We finally got to see it this past weekend. Really excellent! I'm so glad Chani has more agency here. Bardem did an amazing job going from Leader to Follower. And Chalamet did a great job with the changes in Paul throughout the movie.
Poll Dune Part 2 (2024) Spoiler/Rating Thread
- Thread starter wayoung
- Start date
They're not the original novels, that's for sure. At the start they were decent enough fan fiction. Pretty much the same as KJA's Star Wars novels. By the time they went to the "finishing the story" duology (hunters, Sandworms) it went totally off the rails. I gave up when they had a tween Paul run away from home and join the space circus
They kept claiming they kept finding more and more safety deposit boxes, boxes of book outlines in the garage, boxes of book outlines in the attic, etc, but it was all pretty much bull shit. I believe the only proof came down to something like a page and a half of random ideas Frank had jotted down at some point.
The only legit, independently sourced notes & outlines was for a (singular) Butlerian Jihad novel Frank was writing with McNelly that was to follow the Dune Encyclopedia's version of events. They had completed the outline together and McNelly had done the first draft of two chapters, but at that point Frank was too sick to continue. When McNelly died the chapters went to... A university, I can't remember which one off hand. They've been scanned and are online. And those actual, verified, works were rejected for a wholly new and seperate plot by BH & KJA while they still claimed their novels were based on Franks plans, so that goes to show just how ridiculously bull shit their claims were.
Anyway, it's like 17 novels they've written now. Some people enjoy them, obviously, or they wouldn't keep getting paid to write more. Just don't expect them to be anything like the originals.
Edit to add: Despite my posts here, I don't hate that there are more books being written. No doubt they help keep the series in the public mind and increase exposure. I don't like the books, but others do, and I'm glad they have books they enjoy, even if I do not.
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Chani is Kynes daughter. Chani is Stilgars niece. Stilgar calls Kynes his brother at one point in the novel. The Dune Encyclopedia says that they are brothers in law, that Kynes married Stilgars sister. BH & KJA also have Stilgar Kynes' brother in law.
I always like the idea myself that Pardot had two sons, Kynes followed in his father's footsteps to become and Imperial Planetologist and Imperial Representative, and Stilgar followed in his mother's footsteps and was pure Fremen (and also puts a little twist on it being Stilgar who adopts Duncan and first meets with the Atreides before Kynes, the two brothers approaching the Atreides from different angles, to suss out what they are really about) but the brother in law status makes a little more sense.
Liet Kynes is the Fremen "leader" but not in the way of Paul or Stilgar. He's more in charge because of his dignitas than formal leadership role. His being the keeper of their dream, the Planetologist son of Pardot, is where his authority comes from.
Edit to add: Also, members of the Ichwan Bedwine, the brotherhood of Fremen, are also referred to as "brothers". Stilgar calls both Paul and Jamis his brothers in that context, but I don't believe that's the same way he refers to Liet, as he specifically says, "my brother, Liet" to Jessica.
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Disclaimer: I haven't actually read any of the books by Pinky & the Brain.
But from what I've heard, don't they misunderstand the end of Chapterhouse?
I mean, I personally think they purposely retconned Charterhouse so that they could write their own stories based on their own characters. Just like they retconned the first three Dune novels by saying they are In Universe fiction written by Irulan.
The fact they did not use the Butlerian Jihad outline already in the works by Frank & Willis when Frank died supports that they purposely ignored the actual plan for their own creation. But there's no real way to know.
Edit to add: Despite my posts here, I don't hate that there are more books being written. No doubt they helps keep the series in the public mind and increase exposure. I don't like the books, but others do, and I'm glad they have books they enjoy, even if I do not.
Free market capitalism - there's obviously a market for BH+KJA's novels. I just dislike people believing those books are anything similar to what Frank Herbert would have written. His oeuvre was much more nuanced and often required the reader actually to think.
Were you around when Brian went to various fan run text RPG Dune sites (basically a series of message boards where people pretended to be members of different factions, writing their characters actions), posted thanking them for continuing his Father's Legacy, then had The Herbert Partnership send them cease and desist letters threatening them with copyright lawsuits if they didn't shut down?
I did a series of email interviews with KJA back in the day for a fansite I worked at.
A character in one of the Butlerian Jihad books with my last name (no first name given) then died horribly in the opening of one of them after my last interview with him.
I have a common last name, so it's most likely a coincidence, but I like to think it was based on me.
I'd take it as a badge of honour that you had irritated them. I doubt they'd take it any farther. They're obviously doing ok.
I played on a couple of them, I didn't own them. They shut down, they couldn't risk it, they were just run by random people, couldn't afford fighting a lawsuit for them. Not worth the hassle.
I figured I irritated him because I argued back to KJA about some of the changes they made in our last exchange. To his credit, he didn't stop me emailing him, I stopped because I was in third year uni, my apartment building burned down and I was sleeping on the floor of a one bedroom apartment with a recent immigrant from China who did not speak English (he lived in the living room) while also working 60ish hour weeks at a Little Caesars. I just didn't have it in me to participate anymore in stuff like fan sites. And then the next year I got a girlfriend and moved to Australia so never went back into it.
