled into everyone.
It really really is best to not get into the crunchy details of combat in the Dune-iverse. It's a moderately veiled in-universe justification written by someone who didn't really put any further thought than "shields cancel guns, fight with knives lol"
This doesn't make it bad from a story perspective. You just need to remember that Dune wasn't written as some grand escapist sci-fi setting. It is a rather overt message draped in just enough cool sci-fi drip to put it in the fiction instead of philosophy section of the book store. All the books are kinda at that level. At least till they start resurrecting Duncan Idaho and giving him weird sex powers, then I think its more of a kink fantasy...
I WISH the Duncan clones were the weirdest thing in Dune.
Also, a line of barbed wire would have had the Fremen human charge heaping up and dying in a crush. Then just flamethrower them.
If Frank Herbert wanted to make a point he shouldn’t have straw manned and made Paul’s enemies idiots who let themselves get into a ridiculous situation.
Plus show don’t tell. You don’t see the shields resisting conventional weapons on the film and we see an aweful lot of conventional weapons actually killing them away.
It’s not like the Expanse where real thought went into this and it’s just Flash Gordon Logic. The author obviously wants to make his points and has no interest in asking “well would it really play out like that. Maybe the bad guys could do that.” But no, he clearly liked Lawrence of Arabia film and instead of the guns pointing the wrong way he just removed the guns entirely because the Fremen would have seemed weak if they didn’t do a frontal charge.
Frank Herbert
- Technology is a crutch and the human mind and body is superior. There’s a reason Banzai charges didn’t work mate.
- Drugs give you superpowers. I believe the Boxers also thought Kung Fu meant bullets couldn’t kill them.
- One demagogue can raise a mob of peasants on the frontier and conquer the galaxy because a hard life makes for hard men. Except when your noble warrior gets ignobly trampled to death by a horse, gets tangled in barbed wire, is on a sinking ship before drowning or killed in countless other ways that demonstrate this human self importance is hubris. It’s a romantic notion but it’s an utterly ridiculous one that rejects reason.
- Charismatic leaders are terrible (because the idea of a safe pair of hands and stoic Patriarch isn’t an ideal;Nixon. Or tyrants can’t be boring and uncharismatic; Stalin)
- The Revolution devours its children (except implicitly the ones which brought about American and Liberal Democracy. They don’t count because reasons.)
Again, I am working through the audiobook but a lot of what’s come so far is not filling me with confidence. I don’t think there’s much he can write to convince me of his points as I don’t think he is presenting a reasonable or balanced view.
Plus show don’t tell. You don’t see the shields resisting conventional weapons on the film and we see an aweful lot of conventional weapons actually killing them away.
By this you mean we do see how shields work, in both films, and then we see that shields are not used on arrakis which makes the people who are accustomed to having and using shields more vulnerable as they are trained on the assumption that they will have shields and be fighting against opponents using the same.
Plus show don’t tell. You don’t see the shields resisting conventional weapons on the film and we see an aweful lot of conventional weapons actually killing them away.
By this you mean we do see how shields work, in both films, and then we see that shields are not used on arrakis which makes the people who are accustomed to having and using shields more vulnerable as they are trained on the assumption that they will have shields and be fighting against opponents using the same.
Because somebody might bypass the clearly not very impenetrable shield? You should have a second layer of defence my Lord. This display is a an unnecessary risk.
We never see the shields work. If they do Dune part 3 and we see ten Harkonans spraying a shielded Fedaykin with guns which does nothing: that is showing us. Gurney mumbling about slow blades is telling.
As much as I love both Dune and Villeneuve, I only like his Dune Part 2.
Well, I really like it. But I don’t love it, and the main reason why is because it’s not an adaptation of the novel Dune.
Rather, it’s an adaptation of Herbert’s reinterpretation of that original novel, which Herbert accomplished by producing a much shorter and much, much less sophisticated sequel. And that sequel is less of a story and more of an editorial in the guise of a fable, the thesis of which is “why my book is really a warning about politico-religious demagoguery rather than whatever you (or I) previously thought.” Even the name of the sequel presents that argument: “DUNE Messiah”.
And these new movies, this trilogy, reflects that revision. Villeneuve doesn’t seem interested in the original novel’s themes of intertwining economy and ecology. The spice is only incidentally present in the films. The Spacing Guild is entirely absent, except as set dressing.
Yeah like I was struck in the early chapters how prominent Choam is and that the Imperium is more like a mega Corp where they’re just Oligarches owning a lot of assets and looking for their cut. The film does have them briefly talk of profits but there’s a lot more “desert power” and implication it’s about politics instead of just wanting to manipulate the share price. Like some discussion remind me of reading the minutes of a small factory instead of this supposedly archaic medieval society.
Also, somebody mentioned before about how it’s silly to imagine a scenario in which the Emperor uses violence to take control of the Imperium and Arrakis directly. This is what Paul does. He takes a gun and points it at the spice; at which point the megacorp and all this supposedly subtle politics goes away. So it’s not out of nowhere to suggest the Emperor just do what the protagonist did since were shown it is possible to do that.
Totalwar1402 wrote: Yeah like I was struck in the early chapters how prominent Choam is and that the Imperium is more like a mega Corp where they’re just Oligarches owning a lot of assets and looking for their cut. The film does have them briefly talk of profits but there’s a lot more “desert power” and implication it’s about politics instead of just wanting to manipulate the share price. Like some discussion remind me of reading the minutes of a small factory instead of this supposedly archaic medieval society.
