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Dune - dir. Denis Villeneuve

ska invita said:
Yeah fair enough but he really didnt like getting bad reviews for inland empire and hasnt made a feature film since! i was suprised to see him talk about that - he came across mortally wounded - he's not your usual cocksure director
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Inland Empire mostly got good reviews, what he didn't like is that he was reduced to make a film like that at this point of his career, mostly self-financed and on a tiny budget, because in a big budget, franchised obsessed Hollywood, he wasn't able to get his type of films financed anymore. Then he was barely able too get Inland Empire publicised and distributed. That's what he was complaining about at the time and why he hasn't made a film since then, it's too difficult for directors like him, to get his type of films off the ground and distributed. The notion that he would be a crybaby over a few bad reviews after a career of making divisive and controversial films, is a little absurd.
 
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I saw the Lynch Dune when it came out. At the Ritzy, Brixton. They got the reels mixed up and no one noticed. I need to have another look at it. I've liked all that Lynch has done since.

Im a reader of Sci Fi. I understand that film will use a written novel and change it. Blade Runner is an example. The Philip K Dick novel is somewhat different and more spooky imo. Still Blade Runner is an excellent film. Which has to be seen on a Cinema screen.

I've been reading the Dune novel. It is a Sci Fi classic. Read two thirds. Its an old novel 1965. Quite hippy trippy of its time. I do like the Sci Fi of that time.

Reading it now with Jihad having actually occurred is rather unsettling. ( ISIS). Its a very odd story. The desert planet the Home of the Fremen I can see would translate well into a visual experience.

What is going to be hard is the inner hippy trippy psychology. Herbert paints a complex future society where high technology / rejection of AI Co incide. Mysticism is presented as real but also a political tactic. The women only Bene Gesserit implant myths into backward societies for example.

The Mentats are human alternatives to AI. I will be interested to see how the new film deals with first half of novel. There are a lot of interior monologues. It's at one side a highly evolved society at another a form of brutal feudalism/ Asiatic despotism. ( I know that sounds a bit politically dubious but I give American Sci Fi writers from 60s a break on this. )

A thing in the novel is what is called race consciousness . Breeding to produce the One. Instead of using technology. I must say I give this a pass due to the times it was written but alarms bells ring.

I digress. A lot of first bit of novel is what is called in Sci Fi World Building. He describes a complex alternative future society. That is the novels success. On that he gets from me ten out of ten.

What a film director is going to have to deal with is the interior monologues . The story does not make sense without them.
 
To add in the novel the future society has not rejected Space travel. That is run by the mysterious Guild. Who keep the knowledge of space travel to themselves Letting the Barons/ Emporers/ merchants use it. But keeping how it works to themselves.

The future society have rejected a future of AI / Algorithms. Instead training their minds and breeding to produce finer humans. Herbert as a man of the 60s was interested in things like Zen Buddhism - inner space.

This might get lost of an audience of today unless they know the 60s context.

The Spice is clearly about inner space and mind altering/ mysticism.

Women in the novel are important characters and are strong. On that Herbert was ok. Unlike Philip K Dick. In that for a male American Sci Fi writer he was progressive.
 
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I need to see Lynch version again. I got to bit in novel where Paul Is trying to work out if his memories are real. Whether he is seeing the future, a possible future, the past or the the present.

The Desert planet is infused with the drug. Even eating food and you have some. Your eyes change colour. It's a hippies paradise. :p It's the Spice that makes Paul see his visions. Also his breeding.

Felt reading this that its this aspect of the novel that attracted Lynch. Even if his Dune film was a failure his later films perhaps had a little influence from the novel. A suggestion.
 
Gramsci said:
A lot of first bit of novel is what is called in Sci Fi World Building. He describes a complex alternative future society. That is the novels success. On that he gets from me ten out of ten.
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By all reports, this worldbuilding translates very well to the screen. And I share your trepidation for how Villeneuve plans to handle the trippy shit in the 2nd half of the book. Most importantly, he wants to (and I want him to) adapt the second book as well, which makes a satisfying epilogue to the story, turning the white saviour story right on its head.

The Lynch movie looks amazing but the writing and plotting and editing and most of the acting is just not good.
 
shifting gears said:
It’s brilliant, how anyone could describe it as crap is bizarre, and I’m a fully paid up fanboy of the original who was prepared for disappointment
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the thing that disappointed me a bit at the time was the music, which was so abstract compared to the complex melodic majesty of the original but in retrospect zimmer had to do something very different to such an iconic score
 
lefteri said:
the thing that disappointed me a bit at the time was the music, which was so abstract compared to the complex melodic majesty of the original but in retrospect zimmer had to do something very different to such an iconic score
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I found that the less iconic score in the sequel was offset by the bowel-quaking bassy blasts at points, I actually laughed in the cinema at one point when I first went to see it!
 
