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Pacific wrote: My understanding was that the spice was absolutely necessary for space travel, hence the 'he who controls the spice, controls the universe' quote? It also had to be an inordinately rich gift by the Emperor to the Atreidies to get them to leave Caladan and then make themselves vulnerable in doing so.
It's necessary in that it allows Holtzmann effect driven travel to be sustainable. Without it you can still fold space (the engines work with or without a Navigator), but you'll die a large percentage of the time (Frank doesn't give a percentage in the novels, but it's high enough that the Imperium adopted Navigators as the primary method of interstellar travel and literally structured its entire society around that mode of transit).
It's not just the safety, its also that the various houses and Empire clearly operates with a high degree of inter-planetary trade. They have a whole planet they use for a prison.
There's clearly a high amount of reliance and interconnectivity between the houses and worlds. As a result if suddenly space travel became insanely costly and dangerous that would shut down all that casual travel. Suddenly the Empire cannot function as it does. That way of life ends and many worlds might crumble and suffer huge issues. Even agricultural worlds might suffer if materials, fuels, resources and machines couldn't be imported to harvest etc... whilst heavily industrial or marginal worlds might have mass starvation.
Spice is essential for safe, reliable space travel and maintaining the vast intergalactic empire as it is.
They might fight over who controls it, but ultimately everyone has to play the same game.
Spoiler:
That's part of Paul's major element in becoming the leader of the Fremen. It's not just a vector for getting revenge, but also changes the Fremen's nature of their uprising. They were more than happy to just shut down spice production and kick everyone off their world. They had no part in the greater empire outside of their world and were content with surviving on their world. Paul, esp in latter books, builds on that by taking the Fremen off world on his crusade, I think in part a bid to give them interests outside of Arrakis.
Pacific wrote: My understanding was that the spice was absolutely necessary for space travel, hence the 'he who controls the spice, controls the universe' quote?
Obviously not absolutely necessary. Otherwise humans would have never have reached Arrakis, found the Spice, & brought it back.
But oh boy, once they did....
Obviously not absolutely necessary. Otherwise humans would have never have reached Arrakis, found the Spice, & brought it back.
But oh boy, once they did....
Pre-Guild space travel was noted (in Frank's usually nebulous way) to be significantly slower, more dangerous and unreliable. The discovery of Spice and the abilities it added allowed the formation of the Known Universe.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/11/01 14:05:17
There’s also the fact that once someone starts using spice other, similar, substances don’t work; this is specifically mentioned in relation to the BG, but I would assume it affects the guild too.
Zed wrote: *All statements reflect my opinion at this moment. if some sort of pretty new model gets released (or if I change my mind at random) I reserve the right to jump on any bandwagon at will.
Chillreaper wrote: Prior to the Butlerian Jihad, were AIs used to navigate?
I've only read the original 6 books so far, so I really can't remember the timeline regarding the use of spice and the issues with the machines.
Frank doesn't define when it was invented, though it's heavily implied that pre-Guild spaceflight used a different method than spacefolding. KJA writes spacefolding (and about 90% of the other tech and traditions that the original novels depend on) as products of the Great Revolt.
Chillreaper wrote: Prior to the Butlerian Jihad, were AIs used to navigate?
I've only read the original 6 books so far, so I really can't remember the timeline regarding the use of spice and the issues with the machines.
I think so, yes. Or at least computers, rather than full on AI necessarily. Would also explain the distance / speed limitation; a computer fed sufficient data can calculate whether your course is likely to be safe, but the data you use will be limited by the speed of light. The further you go, the more out-of-date your data will, until you reach a point where you’re essentially flying blind. However a navigator cheats by looking into the future and seeing whether if you go that way you live.
Zed wrote: *All statements reflect my opinion at this moment. if some sort of pretty new model gets released (or if I change my mind at random) I reserve the right to jump on any bandwagon at will.
I left the theater dissapointed, but still want to go back and see it again. My feelings when I left the theater were mostly that I'd mostly watched a series of concept art pieces set to a constant Hans Zimmer "BWAAGGGGHHHHHHHHHH" drone. The noise of it was distracting.
I feel like the movie could have done a lot more with the 2.5 hrs it was given, and it would have helped.
I SUPER appreciated:
Spoiler:
How the duel at the end turns out. Paul forsees that he is to die, but instead kills his opponent and is bewildered. That's a great omen for the reluctant butcher he's gonna turn out to be.
Happy the second one is greenlit, I like DV as a director a lot. I hope the second one is better.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/11/01 20:40:56
Chillreaper wrote: Prior to the Butlerian Jihad, were AIs used to navigate?
I've only read the original 6 books so far, so I really can't remember the timeline regarding the use of spice and the issues with the machines.
