Dune Part 2 2023 (24, 25, 26...)

[fireproof78]

It's safe to say that most authors that write for existing franchises know the score, know they're playing with someone else's toys and have no ownership of what they invent.

Probably so, and I don't mind author comments, because I don't hold them in very high regard. The works stand by themselves, and either succeed or fail by that measure, not how the author portrays it.

I think what's less forgivable is supposedly professional writers bickering with fans in public. Just from a career perspective, it's not a good look, and probably an excellent way to not get hired in the future.

I go back and forth on this one. Yes, on the one hand it is a terrible look and insulting your potential customer is a terrible business plan. On the other side, none of these authors know me, or usually the fan base (at least in my experience) and their comments are trite, surface level, and generally uniformed. So I cannot be insulted by it because I do not find any value in those comments because they don't apply to me. They don't know me enough to insult me.

Authors would do well to write their works, let them stand and fall, and let the fans kvetch amongst themselves.

 

[Set Harth]

You cannot convince me that anything they wrote was part of The Holy Notes That Frank Left.

Especially when they seemed to completely misunderstand who Daniel and Marty were. How could that have been from Frank's notes? Did Frank somehow not understand Chapterhouse?

 

[wayoung]

Especially when they seemed to completely misunderstand who Daniel and Marty were. How could that have been from Frank's notes? Did Frank somehow not understand Chapterhouse?

The notes are all PR. Everytime they announced a new book they'd say they found new notes in an attic/garage/safe deposit box, meanwhile the only independently confirmed documents to exist are for the Butlerian Jihad novel FH had been making with McNelly when FH got sick and THP refused to use them because then they'd have to pay McNelly and BH & KJA created their own completely different story, while still claiming they were based on notes from FH.

I'm sure there were some notes scattered around, but not the quantity and type they kept claiming.

 

[The Wormhole]

Given a lot of stuff from the BH and KJA prequel novels are mentioned in the glossary of the original Dune, I've wondered if the fabled Frank Herbert Notes is just an embellishment of that.

 

[JD]

What I don't forgive is KJA/BH's attempts to de-canonize FH's work. Writing a scene in Paul of Dune that dismisses Dune as nothing more than in-universe political/religious propaganda Irulan wrote at Paul's orders and that only the KJA/BH version (ie. the Houses trilogy) is correct is a slap in the face to the older fans and spitting on Frank Herbert himself. You cannot convince me that anything they wrote was part of The Holy Notes That Frank Left. Trying to erase some of the established facts about the main characters and changing the basics about the Bene Gesserit are NOT okay with quite a few fans. And then going on to insult said fans when we made our views known... and KJA wonders why some the fans dislike him so much?

Yeah, for someone who isn't the original writer to come in for what is basically a spin-off and use it to attempt to decanonize the original, especially when it's something as iconic as the original Dune, is pretty messed up. Even if they aren't always 100% consistent with the originals, at least the current Star Trek and Star Wars creators have gone out of their way to keep their original movies and series canon.

 

[Timewalker]

Especially when they seemed to completely misunderstand who Daniel and Marty were. How could that have been from Frank's notes? Did Frank somehow not understand Chapterhouse?

I'll admit that I always found the Tleilaxu to be disturbing and creepy and not completely human. But FFS, they were NOT cartoon robots. Marty and Daniel turning out to be those cartoon characters from the Butlerian Jihad books makes me think that KJA thought his target audience was about 10 years old, rather than actual teenagers and adults (Arrakeen forum was actually founded by a 13-year-old who had to drop out of running it and passed it along to me; by that time I'd been promoted from member to mod to admin - he'd mentioned his parents being upset about his schooling so I guess it was a case of they felt he was spending too much time online).

The Tleilaxu religious angle is something I struggled with in Heretics and Chapterhouse. It's possible to despise characters while still wanting to understand them. I've wondered if it's complicated to other people or if it's just an issue for me, as I'm atheist and religion is something I can't relate to.

The notes are all PR. Everytime they announced a new book they'd say they found new notes in an attic/garage/safe deposit box, meanwhile the only independently confirmed documents to exist are for the Butlerian Jihad novel FH had been making with McNelly when FH got sick and THP refused to use them because then they'd have to pay McNelly and BH & KJA created their own completely different story, while still claiming they were based on notes from FH.

