Dune 2018 (19,20,21...)

[wayoung]

The big issue I have with one merged, default race is that doesn't exist today, so how do you represent it in film? There are only two ways to do it.

1). Cast the entire film with one ethnicity representing the default race of the future.

This is a pretty obviously bad solution, and it's pretty obvious what the "default race" selected would be.

2). Completely disregard any race in casting - thus, theoretically, Leto could be played by a native actor, Jessica by sub Saharan African actress and Paul by an Indian actor.

A much more acceptable option than 1 but I sincerely doubt it would be done in todays atmosphere.

I don't know if the Landsraad being closely related is really true. In fact, it's specified in the novel that while Leto is an (extremely) distant cousin of the Emperor, the Harkonnens have no blood relationship to the imperial family - beyond Paul through Jessica. That's after thousands of years of being Nobility and intermarriage with other noble families - they still haven't managed a blood connection to the Corrinno's. That helps show how big the universe is. Despite the comparisons to feudal Europe we aren't talking about a small handful of families interbreeding - were talking hundreds and hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of majority and minor houses ruling over a million worlds.

Another problem with the idea that humanity evolved into a single race is isolation. Each planet is still isolated with really only the upper and class able to afford regular space travel. The people on each planets are evolving independently to better suit their world's. The Fremen are expressly described this way, with notable differences in internal organs to improve water conservation.
This isolationist evolution is the major reason for Paul's Jihad - the unconscious yearning of humanity to end the stagnation of its genes and wildly mix the peoples of the universe.

 

[Reverend]

I'm not suggesting a mono-race at all. Quite the opposite. I'm advocating that the majority of the cast be non-white and they they not be used according to...well "stereotype" is probably the wrong word; perhaps "direct geo-cultural analogies"?
Like for example specifically *not* using middle eastern people to play tribal desert dwellers, but perhaps instead have them play the sea faring folk of Caladan. Or as I already suggested, use Pacific Islanders as the Fremen. Or Japanese. Whatever, just so long as it runs counter to what one might expect.

As for the Landsraad : it's just that it'd be an easy visual short-hand if the nobility at least look vaguely like they're of a shared bloodline, no matter how separate. It's no good casting a black or Asian person as the Baron and have Paul & Jessica played by Caucasians. It would lack a certain credibility. Conversely having the Baron & Leto being obviously of unrelated groups, while Paul and Jessica being of an obvious mix of those two groups would give the game away and undermine the idea that it took a deep mentat insight to connect the dots. Also I may be misremembering, but isn't there supposed to be a striking resemblance between Leto and Shaddam anyway?

As for the rest of the million houses of the Imperium: what they may or may not look like is not really relevant since they're not directly a part of this little Shakespearean drama. If they show up at all, it'll be only as extras in the final scenes of the first book.

 

[wayoung]

^ I didn't reply to your other suggestions, like having people play against type, because I didn't have anything to add to those comments, that's all.

I thought you were suggesting a monorace (a fairly common proposition) due to this line:

After 10,000 plus years of space travel and multiple migrations and diasporas, I don't think it's credible that any of the ethnic groups will be recognisable, regardless of their ancestral roots.

Sorry if I misinterpreted.

I don't think having the Baron and Paul different races would be incongruous at all. Mixed race children today have a variety of different appearances and can easily appear to be just one or the other when they are a blend of 2 (or 3 or 4...). They're no reason Jessica and Paul couldn't be black if the Baron was white and Jessica's mystery mother (or Mohaim if you like the small world junk from the continuations) is black.

To me, having a complete mix of ethnicities in the Landsraad would be a better short hand at how huge and diverse the universe is, AND how the rich are able to get out and about and can racially interbreed while the 99% are stuck on their own little corner of the galaxy, showing the stagnation of humanity.

My preference for the Fremen being mixed Middle Eastern and Asian are both because they are a people evolved to survive in a desert and because of their cultural heritage. Most likely a people evolved to live in a future desert would be similar to the people who evolved to survive in deserts here on Earth, especially since the people of the future desert are descended from the people in our current desert populations.

A purposeful choice to play against type, as you have suggested, is a completely valid choice, assuming that it's not just used as an excuse by the filmmakers to white wash the cast. It's just not the one I prefer

 

[Hound of UIster]

Actual middle eastern / Asian casting. The Fremen are descendants of a combined Sunni and Zen people. The middle eastern Sunni angle gets referenced a lot outside of books but very little mention how they're also equally derived from an Asian people.

