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Dune

I say the Lynch movie, a few year later I had a lot of time on my hands so I read the six books (and a lot of other stuff). When I tried to watch the Lynch movie again I couldn't get past the first third. I also read the three house books, but didn't get much out of them.
My advise: Read the first six books, skip the movies, and skip the new books.
 

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Tsyr said:
Fading Suns is VERY Dune-ish. It's as close as you are ever going to get to a Dune RPG, unless you're one of the lucky ones who has one of the very rare copies of the actual Dune RPG only ever released one year, at gencon (hugs his tightly!).

To chime in, I love Dune.

Regarding the Lynch-Vs-SciFi debate...

The Lynch movie had style. The Lynch movie had (mostly) great actors. The Lynch movie presented a visual image of the world that the sci-fi miniseries can't touch. The Lynch movie is stunning.

Unfortunatly, the Lynch movie also mangles the plot. It doesn't just take liberties. It just changes needlessly. The Sci Fi movie is MUCH truer to the source, including a number of scenes that really needed to be in the Lynch movie, but weren't. The followup miniseries, Children of Dune, isn't as good as the first Sci-Fi series, but it also is worth watching.

You should read Herbert's essay on the making of the Lynch movie. He very much thought it was good, an amazing accomplishment. He had certain issues with it, but he approved.
 

KenM said:
My main problem with the Lynch version is when I went to the theater and bought a ticket, they gave me a double sided sheet of terms to read and know BEFORE the movie started. This means there was alot of stuff cut out. I had also hear of Sci Fi channel running the expanded Lynch movie on occausion, I heard this was alot better then the TC.

SciFi has indeed shown the expanded TV Dune from time to time. I have it on tape from when it was first aired, and I think it's a mixed bag. ASome of the added scenes are indeed very good, add to the film, and really should have been in the theatrical cut. Others are poorly done, and you can easily see why they didn't make it into the film in the first place.

Most annoying, though, it that they added a 10 (or so) minute prologue explaining the universe and its history, narrated by some guy who sound like a half-conscious trucker who was picked up by the cops on the PA turnpike and spent the night in the drunk tank. All of Virginia Madsen's narration is replaced by narration from this guy. While Madsen's was admittedly lousy, the extended narration is worse. And they retracked all the sound and music for the TV release, and did it badly - it's off throughout the film, and just doesn't work.
 

I'll agree with most everyone here: Dune is a great series of books. I thouroughly enjoyed all books, except for the last one, Chapterhouse: Dune, which I found a bit weird. But the series is great; it's definately something worth reading, at least once.
 

I'm just getting through Heretics of Dune. Between watching both miniseries and the movies and reading the first 4 books, I'd say the Lynch movie certainly had better production values and actors in many cases. But it wasted many of its actors cast in rather short roles, and I just really hated the thing with those stupid weirding modules. I actually like the miniseries better despite the much lower budget, because they didn't do something stupid like, "this is a sci-fi film so we better have energy weapons" thing they did with the movie, and ignore the concept that they were mostly fighting with knives.

It's rumoured they might try to make another miniseries based on God Emperor of Dune, but after reading that novel I'd say its a pretty hard thing when you have a lot of scenes with a guy who has a wormlike body that's 7 meters long, and almost resembles Jaba the Hutt spent talking about a lot of things like his philosophical views while getting constantly lost in his own memories and visions. But somehow I suspect that if they did they'll just try to expand out and add to the scenes with Siona, Duncan and Hwi Noree (and even Malky) like they did in the first 2 miniseries with Irulan and Wensica.

One thing about the RTS games I don't get was why the whole thing with the Ordos, I don't even remember them being mentioned anywhere in the novels. It gives the wrong impression on who the major powers in the Dune universe are (some of them appearing later), which happens to be the Imperium, the Houses (Atreides, Harkonnen, Corrino), Lansraad Council, CHOAM, the Guild, Fremen, Bene Gesserit, Bene Tleilaxu, IX, Fishspeakers, Honored Matres, and others.
 

One thing about the RTS games I don't get was why the whole thing with the Ordos, I don't even remember them being mentioned anywhere in the novels.

Well, of course not. They're insidious, remember? (Like root beer.)

They were very careful to stay below Herbert's radar while he was writing the books...

-Hyp.
 

My problems with the movie adaptations of Dune is that, even though there are several swordmasters running around, NO ONE HAS A SWORD!! Duncan Idaho, swordmaster of the ginaz! I've wanted to see him take down a bunch of Saurdakar with a sword for so long.

But I liked the skiffy miniseries MUCH MUCH better than the Lynch movie.
 

Hypersmurf said:
Well, of course not. They're insidious, remember? (Like root beer.)

They were very careful to stay below Herbert's radar while he was writing the books...

-Hyp.

I doubt they got anywhere, since the Bene Gesserit and Tleilaxu are even more insidious. If they were even around during the first novel, I guarantee that they were wiped out during the Fremen Jihad which took place after that novel.

A big point I remember about the lynch movie, is that water actually hurts and can kill sandworms both addressed in the novels and miniseries. Making it rain on dune is a bad idea, especially in the way it was done in that movie...
 


I suspect that I read for different reasons, and it's possible that if I read it again, I'd have a different opinion, but I really didn't enjoy Dune, and felt in no way inspired to read the sequels. I thought the world-building was fascinating, but I also thought that I'd read other stuff that did as much, and did it better -- which is often a problem for me when I read the classics after already reading the stuff inspired by those classics. At the time (and this was awhile ago), I remember thinking that the dialogue was clunky and that the characters were being led around by the big prophetic plot, and that this bugged me despite the fact that I enjoy fantasy that uses prophecies.

Strictly my opinion. I am aware that it's widely regarded as a masterpiece, and since opinions were solicited, I opted to give mine. I still respect it immensely as a worldbuilding epic, but it failed to impress me as a story.
 

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