DUNE Movie: Thoughts, Opinions, and Impressions

[payn]

The real question is whether folks who didn't know about it missed it. "Oh, he's a human calculator or database or something," may be all they really need, all things considered.



Probably not much. We have learned that politics is a big thing, but the original book didn't really give details - it is a Harkonen/Atredies conflict, with other houses all offscreen, iirc.

Perhaps not the mentats specifically, but most reviews do say, "looks great, but what the hell is going on?" so I think some of these cut details would have helped.

When I said Houses, I should have said Harkonens, Emperor, spacing guild, and the bene geserit.

 

[Umbran]

This is an interesting trick for world building. It's in LotR too. You supply just enough detail to hint at a bigger picture.

It is easier in Dune because that most of the politics is irrelevant and distant from the action.

Everything about Paul being the supposed savior, is planned... a fiction orchestrated by the Bene Gesserit.

Yes, it is planned, but no, it isn't really fiction - the Bene Gesserit just didn't understand who was going to get saved from what. Which makes it less of a deconstruction, and more just a story about how saviors will not be controlled.

 

[Umbran]

Perhaps not the mentats specifically, but most reviews do say, "looks great, but what the hell is going on?" so I think some of these cut details would have helped.

As it is, the movie is two and a half hours long. While any one of these details takes a short time, in total, they're probably half an hour or more of screen time.

Which the critics would then (rightfully) call, "butt-numbingly long," or somesuch.

This is the price of converting to film a work from a different medium that wasn't particularly well suited to it.

 

[Jmarso]

What this version really needed was the same cast, director, production values, and an 8-10 part miniseries. Dune is just too hard and involved a story to put to feature film. That said, this was a fantastic effort and worthy of a watch. Especially if you are a fan and already know the story.

Side note: I thought the ornithopters were a bit fanciful for a civilization that obviously controls gravity, but they were pretty cool! In a theater with good Dolby you felt them coming and going in every pore of your body.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It is easier in Dune because that most of the politics is irrelevant and distant from the action.

So are lots of things referred to in LotR, such as the fall of Gondolin. It's just that Tolkien's "hints of a bigger picture" relate more to history than politics.

 

[Umbran]

What this version really needed was the same cast, director, production values, and an 8-10 part miniseries. Dune is just too hard and involved a story to put to feature film.

I'm going to disagree with that. Dune has an expansive, detailed-filled world... much of which is informative, but not directly relevant to the storyline.

The actual sequence of events is pretty simple, and they've caught most of what happens so far.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I thought the ornithopters were a bit fanciful

I don't think Herbert ever really describes them in detail or explains how they work. It could, for example, be a brand name for an antigrav vehicle.

 

[Umbran]

So are lots of things referred to in LotR, such as the fall of Gondolin. It's just that Tolkien's "hints of a bigger picture" relate more to history than politics.

There's a major difference.

If, in Dune, we say there's lots of politics, we have some expectation they might be relevant to the story, as the politics are concurrent with the story, and some of the people in the story are technically involved in said politics.

If, in LotR, Gondolin is mentioned, that is a thing that happened on the order of 3500 years prior to Frodo's journey - we expect it to be relevant in much the same way we expect Egypt conquering Nubia to be directly relevant to the events in the next Fast And Furious movie, which is to say, not at all.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

There's a major difference.

If, in Dune, we say there's lots of politics, we have some expectation they might be relevant to the story, as the politics are concurrent with the story, and some of the people in the story are technically involved in said politics.

If, in LotR, Gondolin is mentioned, that is a thing that happened on the order of 3500 years prior to Frodo's journey - we expect it to be relevant in much the same way we expect Egypt conquering Nubia to be directly relevant to the events in the next Fast And Furious movie, which is to say, not at all.

If you think of how you use it for world building in an RPG, or a novel you are reading for the first time for that matter, you don't know which details might be relevant.

 

[Jmarso]

I don't think Herbert ever really describes them in detail or explains how they work. It could, for example, be a brand name for an antigrav vehicle.

Ornithopters were not an invention of Herbert, but by definition they are not an a-grav sort of vehicle, nor are they depicted as such in the movie. Some of the earliest attempts at powered flight were ornithopters- the silly contraptions with flapping wings that look like they are out of some old Marx Brothers movie. Here's a wikilink if you are interested in the concept: Ornithopter - Wikipedia.