Gromit said:
The Barons character is one of a sadist, a glutton, a pederast, a megalomaniac who does everything to gross excess.

It's not that he's evil cause he gay. It's that everything he does is done in an evil way. If he was straight he do it in an evil way, if he was Christian he'd do it in an evil way, if he made a cup of tea he'd... you get the point.
Being a pederast was probably seen as the worst way he could express sexuality.
Let's not forget Frank Herbert wrote about religion in a round about way. Religion and pederasts. Could there be a connection?
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Completely by the by, you get an origin story for the Baron's sores and health problems in one of the Brian Herbert prequel novels. I didn't see those books as quite the trainwreck most people do, though there's certainly not much subtlety in the writing, to say the least. I'm not sure there's much of a spoilers issue anyway, but let's say the sores and the rest are as a result of a 'heterosexual crime'.
 
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Crispy said:
I downloaded one of those books on a whim, just to see if they're as bad as they say they are. They are. I do not consider them part of the same world.
Bad fanfiction.
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I'm not going to mount much of a defence, they suffer massively in comparison to the proper series. I just thought the prequels did a reasonable plotwise and they'd be in the middle of the pack if you were given a bunch of random SF/Fantasy books to read. The ones written as a sequel to chapterhouse dune were every bit as bad as everyone suggests.

In admitting I could stomach the plot driven prequels - here we go, amnesty for unpopular opinions thread - I thought the Frank Herbert books themselves, at least after the original novel had a bit too much 'internal dialogue', to the point where my 20 odd year old self might actually have given up on chapterhouse dune. I get that you had a variety of people who through their advanced training were interacting, strategising and seeking advantage - in fact that's what the later novels came to be about (from what I remember a few decades on). It just got a bit... go on I'll say it .... boring.
 
Crispy said:
By all reports, this worldbuilding translates very well to the screen. And I share your trepidation for how Villeneuve plans to handle the trippy shit in the 2nd half of the book. Most importantly, he wants to (and I want him to) adapt the second book as well, which makes a satisfying epilogue to the story, turning the white saviour story right on its head.

The Lynch movie looks amazing but the writing and plotting and editing and most of the acting is just not good.
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The scene when the Bene Gesserit appraise Paul was handled pretty well in this version i felt, probably a good indicator of how the trippiness will be portrayed
 
That was actually pretty good, my wife who has never read the books or seen the first film though it was good. Not sure how they will fill the rest of the first book into a second film.
 
Oh for fucks sake, I'll go and watch it I suppose - beaten down by the onslaught of positive response [/grizzle grumble]
 
lefteri said:
the thing that disappointed me a bit at the time was the music, which was so abstract compared to the complex melodic majesty of the original but in retrospect zimmer had to do something very different to such an iconic score
Click to expand...

The weak part for me was the catch-up with Deckard
 
Almost finished Dune. On the sexual politics its very much early 60s. Baron Harkonnen is into young boys. Shows how evil he is. This comes across as the kind of early 60s hippy homophobia.

In the novel men are men and women are women. Ying and Yang Hippy stuff runs through it. Not that the women don't have power or influence. It's that they do it in "feminine" way. So partly enlightened.

Though in end its a man Paul who is destined to be the one who can plumb the drug induced depths and transcend this. Which the Bene Gesserit woman only caste have been planning for centuries to produce. Through breeding and genetics. Knowing only a man could be the one.

Load of stuff about race consciousness and human race invigorating itself through this social conflict. Harks back to ideas of oriental decadence. The Imperial society had run its course and the human race needed reinvigorating. Its very top down. Only elite few really understand what is going on. Those with the psychic training.

Given the time it was written in could also be about weakening of human race through post war consumerist society. There was a time pre Thatcher / Reagan where it appeared that the managed post war affluent society was the future.

I'm curious how he's going to make a film of this.
 
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shifting gears said:
It’s brilliant, how anyone could describe it as crap is bizarre, and I’m a fully paid up fanboy of the original who was prepared for disappointment
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Thing is it ends badly. Like it was set up for a sequel. 'Blade Runner: Tales of the Replicant Resistance'. And yes i know the original had an ambiguous ending but that was justified over the 'are they both replicants' and 'how long will they live' issues. OK to end on those ones IMO.
 
So I watched the movie in France (a week ago at a film festival).

The hand signals, fremen and Chakobsa languages were all translated into French subtitles so I missed bits of dialogue.
As a book buff that didn't affect my understanding too much but means I need a second viewing when it opens in the UK 😄.

Was expecting the other half (a Dune virgin) not to like it...

... But she did. Even at 2.5 hours in length. Which is a lot of screen time for her in one sitting.

It's visually stunning. Well acted. Covers enough of the lore for a movie but imo not enough of the lore to justify a long drawn out 2.5 hours. I'm still trying to work out what he actually used all that time for if he only progresses the story as far as Paul entering exile. I need second viewing to judge it properly.
 
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