Also, somebody mentioned before about how it’s silly to imagine a scenario in which the Emperor uses violence to take control of the Imperium and Arrakis directly. This is what Paul does. He takes a gun and points it at the spice; at which point the megacorp and all this supposedly subtle politics goes away. So it’s not out of nowhere to suggest the Emperor just do what the protagonist did since were shown it is possible to do that.
The main difference is that the Emperor WANTS to keep his Empire. His entire political, economic and social structure that upholds him (and all the Great Houses and humanity at large) relies heavily upon the transportation that the Navigators Guild and Spice allows. Basically they need the structure to be maintained.
On the other hand the Fremen do not care at all about anything outside of Arrakis. They do not care one bit if Spice Production and export ends; in fact they'd be rather happy if everyone just went away and left them alone. That's why Paul can whip them up into such a powerful force and do things the other factions cannot; because he really can make that gambling roll of the whole stack of cards falling down.
The Emperor, or any other Great House, just can't do that. They cannot risk everything falling apart around them. Yes they want more power and will use warfare to enable that, but they don't actually want the entire status quo to be destroyed. They just want to shuffle around who is on top at any one time and gain the greatest wealth and influence for themselves. It's all internal politics.
The Fremen are external to that and because they are they have the ability to seriously mess with it and change the status quo.
Notice how the Emperor can't just declare war and destroy the Atredies and their army and political power that they had. He simply enables the Harkonans to do it for him with some aid in secret. Heck the Emperor doesn't even have the ability to sanction the Atredies into submission. He has to move them into a more vulnerable position on Arrakis and allow the Harkonans to do the dirty work and even then its basically only possible because they can do it all quickly without causing a huge interruption in spice production. Afterwards the Harkonans also have to sell out huge spice reserves and mine harder to recoup their massive investment in the war.
Another thought - don't think of the Emperor sitting there with the whole army behind him. He's a feudal king with an army; however each of the lords (great houses) also have their own armies behind them. Each one of which can rise to be greater (numerically) than the Emperor's. It's not like a modern country where the ruling power has the entire army at their command; this is a system where each House has their own force and the Emperor is just one Great House that rose to the top and maintained that position.
Plus show don’t tell. You don’t see the shields resisting conventional weapons on the film and we see an aweful lot of conventional weapons actually killing them away.
So you didn't pay attention to either this film or the previous one at all then? Got it.
Grey Templar wrote: The shields are definitely a source of plotholes regarding ranged weapons and combat in general. If lasgun+shields really equals a nuclear detonation, then those small micro-drones should be outfitted with small lasers and used as suicide bombs. The user of the drone would be well outside the blast radius of a personal shield's detonation so they could simply use the drone to destroy anybody foolish enough to use shields with at least moderately limited collateral damage.
That is not the case. When the little needle seeker drone went after Paul and he avoided it the first thing they say is the controller must be close by. They found the guy hidden in the wall down the hallway. The range is not great on those things. And those explosions can be HUGE. They describe it as being anything from a detonation that kills 5-10 people to a detonation that wipes out both opposing forces on a battlefield. Then throw in that it looks like the atomics. If Harokonans leave and then a little drone outfitted with a laser nukes Paul and the entire building every great house, the navigators, CHOAM, and the Emperor would be forced to wipe the Harkonans from existence.
Fair enough on the range of the drones, but I still find it hard to believe that you couldn't fix that. And a detonation that kills 5-10 people seems to be the perfect size for a cheap suicide drone to take out shield users so I think my point still stands. It doesn't seem particularly hard in the Dune-iverse to get someone to do a suicide attack either so who cares if the operator dies?
Alternately, if shields are so effective against even melee weapons such that "The slow knife penetrates the shield" is quite literally true, then melee should genuinely be useless with their technology level. Simply giving everybody chainmail armor would make melee combat a frustratingly futile thing. You swing hard enough to get through armor, the shield stops you. You swing slow enough to get through the shield, the armor stops you. So you'd be left wrestling on the ground trying to slowly drive ice-picks through each other. And that is only if you kept the armor medieval, let alone actually went for some power armor with sci-fi alloys which realistically should be impenetrable to some low speed jabs. And it really doesn't seem like their melee weapons are anything particularly special, they don't have power weapons or anything like that.
The "slow knife" isn't THAT slow. It's a particular speed that is drilled into everyone.
It would still be too slow to deal with sci-fi or even real historical armor. Any amount of punch pulling to bypass a shield is going to make trying to get through real armor useless. It will literally devolve to wrestling with opponents trying to force your little icepick through any gaps, gaps which probably don't exist thanks to sci-fi technology and materials applied to the armor.
Heck, bladed weapons in general can't get through even moderately well-made armor no matter how hard you swing it. Only way to get through armor with a bladed weapon is to apply a lot of force through the point of your sword, and a lot of force means the shield is going to stop it. Or you don't use a bladed weapon at all, but a blunt weapon is likewise going to be stopped by the shield.
Frankly, the shields in Dune are poorly thought out from a mechanical perspective and the effects it has on the story.
Well don't forget the Atreides are armored, at least when they first deploy to Arrakis. We never really get to see that armor in action, presumably because the entire Atreides garrison was asleep when the Harkonnens showed up and they don't have time to suit up.
Presumably though, as was the case in real life, that armor comes at the cost of mobility, and leaves the combatants more vulnerable to strikes at exposed joints and unarmored fleshy bits. The fully armored knight of medieval europe was hardly invulnerable, and it often wasn't high speed blows that killed them.
