The New Dune movie *holly &^%$ this could be good or bad*

Hypersmurf said:
Watched the movie, read all six books.

If it is any consolation, the only one that I rate is the first one. The next two I found dragged and didn't seem to fit well and the ones after that got excessively wierd (no-ships? honored matres?)

So to me Dune is the first novel and that's it :)
 

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Mallus said:
What parts did you find extraneous? And no, I'm not kidding :) The last time I watched it, the only parts that really dragged were the big battle sequences, because Lynch had absolutely no idea how to film them. He was out of his depth.

Well, any sequence involving the navigators was entirely extraneous - they don't appear at all in the initial book. Most notably, the long, tedious, and pointless sequence in which they float around and fold space is extraneous. The rain at the end was extraneous, and totally screwed up the story. The silliness involving most of the scenes with Baron Harkonnen and the mentats was tacked on, including the ludicrous flying Baron. Really, you could cut about twenty minutes to a half an hour out of the Lynch cut of the movie and not cut anything that appeared in Herbert's book or had any relevance to the story.
 

Darkwolf71 said:
You bet, sport. :cool:

Really. The Lynch version of Dune is a hideous monstrosity that later generations will curse the twentieth century for. It will be used as barbaric torture, and will be considered so heinous that entire international treaties will center around banning its use. Special multinational task forces of soldiers will be assembled to hunt down and destroy every copy of the movie, and publicly execute those who try to hide them. Anyone who professes a liking for the Lynch movie will be tried for this crime, and sentenced to at least twenty years of hard labor.

It is that bad of a movie.

(Seriously, it is probably the worst book-to-movie translation made in the last 50 years. And that includes the hideous travesty that was the Starship Troopers movie, the making of which is a crime that Veerhoven should be hung upside down by his ankles for).
 

Storm Raven said:
the hideous travesty that was the Starship Troopers movie, the making of which is a crime that Veerhoven should be hung upside down by his ankles for).

Not wanting to threadjack, but when Starship Troopers is the quintessential book about 'powered armour' and it doesn't have any powered armour in it... you know something is badly amiss :)
 

Storm Raven said:
(Seriously, it is probably the worst book-to-movie translation made in the last 50 years. And that includes the hideous travesty that was the Starship Troopers movie, the making of which is a crime that Veerhoven should be hung upside down by his ankles for).

And I thought that honor (or is that horror) went to Battlefield Earth.
 

I saw Dune when I was 7 or 8. I thought it was awesome. I read the book in high school was all like, "What the heck is this crap? Where are my weirding modules?"

I haven't rewatched Dune in about a decade, though, so I am confident I am viewing it through rose colored glasses.
 

Brown Jenkin said:
And I thought that honor (or is that horror) went to Battlefield Earth.

No, Battlefield Earth was, unfortunately, a reasonably faithful book-to-movie translation. Its just that when you start with a terrible book, you often end up with a terrible movie.
 

Storm Raven said:
Well, any sequence involving the navigators was entirely extraneous - they don't appear at all in the initial book.
See, I loved the introduction with Shaddam IV and the Third Stage Guild Navigator. The fact that the scene isn't actually in the book isn't important to me. It brings the Dune universe to life, a perfect example of how the film speaks volumes in the visual language of the medium. Ever since seeing the movie, I picture the Guild Navigators as they were in Lynch's film, not how Herbert (eventually) described them.

I guess books is books and films is films and never the twain shall meet, even in the case of adaptations. Each medium has its own imperatives, strengths, and limitations.

Most notably, the long, tedious, and pointless sequence in which they float around and fold space is extraneous.
I agree with you here. There was a little too much human/manatee/genitalia hybrid floating around in energy-goo even for me. However the end of that scene when the heighliner silently appears in orbit around Arrakis is gorgeous. It's as memorable for me as when the Millennium Falcon first jumps to light speed in Star Wars.

The rain at the end was extraneous, and totally screwed up the story.
The rain was a powerful visual metaphor that drove home the idea that Paul was a Messianic figure. I think it worked in the context of the film. In fact, I think the film needed something like that. You couldn't do justice to the books concept of the Kwisatz Hadderach (sp).

The silliness involving most of the scenes with Baron Harkonnen and the mentats was tacked on, including the ludicrous flying Baron.
Again, some of the stuff that I liked best, the memorable details that transported me to a version of the Dune universe, something radically different from some piece of generic sci-fi. Oh, and for 20-odd years I haven't been again to get the Baron's doctor's rhyme out of my head, "Put the prick in Pete"... Bad cinema is what I forget immediately after seeing it. What endures, for what ever reason, is good.

Anyway, it's like I suspected, what I thought were the films strengths you found to be its weaknesses. There's not accounting for taste --mine included, obviously.
 

Storm Raven said:
(Seriously, it is probably the worst book-to-movie translation made in the last 50 years. And that includes the hideous travesty that was the Starship Troopers movie, the making of which is a crime that Veerhoven should be hung upside down by his ankles for).
And, of course, I loved Veerhoven's Starship Troopers. It's a film I can't help but watch when I stumble across it on cable. I do freely admit it's a parody of the original, then again, I don't so much care if an adaptation is faithful (since that's usually either ill-advised or imossible), only if it entertains me, and it's a cold, cold heart that isn't entertained by Denise Richards looking pretty, millions razor-clawed giant bugs, and a telepathic Doogie Hauser in Gestapo drag.

BTW, Veerhoven made a film in his native Dutch recently called Black Book, which is absolutely marvelous. It's a big, bold melodrama about Dutch resistance fighters in WWII. gorgeously shot, and surprisingly well plotted. Best 'movie' movie I've seen in ages.
 

Mallus said:
See, I loved the introduction with Shaddam IV and the Third Stage Guild Navigator. The fact that the scene isn't actually in the book isn't important to me. It brings the Dune universe to life, a perfect example of how the film speaks volumes in the visual language of the medium. Ever since seeing the movie, I picture the Guild Navigators as they were in Lynch's film, not how Herbert (eventually) described them.

Of course, opening a film with a long, talky sequence is always a good idea. The sequence also made Shaddam little more than a comic villain of no substance, which makes most of the rest of the movie silly.

Anyway, it's like I suspected, what I thought were the films strengths you found to be its weaknesses. There's not accounting for taste --mine included, obviously.

The added material, while annoying, isn't even the worst of the weaknesses of the movie. The only real problem with the added material is that it consumed time that could have been used to advance the story in some way - and when dealing with a complicated, lenghty story, you need all the screen time you can get. Adding useless material that isn't even from the book is just ridiculous.

The true weaknesses are the changes made that make it just like other science fiction movies. The wierding way of battle was transformed into a ray gun. The ruthless Sardaukar were transformed into boring cut rate storm troopers with laser guns and uniforms that looked like raincoats and welder's masks. Ornithopters became hovercraft. The Bene Gesserit were changed from skilled masters of the human body to bald nuns wearing godawful robes. The navigators were no longer mysterious and unknown, but rather a bunch of guys in leather fetish gear towing what looked like giant mutated talking genitalia.
 

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