I realize that some of the posts I've quoted are from several months ago, but I just noticed this thread and would like to make some comments.
I would like to see it done as animation in the style of Charles Schulz.
I can see it now...
Paul is troubled by the necessity of unleashing a jihad upon humanity, and he goes to the desert to find answers. He encounters Reverend Mother Lucy Van Pelt, who offers him advice. "But first you must pay me," she intones, using the Voice. "Five solaris, please."
Paul coincidentally happens to have five solaris tucked away in his Fremkit, and gives it to Reverend Mother Lucy. She grins happily and exclaims, "I just love the feel of cold, hard cash! Nickels, nickels, nickels!" She might have done a dance of joy and rattled the coin in her money box, except that she's sitting out in the middle of the Arrakeen desert and knows that such actions would attract a worm.
Paul looks at her as though she is insane. "What about my advice?" he asks.
"Calm yourself," Reverend Mother Lucy says.
"I
am calm," Paul says. "What about my advice?"
Reverend Mother Lucy blinks. "That
was your advice," she says. "If you want more than that, you will have to pay me another five solaris."
"Good grief," Paul mutters, and returns to Sietch Tabr.
Time passes, and when all the main characters who are still alive meet up in the Great Hall in Arrakeen, Paul notices Reverend Mother Lucy among Gaius Helen Mohiam's Bene Gesserit entourage. "Oh, great," he says. "Her again."
The loyal Atreides pug dog (whom they never bothered to name), still securely nestled in Gurney Halleck's protective arms, picks up his owner's dislike for the strange black-clad human in the funny hat. Ever-attentive to Paul's wishes, the dog jumps out of Gurney's arms and rushes over to Reverend Mother Lucy. As the Bene Gesserit shrink back and shout at the dog, they realize to their horror that their Bene Gesserit Voice skills do not work on canines - especially Atreides canines. The dog decides to perform an action worthy of an ancient canine hero, Snoopy. He leaps up toward Reverend Mother Lucy and licks her face.
The air is shattered by a high-pitched scream. "Dog germs! DOG GERMS! I've been kissed by a DOG! Get hot water! Get some disinfectant! Get some iodine!" Completely overcome with terror, forgetting that as a Reverend Mother she has perfect control over her body's chemistry and could not possibly be adversely affected by the now-grinning pug who sits on the floor happily wagging his tail, Reverend Mother Lucy Van Pelt flees into the desert where a giant sandworm gobbles her up. The last anyone hears of her is a sandworm uttering a mighty "Bleah!"
Paul holds out his hand and Gurney passes him a doggy treat. The pug scampers over to accept it. "Good dog," Paul says.
"Good dog!"
(just a little vignette to honor both the Peanuts and the unnamed pug that inexplicably managed to survive
years of being toted around by Gurney Halleck without anyone deciding to take its water...)
Not just the rest of the series but the first book itself. Remember that by the end he's a married man with a (dead) infant son. It'd be a bit hard to pull that off convincingly with a 15 year old actor without it seeming creepy, to say nothing of Chani!
To clarify, Paul and Chani were never married. Paul married Irulan at the end of the first book (actually, it happened "off-stage"). Legally, Chani was never more than a concubine.
Anyone have any little touches they'd like to see in the movie / series? Things that don't impact the plot but would improve the product?
The Bene Gesserit sign language used by Irulan and Mohiam should be far more subtle than it was in the miniseries. It would have been obvious to anyone that they were using some kind of sign language that wouldn't be known to the guards. I can't believe that something like that would be allowed, so it should be something practically unnoticeable to anyone who isn't Bene Gesserit (or Bene Gesserit-trained).
And FFS, do NOT cast age-inappropriate actresses! Irulan is the oldest of the Corrino sisters. It was ludicrous for her younger sister to be played by an actress twice as old as the actress playing Irulan.
^Kyle McLachlan would be a great and very ironic candidate to play Fenring IMO.
RE: Ethnicities. 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.
...
Perhaps it'll be more interesting to switch things up against stereotype rather than reinforcing them. For example, how about casting Pacific Islanders as the Fremen? The Laandsrad nobility should probably all look like they're from the same ethnic group as they are mostly related (such is the nature of an aristocracy.) This wall also help sell the credibility of Jessica & Paul being descended from the Baron and Leto being a cousin(?) of Shaddam.
