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

I remember at my screening, there was a group of three guys sitting a few rows down from me who kept pulling their phones out and texting throughout the movie. It's true what they say, the light from a phone's screen can be very distracting in darkened theatre.
Super distracting. It's very bright, brighter than the screen. If it's in front of me it's like someone shining a torch in my face.
 
I think some people have too much time on their hands and it leads to the following article.

One of the points made by the author is that Herbet borrowed nams and terms from Islam and the North Africa/Middle East region but Villenue didn't cast as any actors from the region as Fremen and the both film versions have involved a great deal of white washing.

https://www.vulture.com/2021/10/dune-has-a-desert-problem.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab
 
I think some people have too much time on their hands and it leads to the following article.

One of the points made by the author is that Herbet borrowed nams and terms from Islam and the North Africa/Middle East region but Villenue didn't cast as any actors from the region as Fremen and the both film versions have involved a great deal of white washing.

https://www.vulture.com/2021/10/dune-has-a-desert-problem.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Actually this is a pretty big discussion in the Muslim community.
 
I remember at my screening, there was a group of three guys sitting a few rows down from me who kept pulling their phones out and texting throughout the movie. It's true what they say, the light from a phone's screen can be very distracting in darkened theatre.

Ages ago when we went to see Tron 2 3-4 guys in the row in front of us were very loud - don't care when they do that during the commercials or even the trailers but they continued when the movie started.

I was with a group of friends and all of them had quite some mass and size, including me. So a few minutes in and they continue to be dicks so a friend leans over and says to them to cut it out in a very direct manner.. one of them turns around to obviously start some crap and sees this group looking like professional bouncers and immediately shuts up.

Quite satisfying :lol:

I think some people have too much time on their hands and it leads to the following article.

One of the points made by the author is that Herbet borrowed nams and terms from Islam and the North Africa/Middle East region but Villenue didn't cast as any actors from the region as Fremen and the both film versions have involved a great deal of white washing.

https://www.vulture.com/2021/10/dune-has-a-desert-problem.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab

I have never bought into the notion that Hollywood needs to be the leading edge for social change or even inclusiveness.

Actors are hired to act in movies, in one movie they are a mass murderer, the other a victorian Butler and the next a soldier in WW2 and the list goes on.

Why should it be a prerequisite to belong to a certain group to be able to play a role? If playing a historical figure some things shoud match, you can't have a super white person play Martin Luther King for example ( or you can if you want to make some kind of experimental movie or an artistic statement).

I understand that people want to be represented on screen, to see their culture onscreen and possibly "their" actors too - for far too long Hollywood was an exclusive white club, it took them decades to even recognize people of color as other than background characters or plain racial stereotypes. This development has gained momentum in recent years, though i'm cynical in that regard because Hollywood is huge business and being "woke" means just doing it to avoid social media backlash and possibly testing the waters if it impacts revenue positively.

In the end even Dune is about business.. Javier Bardem is an easy choice because he is a tremendous actor, has an established name and is recognized by the audience so why not? Villeneuve could have broadened his actor's pool but then again why would he?

This is not a movie about muslim culture, the Fremen stand for all indigenous people, they just have an islamic focus because at the time of writing these books the islamic world was considered very exotic and foreign.
 
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They remade the Sardaukar Chant into a Hamburger chant.:lol::lol:

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How about Dune Power Rangers?
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Dune is set at least 20,000 years in the future and Earth is uninhabitable and abandoned. Why should it map one-to-one with current religions and cultures? It's a work of fiction not a prediction. Apart from some linguistic connections, there is no suggestion that the Fremen are practising Muslims. Frank Herbert did show that Judaism still persists but that's four books down the line. We'll probably never get to open that can of worms.
 
Dune is set at least 20,000 years in the future and Earth is uninhabitable and abandoned. Why should it map one-to-one with current religions and cultures? It's a work of fiction not a prediction. Apart from some linguistic connections, there is no suggestion that the Fremen are practising Muslims. Frank Herbert did show that Judaism still persists but that's four books down the line. We'll probably never get to open that can of worms.
No they are no actually Muslims, but in situations like this, where a specific culture influenced a fictional one, people prefer to see actors from that culture play those characters.
 
Yeah, that's bogus nonsense. The Fremen worship Shai-Hulud and do not practise any Muslim rituals. They are not influenced by Islam, which is a religion, not a culture. There are many Muslims who are not from the Middle East - for example, the many millions of Muslims in Sudan, Mali, Algeria, Tunisa, Libya, Morocco, central Asia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia. Many of those countries have very different cultures. There is no one culture in the Middle East either - the Iranians are certainly not Arab, for example. The only commonality is the sprinkling of Arabic words that Frank Herbert used to spice things up.
 
Casting the Fremen with middle eastern actors has never seemed like a good idea to me. It's leaning WAY too much into the allegory and over into straight-up stereotyping.
And let's just be clear on something; this movie has a very diverse cast, with no less than four of the main players being of mixed ethnic ancestry; Bautista is Greek/Filipino, Zendaya is German-Scottish/African-American, Isaac is Guatemalan/Cuban, Momoa is German-Irish-Native-American/Hawaiian, plus IIRC Dastmalchian has some Persian ancestry on the paternal side. Only four of the main cast are "white", and three of those are playing characters that are blood relations.
Pretty much the rest of the cast is either of African, Asian, or Latin decent. Which is as it should be; if it were at all feasible I'd advocate casting everyone with actors of obviously mixed heritage as 20,000 years in the future, all of the modern ethnic groups would be long gone and entirely new groups would replace them, shaped not by Earth's geography but by humanity's wanderings between the stars. But of course getting several good actors with the same, or even approximate mix of heritages AND are all right for their respective parts is not terribly practical. So the movie has done the next best thing; kept it as diverse and against stereotype as possible.

That being said, casting actors from Middle-Eastern ethnicities to play the as yet unseen Corrinos on the other hand; that I can get behind. Half the point of an allegory after all is to try and get people to see something from a different perspective for a change.
 
No they are no actually Muslims, but in situations like this, where a specific culture influenced a fictional one, people prefer to see actors from that culture play those characters.
which actors would that be? Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nigeria, if we are going by largest numbers of adherents per country. The Fremen were descendants of Zensunni wanderers. (oh my, if we're going by the country with the largest population of both Buddhists and Muslims, then the Fremen are possibly Chinese. Someone call casting)

In any case ethnicities as far into the future in the Dune universe would be nothing like they are now, so what is the point? What is known is that there are a lot of isolated sietch communities that have been on Rakis for a very long time, which might have made new ethnicities arise just from genetic isolation. As far as I remember, Herbert never got into that. It wasn't really important to his novels. The Atredies are mentioned as being olive-skinned. The Harkonnen may have been mentioned as being pale, but I do not really remember.
 
According to the Dune wiki:

Little is known of the evolution of the Zensunni faith. What is beyond doubt is that the Zensunni belief was an amalgam of two ancient religions: Sunni Islam and Zen Buddhism.

They were followers of a schismatic sect that broke away from the teachings of Maometh (the so-called "Third Muhammed") about 1381 BG [Before Guild]. The Zensunni religion is noted chiefly for its emphasis on the mystical and a reversion to "the ways of the fathers".
Zensunni | Dune Wiki | Fandom

That there has been time for two more Muhammeds after the final prophet of Islam demonstrates that Dune takes place in a distant future.

Trying to map the people of the Dune universe onto modern ethnicities is a futile exercise. We should acknowledge the increase in diversity of casting over the previous movie and TV adaptations as being a positive thing.
 
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