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Ok, I read this story about a week ago and while (being a huge Dune fan) found it interesting, I wasn't particularly excited given the previous attempts to adapt the behemoth that is Dune. If you've seen either David Lynch's fascinating train wreck or the commendable yet flawed mini-series with the over excitable costume designer with he big hat fetish, you'll know what I mean.
That was before today, because today I watched The Kingdom and holy crap, he just might do a GOOD adaptation! Ignoring for a second The Kingdom's action elements, that while very good and engaging (worthy of a Ridley Scott film) do not dominate the picture, which is mostly focused on the people and the emotion - the true mark of a good actor turned Director.
While nobody who has read the book (and has at least with half a brain still working) will expect a "perfect adaptation" because it's not really possible, but based on what little he's said about it and his track record I think it may be something special. After all, who would have expected a cheezy, B-movie horror director to turn around a produce the masterpiece that the The Lord Of The Rings?
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I would argue that "half a brain sill working" is about the best one can hope for, after slogging through Dune.
Registered: Mar 1999
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I gave up on the 5th book, which introduced all the same kinds of organizations with slightly different names, after the Emperor's death in book 4. Maybe it got better after that, but I don't have the stomach to continue. The story was rather nicely completed in book 4, I reckoned.
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I like the original Dune, and always will. I watched it at the golden movie age, 13. First played the awesome strategy game with a friend, then procured the movie. Best combo ever.
"We have wormsigns the size of which GOD has never seen!" "I want to spit once on your head, Jessica. Just some spittle, in your face! ... What a luxury." "The stillsuit will retain all your moisture in desert fashion. Your feces will be stored here, here, up here, and in this little pocket here. Also here. Enjoy." "The weirding module gun reacts to power words, killing words. Hm. Rooooooxaanne! *kaboom*"
No, I love it. And the "Shai-Hulud" worm suit worn in the halloween episode of "Chuck" validates it, binds it together.
Registered: Aug 1999
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I much preferred the Scifi mini-series over David Lynch's motion picture. While the deleted scenes/expanded introduction from the movie make it a little better, I felt the mini-series (both Dune and Children of Dune) were much more faithful to the books.
I read all of Frank Herbert's Dune series. It took me two tries. First was back in 8th grade and I made it from Dune to about the middle of God Emperor. Then right after high school and the release of Chapterhouse Dune I went back and read the entire series.
I refuse, refuse, REFUSE to read the prequels because I feel that Kevin J. Anderson is a hack that cannot write anything original to save his life. He's the reason I stopped reading the Star Wars novels. Star Wars - An epic story set in an entire galaxy and what does Anderson do? All of the characters know or are related to or connected to all the other characters. Instead of doing an original story he re-introduces the Death Star not once but TWICE! He even lifted lines of dialog from the movies and passed them off as new dialog in his stories.
Uh, what were we talking about again?
Registered: Feb 2004
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I did read the Dune-prequels and the man just can't write anything but shallow, formulaic pulp.
He and Brian Herbert seem to love spamming pointless and childish cruelty for effect, like having Gurney's hatred of the Harkonnen stem from Beast Rabban drugging him and then letting an entire platoon rape his sister, before Rabban goes in himself and then finishes by strangling her. Because Gurney had punched him once. Over the course of the books Beast Rabban also strangles his own father and later he strangles the inventor of the only no-ship in existence. Without aquiring any blueprints. Then he crashes it into the Bene Gesserit's planet, beyond repair.
They also turn the Baron Harkonnen from a machiavellian, ever-patient supervillain into a bumbling, shortsighted idiot, and they elaborate on him and Reverend Mother Gaius conceiving Jessica together. How? Why through violent rape of course.