The way to show some more diversity in the cast would be to have the subjects/servants of Caladan & Giedi Prime each be of particularly distinct groups. Could be a neat way of flagging up Gurney's history if he looks like a Giedi Prime native while Duncan is clearly from Caladan.
It would be nice to have the main characters match their descriptions in the novel.
So is there anything from the Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson books that would be worth incorporating into a potential movie series?
No.
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.
I used to belong to several Dune forums, including the official one (Dunenovels.com). A recent check has shown that the forum has been taken down (which is rather infuriating, since I had some really good posts there, explaining how the KJA/BH books deviated from already established canon, and discussing a myriad of things about the Original Six novels and the nuDune stuff. The forum was run by Byron Merritt, who is Frank Herbert's grandson. He was firmly on the side of "these new novels are just the greatest thing ever!" and interforum relations were... tense, to put it mildly.
Around that time, a group of Spanish Dune fans decided to make their own movie. They had a trailer, which was up on YouTube (and removed before I was ever able to see it), but I've seen still pictures. They had a really interesting visual take on it - there was no problem at all imagining their version to be taking place in some far-future time.
The reason why the trailer was taken down was because they decided to be courteous and let the Herbert estate know what they had done. They stressed that it was a 100% amateur production, nobody had made any money off it, and it was a labor of love. KJA/BH and the HLP issued a C&D and they had to take the trailer down and stop production.
It wasn't until later that we learned that one reason was probably because there was talk of another Dune movie being made... and KJA/BH expected to be involved in it. So anything online they could find that was fan-created was being stomped on, including the Second Life Dune community. They had to rename everything and remove all things that were explicitly Dune-related. At least they didn't get the fanfic that was posted here and there... For awhile some of us were wondering if our forums would receive C&D orders, until someone probably explained to them that the more places people were discussing their books, the more free advertising they were getting.
The problem is the alleged notes that Brian Herbert has claimed as the source material for his sequels is almost certainly fictitious or at least nowhere near as indepth as he would have us believe. The fact that his two Dune sequels contradict written elements in Frank Herbert's published work and that Brian Herbert used his two personal OCs is more indicative of the fact that a) he does't know what direction his father was ultimately going in with the Enemy of Many Face and b) really doesn't know much at all about the Post-Leto II Universe fleshed out in Heretics/Chapterhouse.
If he did have anything at all, I suspect it mostly covers the era in the first Dune novel. There was a Dune RPG sourcebook that was published that claimed to have seen these notes and I recall some of the details in there matching things found in the House Atreides book (as well as the non-canonical Dune Encyclopedia)
If they used anything significant from Frank Herbert's notes (which, apart from the unfinished manuscript of "Dune 7" he was working on at the time of his death, are probably nonexistent), I've got ocean front property for sale (hint: I live on the Prairies in Western Canada; the nearest ocean is a two-day drive).
A bunch of us on the Dunenovels forum kept asking for the notes to be published (at least those pertaining to the already-published nuDune books), and we asked KJA directly. He and Byron Merritt put on a "Duh, why would anyone be interested in that?" attitude. The fact that hardcore fans would pay $$ to have a copy didn't make an impression. And since Kevin J. Anderson is All About The Money, that leads me to suspect that there never were any notes.
McNelly refuted that pretty hard as well. He claimed he had the Butlerian Jihad outline and first four chapters since he was writing it with Frank, and what he had is nothing at all like what B&K put out. Purposely different, most likely, to avoid having to pay McNelly anything.
I wish McNelly's version of the Butlerian Jihad could have been novelized and published. It was far superior to the crap that did get published.
The problem is the story in Heretics & Chapterhouse was never concluded. God Emperor of Dune in many ways is a better conclusion compared to the uncertainty and the revelation of a greater threat at the end of Chapterhouse of Dune.
It would have been concluded if Frank Herbert had lived another year or two.
I don't actually have a problem with the uncertainty at the end of "Chapterhouse." I look at it as the Dune equivalent of "Out there. Thataway." And the audience is free to imagine for themselves what Duncan and the rest of them encountered.
Even with a $40 million budget, the Lynch version struggled with the technical side of the movie. While some things look terrific, in general, the FX are very uneven. Aside from the usual things the sequel needs, ie: a good screenplay adaptation, good acting, the new movie will probably have a better time of it conveying the universe to us.
Another complication was that the production was having a LOT of trouble getting stuff through customs when they were filming in Mexico. They fell behind schedule in quite a few departments since the materials and equipment they needed were sometimes held up for weeks, or mysteriously "lost."
