Wait, what? What does Disney or Lucas have to with it? Nods to Dune doesn't mean "Dune movie must equal Star Wars now!" That's baffling logic, at best.
Dune 2018 (19,20,21...)
- Thread starter wayoung
- Start date
Absolutely Right™.
"Bug" is hardly an original term belonging to Starship Troopers or Ender's Game.
No, he called them "buggers", which being British I found both hilarious and very off-putting.
First of all, the spice had a specific name=melange. In Star Wars it's just "spice mines of Kessel" and that's about as much of a reference as you'll get. "Blasters" were "las guns" were Dune's term for energy based weapons, and created a "Holtzman effect." They were rarely used due to an atomic style explosion that occurred if interacted with a shield.
Secondly, "spice" was used in a variety of Golden Age science fiction authors, like Heinlein, before Star Wars appeared. Similarly, with "Bugs" it was a pretty generic term, with Starship Troopers and Ender's Game being most prominent. I do not recall "bugs" in Dune, at least not the original works. And, a quick search confirms that. Herbert was a strong believer in building his own terminology and world, and rarely did slang pass through without an official term being coined as well. Hence the reason there is a concordance in the back of the book.
Most certainly not.
Hugo - unless those that decry loudest keep their secrets closest to their chest
I'm just glad that Peter Berg isn't involved any more. The Kingdom had some of the worst shaky-cam I've ever seen. Even Paul Greengrass has the good sense to keep the camera steady during the dialogue scenes.
As for Villeneuve, I liked Arrival ok but I hated Blade Runner 2049. Too much time lingering over the production design and not enough actual story. That movie could have easily been dropped down to 90 minutes had he shown any discipline at all. Makes me wonder how he would handle such dense material as Dune.
...You have seen the original 'Blade Runner', right? I mean that wasn't exactly plot heavy or shy about showing off it's production design either. That's kind of the franchise's signature style.
I'm not saying you have to like it, but that's sort of like complaining about 'Kingdom of the Crystal Skull' having too many chase sequences and not enough tense political drama.
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True. I found the original Blade Runner to be pretty tedious as well. But not quite as tedious as the sequel. It felt like the new one spent even more time gazing over the scenery than the first one did. Plus, the original Blade Runner could kinda almost get away with it because, in 1982, no one had ever seen anything like that on the big screen. But by now, rain-soaked neon-lit cyberpunk dystopias and sandy post-apocalyptic wastelands are so common that they're basically cinematic shorthand. You don't need to linger over those images for more than a second because we're all trained to see them and pretty much immediately understand the basics of what's going on and what we're about to see. Plus...
The having sex with a prostitute as a proxy for his digital girlfriend thing was already done 4 years earlier in the much more interesting Her.
The original 'Blade Runner' didn't spend approximately 50% of it's run time "gazing at the scenery" just because Ridley Scott wanted to show off what his effects people could pull off, nor was it "a 1982 thing." It was a deliberate style choice to evoke the even earlier noir genre movies from four decades prior. It's a bleak, sombre world with a beat-up, hard-boiled protagonist in a world consisting mostly of smokey offices, rain drenched streets and chain-smoking femme fatales. The central plot was almost entirely besides the point and indeed, it's so straight forward it could easily be summed up in only a paragraph or two. It's a mood and character piece, and on that score at least, the sequel was quite faithful.
Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that despite what I just said, the sequel injected a *lot* of more modern style action sequences putting it a little closer to the likes of 'Children of Men' than 'Blade Runner'. How many and what kind of action sequences did the original have? Not many and very simple, respectively. Two brief fist fights both concluded with an equally brief shooting, topped off by the final show down that bucks tradition by not bothering with an action climax or victory and simply ends it on a philosophical note in tone with the rest of the movie, followed by an appropriately ambiguous denouement.
Again, I'm not saying you have to like either movie for any of these reasons, but it's unfair to criticise something for not being what it wasn't even trying to be in the first place.
For example, you can fault say...'Robocop 2' for any number of perfectly fair reasons, but one of them is not "didn't work as a romantic comedy", because it never tried to be. To look at the other end of the spectrum, it would be equally ridiculous to complain that 'The Godfather' "didn't have enough laser guns and space aliens".
Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that despite what I just said, the sequel injected a *lot* of more modern style action sequences putting it a little closer to the likes of 'Children of Men' than 'Blade Runner'. How many and what kind of action sequences did the original have? Not many and very simple, respectively. Two brief fist fights both concluded with an equally brief shooting, topped off by the final show down that bucks tradition by not bothering with an action climax or victory and simply ends it on a philosophical note in tone with the rest of the movie, followed by an appropriately ambiguous denouement.
Again, I'm not saying you have to like either movie for any of these reasons, but it's unfair to criticise something for not being what it wasn't even trying to be in the first place.
For example, you can fault say...'Robocop 2' for any number of perfectly fair reasons, but one of them is not "didn't work as a romantic comedy", because it never tried to be. To look at the other end of the spectrum, it would be equally ridiculous to complain that 'The Godfather' "didn't have enough laser guns and space aliens".
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I loved loved loved Blade Runner 2049. My favorite film of the year. I'm really hoping he does something great with Dune. I still wish it had been an HBO series, but I've now got confidence that it would be a great 3 hour movie.
God Emperor, maybe, to complete the Arrakis main story and enable the scattering of humanity but it'd be a difficult book to adapt given its narative structure. The emperor himself might also make some say that he's a ripoff of Jabba the Hutt.
I read Heretics and Chapterhouse decades ago but they're so non-memorable that I'm not enthused. All I seem to recall vividly is the reference to Miles Teg's erection.
Heretics introduces a big jump in time and the Honored Matres, who I found boring and not at all interesting.
Chapterhouse would complete the ecological cycle for Arrakis with its redesertification but any adaptation would almost demand the adaptation of the Pinky and the Brian books to avoid hanging plot threads.
ETA: I wish HBO or other network would adapt Brian Aldiss' Helliconia Trilogy. Its multiple themes (Gaia and ecology, the seemingly inevitable descent into decadence and fall of civilisations, religion and ancestor worship, inherent human fallibility and no guarantee of progress in a random cosmos sliding towards entropic heat death) are just as rich as Dune or Game of Thrones. I guess some people might mistakenly see it as a GoT knockoff because of the long year and threat of Phagor invasion from the north during the long winter. However, the Trilogy was written in the early 80s - well before GRRM started writing GoT. It even has a version of dragons.
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All I seem to recall vividly is the reference to Miles Teg's erection.
I was afraid someone would bring that up. ( pun not intended )
Oh HELL to the NO! Those books totally misrepresented the ending of Chapterhouse!
I quite agree - some people seem to like them though. I suspect we'll never get to study Frank Herbert's notes to be able to judge how great the disparity is between his vision and what P&tB churned out. The pair of them seem unable to reproduce his depth of intellect or writing skills.