I think so, yes. Or at least computers, rather than full on AI necessarily. Would also explain the distance / speed limitation; a computer fed sufficient data can calculate whether your course is likely to be safe, but the data you use will be limited by the speed of light. The further you go, the more out-of-date your data will, until you reach a point where you’re essentially flying blind. However a navigator cheats by looking into the future and seeing whether if you go that way you live.
Pretty much. Before and during the era of the Butlerian Jihad, I think I remember that it's explained that even the most conservative version of FTL travel has about a 10% loss-rate for ships. Kind of a bad thing if you are travelling as a military flotilla to attack somewhere, and your commander has a 1 in 10 chance of never getting there.
The only good way to travel safely was to have AI ships constantly travelling the known space updating all the AI copies of the "master" AI that then got used for a basis for where everything was "sitting" in every system so things didn't get hit by incoming ships.
"By this point I'm convinced 100% that every single race in the 40k universe have somehow tapped into the ork ability to just have their tech work because they think it should."
Chillreaper wrote: Prior to the Butlerian Jihad, were AIs used to navigate?
I've only read the original 6 books so far, so I really can't remember the timeline regarding the use of spice and the issues with the machines.
Can't comment on the original 6 books, but in Brian+Kevin's Butlerian Jihad stuff?
The spice was required for the nascent Navigator gene to properly be expressed within the whole Holtzman field stuff. Prior to that, travel was done the slow way...or once the foldspace engines were a thing, it was a crapshoot where you'd hope for the best.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/11/01 23:51:21
cygnnus wrote: Spoilered just in case someone’s reading this by accident and doesn’t want any spoilers…
I also thought the actress playing Lady Jessica over-acted the role from time to time. The Lady Jessica a full-on bloody Bene Gesserit. She should not be weeping and sobbing that much.
Valete,
JohnS
Was she really weeping and sobbing? I mean, the actress was, but was there ever anyone else in the shot? I kind of assumed that she was feeling these really intense emotions, but using her BG training to mask her feelings and get stuff done.
I agree; I’ve just started re-reading the book and Jessica is quite emotional, it’s just she controls it and/or hides when she needs to. Which is actually the point of BG training. They’re not Vulcans who suppress everything, they just need to be in control and able to act.
Zed wrote: *All statements reflect my opinion at this moment. if some sort of pretty new model gets released (or if I change my mind at random) I reserve the right to jump on any bandwagon at will.
The problem with showing "stoic, in control" characters is...really damn boring. Books can go into detail about internal feelings, movies can't exactly do that.
Obviously not absolutely necessary. Otherwise humans would have never have reached Arrakis, found the Spice, & brought it back.
But oh boy, once they did....
Pre-Guild space travel was noted (in Frank's usually nebulous way) to be significantly slower, more dangerous and unreliable. The discovery of Spice and the abilities it added allowed the formation of the Known Universe.
It depends what your definition of 'absolutely necessary' is though ccs. GPS systems aren't 'absolutely necessary' for modern flight and sea shipping control, both of those modes of transport will function without them, but it would make the widespread use of flight and shipping trade impracticable and cause the world's economy to collapse.
The impression I get from Dune is that it would be the same if the Guild lost access to Spice - I assume the network and control by the Emperor, the Great Houses etc. would fail. And whoever controls that spice holds a massive hammer over everyone else.
The impression I get from Dune is that it would be the same if the Guild lost access to Spice - I assume the network and control by the Emperor, the Great Houses etc. would fail. And whoever controls that spice holds a massive hammer over everyone else.
God Emperor Spoilers:
Spoiler:
The above is literally what happens later in the timeline to catalyze The Scattering and cement Leto II's Golden Path for Humanity. Everything goes to gak because he systematically and deliberately designs the mechanisms of the Known Universe to fail catastrophically and all at once
Jadenim wrote: I agree; I’ve just started re-reading the book and Jessica is quite emotional, it’s just she controls it and/or hides when she needs to. Which is actually the point of BG training. They’re not Vulcans who suppress everything, they just need to be in control and able to act.
She also isn't a Reverend Mother yet, and that is a pretty important distinction since 'Motherhood' comes with Other Memory. Which would change someone quite a bit.
cygnnus wrote: Spoilered just in case someone’s reading this by accident and doesn’t want any spoilers…
I also thought the actress playing Lady Jessica over-acted the role from time to time. The Lady Jessica a full-on bloody Bene Gesserit. She should not be weeping and sobbing that much.
Valete,
JohnS
Was she really weeping and sobbing? I mean, the actress was, but was there ever anyone else in the shot? I kind of assumed that she was feeling these really intense emotions, but using her BG training to mask her feelings and get stuff done.
This is a key point. Whenever she cried or showed emotion, she was alone. Her mask could come down and let the viewers in on the human side, without voice-over inner monologues.