There is a line in the books that goes something like “lasguns were clunky and expensive, so the Atreides preferred to rely on their shields and their wits.” I think it’s mentioned a few times that lasguns are temperamental and difficult to maintain. And it definitely states a couple of times that lasgun-shield interactions are unpredictable; it might be a nuclear explosion that wipes out an entire battlefield or it might just be a fizzle that does nothing. So even if you were willing to use suicide drones, they might not do what you intended them too, which is not a great basis for tactical planning.
If he wanted to stop being stabbed by a knife he could wear plate armour. It’s not very impressive and does not communicate the sort of god tier cheat code people claim it is. Plus, first film a shell goes clean through a shield into an Atreides troop transport. Not sure why they bothered wasting money animating something that has no relevance to the plot of story. There’s a lot of scenes where those shields do not work and these are money shot scenes.
We are not shown the shields make you immune to an artillery shell landing next to you and that it would prevent you being propelled into the air like a balloon. We are not shown people tanking 50 cal bullets like Kryptonians. That has to be shown otherwise it’s just fans rationalising away plot holes. If the shields generated total inertia then why does any force work on them at all? For example somebody said burying somebody under a building wouldn’t kill them. Not sure how being slowly crushed into paste isn’t slowed by the thing resisting it. Why would it stop fire if a person can still breathe.
Again, it’s just dumb and they aside from a special effect people die it’s not used. You can’t establish something’s effect by its absence.
Spoiler:
How do the Honoured Matres kill the Fremen on Arrakis if they’re all super god tier warriors who know the ways of the desert. Human wave charges didn’t work for them then.
Gert wrote: Bro does not want Dune to be Dune or sci-fi.
So you’re saying the shields are set dressing? Its mentioned in the book so we’ll put it in.
I think, at the time he was writing it wasn’t as accepted a trope in sci fi that people can just fight in close combat because it’s space fantasy. So like in Foundation he felt he had to provide some hand wave justification instead of leaning on the audience trope.
Plus the shields in Dune run counter to how most other shields work. Star Trek, Star Wars, Halo where it’s a defence but shoot it enough and it goes down. Having an absolute handwave to all damage apart from a slow knife is very specific and very jarring in the context of more modern sci fi.
It’s also odd to introduce something and then mark it by its absence.
Sometimes you just have to roll with a setting and open up to the story being told.
Dune requires all combat to be resolved by personal knife fights in order for the “harsh climes make harsh men” trope to matter, or for Bene Gesserit self-mastery to impress as it does. It’s all about the power of the human being. Air strikes on armored divisions don’t really tell that story.
But yeah, we see lots of shielded people shoved or thrown around. Even if the shield disperses the momentum over the whole human body, a jackhammer or large caliber firearm would still be a deadly threat, even if the person inside the shield is wearing armor.
As for the Honored Matres fighting the Fremen…
Spoiler:
Don’t they just blow up Arrakis? Even if they invaded, the Fremen of that period are not the same people Paul turned into an army with his Bene Gesserit martial arts.
Totalwar1402 wrote: So you’re saying the shields are set dressing? Its mentioned in the book so we’ll put it in.
I'm saying you've looked at Dune and gone "I don't want any of this". You don't want Dune to be Dune, you want it to be not-Dune.
It’s also odd to introduce something and then mark it by its absence.
Again, pay attention to the film and you'll get why the shields aren't at the final battle. You can't fault the films because you didn't listen or watch.
Totalwar1402 wrote: So you’re saying the shields are set dressing? Its mentioned in the book so we’ll put it in.
I'm saying you've looked at Dune and gone "I don't want any of this". You don't want Dune to be Dune, you want it to be not-Dune.
It’s also odd to introduce something and then mark it by its absence.
Again, pay attention to the film and you'll get why the shields aren't at the final battle. You can't fault the films because you didn't listen or watch.
I’ve looked at Dune and said I don’t like it. I fundamentally disagree with almost every point Frank Herbert makes and he presents a ridiculous case study to back up his conservative ideas. It’s a mark of the quality of the film maker that he made gold out of dated junk. Wouldn’t have went to see film twice otherwise.
I’ve already stated various scenes where the shields don’t work and it’s on you if you ignore them. The critique amounts to “well the shield does work you just don’t see it. Frank was so clever in his world building” But we see the shields fail repeatedly in the film.
1 - In the Battle of Arakeen a shell passes clean through a ships shield.
1A - Harkonan drop ships are shot down by cannons.
2 - Shielded Atreides troops are shown as being knocked down and killed by the firestorm of their ships exploding around them.
2A - Duke Leto has a dart caught in his back which for dramatic tension is made incredibly slow as it punches through the suddenly very resilient shield. Not a gun.
3 - A pike wall of Atreides get killed by Sardaukar taking light swipes on each other. Also, they clearly use spears so all this “bayonets would be useless” is ignoring them using spears.
4 - Duncan lightly swipes a few of the shielded Sardaukar. No slow blades.
5 - The Harkonan decide not to turn on their shields because they’re worried a worm might attack them. So get sniped by the peasant scum. Why? You haven’t shown shields deflect bullets and how is a worm going to get you if you can fly and already fled onto the mountain to escape it. Silly scene. Not been established it protects against guns.
6 - Copter blocks one shot and then the second doesn’t work because “firing interrupts the shield”. Not how it worked in the previous film and just made up to add tension to the scene.
7 - Chani shoots a Harkonan soldier with a missile launcher and he’s sent flying.
