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One part of me is groaning, "Oh no, not another remake!" and yet, there is another part of me that is drawn to this like a moth to a flame.
Posts: 631 | Registered: Oct 1999
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Hopefully it'll be better, but if a miniseries with more running time falls flat and stupid, how well can a 21/2 hour movie do?
Posts: 1236 | Registered: Mar 2002
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David Lynch's version was a hundred times better than the miniseries -- if for no other reason than it FELT like Dune. It took place in an epic-feeling universe. It was alive.
Was it Dune? Not exactly. Was if flawed? Oh, yeah. But it was at least *interesting*.
Watching that miniseries was like watching paint dry.
I loved the way David Lynch's movie looked, at least. The designs, the sets, the ships -- they were works of art.
My best-case scenario would be if they kept most of Lynch's designs but made the story totally different. (Closer to the novel.)
Really, though, if I'm being honest -- I don't know that Dune is actually adaptable. It is this huge impenetrable complicated WALL of words. I'm not sure I believe there's a screenwriter alive with the skill to pull this off.
Maybe they should just let it be a book and call it a day.
Posts: 2267 | Registered: May 2005
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I agree with TL. Lynch did a pretty darned good job, considering what he had to work with. Of course I have gripes with his interpretation, but there hasn't been a book-to-movie yet that I've been completely happy with. And there truly was FAR too much material to put even half of the book in.
My first exposure to Dune was the expanded "Smithee" version that was broadcast over network television in 1985. We've been able to date it based on commercials in the videotaped version, and thank goodness someone finally saw reason and released the Extended to DVD, my tapes wouldn't have lasted much longer! I hadn't even read the book yet when I first saw the movie at age 12. And I honestly don't think I could have gotten through the book without having seen the movie - at least not for many years. With the movie, though, I was addicted in high school.
I went into the miniseries hesitant because Lynch's casting is so indelibly burned into my mind. I couldn't finish watching. There were times I wondered if the filmmakers had even bothered to read the book. Giedi Prime..... PINK?????
Anyway, I must now go watch the Extended again... Posts: 4515 | Registered: Jul 2004
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I disagree. The 1984 version was almost worthless to anybody who wasn't already a fan. I watched it with my friend who explained everything to me, and it still made no sense.
I actually liked the two SciFi miniseries. I've only watched them once, though. I should watch them again.
Edit: I had read none of the books when I watched the 1984 version, and had read them all several times when I watched the other version, so it's not a fair comparison.
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The 1984 version sucked. The mini-series, on the other hand, is actually what introduced me to Dune, and now I'm a huge fan of the 6 original novels because of it.
I look forward to a new adaptation, and I also hope that SciFi will make mini-series of books 4-6 in the near future.
Posts: 1569 | Registered: Dec 2004
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I remember watching the mini-series and hating what they did with the Fremen eyes. I had imagined them completely different when I read the novels.
And then there's the spice orgies, which I thought meant they just got really high. My innocent brain couldn't fathom a literal sexfest that was later portrayed on the screen. Posts: 1236 | Registered: Mar 2002
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The 1984 version brought something home to me that I'd missed when I read the books. It wasn't until I saw the movie that I realized what a bloody fascist Paul was.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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The '84 version also had it rain on Arrakis: something that would have killed the worms, destroyed the spice cycle, and ended human civilization.
But I have to admit that the rain scene amuses me to no end. I love when Alia says, "And hoooow can this beeee?? For he is the Kwisatz Haderach!" and Paul just looks like he's confused or stoned or something.
Posts: 1569 | Registered: Dec 2004
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Watching 1984 movie was what made me want to read the book - to find out what the heck was meant to be going on. IMO, the Lynch film is very confusing, it feels strangely over long - yet it’s really far too short, often dull and the special effects are distractingly unspecial. And it messed up the ending. Even Patrick Stewart can't make me like that movie.
The mini-series was flawed, but at least it told the story in a way that could be followed by someone who had never read the book - which is what an adaptation is supposed to do, after all.
But a new movie, made by the right people, has the potential be amazing. I think that Dune is actually very cinematic - there's atmosphere, epicness and great characters. I'd love to see what the folks at Weta could do with the worms.
Posts: 1528 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Weta? Well shoot, if they're involved...At least it'll look damn purty. Hopefully it'll have a story too, but it may end up like the Final Fantasy movies in that regard. Posts: 1236 | Registered: Mar 2002
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I hope that a new movie can take good bits from both Lynch's version and from the mini-series. I think both had some good points (the mini-series more than the movie, in my opinion), as well as some bad points (there was a lot of stuff in the movie that irritated me as a fan). Of course my opinion has to be taken in context. I first read Dune like 6 months before the mini-series came out. I saw the mini-series and then afterwards rented the movie. The mini-series felt to me more like how my mind has seen Dune when I read it, and the movie felt off a lot of the time. Then again, it could be because I saw the mini-series first. *shrugs* As I said, I hope this new one if it happens can take the good bits from each one and make an awesome product. We'll see though.