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I watched the Dune movie last night. I think it's a pretty good movie but i watched it on Kast (a group movie watching site) and the framerate of the movie was so awful it was like somebody had a 56k modem or something terrible to run it on. That or one of those sketchy 3rd party sites where i have to worry about getting a virus.
So basically instead of watching it in glorious IMAX with great speakers i had super bad framerate and poor headphones....woo.
OK, so I watched the film last night and I want to check with folks regarding my memories of having read the book (a few years ago) vs how things were portrayed in the film, and how they affect internal logic.
My overall review is: maybe Villaneuve will produce two versions of the film, the "Scotsman Cut" and the "Insectum Cut" and insectum can have 90 minutes of dialogue and plot and I can have whatever seven hours of just literally every establishing shot and scene of weird shown-not-told stuff happening in this wild science fiction universe with no need to follow who anybody is or be told anything that's going on. I would LOVE a purely conceptual, non-hollywood version of this movie. The things I generally most disliked
Spoiler:
Was basically any time they had to grapple with the fact that someone might not have read Dune, and they add some extra expository dialogue in there. Because while I felt like the actor playing Paul was pretty solid when it came to Paul's actions and lines from the story, when he was for example experiencing the visions and then they cut to him having to explain essentially to the auience what was going on, he got a little...Anakin from Episode 2/Kylo Ren. "YOU BENE GESSERIT MADE ME A FREAK!!!" and then just continue the scene right after as if nothing happened had big "NOT JUST THE MEN BUT THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN TOO" energy to me.
And then the other big thing that might entirely be in my head but just made it REALLY difficult to establish internal consistency was
Spoiler:
Everything involving shields.
To my memory, and please, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I seem to recall that (one of) the reasons for the anachronistic combat in the setting is that shields are this "almost perfect technology" that essentially set warfare back to the medieval ages. Like any kind of projectile, any kind of gun or bomb or even a fething arrow would just be effortlessly turned aside, and the only thing other than fighting a guy with a fething sword you could do would be to fire a laser at one, and that was like mutually assured destruction, the resulting explosion would ALWAYS kill the person firing the laser as well as the person with the shield. That's why everyones using swords and daggers and old-timey medieval poisoning tricks and gak. And when in the novel the harkonnens hit them, they in some way did something crazy tricky and unheard of by disabling the shields surrounding Arrakis, and the fact that they brought some artillery to bear was this crazy, unheard-of thing. When I read the books I was literally envisioning them as like, 21st century rusty old antiques. And the only reason the little bug drone in the beginning was a threat to Paul is because he had his shield off...there was probably some reason why people didnt just always have the shields on, but I dont remember what it was. IDK. If my smartphone stopped bullets and explosions from killing me I'd probably carry it around with me...exactly as much as I carry it around now, which is 100% of the time, I wouldn't take it off frequenly in perilous situations or when I was messily eating a feast while gloating over my naked political nemesis.
However in Dune the film it seemed like there were essentially analogues to literally every piece of modern technological weaponry designed to get through shields. Shields in Dune the film seem to be "if someone shoots you with a gun or you get hit by an explosion, you will get a nice blue-then-red sparkly effect and a single split second for a dramatic facial expression or for dramatic tension to build before the thing gets through your shield and kills you."
And it kind of..makes all the sword fighting seem a bit silly? Like dont get me wrong, this is not a technology that stands up to much sustained scrutiny. Obviously if these things were invented people would do what's shown in the movie and design weaponry that shoots out and slows down when it encounters a shield, and then just keeps going afterwards, we're talking about a hyper-technological science fiction setting here that managed to invent shields in the first place.
But in the movie you literally have this big ambush scene where the bad guys are fething nuking them from orbit, using what seem to be highly, HIGHLY effective at destroying shields bombs that we see are both capable of blasting straight through the shields on the atriedes spaceships AND killing the atreides soldiers as they march bravely out of their bunker in their pajamas waving swords at the space ships...but then the space ships just LAND? and the guys get out? And start fighting them with the swords? I literally said out loud "Well that was SPORTING of them!" when I was watching it.
And one more thing that maybe I'm not remembering correctly from the book but
Spoiler:
Were the harkonnens always...um....Orks? They seemed like they were weird orks, except that one guy who was I guess an extra from Monty Pythons Flying Circus who wanted to violate paul's mom. It was very strange for him to switch from HUBUGGUDA GROWLY GROWL GROMPLY GRUMBLE to "OOOOh I like a spot of noble highborn ladie tea and krumpet m'lud 'ows your auntie say no more say no more"
i feel like as a science fiction film maker you should make a decision up front whether youre going to go with "everyone speaks the language the film is in, dont question it, its fine" or "everyone speaks alien languages and we have subtitles." dont cross the streams.