8 - Chani missile gets caught in the shield and like with the troop transport buzzed through the shield.
9 - Harvester gets destroyed by lasguns. The thing that attracts worms anyway so has no reason not to put its shields on.
10 - Montage of Paul shooting down shielded copters and harvesters.
11 - Harkonan planes shot down by missiles with the shield effect shown.
12 - Feyd gets protection from a knife. That’s not very impressive.
12 - Boulders crushing Sardaukar from a nuke exploding. Great to see that inertia in action.
13 - ornithopters being one shot by missiles again and the shields offering no protection.
14 - Sardaukar being killed in close combat with light taps and swipes.
15 - Arrakeen planes being shot down in the background as Gurney lightly taps people and they go down (clip with the banner)
Really, in which scene do we a Fedaykin go all Kryptonian and wade through machine gun fire? That’s an aweful lot of this thing not working that we’ve never seen work.
Wheel of Time did the same thing where they established all the characters were god level mages and then came up with every reason under the sun why they couldn’t solve problems with magic. It gets annoying when you introduce a story element only to keep coming up with reasons it isn’t being used.
Totalwar1402 wrote: I’ve looked at Dune and said I don’t like it. I fundamentally disagree with almost every point Frank Herbert makes and he presents a ridiculous case study to back up his conservative ideas. It’s a mark of the quality of the film maker that he made gold out of dated junk. Wouldn’t have went to see film twice otherwise.
Frank "Don't trust your government because it will inherently attract those who seek power for their personal gain" Herbert? Frank "Beware the dangers of allowing religion to dictate your freedoms" Herbert? Frank "Opposed to the Vietnam War because it perpetuated the cycle of violence" Herbert?
What are you smoking and can I have some?
This isn't the original Starship Troopers where the author very explicitly wrote a book glorifying "manliness", war and violence. Literally the whole point of Dune is about how power corrupts and about being wary of figures of authority and not blindly accepting their words.
Spoiler:
I’ve already stated various scenes where the shields don’t work and it’s on you if you ignore them. The critique amounts to “well the shield does work you just don’t see it. Frank was so clever in his world building” But we see the shields fail repeatedly in the film.
1 - In the Battle of Arakeen a shell passes clean through a ships shield.
1A - Harkonan drop ships are shot down by cannons.
2 - Shielded Atreides troops are shown as being knocked down and killed by the firestorm of their ships exploding around them.
2A - Duke Leto has a dart caught in his back which for dramatic tension is made incredibly slow as it punches through the suddenly very resilient shield. Not a gun.
3 - A pike wall of Atreides get killed by Sardaukar taking light swipes on each other. Also, they clearly use spears so all this “bayonets would be useless” is ignoring them using spears.
4 - Duncan lightly swipes a few of the shielded Sardaukar. No slow blades.
5 - The Harkonan decide not to turn on their shields because they’re worried a worm might attack them. So get sniped by the peasant scum. Why? You haven’t shown shields deflect bullets and how is a worm going to get you if you can fly and already fled onto the mountain to escape it. Silly scene. Not been established it protects against guns.
6 - Copter blocks one shot and then the second doesn’t work because “firing interrupts the shield”. Not how it worked in the previous film and just made up to add tension to the scene.
7 - Chani shoots a Harkonan soldier with a missile launcher and he’s sent flying.
8 - Chani missile gets caught in the shield and like with the troop transport buzzed through the shield.
9 - Harvester gets destroyed by lasguns. The thing that attracts worms anyway so has no reason not to put its shields on.
10 - Montage of Paul shooting down shielded copters and harvesters.
11 - Harkonan planes shot down by missiles with the shield effect shown.
12 - Feyd gets protection from a knife. That’s not very impressive.
12 - Boulders crushing Sardaukar from a nuke exploding. Great to see that inertia in action.
13 - ornithopters being one shot by missiles again and the shields offering no protection.
14 - Sardaukar being killed in close combat with light taps and swipes.
15 - Arrakeen planes being shot down in the background as Gurney lightly taps people and they go down (clip with the banner)
Really, in which scene do we a Fedaykin go all Kryptonian and wade through machine gun fire? That’s an aweful lot of this thing not working that we’ve never seen work.
Wheel of Time did the same thing where they established all the characters were god level mages and then came up with every reason under the sun why they couldn’t solve problems with magic. It gets annoying when you introduce a story element only to keep coming up with reasons it isn’t being used.
Cool so now you're making stuff up and spinning it to your personal interpretation to justify your incorrect points. There's no discussion here, just you shouting at a cloud.
Nixon said he wanted to end the war as well. Talking about small government is just classic libertarianism. Plenty of right wing writers present themselves as being on the side of the little guy and to distrust people who complain. That’s a hallmark of right wing conservatism.
It’s a point by point of every scene in the film where shields are.
Expert troll. EXPERT troll. You had me convinced you were just dense, but now I get it. Very well played.
Totalwar1402 wrote: Plus, first film a shell goes clean through a shield into an Atreides troop transport. Not sure why they bothered wasting money animating something that has no relevance to the plot of story. There’s a lot of scenes where those shields do not work and these are money shot scenes.
1-The shell slowed down to pass through the shield you numpty. You clearly *did not* pay attention to what DV was trying to SHOW you instead of TELLING you.
Also most of your other examples are of things that aren't shielded or being misinterpreted incorrectly - because you didn't pay attention.