Posts: 1960 | Registered: May 2005
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Anybody making a new Dune has the advantage of knowing that no creative human endeavor can possibly fail as badly as the Sci-Fi miniseries, so they cannot possibly fail to improve the franchise.
Nowhere to go but up!
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I LOVE the David Lynch movie. "He who controls the Spice contols the Universe!"
I think Lynch's movie gets the feel of the Nobility right and the Sci-fi miniseries gets the Fremen right (or at least a bit better than the movie).
The second miniseries, Children of Dune, was brilliant (or at least 10x better than the first one). The only part that they could have done better on was explaning that Paul Jr. was the one Paul Sr. did not detect, because Paul Jr. was also (like the Guild Navigators) precient in the womb. That and they could have done better showing that Paul Jr. was merging with a ton of baby worms. If you hadn't read the books you wouldn't know what was going on.
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Telperion the Silver: That and they could have done better showing that Paul Jr. was merging with a ton of baby worms. If you hadn't read the books you wouldn't know what was going on.
That's part of the reason why I, unlike most people it seems, like the "Dune" miniseries more than "Children of Dune". I watched the latter with someone who hadn't read the books, and I found that I had to explain a lot. I don't think that "Children" presented the story well enough for someone who hasn't read the books to fully understand what's going on, especially regarding Leto II and the Golden Path.
Posts: 1569 | Registered: Dec 2004
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I think that is a valid point, neo-dragon. While I really like Children of Dune, I do believe part of it was because I knew what was going on. Someone who hadn't read Dune Messiah and Children of Dune would not have.
The David Lynch film was just a complete and horrid travesty. It was a mutilation of Herbert's work, it was terrible. I had read the book first and loved it. That's why I wanted to watch the movie. I understood what was going on. But the choices made (like making the wierding way have to do with voice, or having he baron place 'heart plugs' on people, or the strange Mad-Max style makeup on some of the characters) made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Seriously. It's been 15 years, and I still hate that film.
Posts: 1346 | Registered: Jun 1999
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But those are all reasons I love the movie. The look of the movie was just awesome, the costumes, the music, the sweatiness of the actors, etc...
And I liked how Lynch showed how the Guild was the power behind the thrown and when Paul took the Water of Life and became (more than) the Kwisatz Haderach it shows a Guild command center and a Navigator burning up...showing how Paul had taken control of Fate away from the Guild.
Of course the whole weirding moduels were stupid. An interesting consept, a telepathic weapon, but still no point to change so much from the book like that.
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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I read the book after overhearing parts of the miniseries, and then I watched all of the mini-series.
But after being intensely interested in Dune for a few weeks, I'm surprised at how little of it has stuck with me.
If I ever join Netflix, I would want to check out Children of Dune. Maybe. I liked the books (Messiah and parts of ... now I'm confused... there was a book I didn't finish reading.)
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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What I find interesting (having grown up on the Dune movie, Dad was a big fan) is that I assumed that Paul was a hero.
But after I grew up I began to question Paul as good guy. The dude overthrew the legitimate government of the Galaxy.
(possible spoilers) It wasn't until I read Dune Messiah that I saw that Paul was a monster! As soon as Paul claimed the Imperial Throne two thirds of the Galaxy refused to accept him. So what did Paul do? He released his Fremen hordes and killed billions of people in a genocidal war of conquest.
Of course this was because Paul saw a dead end in the future, no future at all... and he determined that the Human Race was on a path to extintion in some distant future... All this was to cause some kind of change, shake up fate a bit, and eventually the path to salvation was the Golden Path that Paul Jr. would adopt.
I can't remember now what the threat was...either a slow stagnation or something else...
But either way, Paul Sr. was a butcher.
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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well, actually, Paul saw the Fremen Jihad as an inevitable outcome. That humanity, as a single organism, felt it's own need to explode out in violent war, and the concomittant genetic mixing and 'refreshing/revitalizing' that it would lead to. That doesn't abdicate his responsibility. But that is, in fact, what was going on, in the series. 'There are no innocents anymore', since we are an amalgamation of our ancestral memories and are acting in harmony with almost-Jungian subconscious unity.
Posts: 1346 | Registered: Jun 1999
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quote:Originally posted by IanO: well, actually, Paul saw the Fremen Jihad as an inevitable outcome. That humanity, as a single organism, felt it's own need to explode out in violent war, and the concomittant genetic mixing and 'refreshing/revitalizing' that it would lead to. That doesn't abdicate his responsibility. But that is, in fact, what was going on, in the series. 'There are no innocents anymore', since we are an amalgamation of our ancestral memories and are acting in harmony with almost-Jungian subconscious unity.
