Dune 2018 (19,20,21...)
- Thread starter wayoung
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That would be my ideal version too, it really is a very complex book to try to cut down to two hours. Is the plan still to do a TV series too, and if so how is that going to work? Would we basically be getting a movie pilot, with the first season just picking up from there?^+1
I don't think it's a story that can be adequately told in a couple of hours. I'd prefer another TV version with a GoT-sized budget together with better aesthetics and casting.
Yeah, sometimes minor details don't have to be exact. I thought the mini series did them well with the design they used, and they're not really important anyway, outside of being transport.
You guys are thinking of the mentally deranged, scenery chewing Baron from Lynch's movie. The Baron as he is on page is a cold, calculating tactician and a pragmatist. He's no orange skinned cretin. Think less the Michael Clarke Duncan version of Kingpin and more Vincent D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk. I'd much rather see them stick close to the book on this one.
I got the impression that Lynch either hadn't read the book at all or he had just skimmed it. IMO Ian McNeice made a better baron but didn't convey enough of the required hard-edged, uncompromising nature.
ETA: As pointed out below, Lynch had read the book. I just didn't think much of some of his directorial choices.
ETA: As pointed out below, Lynch had read the book. I just didn't think much of some of his directorial choices.
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As a huge fan of the Dune books it's always sad when your favorite material gets butchered in movies and TV shows.
The first movie by Lynch had the aesthetic down to how i envisioned it.. i love the bronze tones of the feudal Atreides home, the personal shield effect (looked weird but it was something new), the Fremen stillsuits (would have been evern more awesome if they wore big cloaks, how they were described in the book and artwork) and the actors.
It fell apart in other ways,, the weirding module (still can't get past this, the book had such a wonderful and easy explanation why the Fremen were so dominant when it came to combat and even outclassed the Sardaukar), Alia, the rain at the end and the cartoonish Harkonnen.
The Miniseries tried to stick closer to the books and was in many ways superior to the movies (maybe because they had more time to develop the story and the characters) but fell a bit down to a low TV budget which showed, especially in the desert scenes.
It all comes down if the new person at the helm understands and likes the source material.. given enough money (and it doesn't have to have a 200 million + budget) i think he can do the book justice. It's not that hard of a story to film (God Emperor is much more difficult i think) so if it happens i'll be happy to return to Arrakis and see some Fremen whoop Sardaukar ass
The first movie by Lynch had the aesthetic down to how i envisioned it.. i love the bronze tones of the feudal Atreides home, the personal shield effect (looked weird but it was something new), the Fremen stillsuits (would have been evern more awesome if they wore big cloaks, how they were described in the book and artwork) and the actors.
It fell apart in other ways,, the weirding module (still can't get past this, the book had such a wonderful and easy explanation why the Fremen were so dominant when it came to combat and even outclassed the Sardaukar), Alia, the rain at the end and the cartoonish Harkonnen.
The Miniseries tried to stick closer to the books and was in many ways superior to the movies (maybe because they had more time to develop the story and the characters) but fell a bit down to a low TV budget which showed, especially in the desert scenes.
It all comes down if the new person at the helm understands and likes the source material.. given enough money (and it doesn't have to have a 200 million + budget) i think he can do the book justice. It's not that hard of a story to film (God Emperor is much more difficult i think) so if it happens i'll be happy to return to Arrakis and see some Fremen whoop Sardaukar ass
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The film has made no progress in over a decade. The only way I can ever see this being made now is with HBO or Starz or someone else trying to emulate Game of Thrones and buying the original 3 or 4 novels for a limited television run.
I know the internet loves to rage on the newer books, but there's enough material there to draw from to fill in the gaps
I know the internet loves to rage on the newer books, but there's enough material there to draw from to fill in the gaps
Since I saw the movie first (took three attempts) and that's what got me to read the books, I'll always have a soft spot for loony Baron, fetus navigator and the weirding modules. That said, I'd much rather they hew *much* closer to the books in the future.
Well yes and no. Yes the surface plot is easy to adapt (I mean it's basically 'The Lion King', no?
) but the thing with Dune is that just like the titular planet, there's a *lot* more going on under the surface.