1A-The harkonnen dropships are unshielded once they deploy the air bags and start dropping troops. They are being shot down because they have no shields, they don't have shields because it's too difficult to deploy troops through a shield into a combat drop, because the troops can't use shields while doing so.
2-The atreides troops are being knocked around and killed by fragmentation from the explosions, not the blast. That's why atreides troops right next to the guys getting killed aren't bothered at all by the detonation, because they aren't getting hit by the fragmentation themselves - the blast does nothing to them. Note too that much of the blast is being contained within the shiekds of the atreides ships, whatever is getting through is stuff that was either slow enough to penetrate the shiekd in the first place, or which was sufficiently slowed by the shiekd to make it through them. It's also not entirely clear that they are wearing shields at that point, we aren't shown much of the shield action as they are fighting the Harkonnens in the landing fields, only within the city/palace. The Harkonnens that Gurney dispatches aren't wearing shields, and in general shields are not used in Arrakis due to the worm issues.
2A-The Dart is designed to penetrate shields by slowing down - it is fired from a gun. Again, if you paid attention to what DV was SHOWING you, you'd understand it and wouldn't need to be told.
3/4-The spears are used to push back the harkonnens and/or disarm them more than they are to kill them. Also lol at "light swipes" - all of the sardaukar and Duncan's movements are relatively slow compared to what you would see in literally any other movie.
5-The fact that shields protect against guns is established early in part 1 on Caladan - Paul turns his shield on prior to sparring Gurney and takes two quick swings against his hand which are blocked, then takes a third slow strike which penetrates. You're being SHOWN that fast = no, slow = yes. If a quick strike from a blade can't penetrate a shield, a gun wont either. The fact that every projectile that does pentrate a shield is very directly shown to slow down should also be a big clue. Gurney even delivers the famous "the slow blade penetrates the shield line", what more do you want?
The reason to not use shields on the mountain is because the vibration of the holtzman field will still be felt by the worms through the rock, and thus it will still attract the worms. They may not be able to get to the Harkonnens, but the Harkonnens won't be able to leave the mountain either, unless the worms kill themselves smashing into the rock (seems unlikely) - also keep in mind the worms commonly exceed 500m in length, so they should in theory be able to reach the harkonnens on top by rearing up on their length, assuming they are smart enough to know that the shield is up there. Either way, the worms could easily wait out the Harkonnens, so not exactly a winning strategy.
6-Not sure what you think the issue with the thopter in the previous film is - in the previous one they are only shown firing missiles, not guns, and those missiles are dropped before their motors ignite, presumably to drop through shields - assuming the shiekds are even on, we are quite simply never shown that to be the case.
7-The harkonnen soldier sent flying by chani didn't have a shield.
8-The missile that shot down the thopter was caught inside the shield, as in the thopter brought it's shield up with the missile inside it already. Evidently the dynamics of this situation is a bit different from a projectile striking a shield from outside.
9-Once again, harvesters don't use shields because it sends the worms into a frenzy and attracts many worms to its location in the process, whereas only one will come in normal operation and its only there to feed on what it believes to be food. Period, end of. That's all the reasoning we need. A swarm of angry worms is presumably a different problem from a single hungry one, and that's rationale enough to not bother shielding a harvester.
10-None of what was shot down in the montage was shielded, much of them were destroyed by lasers. You seem to assume everything is shielded, that is not the case.
11- It's a slow missile (you can watch it slowly advance on the target thopter when it's fired), also the rhopter is firing on them. Presumably it's a similar situation to what we saw with Chani earlier in terms of timing, as we never see the red-shift as the missile tries to hit it. The other two chapters glow blue, presumably from fragmentation, but aren't damaged and continue flying.
12-they weren't shielded
13-see 11.
14-again, lol
15-the only thopters I recall in these scenes were ones being shot down as they try to lift off, no shields.
Examples of shields not working is examples of showing they do work? Yeah they don’t work.
What we are shown in Paul’s training session is a piece of fencing gear to protect him from sword blows. If they wanted to demonstrate the thing was bulletproof he would have shot him or a training dummy with the thing on.Denis isn’t trying to prove it’s bulletproof because he never shows the thing resisting bullets.
If they can make a missile slow enough it can pierce the shield then they should all be using rocket launchers. Y’all saying the things totally immune to projectile weapons and now moving the goal post.
Also it takes seconds to turn a shield on so they should be activating them when they’re in life or death situations. Such as a harvester being shot at. Or if they’re already fighting giant worms.
You see the shield effect on the copters in the Sardaukar battle. The worms are already in a killing frenzy so there’s no reason for the Sardaukar not to turn their shields on and they should be armed with guns.
The Emperor goes to Arrakis because he is challenged by Paul with his army of Fremen.So he knows there’s going to be a fight with unshielded opponents so he should be doing prep before going in.
They are not slow blades.
Plus, the Wheel of Time point is apt. I can’t stand introducing a major piece of world building to then ignore it or come up with reason after reason it can’t be used or it doesn’t work. It gets really eye rolling as you read book after book where they don’t do the thing they’re supposed to be able to do. So why bother having that be a thing?
The manner in which shields function are clearly demonstrated throughout the films.
You're shifting goalposts with this nonsense about fencing gear.
Specialized projectiles designed to penetrate shields by slowing down doesn't mean it's a weapon worth using in every situation. I explained it previously, a weapon moving too slowly to be blocked by a shield is a weapon that's often only useful against static targets. Anything else is going to be moving too fast for it to usually be effective. A normal gun probably isn't going to be able to shoot a bullet with all the necessary internal gizmos to make that work. Rocket Launchers are pretty capable weapons in the modern day, moreso than a rifle - yet not everyone is running around with one, for good reason.