They had the rights to the IP and they exploited it. Christopher Tolkien did similar and honoured his father's memory. Of Simon Tolkien, let us not speak...
Indeed. And the publication of said works takes away nothing from the original.
Exactly. They are still there, and more popular than ever. I found elements of the new books disrespectful to the old (space circus, retconning the originals to be in universe fiction and the new ones canon) but all I had to do was stop reading them and problem solved.
Saw it for the second time today. Was I'll the last two weeks.
First, IMAX does make a difference. If you can, watch it in IMAX.
Secondly, I liked it even more the second time, not as obsessively thinking about the differences.
Third, I think this is an amazing adaptation and but I still think there's a better one out there. The thing is, it won't be a movie adaptation. You need the 10-13 episode limited series to truly sell it.
I remember the early rumours it was going to have a limited series on HBO between movies detailing the 3 year guerrilla war period. I think you need that. Even the full hour showing it here didn't work. You need the room for the myth of Muad'dib to grow on film/TV. The book, the radical jump works. It doesn't on screen.
You also need to see Paul's visions. The outsider perspective worked here on film, but the lack. It's the wrong medium of them is one of the reasons some of the plot points didn't land with the general audience.
Everything needs to breathe more than the movie format gives it.
Villeneuve did an amazing job. The movies are great. Possibly the best that can be done as movies. But there is still a better adaptation out there. Maybe in 20 years we will get it.
I am excited for Messiah. For me, it's the book best suited for movies. Even though instead of being an action packed spectacular it's a Greek Tragedy. The miniseries adaptation was fantastic. Newman killed the role of Paul in it. Be interesting to see what Villeneuve and Chalamet can do
First, IMAX does make a difference. If you can, watch it in IMAX.
Secondly, I liked it even more the second time, not as obsessively thinking about the differences.
Third, I think this is an amazing adaptation and but I still think there's a better one out there. The thing is, it won't be a movie adaptation. You need the 10-13 episode limited series to truly sell it.
I remember the early rumours it was going to have a limited series on HBO between movies detailing the 3 year guerrilla war period. I think you need that. Even the full hour showing it here didn't work. You need the room for the myth of Muad'dib to grow on film/TV. The book, the radical jump works. It doesn't on screen.
You also need to see Paul's visions. The outsider perspective worked here on film, but the lack. It's the wrong medium of them is one of the reasons some of the plot points didn't land with the general audience.
Everything needs to breathe more than the movie format gives it.
Villeneuve did an amazing job. The movies are great. Possibly the best that can be done as movies. But there is still a better adaptation out there. Maybe in 20 years we will get it.
I am excited for Messiah. For me, it's the book best suited for movies. Even though instead of being an action packed spectacular it's a Greek Tragedy. The miniseries adaptation was fantastic. Newman killed the role of Paul in it. Be interesting to see what Villeneuve and Chalamet can do
I thought melange was basically aged baby worm poo.
It is. Sand trout poop a kind of fungus that mixes with water, blows up (spice blow), and dries in the sand becoming spice.
Didn't the DVD version of the 2000 miniseries actually have an interview with McNelly where he claimed Frank Herbert told him it was the worm's sperm?
Not according to either Dune or McNelly's Dune Encyclopedia. Maybe he said it in that interview, it's been a long time since I watched those special features.
The exact word used in the book is "excretions". It's not likely sperm as there is no mention of sex being part of the reproductive process of the worm. It also specifies that the excretion is fungal, which fits with Frank's using psilocybin as the inspiration for Melange.
In the book, Sand trout are formed by sand plankton merging as a colony. Sand trout then excret the fungal pre-spice. The blow occurs, kills most soundtrout, and the ones that survive band together into another colony, forming infant sand worms. Sandworms feed on the plankton, scattering the spice as they move. When trout/worms die they, in theory, would biodegrade into plankton again.
In the DE McNelly turns the process into sexual reproduction, but even in it the spice isn't sperm. It's still fungal excretions from sand trout, and sex is after 1,000 years of sandworm maturation.
It's weird. I look at just about any photograph of Lea Seydoux and she's about a 6. Then, every time I see her on screen she inexplicably elevates to about a 9. There's just something about her screen presence or what not that really works for her. Even in a brief appearance in this movie, she was revving my motor way more than the gals playing Chani or Irulan.
When I watched the first film at the theater I proclaimed after that I wouldn't be watching the second one in the theater. Well, I gave into the hype and did just that. I was way more engaged with the second film. There's just more going on and we get to see characters grow and develop relationships. The first film feels so much like set up for what the second one is. Now I'm OK with it, but I think from a cinema goers perspective they should have gone deeper into the second movie's plot with the first film and find some sweet spot to leave it on. Even when I rewatched the first film recently it still felt like a slog. Beautifully made but didn't grab me the way this one did.