I just bumped into this and know nothing about it. Hope it's gonna be better than the previous versions, although I've always thought that "Dune" is a particularly hard novel to adapt.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
I know someone who was offered the script and turned it down because he knew nothing about the books at all. Which is admirable i guess. But man...what a missed opportunity!
Posted by the_Somalian (Member # 6688) on :
I like Peter Berg--he's another decent actor who's made it as a director. A while back ago I posted the rumors that were circulating about this--one of which mentioned Berg utterly adoring the novel(s).
I think the first book can serve as the basis for a two-part epic. You can't whittle down the story of "Dune" to two and a half hours without losing much or coming off as rushed/incoherent. There's enough plot in the first novel to fuel a 20 part mini-series, so I'm kind of skeptical that Berg can pull this off.
Posted by Telperion the Silver (Member # 6074) on :
How neat. David Lynch's version is still awesome, and deals with the Noble Houses better, while the sci-fi channel miniseries shows Fremen culture better.
Though the second miniseries, Children of Dune (a combo of Dune Messiah and CoD), was really really close to the books. I was impressed. Music was awesome too. Of course they got Paul's son all wrong, as he never knew Leto II was going to exist because he was just like himself.
Posted by Sachiko (Member # 6139) on :
I think of the two film versions of Dune as being symbiotic, or something. Each one offers whatever the other lacks.
I really liked James MacAvoy in the recent version.
Posted by swbarnes2 (Member # 10225) on :
quote:Originally posted by Telperion the Silver: Of course they got Paul's son all wrong, as he never knew Leto II was going to exist because he was just like himself.
Well, I think they had to do something like that, because the point of the first few books is that Paul is really screwing things up. Humanity is, and should be, like an ecosystem...very complex, with lots of different parts doing their own thing, not locked down into the pattern that the guild, or the Bene Gesserit, or any precient Emperor wants. Paul isn't even able to control the Fremen, they end up jihading despite his attempts to turn them from that.
Paul's increasing reliance on precience is locking down the very future of humanity, which will lead to their end. (It's a weakness of the books, I think, that the author isn't able to dramatize this well, he just has the characters say it a lot) Leto is going to fix that, but it's going to take a lot of time, a lot of chaos, and a big sacrifice on his part, so it's useful to have him poking up every now and then to hint to the audience that Paul is doing something wrong.
How effectively the miniseries got that across is a different question.
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