Aahhhh...yes that was it. Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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quote:Originally posted by IanO: I think that is a valid point, neo-dragon. While I really like Children of Dune, I do believe part of it was because I knew what was going on. Someone who hadn't read Dune Messiah and Children of Dune would not have.
When I saw Children of Dune, I had only read the first book in the series, and I didn't think it was all that hard to understand. I certainly remember enjoying it, at any rate. Personally, I would take the miniseries over the movie any day.
Posts: 2437 | Registered: Apr 2005
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The special effects weren't that great but the "Dune" Movie is still my favorite over the mini-series that I like as well. Actually, I like the style of the movie much more as it really brings out the dark, dusty, and ancient feel of the Desert planet. The mini-series was way too clean.
As far as not understanding what was going on for the movie version, I saw it when I was a teenager and understood most of it just fine having never read the books. I didn't read any of the books, and then only the first three before getting extremely tired of the series, until I was in my mid 20s.
To this day I still don't understand what confused people so much? The movie was a simple sci-fi story as far as I was concerned, not much different than the Star Wars Luke Skywalker story line. Luke/Paul were young men who didn't understand the world outside their own. They are transported to alien worlds/lifestyles. Each are given supernatural power through The Force/Spice and find heroic destiny. Both fight a Galactice Empire with the use of Rebels/Fremen in order to bring a new order to the universe. It just wasn't something that made me scratch my head as someone who had never read the books.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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I remember being so disappointed by the movie and just getting so annoyed at the Fremen eyes in the miniseries that I stoped watching it. It seemed to me the movie was too caught up in in having special effects for their own sake, like when they hauled in a giant Guild Navigator, I remember wondering how much of their budget went on that just so they could have something that fitted in with the Jabba the Hutts and such like that were the flavour at the time. Pointless.
Posts: 867 | Registered: Dec 2003
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Dagnabbitt, mph! Now you’ve got me all curious and I’m going to have to go reread “Dune.” Because I have a copy of “Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials” and he has a painting of a Guild Steersman in there. So now I’m all curious as to how much of a description is in the book and how much was Wayne Barlowe’s own wonderful imagination.
Posts: 631 | Registered: Oct 1999
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There's no description at all of the navigators in Dune. We do see one later, however, as a member of the conspiracy. It didn't look much like the one in the movie, though.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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You know, they should abandon making "Dune" into a movie. You simply can't do justice to the book that way or, more importantly, make much of a movie.
The story in Dune is involving, sure, but its outlines is what Hollywood immediately zeroes in on to the neglect of everything else that makes us care about the story, like the various intricacies of the universe that Herbert created. For example, in both adaptations, the "spice" came off as a mere mcguffin whereas in the novel it is something utterly pervasive.
I think the only way to truly do justice to the novel is a tv series comprised of at enough episodes containing everything in the novel that is fleshed out without the overall plot being attenuated the least bit.
For instance, you can fashion an entire episode out of the trip that the Duke, Paul, Kynes and Gurney make to the spice mining unit. Kynes sizing up the Duke and Paul can provide for a lot of tension--and of course his realization that Paul might indeed be the Mahdi as Paul unknowingly gives off all the signs. The climax of the episode would be the emergence of the worm!
Another episode: The death of Liet Kynes. The episode simply begins with the Harkonnens dropping him in the middle of the desert. Kynes is walking, tired--falls down. He remains fallen, and suddenly hears the voice of his father, who is standing few feet away, amused. Here we take advantage of the fact that imaginary elder Kynes is lecturing his son to insert flashbacks that explain the elder Kynes's story as told in the appendix of "Dune." The substance of the episode would be these flashbacks through which we learn elder Liet's vision for Dune, the Fremen's embracement of his vision, the birth, and his rearing in Fremen ways. The flashbacks would contain the death of elder Kynes and the continuation of his work by his son. All through out these flashbacks we keep getting jolted back to Liet Kynes on the desert--dying, his imaginary father babbling about ecology (his dialogue would have to written in such that it smoothly transitions into the flashbacks.) And tragically, the episode concludes with the explosion of the spice field that was burgeoning under Liet all along.
quote:You know, they should abandon making "Dune" into a movie. You simply can't do justice to the book that way or, more importantly, make much of a movie.
As long as there's money to be made making Dune movies, they'll make Dune movies.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:You know, they should abandon making "Dune" into a movie. You simply can't do justice to the book that way or, more importantly, make much of a movie.
As long as there's money to be made making Dune movies, they'll make Dune movies.
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yes, it is no easy task, it must be thought of as a quest. but who could suceed in this epic journey?
Posts: 856 | Registered: Jun 2007
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