Yes, that's fine you can act with your eyes, but when you have recognizeable actors on screen, you're going to want people to see all of their face. Actors in live action movies are recognized by their faces, and hired because they have a recognizable face, so as often as possible they are going to want to show those faces. You're not going to pay 6 or 7 figures for an actor, and then cover their face.
By this reasoning, every animated character who was voiced by a famous actor should be redrawn to look like the actor.
The acting in the early seasons is usual Sci-fi channel level terrible and only rescued by a young McAvoy.
The art direction was awful even allowing for the low budget.
A miniseries has more time to play with so a better fit for the type of book readers who cry about every little dull moment that gets cut like Gurneys pointless balicet or the utterly boring Tom Bombadil but the miniseries of Dune was nowhere near as good as a whole.
The thing about the baliset is that no production has yet figured out a way to include that scene and have it seem natural, rather than 'there's this weird musical instrument Herbert invented and it's part of Gurney's character so we need to show him playing it'. And then they completely mess it up, including having the music be something that's actually interesting.
The Dune Encyclopedia includes sheet music for a couple of Gurney's songs. I transcribed it for the organ (that's the instrument I have played for many years), and found "The Desert Hymn" to be hauntingly beautiful. So if I could do that at home, think how much more superior a professional production could make it - yet they never bother.
Well seeing as I mentioned McAvoy I was including the second season. Sorry if my wording was a little off.
If we are just talking about "Dune" then I would say it's all pretty crap and it's only saving grace is it didn't have stupid things like weirding devices or pugs.
Waaaay back on the old Arrakeen forum, we had a thread about that damn pug dog.
Next thing we knew, Google AdSense was showing us ads for pug breeders and kennels.
I started a Cheezburger project called "Pug Dogs of Dune" in which the movie could be sorta loosely retold with pugs and cats as the characters (found a picture of an adorable kitten dressed like the Bene Gesserit were in the Lynch movie, except with hair).
And then a couple of years ago I had another idea about the pug - retell the story using Peanuts/Charlie Brown characters for some of the roles.
Let's just say that Snoopy has the last laugh on Reverend Mother Lucy Van Pelt, as she's so upset about dog germs that she runs smack into the maw of a sandworm. The last anyone hears about her is the sandworm uttering a disappointed "BLEAH!" (in Comic Sans) because she really didn't taste that good.
In other words, the pug is tolerable if you can learn to appreciate the absurdity. In reality, that dog shouldn't have survived more than a day in the open without a stillsuit, and for damn sure the Fremen wouldn't have seen the point of keeping it alive until the end of the movie. They'd have taken its water so it wouldn't waste the tribe's resources.
Exactly. That's literally how a mini-series works, especially with literary adaptations with more than one entry. You make one, you put it out. Maybe you'll get commissioned for a second, maybe not. Depends how the first one did. Much more in common with a movie sequel than a season of television. Remember there was a three year gap in production of the two series and several key positions were switched out, not least of which the cinematographer and I think the production designer (to say nothing of recasting a key role.)
The roles that were recast from Dune to Children of Dune include Jessica, Duncan Idaho, and Stilgar.
And Alia, of course, but that's because she was older in the second miniseries.
Computer tech (smart or dumb) isn't made on Ix or by the Ixaians, just devices that are close to a computer without really being one; however, in Dune: House Atredies, it was the making of a fighting mek that reacts to your movements and the making of a Guild Heighliner with fifteeen percent more carrying space, as well as the inciting to riot of their slave class, the suboids, by the Teliaxu over the building of said Heighliners, and the need for research space for the Teliaxu to make artificial spice, that led to House Vernius being overthrown, with an invented reason of their 'violating' the Butlerian Jihad simply because they make complex machines non-Ixians think are computers.
Can we not muddy the discussion with the nuDune nonsense?
That trailer was amazing, and got even more pumped for this movie than I already was.
Did Paul and The Emperor ever meet face to face in the book? I recognized and remembered a lot of the big story beats in the trailer from the book, but I don't remember those two ever actually being in the same room in the book.
Of course they met. Paul informed the Emperor that he had decided to marry Irulan, and when Feyd-Rautha said he wanted to fight Paul, the Emperor let him use his knife.