This is related in Ed Naha's book "The Making of Dune" - it's a fascinating behind-the-scenes account of how the movie was made and all the things they wanted to do but couldn't, for various reasons.
I really like the philosophical/existential underpinnings of GEoD....but like the rest of original Herbert books you can see how it's a real challenge to dramatise. The Herbert fils/Anderson books are so much easier, but equally so much more superficial.
So incredibly dumbed down. How could anyone with a functioning brain think that Marty and Daniel were robots, instead of extremely advanced Face Dancers?
I think they got that way, but the "House" prequel series to "Dune" was very well done, in my opinion.
I read "House Atreides" in 2001, during a 5-week stay in the hospital. My mother had offered to buy me
one book (she disapproved of science fiction, so I could only choose one) and I made a short list of possibilities. I'd have been glad to get any of them, and had no idea she would bring me House Atreides.
Well, I was starved for new Dune material and at first I found the book reasonably okay... until the deviations from established canon and the retcons started piling up. By the time I got to the end where Paul was not only born on Kaitain (no, he wasn't; it's explicitly stated in Dune that he was born on Caladan) but also kidnapped... well, "disappointed" is about the politest word I can use to describe how I felt when I'd finished the book.
Agreed. This book does not lend itself to film adaptation very well.
The problem with God Emperor of Dune is that it had a very exciting opening sequence, with Siona and her band of rebels running through the forest, trying to escape from Leto's D-wolves, after having stolen his journals. It was nail-biting, and promised a good adventure...
And then the book basically put everyone into snooze mode except for the parts where Duncan or Siona actually did something.
If I were going to adapt that novel, I would show more of Siona's rebel activities - actually, I'd show people trying to rebel on several worlds, and how Leto would be able to quash them and reinforce his control. The book didn't really
show us how he was a tyrant over the entire Imperium; it just
told us. That makes for a largely boring story, unless you're into the philosophy part of it. There are some fans who consider God Emperor of Dune to be the best of the entire series, and it took me years of discussion on the Dune forums to understand why. Granted, I didn't understand everything about the book the first, or even the third time I read it. It took a lot longer.
But it was still a lot more tedious than it should have been.
I enjoyed Leto's story.
Which Leto?
I honestly really liked all of the Brian Herbert/KJ Anderson Dune books that involved the characters from the main Dune books. The only ones that lost me where their prequels set 10,000 years (or however long) before Dune.
There's a common misunderstanding that the events of Dune happen 10,191 years from
now. The reality is that they happen 10,191 years after the Spacing Guild was formed, and there was approximately 10,000 years between
that point and our time.
I couldn't get into those, but I liked their House Trilogy and the books that ended the main Dune series. I also liked the books about Paul before Dune (aka Paul of Dune/The Winds of Dune) a lot. Honestly, while they don't match up to the original Dune Trilogy the BH/KJA books are all generally superior to all the stuff frank herbert did after Children of Dune, especially compared to the rather boring God Emperor and the really sleazy Heretics of Dune (Heretics specifically being outright terrible and not just because it has in depth, fairly pornographic sex scenes for absolutely no damn reason).
Gratuitous, pointless torture and making the Bene Gesserit look like morons is "superior"?
Throwing established canon into the garbage and saying that everything established in
Dune was nothing more than false propaganda that Irulan wrote on Paul's orders and the events of KJA/BH's books were what
really happened is "superior"?
They might as well have gone to the site where FH's ashes were scattered and spit on the ground (in this case it would
not be a gesture of respect).
You do have a point about the inappropriate sex scenes in Heretics and Chapterhouse. Lucilla's attempts to seduce Duncan and Duncan's sexual escapades with Murbella (while he was still a teenager), not to mention the shenanigans with Miles Teg when he was a CHILD are just... beyond disgusting. I know there was an in-universe "reason" for this, but my gut reaction is that nothing excuses what was essentially child rape.
That said, do you remember one of the scenes on the no-ship where Duncan is lonely and missing Murbella? I don't remember if it was in Hunters or Sandworms, but he's sitting in the ship and has found a strand of Murbella's hair. That's enough DNA to have her brought back as a ghola, and he spends some considerable time debating with himself whether or not he should do it, 'cause he really misses this woman he's sexually addicted to.
This scene just disgusted me, since essentially Duncan didn't want Murbella back for any other reason than to once again be his sex partner - and he showed no awareness that he'd have to wait at least 15 years for her to mature physically.
