Dune (2020) - Denis Villeneuve

[Destination]

There's no mention of Alia who is quite an important character.

Hardly an important character, when she isn't born until part 2.
There are several they will introduce after the 'killings off' of the first part.
Most of the cast die for goodness sake.

 

[Somnambulist]

That's a very good point. Interesting

Actually those aren’t the Hark troops thinking about it (and remembering the Hark troops are all bald), it’s the Sardaukar the Emperor lends him. Ritual is part of their thing to make them feel important (deliberately done to help distract them from the inhumanity of their ‘selection process’).

There's no mention of Alia who is quite an important character.

If they cut the film before the two-year jump she will have just been born (just lol at the audience meeting a newborn with full Other Memory).

 

[SixTwoSix]

Seems Warner Brothers is annoying the dune fans using the trailer in fair use that are publicising the movie.. simply using the trailer ends up in a copyright strike..

Quinn’s Ideas is an extremely good sci-fi YouTube channel.

I saw this yesterday from him, it's a real shame, nothing he is doing is damaging the movie, if anything, it's free publicity for WB.

I've seen a lot of extra Dune content via creators on Youtube, his is hands down the best i've come across. Dune is a big universe and my knowledge of it is firmly around the first book, lynch movie, etc. He provides a great fleshing out for someone who hasn't had chance to check out the other books.

He's also got me interested in Hyperion with his videos.

 

[Efour]

I also listen to him, started back in the game of thrones days. I've tried foundation because of him and god it was boring, ill have to try again.

I find him to be incredibly whiney sometimes, that video above especially.

I still very much rate him though, well worth going through his years of content.

 

[gettothechopper]

three songs from the HZ soundtrack here
https://www.youtube.com/user/WaterTowerWB

 

[mid_gen]

Impressed with that trailer. Herbert was great at building a world, but his dialogue was pretty awful, this could be a film adaptation that is a big improvement over the source material. Visually it certainly looks great.

I'm guessing from the trailer that the split is somewhere in that gap....I suspect the film closes on a battle scene where they're fighting the guerilla war against the Harkonnen.

 

[Sankari]

It looks feisty, but I am really missing the noir-baroque aesthetic of Lynch's version, which was glorious and otherworldly. This one just looks like the producers reached into their bag of stock designs and pulled out 'generic future #5.'

 

[PlacidCasual]

@Sankari That's a really interesting point. I haven't seen enough to know that you're right about the generic bland future but the grand opulence of Lynch's Dune does nicely reflect the indulgence and self satisfaction of the millennia old galactic empire. There is a moral decline evident in the sets of the lynch film. Harkonnen inhumanity in the brutalist sets. The Emperor has overly detailed and elaborate sets of a dynasty who has been in power to long and lost touch. The Atredies Caladan sets are reminiscent of a grand family with discipline. The set design works really well in that regard.

 

[Sankari]

@Sankari That's a really interesting point. I haven't seen enough to know that you're right about the generic bland future but the grand opulence of Lynch's Dune does nicely reflect the indulgence and self satisfaction of the millennia old galactic empire. There is a moral decline evident in the sets of the lynch film. Harkonnen inhumanity in the brutalist sets. The Emperor has overly detailed and elaborate sets of a dynasty who has been in power to long and lost touch. The Atredies Caladan sets are reminiscent of a grand family with discipline. The set design works really well in that regard.

@PlacidCasual in sensible comment shocker!

I agree with everything you say here. The Lynch designs achieved iconic status because they were intelligent and meaningful, reflecting a solid grasp of the source material.

 

[SixTwoSix]

We get a hint of the Caladan designs in the teaser with the box scene, it looks vaguely reminiscent of Lynch's Dune but it's such a small glance, it's really hard to tell the overall aesthetic, for that part at least.

 

[Somnambulist]

I’ve always found Dune hard to visualise in my head. 20,000+ years in the future is no minor leap forward, it’s as far from us as we are to humans in the upper Palaeolithic/late Stone Age. If you go too weird/abstract you run the risk of it entering Fifth Element runway haute couture silliness and if you go too familiar it just comes across as near-future.