The trailer is itself a prescient vision of things to come. However, without context, I agree it's not really a spoiler. Did any other adaptation include mention of other memory? I don't recall...
Both miniseries did.
https://collider.com/dune-3-messiah-adaptation/
In the wake of the second trailer Villeneuve has confirmed he intends to make Dune Messiah to cap of the initial story, however no official studio confirmation yet.
Awesome news and i fully expect Dune Part Two to be a massive fan/critics/financial hit that will warrant the third movie. It also makes logical sense to close off Paul's story arc and depending on the reception the end could be left open should someone, maybe even Denis if he feels like it, continue to make these movies.
I'm a happy Dune fan right now
Paul's arc doesn't end until the end of
Children of Dune.
I tried reading Messiah years ago but I didn't get far and moved onto something else. I rarely stop a book after starting it and this is probably the only instance where I stopped wasn't because I hated the material (like, say, Artemis Fowl), rather I just wasn't engaged by it like Dune.
However, if there's official confirmation from the studio that Villeneuve will adapt that novel, I'll definitely give it another shot prior to its release (or even before any promotional material is released so I'm not unduly influenced).
It may not have massive scenes, but there's plenty of imperial court intrigue, and there's conflict between Chani and Irulan over which of them has the greater right to bear Paul's heir, and of course there's the assassination plot involving several factions among the Imperium, not to mention corruption among the Qizarate (Fremen priests of the religion established around Paul and Alia).
Here's one of the best scenes from the second miniseries. It comes at the end of the part that dramatizes Dune Messiah, when Chani gives birth to the twins. If you're unfamiliar with the events of Dune Messiah, most of Children of Dune won't make any sense to you, and of the parts that do, so much nuance will be lost.
Really, they need to commission Children and God Emperor as well to finish Alia's arc and have Leto II set humanity on the Golden Path.
You don't need God Emperor to finish Alia's arc. She's done at the end of Children of Dune.
Leto begins his Golden Path, and then there's a several thousand-year time jump.
And yeah, God Emperor of Dune would be a nightmare to turn into a movie or TV series because so much of it is just Leto II sitting on his Royal Cart, with various courtiers and others cowering before him while he boasts of how smart he is and how self-sacrificing he is, and it slips into one hell of a pity party at times.
The only times when something actually
happens is at the beginning - a very action-filled sequence with Siona and her rebel friends trying to escape the D-Wolves with the journals they've stolen, and the few other times when either an attack happens or Duncan Idaho is thrown for yet another loop as he desperately tries to understand this insane new reality that he's been reborn into (as yet another in a very long line of gholas).
Most of it's rather boring, though, and would have to be condensed quite a bit.
One can build on the other - Messiah can close off Pauls story while simultaneously building up Alia. Children then builds Leto II's story that leads into God Emperor that could really end on a positive note with humanity taking the golden path and becoming safe from extinction. You could have a nice 5 movie miniseries from this and if there's still enough interest make the time jump and continue with the fight against the returning Matres but i get the feeling that closing off that story arc brings us close to Game of Thrones levels of desaster or rather Kevin J. Anderson/Brian Herbert levels of bad.
Paul's story isn't over until the end of Children of Dune.
As for adapting the last two books... incest, anyone? They'd need a couple of younger actors to play teenage Duncan and child Teg, and in neither case would the audience accept the nonconsensual sexual imprinting attempted on the two of these characters.
Breeding and marriage are why the twins were aged several years in Children of Dune. Novel-Leto and Ghanima were NINE YEARS OLD. And the Bene Gesserit actually considered breeding them
together to preserve the Atreides genes.
Incest is punishable by death among the Fremen, and the bodies' water is poured on the sand, rather than added to the tribe's water.
God Emperor is really slow going - lots of talking - and then the denouement. It's been mentioned previously that it might best serve as a framing device around Children.
That would really give stuff away for the people who don't know that child Leto becomes a tyrannical human/sandworm hybrid who rules for several thousand years.
I actually got lucky in that I read the first three books not long before the fourth one came out.
It didn't make God Emperor any easier to read and understand.