I'm sure there were some notes scattered around, but not the quantity and type they kept claiming.

Every author keeps some notes, even fanfic authors. I've got looseleaf binders' worth of notes on my various writing projects (I've been working on some of them for years and they've grown to the point where I need notes to remind myself of how everything fits together and where I want it to go - though the characters sometimes have their own ideas where they want it to go).

So of course FH would have had notes to remind himself of who his characters were, how they interrelated, how the Imperium, Bene Gesserit, and Fremen societies worked, and so on, including where he wanted to take the last book that we know of as Dune 7 (since we don't know what FH intended to call it).

Going by the account of the Butlerian Jihad in the Dune Encyclopedia, the novel that had been planned would have been one I'd really have enjoyed. As I kept trying to explain to the prequel fans over on the dunenovels.com forum, the Jihad was not Humans vs. Robot. It was Humans Who Are Pro-Robot/AI And Consider Them Good And Beneficial vs. Humans Who Are Anti-Robot/AI And Consider Them Evil And Harmful. In short, it was a war of humans who believed and supported opposing ideologies. It wasn't ever meant to be a cheap Terminator ripoff.

And holy crap, the stories about The Holy Notes That Frank Left (my own snarky label for them) just keep changing according to what spin KJA wants to put on them, depending on if he's bragging or wants to brush off anyone asking uncomfortable questions.

At one time they were a treasure trove of boxes and disks full of notes. But when people started asking why they didn't publish the notes, suddenly they were "just a few floppies, not much there, not that interesting, who would even care about them?".

Literary scholars who specialize in science fiction, obviously. But of course KJA will find any excuse to never let anyone like that get their hands on the notes - because they'll see immediately that the story that Hunters/Sandworms followed THNTFL is nothing but a lie.

 

[JD]

Is there no one else who was close to Frank Herbert, besides Brian, who might have some idea what was or wasn't in the notes, or if they even exist at all?

 

[Timewalker]

Given a lot of stuff from the BH and KJA prequel novels are mentioned in the glossary of the original Dune, I've wondered if the fabled Frank Herbert Notes is just an embellishment of that.

The glossary is just a list of words and their definitions. There were a lot of Fremen words that would have been unfamiliar to North American readers (many were based on Arabic words), and they wouldn't necessarily have been intuitive from the context or readers might not remember. So the glossary was very helpful in that respect.

Some of the other material in the Appendices directly contradicts NuDune. A prime example is that nuDune has Earth being destroyed in the Butlerian Jihad. The fact is that there's no reason to suppose Earth wasn't still alive and well even in the year 10,191 A.G. (though by that time it was such an unimportant cultural backwater that only scholars and Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers and/or Fremen Sayyadina could remember it). After all, the conference of theologians who rewrote the Orange Catholic Bible to incorporate the new ban/taboo against computers/A.I. and included the dictum "thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind" held their meetings on the island of Hawaii. This conference took place after the conclusion of the Butlerian Jihad, so it would be a tricky thing to do that if the planet was destroyed as nuDune claims.

Is there no one else who was close to Frank Herbert, besides Brian, who might have some idea what was or wasn't in the notes, or if they even exist at all?

Not that I know of, unless his daughter might know something. McNelly might have known something, as he and FH had plans to collaborate on a Butlerian Jihad novel. But McNelly was shut out of everything after FH died and the HLP has refused to let the Dune Encyclopedia back into print. McNelly died years ago, so there's no way to ask him now.

FH's grandson, Byron Merritt, was the person running the dunenovels.com forum and of course his task was to promote the nuDune books.

I don't know what Byron may or may not have known about the true intentions for Dune 7 and the truth about THNTFL. Brian Herbert seems not to have concerned himself that much until years after FH died, or so I recall from his biography of his father. I'd have to double check that to be sure, though. They did collaborate on non-Dune material and BH wrote a bit of SF on his own (I haven't read it, though I do have the poetry book he edited - Songs of Muad'dib - that includes some Dune poetry that FH wrote).