But there is very little of the East Asian influence in the Fremen even within the text. Yes they are certainly called Zensunni Wanderers, but much of the emphasis is on the Islamic/Arabic aspects such as the terminology and history. Furthermore if you examine the original novel from a John Campell-esque perspective like the Foundation Trilogy was Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire in Space. Dune is very much analogous to the story of Mohammed and the historical Arab/Islamic conquests and the Fremen are very much the stand-ins for the Arabs, but with certain modern anxieties mixed in there.

 

[wayoung]

Sure. All true. But just because the Sunni overpowered the Zen philosophically doesn't mean it wouldn't be nice to see a portion of the Fremen cast as Asian to reflect the ancestry.

 

[Reverend]

Turns out, I wasn't misremembering after all: -

"My father, the Padishah Emperor, took me by the hand one day and I sensed in the ways my mother had taught me that he was disturbed. He led me down the Hall of Portraits to the ego-likeness of the Duke Leto Atreides. I marked the strong resemblance between them—my father and this man in the portrait—both with thin, elegant faces and sharp features dominated by cold eyes. “Princess daughter,” my father said, “I would that you’d been older when it came time for this man to choose a woman.” My father was 71 at the time and looking no older than the man in the portrait, and I was but 14, yet I remember deducing in that instant that my father secretly wished the Duke had been his son, and disliked the political necessities that made them enemies.

—“In my Father’s House” by Princess Irulan"​

I thought you were suggesting a monorace (a fairly common proposition) due to this line:

After 10,000 plus years of space travel and multiple migrations and diasporas, I don't think it's credible that any of the ethnic groups will be recognisable, regardless of their ancestral roots.

Sorry if I misinterpreted.

All I meant was that if you took modern Asian people (or any ethnic group of your choice), fast forward ten millennia and more, odds are their direct decedents probably won't look recognisably Asian. They'd look like an entirely different group that may or may not coincidentally resemble modern Cubans with a touch of Aboriginal Australians. Who can say?
Apply the same thinking to the rest of the human universe and you end up with an order of magnitude more ethnic groups than exist today, some which may seem familiar, others not so much and very few if any resembling their long dead distant ancestors from a half forgotten world of a mere few billion individuals.

To me, having a complete mix of ethnicities in the Landsraad would be a better short hand at how huge and diverse the universe is, AND how the rich are able to get out and about and can racially interbreed while the 99% are stuck on their own little corner of the galaxy, showing the stagnation of humanity.

Again though, we're not talking about the *entire* Landsraad, just three very specific great houses, two of which are known to be related with their respective heads baring a marked resemblance and the third that for story reasons, needs to look close enough that it's neither immediately obvious that Paul and Jessica are related to the Baron, nor lacking in credibility that they indeed are.
The other Landsraad nobles (what scant few even show up) can look like anything. It really doesn't matter.

My preference for the Fremen being mixed Middle Eastern and Asian are both because they are a people evolved to survive in a desert and because of their cultural heritage. Most likely a people evolved to live in a future desert would be similar to the people who evolved to survive in deserts here on Earth, especially since the people of the future desert are descended from the people in our current desert populations.

This may seem like a logical line of reasoning, but I feel it pushes a setting already steeped in allegory a little too far into the literal. I rather think the point is made better if it were not quite so on the nose. Indeed, ofttimes it works better if the historical roles are reversed, or otherwise shuffled around to remove the subjective baggage and view it from a fresh perspective.

 

[wayoung]

I think we're at an agree to disagree point here, since we're discussing personal preferences of story telling devices.

Another thing I want to see:

Bladed weapons being the main weaponry ,like in the books. Lynch brought in weirding modules and had the crysknives little fly fishing blades. Harrison had the Harkonnens and Saurdakaur using guns and the Fremen with those little crossbows on their wrists.

Enough with the projectiles. Let's see some knife fighting.

 

[Takeru]

Again though, we're not talking about the *entire* Landsraad, just three very specific great houses, two of which are known to be related with their respective heads baring a marked resemblance and the third that for story reasons, needs to look close enough that it's neither immediately obvious that Paul and Jessica are related to the Baron, nor lacking in credibility that they indeed are.

I don't think that's a problem, even if the Baron and Jessica share an ethnicity I don't think audience members would jump to the conclusion that they're related, in an original story you wouldn't look at two random black people who don't share scenes and have nothing in common except the color of their skin and think "I bet there's a twist and they're scretly related!"
You only think it'd be obvious with the baron and Jessica because you already know the truth.