But enough about rape, what time frame are we talking about for the movie? 2010? (Weird that we are soon living in the year 2010 by the way)
Registered: Aug 1999
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I'm about two thirds of the way though reading "Sandworms of Dune" and like most of the other Brian Herbert/Anderson books it's pretty turgid stuff. I'm just curious as to how it all ends. What gets on my nerves is that they waste whole chapters on plot lines that are totally unnecessary to the plot and somehow manage to do less in half a book than Frank Herbert would have done in a single paragraph. If you read the Dune books again you should see that surprisingly little actually happens "on screen" (or whatever the literary equivalent is.) He skips over years of Paul and Jessica with the Fremen, the move from Caladan to Arrakis and even the final battle at the end, yet you never miss them. Brian and Kevin on the other hand would give a stroke by stroke account that would bore you to tears. I think it would have been SO much better if the entire book just stuck with the no-ship and ignored all the shenanigans with the New Sisterhood, Ix, Guild, new Facedancers and most especially the identity of the Enemy should have been kept a mystery to the very last moment, rather than blowing it way to early so they could have a weird little plot with the Baron's Ghola.
Anyway, for those who never got past "God Emperor", Heretics and Chapterhouse are very much worth it, if only for the character Miles Teg. Easily my favourite character out of all the books.
As far as the previous adaptations are concerned, I rate the Children of Dune mini as my clear fav, with Alec Newman doing surprisingly well as the Preacher. The 2000 mini suffered mostly form some poor casting choices, a silly wardrobe and a painfully fake desert backdrop painting, most of which was corrected in CoD. As for the Lynch film, while it is the least faithful to the book and easily the most bizarre (par for the course for any Lynch flick) it had a superb cast. Oddly enough only Patrick Stewart seamed miscast as the roguish troubadour warrior while the likes of Brad Dourif, Freddie Jones and Francesca Annis were PERFECT for the roles.
As far as this new one goes, I think Berg has another film to do between what he's doing now and Dune, so it'd probably be more like 2011, depending on how much post production gets done. On my personal wish list for this film is to finally see a properly done ornithopter, a "realistic" Lasbeam and to see Herbert's ideas of humanity as an ecological force and Fremen ingenuity faithfully represented. Also, the Sardaukar should be hard bastards, so when the Fremen outfight them it should be all the more stunning.
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I actually liked the 2000 miniseries' artistic choices a lot. The choices were budget-conscious, but I got a very strong overall feeling from the wardrobe, camera angles, and even the unconvincing desert that I was watching a play on a stage rather than a movie, and that this was a deliberate choice. Speaking as a theatre guy myself, I quite enjoyed the motif of us being "narrated" the story much as a chorus or fourth-wall character would in a five-act play.
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I think I disliked it for the same exact reasons that you liked it. Everything felt so much like a theatrical production that it just took me out of the story. The siech orgy is a prime example and just screamed theatre to me, with the funky primary coloured lights and the exaggerated choreography...oh and the fresh faced Fremen with the squeaky voices and public schoolboy accents was a huge mistake. I suppose the my main gripe was a total lack of the subtlety I kind of hoped for given the source material. Theatre doesn't do subtle.
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The Sardaukar shocktroops where dressed like 18th century romanticist ponces. I expected them to come at the fremen with sharpened paint brushes and codpiece thrusts.
I prefer the David Lynch-style "Toxic Avengers". Although what I'd really like to see would be a rendition of the PC-game version of Sardaukar:
Registered: Aug 1999
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That's slightly too mechanised for the Dune Universe, remember the great convention. Looking too machine-like is a good way to get yourself nuked! Besides, shields render armour like that redundant.
Besides, it's not the hardware that makes Sardaukar or Fremen so formidable, it's the sheer physical fighting skill. Dune is about the limits to which the human body can be pushed, not how advanced technology can be made. Prime examples of this is would be the Mentats, Tleilaxu, Guild Navigators and of course the Bene Gesserit.
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Yeah, isn't the whole point that humanity fought a war with AI machines ages ago, and had since reformed to never allow ANY human-looking or human-thinking machines to exist again? Also, the major plot has something to do with keeping humanity from self-extinction somehow..?
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