The sardaukar can't use their shield because the coriolis storm is overloading them. That's literally explained in the film, it's why Paul timed things the way he dud, to Rob them of it. On that note, it may also explain why the thopters are being shot down during the battle - the shields are failing because the storm. The Sardaukar aren't armed with guns because those aren't standard issue because on every other planet in the Known Universe they are pretty much useless.
The Emperor goes to Arrakis to bring the Baron to heel. He's not there to fight Paul, and if Paul tries to strike at him his Sardaukar force should have been more than enough to overpower the believed maximum strength of the Fremen. That there are millions if them and they have all joined together in an army of religious fanatics is not something he's aware of.
They are slow blades, 6-9cm/s is the threshold, that's about right for what's shown on screen.
- He’s suspicious of big government. This implies an idealised image of individualistic Americana. That’s a conservative point.
- His vilification of the Fremen is a clear reference to Nassers Arab Nationalism who like Paul sought to unite the Arab world when the book was written. Socialist leaning enemies of the United States. There is a lot of othering in the book. So the bad we see isn’t calling out the evils in his own society but a case of “don't become like the foreigners.”. By making the world so strange you have to really reach to compare it to the United States. This isn’t like Helldivers or the Boys where the satire is inward looking. It’s a call to preserve what makes America this civic nation of free men et etc.
- He was hostile towards JFK and claimed Nixon was unfairly called out. He claimed JFK was never opposed people thought he was the charismatic leader; this ignores an awful lot of criticism JFK took. A lot of it due to seeking to reverse Jim Crow laws or his Catholic heritage. Much of which centered on the idea his religion would interfere with his politics as he would be loyal to the Pope and America had traditionally seen itself as a Protestant country. Casts his anti religious stance in a bad light. Plus it’s in very bad taste and a blatant lie to characterise JFK as having never been criticised.
- The books primary focus is fear of heroes and to encourage suspicion of people wanting change or to improve things. Paul says he will free the Fremen who seem like an oppressed people and it turns into a totalitarian nightmare of blood. Same as Burkes commentary on the Terror of the French Revolution. This very much is a Burkean notion that upsetting the natural order of society is unnatural and will bring about catastrophe. The people most likely to want to advocate for change are figures on the left and not those wanting things to stay as they are. He certainly isn’t calling for change.
- Vladimir Harkonan??? Hmmm. Better dead than red.
So from that, yeah this is a Cold Warrior writing a conservative work in the style of Edmund Burke.
Plus he was related to McCarthy.
Also it’s the 60s Civil Rights era and he’s talking about the dangers of charismatic leaders and their followings. Well come on, he’s not talking about the American right here. “Nixons back!” 😄
Any explanation which refers to the book(s) is a moot point when I didn't go to the cinema to read the book.
If it makes total sense that nobody knows what's happening in the south because the Fremen are bribing the navigators, then that should have been in the film in some form (although the smuggling of spice then raises more questions around orbital security...)
I’d like to see specific quotes by him on JFK and Richard Nixon because I suspect you are misrepresenting his famous quote about how JFK was dangerous because he was charismatic and Nixon was valuable because he demonstrated so blatantly why we should be suspicious of those in power.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I’d like to see specific quotes by him on JFK and Richard Nixon because I suspect you are misrepresenting his famous quote about how JFK was dangerous because he was charismatic and Nixon was valuable because he demonstrated so blatantly why we should be suspicious of those in power.
It’s a video on YouTube. Looked all over, can’t find the one. Had a look and I think this is the quote.
“HERBERT: There is definitely an implicit warning, in a lot of my work, against big government . . . and especially against charismatic leaders. After all, such people-well-intentioned or not-are human beings who will make human mistakes. And what happens when someone is able to make mistakes for 200 million people? The errors get pretty damned BIG!
For that reason, I think that John Kennedy was one of the most dangerous presidents this country ever had. People didn't question him. And whenever citizens are willing to give unreined power to a charismatic leader, such as Kennedy, they tend to end up creating a kind of demigod . . . or a leader who covers up mistakes—instead of admitting them—and makes matters worse instead of better. Now Richard Nixon, on the other hand, did us all a favor.
- You feel that Kennedy was dangerous and Nixon was good for the country?
HERBERT: Yes, Nixon taught us one hell of a lesson, and I thank him for it. He made us distrust government leaders. We didn't mistrust Kennedy the way we did Nixon, although we probably had just as good reason to do so. But Nixon's downfall was due to the fact that he wasn't charismatic. He had to be sold just like Wheaties, and people were disappointed when they opened the box.“
He frames it as Nixon was caught and then goes on to say that JFK was given the benefit of the doubt. He wasn’t. He really really wasn’t. So he is disavowing Nixon post watergate but he effectively says JFK was as much a rogue as Nixon but he got a pass because he was charismatic. Which ignores an aweful of criticism around JFK. Plus, I think most people hear charismatic leaders are bad and assume he is talking about somebody else. Even the interviewer is a little taken aback by Frank Herbert implying no difference between Nixon and JFK. JFK was absolutely no Saint but Nixon did some monstrous things which should never be talked of in the same manner.
I think he’s wrong. Nixon very consciously appealed to this patrician image, always talked about Eisenhower implying he was his protege and presented himself as the safe pair of hands. That IS an act and is a form of manipulation. It’s just in Frank Herbert’s world view that isn’t being charismatic and so he leaves you blind to the Stalins and Robespierre of this world. Most tyrants aren’t actually charismatic they just obtain the mechanisms of power.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Sometimes you just have to roll with a setting and open up to the story being told.