 

[wayoung]

Sure, the rest of his family, all of which are members of The Herbert Partnership and profit from the new novels. The more books, the more money for them. And some of them also want to be writers themselves and get in on the series, so will no doubt find their own suitcases of notes someday.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

This probably means that the next Dune movie might get released by Columbia or Paramount (the latter happening would be ironic since there was to be a Dune movie made by Paramount a short while ago [there's also a piece of preliminary artwork floating around that has a nifty Dune logo and the Paramount logo.]) I downloaded it once and had it as wallpaper on my computer for a while: if I can find it, I'll post it here.

As promised, here's the concept art:

Peter Berg's Dune

 

[Reverend]

Yikes. I'm not too crazy about the direction they were going with that sandworm design. They all seem far too deliberately "monstrous" rather than an actual animal. Also a clear emphasis on imparting a sense of speed and sudden motion in the design, like a mutant lamprey/cobra. That seems like a mistake.
If those things look like they're moving too fast it undermines the sheer sense of mass that's supposed to be their real threat. Not to say that sandworms aren't meant to be fast (they are indeed very fast) but they're also so huge that it almost doesn't register how quick they're moving until they're already on top of you. Less a beast, more an avalanche with teeth.

As for the rest of it . . . not really fair to say given such a small sample size, but nothing is really jumping out at me in terms of a distinct visual style.

 

[saddestmoon]

Yikes. I'm not too crazy about the direction they were going with that sandworm design. They all seem far too deliberately "monstrous" rather than an actual animal. Also a clear emphasis on imparting a sense of speed and sudden motion in the design, like a mutant lamprey/cobra. That seems like a mistake.
If those things look like they're moving too fast it undermines the sheer sense of mass that's supposed to be their real threat. Not to say that sandworms are meant to be fast (they are indeed very fast) but they're also so huge that it almost doesn't register how quick they're moving until they're already on top of you. Less a beast, more an avalanche with teeth.

As for the rest of it . . . not really fair to say given such a small sample size, but nothing is really jumping out at me in terms of a distinct visual style.

I concur, and QFT!

 

[FPAlpha]

Let's just say that Villeneuve and especially the design department knocked it out of the park, it's nice to see other peoples' take on it but i'm absolutely happy with what we got.

Only a couple of months away

 

[Timewalker]

Sandworms do not have arms or flippers or feet. Those images are ridiculous. They're giant worms, not reptiles.

The only reference to arms/flippers are in God Emperor of Dune, and that's only in reference to Leto II - because it's all that's left of his arms and legs as he slowly turns into a worm over the course of millennia.

 

[Reverend]

Sandworms do not have arms or flippers or feet. Those images are ridiculous. They're giant worms, not reptiles.

The only reference to arms/flippers are in God Emperor of Dune, and that's only in reference to Leto II - because it's all that's left of his arms and legs as he slowly turns into a worm over the course of millennia.

Keeping in mind that concept art is often meant to be exploratory, and not necessarily reflective of where they'd eventually land; I can understand the kind of anxiety that would lead to this inclusion. I also think it's misplaced, but I do understand it.
If they're thinking about this in terms of a giant CG monster (which is of course the wrong way to think about it) then I can see them looking at the novel description, at Lynch's take, and suddenly getting very nervous that this thing isn't going to look scary or animated enough to sell that it's even alive. That it's just going to look like an inherit phallus wriggling around in a giant litter tray. Hence all the crazy spikes and flippers and attempts at asymmetry. They're trying to both imbue a sense of motion even when it's stood still, and break up the silhouette so it actually looks like something *anything* other than a cigar with teeth.

 

[Timewalker]

Sandworms are basically megagigantic earthworms in shape, though many times larger, with a different biochemistry, and with many sharp teeth.

Given how some people in RL are terrified of earthworms (I'm not; they're cute, they tickle when they move around if you hold them, and I still feel guilty over 45 years after I had to dissect one in high school), the sandworms of Arrakis are plenty scary. I'd want to be as far away from one as possible.

 

[fireproof78]

Meh...it's a worm.

Now, if it were a wyrm I would have issues.

 

[The Wormhole]

Peter Berg's sandworm reminds me of a dead shark.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

An analysis of the art style of the new movie:

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[JD]

Yeah, I'm not a fan of those sandworm designs. I can see the idea behind what they going for, but it just doesn't work for me.