Keep in mind that Frank Herbert didn't write this. Kevin J. Anderson/Brian Herbert wrote it. So you can't pin all the age-inappropriate sex-related parts of the series on Frank Herbert.
The last Brian Herbert Dune book (so far) was in 2016, ending a prequel trilogy (which I didn't read since its another "1000s of years before Dune)" trilogy). He's also apparently got two more of the "heroes of Dune" series planned (Throne of Dune and Leto of Dune) that got delayed for the last Dune trilogy BH and KJA just finished, but they'll still probably get made and I'd definitely need them. The fact that they've done so much and continue to make books (that are presumably making a profit) proves that many people do want their books, including me.
Ghah. I have Mentats of Dune and haven't bothered to read it. Navigators of Dune is still only available in hardcover (and I will not be getting it until it's either on the $2 bargain table at Indigo or available for a penny plus shipping on Amazon Marketplace).
If they really have all these other novels planned, I have to wonder why the official Dunenovels forum has been shut down.
I remember reading an interview with Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson actually do address the criticism their Dune novels get, basically saying something like "people can say as many harsh things about our novels as they want, in the end our novels still pull in millions of dollars and that's what we and our publishers care about."
Yeah, money is all that matters to them. My take on it is that I don't give a damn how much money they make - it doesn't mean it's
good. An analogy I made on the Dunenovels forum was that the Original Six novels were a fine gourmet feast and the nuDune books were essentially the literary equivalent of McDonalds. Billions and billions served, but they're nothing compared to a quality feast.
As for "addressing the criticism"... KJA decided to start calling everyone who didn't like his books "Talifans." And then he wondered why he got even more ill-will out of that. In my online interactions with him, I
politely pointed out what I considered to be mistakes, what I didn't like about how he changed certain characters, etc. ... and damn if he didn't write one of his arguments into a later novel (Paul of Dune, or possibly a later one; I'd have to check; we were disagreeing about Duncan Idaho).
He finally got exasperated and asked, "If you hate the books so much, why do you buy them?" I told him I kept hoping they would get better... but so far, I kept being disappointed. And if I'm going to criticize a book, I should know what I'm talking about.
That doesn't mean they don't put effort into it or people don't like the books. I'm sure Frank Herbert wasn't writing his books as a type of charity, he wanted to make money just like probably 99% of published fiction authors. Besides which, every time someone complains about their stuff I honestly wonder if the person had even bothered to read Frank Herbert's last two Dune books.
Yes, of course he wanted to make money. I daresay that's the
only reason the last two books were written. By that time, FH's life was one of illness and mounting medical bills, and the surest way he had of paying them was to write as many Dune books as he could - since he knew they would sell.
BH and KJA got a lot of respect from me just for finishing the ongoing Dune story in a fairly entertaining way even while being tied down to the events of Heretics and Chapterhouse, which while not terrible (outside of the weird porn-ish bits) were definitely not great and all of the BH/KJA books in the main story line and the spin offs set around the time of Dune were better then those last two frank herbert books in my opinion.
They certainly didn't consider themselves "tied down" to what FH wrote. Instead of advanced Face Dancers and a rational explanation for the Honored Matres, we got sociopathic robots, Bene Gesserit who were more like the Keystone Cops, everyone on the no-ship losing about a hundred IQ points between Chapterhouse and Hunters, a space battle that apparently only took place in two dimensions instead of three, water worms, Norma-fucking-Cenva (who had been aimlessly wandering around the universe for the past 15,000 years or so and just decided to show up in time to save everyone), and an insane blending of ghola-Leto and a bunch of sandworms (again!) while ghola-Paul and ghola-Chani wander over the surface of a dead planet...
Hunters/Sandworms weren't a sequel to Chapterhouse. Not really. They were a sequel to KJA/BH's garbage.
The BH/KJA books do have about 3 1/2 to 4 stars average on Amazon with around 100-300 reviews each, so apparently there are some people that do like them. I'm honestly a bit surprised since it seems like whenever they come up here or sites like Tor.com or Io9, all I hear about is how bad they are.
That's because those of us who hate them can only do one review per person.
All the above said... KJA/BH actually did two things that made a positive impression: I actually liked the character of Griffen Harkonnen. And the execution of Bronso of Ix was emotional and well-written. I'm not wild about the character himself, but the scene wasn't bad.