Yeah. Dune is one of those settings you need to consciously turn a blind eye towards its faults and just focus on the story itself.
It will inherently annoy us nerds who love to discuss the minutia of a settings technology, magic, etc... due to its problems in that department. Dune was written to convey a message, not give enjoyment in its internally consistent immersion, to its reader.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Sometimes you just have to roll with a setting and open up to the story being told.
Yeah. Dune is one of those settings you need to consciously turn a blind eye towards its faults and just focus on the story itself.
It will inherently annoy us nerds who love to discuss the minutia of a settings technology, magic, etc... due to its problems in that department. Dune was written to convey a message, not give enjoyment in its internally consistent immersion, to its reader.
I'm sure Frank Herbert would be disappointed to hear you say that, considering he had you specifically in mind when writing.
McCarthy, whom he famously decried when McCarthy said communists shouldn't be allowed to work certain jobs because Herbert believed that was un-American.
Because critics of big government are really interested in any of that?
I am not surprised he would want to distance himself from McCarthy after the fact.
A work that wanted people to question and challenge the evils of their own society/gvt has to allow them agency. That they can make a difference. Dune, at a fundamental level is criticising the idea of heroism and hope that underpins that. It encourages you to doubt yourself. To doubt people advocating for change. That’s where the suspicion is being directed. Paul challenges “the man” and it leads to disaster. The Fremen try to liberate themselves and they become pawns of a power hungry man and a totalitarian nightmare. Oh if I listen to this guy causing trouble terrible things will happen; is the exact opposite of calling for action. Dune is a conservstive work. It’s a different kind of right wing to Starship Troopers or Lovecraft but it is conservative.
Totalwar1402 wrote: Because critics of big government are really interested in any of that?
I am not surprised he would want to distance himself from McCarthy after the fact.
A work that wanted people to question and challenge the evils of their own society/gvt has to allow them agency. That they can make a difference. Dune, at a fundamental level is criticising the idea of heroism and hope that underpins that. It encourages you to doubt yourself. To doubt people advocating for change. That’s where the suspicion is being directed. Paul challenges “the man” and it leads to disaster. The Fremen try to liberate themselves and they become pawns of a power hungry man and a totalitarian nightmare. Oh if I listen to this guy causing trouble terrible things will happen; is the exact opposite of calling for action. Dune is a conservstive work. It’s a different kind of right wing to Starship Troopers or Lovecraft but it is conservative.
You should read the prequels. From what you've described I think you'd find them more accessible.
Easy E wrote: So, this thread is really just a Politics thread in disguise?
Cool!
I mean, all discussion of any media beyond the most shallow takes will end up discussing politics because politics shapes the media that is made and how we interpret that media.
As soon as you go beyond the surface of "recitation of what is shown on the screen or written on the page" into "why was this shown or written, what meaning is the creator trying to convey with this particular work, and why?" you hit politics.
People arguing about whether Dune is pro one side or the other of the left/right or conservative/progressive divide are missing the point just like people arguing the same or similar about 1984.
Neither is any of those; they're both anti-authoritarian.
Whether that authority is a charismatic leader or an oppressive police state, left-wing, right-wing, or whatever, is irrelevant to that.
Dune is explicitly political and I think it's fair game to discuss how contemporary political discourse affects its reading. The book is over 60 years old at this point, Herbert was pulling from contemporary social theory to sketch out the lifeways of Arrakis. The theory is a bit dated now but produced some compelling world building.
Given the variety of characters in Dune, from wildly different positionalities, their discussions on politics and power, you could take any quote out of context and argue that the author was endorsing radical, reactionary, fundamentalist, monarchist, or anti-colonial politics. Herbert's politics are relevant in how they shaped the writing but in my analysis I think his primary interest was exploring cultural ecology interspersed with some fun swordfights.
As the series goes on things get weirder. Villeneuve, give us the chairdogs, you coward!
Easy E wrote: So, this thread is really just a Politics thread in disguise?
Cool!
I mean, all discussion of any media beyond the most shallow takes will end up discussing politics because politics shapes the media that is made and how we interpret that media.
As soon as you go beyond the surface of "recitation of what is shown on the screen or written on the page" into "why was this shown or written, what meaning is the creator trying to convey with this particular work, and why?" you hit politics.
I absolutely agree! I just don't want to give the Mods an excuse to shutdown my new favorite part of the forum!
So, do we think Dune was written to be art or product? Was it designed to teach a lesson, or to move books? If you had to lean one-way or the other, which side would you lean on?
We have no interest in shutting it down and wont unless people go off the rails. Of course though it helps if people can keep conspiracy theories, flamebait and political rants out of it. Always nice when the participants actually have engaged with the media before arguing with it too.
To your question, both? Herbert's career was down the can and he needed to eat but he also wanted to try and have his book serve as a warning. Luckily for him it took off well, if only he had stopped writing after three books and forbidden anyone else to write anymore.
Easy E wrote: So, this thread is really just a Politics thread in disguise?
Cool!
I mean, all discussion of any media beyond the most shallow takes will end up discussing politics because politics shapes the media that is made and how we interpret that media.
As soon as you go beyond the surface of "recitation of what is shown on the screen or written on the page" into "why was this shown or written, what meaning is the creator trying to convey with this particular work, and why?" you hit politics.