Indeed, it's to Lynch's credit that he even made the attempt to include as much of the subtext and detailed machinations as possible...with admittedly mixed results.
The problem is a lot of this stuff is difficult to translate into film. In a novel, it's a simple thing to explore a character's hidden thoughts and motivations, but on screen it's a lot more complicated, especially when it's the kind of story where people's thoughts and words are very deliberately out of sync. Lynch could have either either ignored this aspect entirely (this making a very shallow film), gone form *even more* massive expositional dumps in a script already bursting at the seams with exposition or go with the solution he ultimately settled on: awkward voice over. Bit of a no-win situation really.
I know I've made this argument before, but I really do feel that Dune would be best served as a GoT style mini-series., with the first book broken up into three seasons of 6-10 episodes each. That'll give ample time to really dig into the *huge* cast, their motivations, their history and include the kinds of things that tend to get pushed to the side in shorter form story-telling.
Things like the shadow cast by the Old Duke, the sub-plot with Fenring, Thufir's attempts on the Baron's life, Gurney with the smugglers, the backstory of Pardot Kynes etc. etc.
It all comes down if the new person at the helm understands and likes the source material.. given enough money (and it doesn't have to have a 200 million + budget) i think he can do the book justice. It's not that hard of a story to film (God Emperor is much more difficult i think) so if it happens i'll be happy to return to Arrakis and see some Fremen whoop Sardaukar ass
Well yes and no. Yes the surface plot is easy to adapt (I mean it's basically 'The Lion King', no?
) but the thing with Dune is that just like the titular planet, there's a *lot* more going on under the surface.Indeed, it's to Lynch's credit that he even made the attempt to include as much of the subtext and detailed machinations as possible...with admittedly mixed results.
The problem is a lot of this stuff is difficult to translate into film. In a novel, it's a simple thing to explore a character's hidden thoughts and motivations, but on screen it's a lot more complicated, especially when it's the kind of story where people's thoughts and words are very deliberately out of sync. Lynch could have either either ignored this aspect entirely (this making a very shallow film), gone form *even more* massive expositional dumps in a script already bursting at the seams with exposition or go with the solution he ultimately settled on: awkward voice over. Bit of a no-win situation really.
I know I've made this argument before, but I really do feel that Dune would be best served as a GoT style mini-series., with the first book broken up into three seasons of 6-10 episodes each. That'll give ample time to really dig into the *huge* cast, their motivations, their history and include the kinds of things that tend to get pushed to the side in shorter form story-telling.
Things like the shadow cast by the Old Duke, the sub-plot with Fenring, Thufir's attempts on the Baron's life, Gurney with the smugglers, the backstory of Pardot Kynes etc. etc.
I don't think it's that difficult to translate into film, even with the Kwisatz Haderach plot. It introduces a supernatural element into a basic power struggle between two power blocks with Paul being the (unknown) wild card in the scenario. It could well follow the template of the Lynch movie.. establish the geo(astro?)political landscape and organization, the major players and then shift to Dune and let the story take its course from the betrayal of House Atreides, Paul's and Jessica's escape to the Fremen and him becoming their leader and starting a guerilla war to reclaim his rightful place.
Later books, especially God Emperor, Heretics and Chapterhouse deal much more in poltics and sociology and that's always difficult to bring into a 2 hour movie time frame.
However i do agree that it would work really well a GoT style series.. there certainly is enough material for several seasons (the first book alone could be at least 2 seasons) but as it stands it always depends on the faith of those who decide to finance all this.
GoT also did start slow.. first season was cheap compared to the later seasons when the show established itself as one of the most popular ones currently running. I would love to see this happen to Dune as a counterpoint to Fantasy, TV could use an epic Science Fiction series.
Later books, especially God Emperor, Heretics and Chapterhouse deal much more in poltics and sociology and that's always difficult to bring into a 2 hour movie time frame.
However i do agree that it would work really well a GoT style series.. there certainly is enough material for several seasons (the first book alone could be at least 2 seasons) but as it stands it always depends on the faith of those who decide to finance all this.
GoT also did start slow.. first season was cheap compared to the later seasons when the show established itself as one of the most popular ones currently running. I would love to see this happen to Dune as a counterpoint to Fantasy, TV could use an epic Science Fiction series.
