DUNE heads

[Sherlock Data]

Hello all,
I wanted to talk anything and everything DUNE related in honor of the upcoming DUNE part 2 premiere.
I'm currently reading God Emperor of Dune, so I am a little behind on the series and all things DUNE but figured there must be a lot of fans out there, maybe even here.

 

[Set Harth]

wow i thought this was gonna have something to do with the characters' actual heads

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I read the two Frank Herbert Dune novels after God Emperor - Heretics and Chapterhouse - and in retrospect I could have done with not bothering. I certainly regret reading the novels written by the son Brian Herbert and KJA. Movies might get made of Messiah and Children, but I suspect God Emperor would be a nightmare to adapt. I've mentioned in other threads here that a mashup of God Emperor and Children might be one way forward, but I doubt anything beyond Messiah will get made unless audience interest can be maintained.

 

[theenglish]

I thought your idea for adapting God Emperor was a pretty good one actually-- IIRC, it was using God Emperor as a framing device for the earlier stories.

 

[Timewalker]

I read the two Frank Herbert Dune novels after God Emperor - Heretics and Chapterhouse - and in retrospect I could have done with not bothering. I certainly regret reading the novels written by the son Brian Herbert and KJA. Movies might get made of Messiah and Children, but I suspect God Emperor would be a nightmare to adapt. I've mentioned in other threads here that a mashup of God Emperor and Children might be one way forward, but I doubt anything beyond Messiah will get made unless audience interest can be maintained.

Note: If you (general "you") have not read Heretics/Chapterhouse and want to be spoiler-free, don't read this post (I'm not going to bother with spoiler tags for books that came out nearly 40 years ago).





A perfectly adequate miniseries has already been made of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune (I don't care about the effects being out of date; other than the funny hats worn by the Bene Gesserit and Susan Sarandon being 30 years too old for the role she played (plus she also wore a funny hat), it was a decent effort.

Adapting God Emperor would be a nightmare. There's a great action scene to begin with, a few interesting scenes here and there (all involving Duncan Idaho), and one other in which Siona learns that she really should shut up and learn the proper use of a stillsuit. Then there's the underwhelming ending of it. The rest is Leto II's Self-Pity Party.

Heretics and Chapterhouse would be doable if they could figure out how to avoid the utterly revolting incest part of it. They'd have to age Miles Teg as they did the Atreides twins in the miniseries, because there is no way in hell that a child actor could play the part as written in the novel, nor would the audience be okay with a child ghola being sexually imprinted as a method of restoring his adult memories. The incest part of that makes it even more disgusting.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Yeah, I felt very uncomfortable reading that stuff. I assumed making the reader unsettled was the intent. I didn't feel it was normalising such behaviour, though. I would be more worried had I not been disquieted, but then I wouldn't likely have noticed. However, I did decide never to read Heratics or Chapterhouse ever again. I didn't feel that they came up to scratch and added nothing of interest following the events of God Emperor. Perhaps I missed some deep and meaningful theme - so be it.

 

[Timewalker]

Yeah, I felt very uncomfortable reading that stuff. I assumed making the reader unsettled was the intent. I didn't feel it was normalising such behaviour, though. I would be more worried had I not been disquieted, but then I wouldn't likely have noticed. However, I did decide never to read Heratics or Chapterhouse ever again. I didn't feel that they came up to scratch and added nothing of interest following the events of God Emperor. Perhaps I missed some deep and meaningful theme - so be it.

A cynical reason says that it was simply that FH was having medical issues (ie. cancer) and needed to be able to pay for his treatment. By that time he could have written Shopping Lists of Dune and fans would have bought it. So there's that aspect.

However, I think he wanted to tie up what he considered to be loose ends (and in doing that he created a freight train's worth more loose ends), and for some reason decided to have Odrade spend pages and pages and pages pondering the deep mysteries of Old Earth paintings, jazz, and oyster stew.

It's a shame that he and Dr. McNelly never had time for the Butlerian Jihad collaboration they'd wanted to do. If they had, then those abominable Legends books wouldn't have been written.