But there's no reason for them to even look alike. Let's say the baron is white, there's no reason Jessica can't look samoan and Feyd Rautha and Glossu Rabban east asian for example.
Leto could be black and Shaddam native american and still be related (theyr'e not even closely related, Leto's grandmother was Shaddam's half sister iirc), they can cast whoever they want and it'd still be believable because for the majority of characters we never see both parents and even if we do they'd probably have recessive traits that could pop up in the next generation while not visible in the parents.

 

[FPAlpha]

Oh i'm pretty sure that if the movie actually gets made and people are dedicated to it there should be some amazing close combat fights. I'm dying to see some Fremen vs. Sardaukar hand to hand combat.

Establish the Sardaukar as the ultimate badassess by tossing House Atreides troops around effortlessly and then they meet the Fremen

 

[Marc]

Oh i'm pretty sure that if the movie actually gets made and people are dedicated to it there should be some amazing close combat fights. I'm dying to see some Fremen vs. Sardaukar hand to hand combat.

Establish the Sardaukar as the ultimate badassess by tossing House Atreides troops around effortlessly and then they meet the Fremen

I'm not so sure that that Atreides troopers would be that much of a push over. There's a scene in the novel where Hawat is explaining to the Baron why the Emperor had turned against House Atreides and says that Hallack and Idaho had trained an army that was within whisker of the Sandukar.

 

[wayoung]

It's a small group though. Very few. Thats a big reason why the Emperor moved against them - to stop them before they could raise a real challenge to him.

 

[JD]

So is there anything from the Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson books that would be worth incorporating into a potential movie series?

 

[wayoung]

Absolutely, if they ran out of TP on set.

 

[wayoung]

OR instead of having Jessica take Stilgar hostage they can have Paul save the two of them by impressing the Fremen with the clowning skills he learner when he ran away to join the circus.

 

[Reverend]

Bladed weapons being the main weaponry ,like in the books. Lynch brought in weirding modules and had the crysknives little fly fishing blades. Harrison had the Harkonnens and Saurdakaur using guns and the Fremen with those little crossbows on their wrists.

Enough with the projectiles. Let's see some knife fighting.

I want to see propper lasguns. Not the pew-pew blaster things from the movie & mini but an actual high powered particle beam that looks like it can slice a building in half. I'd also like to see that scene where Duncan leaves an active shield right where the Sardaukar are sweeping the desert with lasbeams...

 

[Marc]

I want to see propper lasguns. Not the pew-pew blaster things from the movie & mini but an actual high powered particle beam that looks like it can slice a building in half. I'd also like to see that scene where Duncan leaves an active shield right where the Sardaukar are sweeping the desert with lasbeams...

Given the an active shield would also have attracted a worm, they were probably dead either way.

 

[Hound of UIster]

So is there anything from the Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson books that would be worth incorporating into a potential movie series?

How not to write a Dune novel.

 

[The Wormhole]

So is there anything from the Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson books that would be worth incorporating into a potential movie series?

In all honesty, I have a very good feeling that a Dune movie made as a blockbuster is very likely to be rather similar to the Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson novels.

 

[wayoung]

Another want - a good video game tie in. One not following the plot but a side story. Maybe a surviving specially trained Atreides soldier fighting a guerrilla war against the Harkonnens /Saurdakar Shadow of Mordor style. Mad Max proved you can make a damn decent beat'em up in the desert.

No cheap Activision cash in.

Edit: A Telltale game would also be cool. Lots of possibilities there.

 

[Reverend]

Given the an active shield would also have attracted a worm, they were probably dead either way.

I was describing an actual event from the book.

Paul pointed to the violence above the distant cliff --the jetflares, the purple beams of lasguns lacing the desert.
A rare smile touched Idaho's round, placid face. “M'Lord ... Sire, I've left them a little sur --”
Glaring white light filled the desert --bright as a sun, etching their shadows onto the rock floor of the ledge. In one sweeping motion, Idaho had Paul's arm in one hand, Jessica's shoulder in the other, hurling them down off the ledge into the basin.
They sprawled together in the sand as the roar of an explosion thundered over them. Its shock wave tumbled chips off the rock ledge they had vacated.
Idaho sat up, brushed sand from himself.
"Not the family atomics!" Jessica said. “I thought --”
"You planted a shield back there," Paul said.
"A big one turned to full force," Idaho said. “A lasgun beam touched it and ... “ He shrugged.
"Subatomic fusion," Jessica said.
“That's a dangerous weapon."
"Not weapon, m’Lady, defense. That scum will think twice before using lasguns another time."