I think the weirding modules were the only way they could come up with to show fighting technique that didn't look like something out of a martial movie.
Had the film been made a decade or so later and Lynch able to use similar techniques to what was shown in the Matrix they might not have been necessary.
Maybe it's the era the movie was made in.. 80s Hollywood hasn't branched out from Schwarzenegger/Stallone style fights and the occasional western Martial Arts movies were more B movies in general. At least they didn't utlise the many martial arts that exist like Hollywood does now to give the hero a "unique" fighting style as opposed to just hitting the other guy with a fist until he drops.
I don't know who decided on the modules in the film, maybe they thought a SF film needed a ray gun or something like that.. i would have loved to see a Fremen pull out some good Krav Maga, Kali or Sambo techniques but maybe the new movie gets a chance to do it right. Would be cool to see a Sardaukar in the initial assault throw around some Atreides soldiers like it was nothing thus establishing their badassness, showing us a perfect fighter until he has to go up against the Fremen (the possibility for some very cool fight choreography is there)
I always figured each faction should have a fighting style unique to the household philosophy. Atreides should be more fancy kung fu like, Fremen pure effeciency so like Krave Maga, Harkonnen brutal, overwhelming size and strength, Saurdakaur like the Fremen but sloppier, Bene Gesserit crazy black widow like flexibility and total body control.
Then the sword and knife play in the training room would follow whatever type of weapon being used - with an uninterrupted flow from sword to knife to sword, showing the versatility in Paul's training.
Then the sword and knife play in the training room would follow whatever type of weapon being used - with an uninterrupted flow from sword to knife to sword, showing the versatility in Paul's training.
The weirding modules were I think a way of building on the concept of 'The Voice' and unifying it with 'The Weirding Way'. Basically they took two BG super-powers and made them more explicitly related.
It may have just been me reading too much into it, but I've often thought the intent was supposed to be that Jessica had spilled BG secrets and helped the Atredies to develop a technological workaround in the form of the weirding modules. The way this pays off is when Paul uses the voice to finish off Feyd, making the "I can kill with a word" line very much literal.
I don't necessarily approve of the liberties taken here, but I think I at least see what they were going for and why.
It may have just been me reading too much into it, but I've often thought the intent was supposed to be that Jessica had spilled BG secrets and helped the Atredies to develop a technological workaround in the form of the weirding modules. The way this pays off is when Paul uses the voice to finish off Feyd, making the "I can kill with a word" line very much literal.
I don't necessarily approve of the liberties taken here, but I think I at least see what they were going for and why.
I think the voice distortion was a valid way to portray something that again, doesn't translate well visually. Don't know if I'd call it hypnosis exactly so much as bypassing the brain's higher functions and directly hijacking the muscle controls. So the way Kyle MacLachlan sort of tensed up and took a stiff half-step forward seemed quite appropriate. It's as if the muscle nerves were getting conflicting signals, which they probably were.
As critical as I am of the Lynch movie, I am glad we got it instead of Jodorowsky's film. That really had nothing to do with the novel, and indeed Jodorowsky and many of his production staff have never read the novel. They even admit as much in the documentary about the film that was released a few years ago.
Then there is Ridley Scott's version, with the Paul/Alia incest...
Only the mini was faithful to the novel, and it had the luxury of 4.5 hours of runtime.
Other than some leaked concept art (and even that was disputed as possibly being from a cancelled video game) we never heard at all what Berg or Morel were doing.
Speaking of cancelled video games, poor Dune Generations
That had so much potential. The people working on it were so passionate about it. I had multiple Q&A's and chats with them for a dune fansite and when the game was shut down they leaked us tons of game play vids so that people could see the Dune MMO that almost was....
Only the mini was faithful to the novel, and it had the luxury of 4.5 hours of runtime.
Other than some leaked concept art (and even that was disputed as possibly being from a cancelled video game) we never heard at all what Berg or Morel were doing.
Speaking of cancelled video games, poor Dune Generations
That had so much potential. The people working on it were so passionate about it. I had multiple Q&A's and chats with them for a dune fansite and when the game was shut down they leaked us tons of game play vids so that people could see the Dune MMO that almost was....