I absolutely agree! I just don't want to give the Mods an excuse to shutdown my new favorite part of the forum!
So, do we think Dune was written to be art or product? Was it designed to teach a lesson, or to move books? If you had to lean one-way or the other, which side would you lean on?
Whether he was reading them directly or indirectly I get the sense that Herbert was inspired by the cultural ecology of the time, with influence from Leslie White and/or Julian Steward, what would later be described as cultural materialism. A lot of great sci-fi from the time pulled from contemporary anthropology (LeGuin is another great example). In this view the environment is the primary influence on cultural development, starting with subsistence and technology and working up to social organization and ideology. The appendices at the back establish this a little further and I really like how Liet-Kynes as a character gives voice to some of these ideas.
A large part of the book is the various justifications for power or rulership. "He who can destroy a thing controls a thing." This is probably the closest we get to Herbert endorsing an Arrakeen political ecology. Based on how the series unfolds I would say at minimum Herbert is anti-authoritarian and anti-Colonial. I love the back-and-forth between the Bene Gesserit who aggressively enforce the limits of humanity and the Bene Tleilax and Ix who run past those limits as fast as they can. Neither purely represent Herbert I'm sure - as Kirk says, "we're both extremist. The truth is somewhere in between."
Managed to watch Part two last night. There were a few bits liked but over all I didn't enjoy either of the new takes on Dune. So far the Si-fi mini series has been the telling I have enjoyed the most even if it wasn't as flashy and cool as this new one. I liked the floating suites and the lasers. some of the extras were hilarious mostly because of the looks on their faces. The lady Jessica arguing with her unborn child was funny and clever. The pace seemed much faster than in the first movie, I'm not sure if that's accurate or not but it felt much faster.
I found part one completely tedious to watch this was a slight step up.
Good interview, interesting explanations for some of his creative changes and his approach to the narrative - I'd say some of you might be surprised by his answers, but realistically I expect it will only incite more nerd rage.
The one question I wish would have been asked is how the hell do sandworms move? It's been bugging me since seeing part 2 - we never see enough of a worm in part 1 for it to become a thing, but in part 2 we see them fully extended out of the sand being ridden, and they just kind of.... go. Like a jet engine taking in air through their mouths and producing thrust out their rears. There's no side to serpentine side motion like a snake, there's no "inching" like an earthworm. Their bodies remain relatively straight and they just move as if carried by millions of tiny invisible feet.
The side to side thing is only one part of snake movement; the other is basically doing the same thing earthworms do; but just on their lower belly region only.
Good interview, interesting explanations for some of his creative changes and his approach to the narrative - I'd say some of you might be surprised by his answers, but realistically I expect it will only incite more nerd rage.
The one question I wish would have been asked is how the hell do sandworms move? It's been bugging me since seeing part 2 - we never see enough of a worm in part 1 for it to become a thing, but in part 2 we see them fully extended out of the sand being ridden, and they just kind of.... go. Like a jet engine taking in air through their mouths and producing thrust out their rears. There's no side to serpentine side motion like a snake, there's no "inching" like an earthworm. Their bodies remain relatively straight and they just move as if carried by millions of tiny invisible feet.
Saw a short youtube video on that. The conclusion was that they don't do either snake or worm movements (because it would be seen in the movie), and they obviously can't roll, because the riders stay stationary on top.
On the other hand, they're shown swallowing tons of sand (and vehicles) at several points in the film, so... yeah. They just expel all that out their back end for propulsion.
Overread wrote: The side to side thing is only one part of snake movement; the other is basically doing the same thing earthworms do; but just on their lower belly region only.
To expand on this snakes are also able to scoot forward using only their belly muscles while staying relatively straight (relevant footage at 3:55). Plausible enough to scale up for science fiction.
Good interview, interesting explanations for some of his creative changes and his approach to the narrative - I'd say some of you might be surprised by his answers, but realistically I expect it will only incite more nerd rage.
The one question I wish would have been asked is how the hell do sandworms move? It's been bugging me since seeing part 2 - we never see enough of a worm in part 1 for it to become a thing, but in part 2 we see them fully extended out of the sand being ridden, and they just kind of.... go. Like a jet engine taking in air through their mouths and producing thrust out their rears. There's no side to serpentine side motion like a snake, there's no "inching" like an earthworm. Their bodies remain relatively straight and they just move as if carried by millions of tiny invisible feet.
Saw a short youtube video on that. The conclusion was that they don't do either snake or worm movements (because it would be seen in the movie), and they obviously can't roll, because the riders stay stationary on top.
On the other hand, they're shown swallowing tons of sand (and vehicles) at several points in the film, so... yeah. They just expel all that out their back end for propulsion.
IIRC they use sound to do it. They sonically liquifact the sand around their bodies, allowing them to basically swim through it as the sand behaves like a liquid.
But even a fish swimming have discernable motion to propel themselves, whereas the worms don't.
Interesting on the snakes using their abs to propel themselves, never knew that, but a good concept for how the worms may work, though it looks like a relatively slow going way of movement.
Grey Templar wrote: Alternately, if shields are so effective against even melee weapons such that "The slow knife penetrates the shield" is quite literally true, then melee should genuinely be useless with their technology level. Simply giving everybody chainmail armor would make melee combat a frustratingly futile thing. You swing hard enough to get through armor, the shield stops you. You swing slow enough to get through the shield, the armor stops you.
I believe they have monofil tech so sharp enough knives to go through armour would be a thing.