And also, though this is 100 billion percent on Dune, the novel, rather than the director of this new movie, but
Spoiler:
The Sardaukar essentially get immediately Stormtrooper Effect'd out of being any kind of plausible threat at all, immediately. "We are the emperor's blades...those he points at DIEEEE! THE MOST ELITE SOLDIERS CAPABLE OF KILLING ANYONE except one guy with a knife in a hallway with no cover at all. Yeah this armor if mostly for decoration honestly, it is not only ineffective at stopping knives but also a guy will literally punch one of us with our shield on and it will super dramatically knock us to the ground so he can kill us no problem. Don't know why we wear it!"
I dont know why movies do this honestly. It would have cost them nothing, nothing at all for the very first Sardaukar to absolutely shred Jason Momoa in a SECOND, and then they start trying to cut down the door with a laser beam. You could have so easily established these guys as a legitimate threat - just show the Harkonnen troopers instead of the Sardaukar in all the vision scenes where its like 'the fremen are scary good soldiers!' This is supposed to be Film #1 in at least a two-film series, you should be trying to leave us with the impression of "oh man, how are our heroes going to deal with THESE GUYS?" Every fight with a Sardaukar in movie number 1 should have been just, instant death.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/11/05 12:06:21
"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"
"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"
"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"
"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"
On Sardaukar - they are elite. They are all elite. Other houses might have a regiment of comparable troops. Those guys can fight toe to toe with equal numbers... but you other house troops just die and the Sardaukar outnumber your elites.
Sword masters are the people who train your elite troops. They are a cut above even Sardaukar. A space marine officer compared to a space marine. The Atriedes almost unheard of 2 swordmasters (many houses had zero) was a key enabling factor for their house troops to be so well trained and organised and part of why the emperor saw them as a growing threat.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I have yet to see the film but assume the good doctor disables the shields as per the book? Houses still have artillery and missiles as you can use them to scatter formations of troops and use them on non shielded targets like peasants houses, factories or whale pens.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/11/05 13:01:55
I did wonder what the point of the shields was when everything seemed to just go right thru them.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Yeah, the doctor mentions dropping the base shields, but all the ships in the yard still has shields and the bad guys were dropping bombs on those no problem.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/11/05 13:09:02
The bombs were parachuted to go down super-slow to go thru shields, if the base had their defenses up, they'd presumably be shot down without any trouble.
The whole point of the shields was to have swordfights cause the author thought they were neat, there's no deeper meaning behind them.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/11/05 13:18:29
Those bombs would also not have been much threat had they gotten the ships in the air. This is where Yueh downing the comms systems probably looms large.
It would just mean more if the shields were ever shown saving someone’s life, but the only time they seemed at all effective were during the training session. Oh, wait, there Was one time where a bullet pressed up against a shield and the dude then swatted it aside with his sword.
Picking nits, but the worms were very conveniently sized. Like there’s a worm that needs to eat a harvester, and it’s mouth is just large enough for it. Later there’s a handful of people who need to get eaten, and the nearby worm is neatly just large enough that the diameter of its mouth perfectly encompasses the formation these people happened to by standing in.
Overall I did quite enjoy it, the shields just seemed very confusing and inconsistent.
You may recall, there are two places where the slow dart gun is used in the movie. One hits Leto inbetween the shoulder blades, and he struggles to reach it as it is burrowing through his shield, and ultimately fails. The other is Duncan Idaho is shot by a Sardaukar, but he uses his blade to deflect the dart out of his shield before it burrows through.
The book mentions there are dart guns that can penetrate the shield by using a slow dart. That is how Duncan Idaho is killed in the book. It is where in the movie, the Sardaukar shoots him, but in the movie he deflects it and survives longer, IIRC.
In the book, they also mention that the Harkonnen's use air power to destroy the space port in their surprise attack. We see this in both the 1984 and new version as well. However, in the new version, they add in the slow dropping bombs penetrating the shields of the ships on the ground. I do not recall that in the book, but I also read it a long time ago.
Were the Sardaukar using a laser late in the film? I think that was that man-portable beam thing, but I am not sure. I do not recall any of that scene from the book. Was it a new addition?
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/11/05 14:05:58
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Pacific wrote: My understanding was that the spice was absolutely necessary for space travel, hence the 'he who controls the spice, controls the universe' quote?
Obviously not absolutely necessary. Otherwise humans would have never have reached Arrakis, found the Spice, & brought it back.
But oh boy, once they did....
I always wondered, who was the first person who decided to try and eat dried sandworm dung?
"The 75mm gun is firing. The 37mm gun is firing, but is traversed round the wrong way. The Browning is jammed. I am saying "Driver, advance." and the driver, who can't hear me, is reversing. And as I look over the top of the turret and see twelve enemy tanks fifty yards away, someone hands me a cheese sandwich."