People are talking a lot about the immense scale in the film which we’ve only touched on from the trailer footage. We know the Harkonnens style is brutalist, minimalist and oppressive for both Giedi Prime and Arrakeen though, and this is where much of the book takes place. I guess outrageous opulence if it’s to be found might be in part 2 when Shaddam IV turns up, since the Lynch film put him in way earlier than the book.

 

[Destination]

It is also, like WH40k a universe where they already had their AI war, and banned them as a result.
So we have great machines, which are not computers, mentats doing the same task and role etc.
I think sidestepping the superAI we would expect in the future is a good idea for any future sci-fi setting, else the humans have no real point. (the Culture being an exception)

 

[alchal]

It is also, like WH40k a universe where they already had their AI war, and banned them as a result.
So we have great machines, which are not computers, mentats doing the same task and role etc.
I think sidestepping the superAI we would expect in the future is a good idea for any future sci-fi setting, else the humans have no real point. (the Culture being an exception)

Think it's fair to say 40k takes a lot of inspiration for its setting with regards to humanity, no bad thing either.

 

[Efour]

Morgan freeman to play Shaddam Corino 4th.

You read it here 1st.

 

[Somnambulist]

It is also, like WH40k a universe where they already had their AI war, and banned them as a result.
So we have great machines, which are not computers, mentats doing the same task and role etc.
I think sidestepping the superAI we would expect in the future is a good idea for any future sci-fi setting, else the humans have no real point. (the Culture being an exception)

As an aside, the Brian Herbert Skynet minus-time travel crap does not exist to me. All the books outside the original 6 are fan-fic rubbish. Frank was clear in his writing that the Butlerian Jihad was about ending the human reliance and outsourcing of thinking to machines that led to the creation of a stagnant and apathetic society that was easily manipulated by those in control of said machines.

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

The way we’re doing already - happened much faster than Frank envisaged! Even the Lynch movie had a slightly dumbed down take on this in the extended intro which was cut from the theatrical version:

At no point was did we have any of that Omnius and Erasmus gonna exterminate mankind and were the real faces behind Daniel and Marty retcon junk. Frank was even going to write a prequel book before his demise with the author of the Dune Encyclopedia about the Jihad which again reinforced that it was a conflict rooted in philosophy rather than a physical one against generic genocidal robots. The Dune Encyclopedia is amazing (as it’s written as a fallible in-universe document that openly misrepresents known history from the books and adds historical embellishments making it feel very in-universe) but Brian Herbert won’t let it be reprinted because the stuff in it is in conflict with his awful retconning of Dune history.

But yes the series is all about human variance and various untapped mental and physical potential we could have, which is also why there’s no intelligent aliens or even any traces of them (outside of the sandworms whom Leto II is certain were brought to Arrakis as a foreign species long before it was discovered by the empire).

 

[Destination]

Yes Brian is an awful gimp

 

[SixTwoSix]

Even grumpy pants CD has hope for Dune, lol

 

[Somnambulist]

Apparently the studio like the film so much and are confident about it they’ve green-lit part 2, with Denis beginning work on it already.

 

[Destination]

I must admit, I was confused, as I thought they'd already made both parts at the same time, and were going to release them a year apart.
Its why i was very vexed over why certain characters were being stealthy hidden from us, but it simply appears they might not have been cast yet.

 

[SixTwoSix]

I must admit, I was confused, as I thought they'd already made both parts at the same time, and were going to release them a year apart.
Its why i was very vexed over why certain characters were being stealthy hidden from us, but it simply appears they might not have been cast yet.

The early reports and production information did state it was all being done at the same time, they've changed tact along the way somewhere and not really made anyone aware.

I do worry due to the day 1 release on HBOMAX too that a lot of folks will simply pirate, killing a lot of revenue and making a sequel DOA