Dune 2020 by Villeneuve has finished filming

[conon394]

@Akar - sorry not much time for posting lately. But as already noted 15 million is not exactly a lot of people. Are we to assume all planets in the Empire are as thinly populated like just hardly the size off a major word city now?

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Messiah plots are so boring.

I kind of recall having my interest perk a bit at Paul POV parts toward the end where he watches his friends and family fade to believers and he's too cool with that. Could never figure out why there had to be a crusade outside of liberating Dune.

[Gaidin]

To be honest, 15 million people is not "A whole planet of people". Saudi Arabia and Australia, both not Planet-sized and mostly desert, have twice as many people.

For the environment of Arrakis in which the sandworms control 95% of the surface, the only cities are on the North Pole, the Fremen live in underground sietches, and the Baron thought they didn't even more than in the six figures of population for the Fremen. The Baron thought the population was in 5,000,000 in the towns and villages in the North Pole. He was shocked when Thufir Hawat told him there were 10,000,000 Fremen in the Sietches.

Now the question then comes up, how could 10,000,000 Fremen launch a Jihad that killed billions? Well, Paul had the Spacing guild by the balls and House Atreides and the Fremen were literally the only people that could use FTL travel unless they had his permission. I'm not sure the tactics he used, but as the Expanse series likes to say, throw a rock at it. It's heavy shields won't last long. Nevermind the specialized combat training Paul and Jessica had given the Fremen.

But the point is, given the living space available on Arrakis, 15,000,000 IS an entire planet of people. Unless you want to get eaten by a Sandworm.

[conon394]

Well, Paul had the Spacing guild by the balls

Although it seems a bit unlikely that the whole empire ran on just in time delivery. No stockpiles anywhere. I did not finish the books so I can't say if the story ever fleshes out war in orbit, but a a few atomic mines or missiles in orbit would seem like a good way to swat down a big huge transport ship full of a very limited supply of Freeman.

[Gaidin]

Although it seems a bit unlikely that the whole empire ran on just in time delivery. No stockpiles anywhere. I did not finish the books so I can't say if the story ever fleshes out war in orbit, but a a few atomic mines or missiles in orbit would seem like a good way to swat down a big huge transport ship full of a very limited supply of Freeman.

Limited Fremen whatever. He could make the spice go extinct.

And by the way... "did not finish the books" meh... this was in the very first book.

Conon. I get it. If you didn't want to read Dune say it. You didn't want to read Dune. It's alright. I forgive you for not knowing your crap. Just don't act like you know half the series at the same time.

[conon394]

Limited Fremen whatever. He could make the spice go extinct.

And by the way... "did not finish the books" meh... this was in the very first book.

Yes and his followers jihad is not going anywhere either. In fact unless he can magic up navigators he needs guild as much as they need him. Also you dodged the point nobody has a stock of spice?

[Gaidin]

Yes and his followers jihad is not going anywhere either. In fact unless he can magic up navigators he needs guild as much as they need him. Also you dodged the point nobody has a stock of spice?

Paul is quite happy living on Dune. The Guild literally can not live long term without spice. Thus, no matter their their stockpiles, and no matter their source of other stockpiles, since he has the ability to make it go extinct, he has them by the balls. The Guild will and does what he wants.

[Cyclops]

So I finally saw this, very enjoyable film.

It was a Villeneuve film so the colour orange, blunt ziggurats with open slits and dust all got a good run. The soundtrack was crashingly loud in the cinema, but that seems to be a feature and old mate really lets you know when you should be paying attention because your atoms start to separate.

It was extremely sincere and self serious. The material was treated reverentially. There were several moments which made no sense at all if you had not read the books:

spoiler

when Jessica interviews the Shadout Mapes (just Shadout Mapes in the film) the book features a very dense internal thought stream only hinted at in the film: the key phrase "it is a maker..." is included without elaboration, I suggest, as a wink from the director to the book-readers: "you know, I know you know, and you know I know you know-non readers can gtfo lol"

The material was condensed, with several interesting subplots deleted,

spoiler

..in particular the "who is the traitor" subplot, and Paul's status as a trainee Mentat

but the clarity and adherence to the pivotal Gom Jabbar scene and a few others show I think Villeneuve is committed to presenting the book as the book with its faults. That said some uncomfortable elements were removed or adapted

spoiler

with the reverend mother's misandry tempered, she does not admit she must have wanted Paul to fail as in the book, a 1970's bit that would generate aggro for the film

The changes are not execrable,

spoiler

the general BG survival template recast as a specific plan to save Paul, human centipede probably Wanda, Jomsviking Sardaukar, woman Liet Kynes, and the substitution of Chani's narrative intro instead of the multiple voiced (but most often Irulan) chapter supercripts

don't break the film. Some flavour text like references to the Orange Catholic Bible, Ix, Tleilax, whale fur etc have been omitted just to save time I suppose: the directors cut of this one will be 10 hours of Josh Brolin singing about CHOAM directorates and stock dividends. .

The visions of Jihad that plague Paul, their appearance and fulfilment in them are probably the least successful element but I think they still work. Once again if you read the book, dummy...(winks in French)

The casting seems perfect, stacking up charismatic stars like Brolin and Momoa really works well as you get a sense of strong characters with their own stories coinciding at this moment, rather than stock figures. The key relationship of mother and son works very well, Chalamet and Ferguson seem to be actors capable of playing their parts and surviving the close ups.

Mostly the faults of the film are the faults of the book: a doom laden heroic duke cannot survive, because bad men, but what if...?

Paul is quite happy living on Dune. The Guild literally can not live long term without spice. Thus, no matter their their stockpiles, and no matter their source of other stockpiles, since he has the ability to make it go extinct, he has them by the balls. The Guild will and does what he wants.

Its doesn't always make complete sense. The empire is 10,000 years old, but the Harkonnen and Atriedes feud remains strong, and with the same names. There was a way to space travel before spice but is been forgotten and is too dangerous because 10,000 years is to short to research a safe alternative. There's plenty of holes to pick in the story if you wan to, and the quality gets worse as the series goes on (and with Brian Herbert it all goes to ****).

What the story gives you is sci fi but with a stab at realistic human religion economics and politics rather than Ming the Merciless/Sheev grade political fairy tales ("its an empire, it must be bad, its a republic it must be hurr durr"), based on interesting past examples (above all the Ottoman Empire). Pauls drug induced messiahship is a newish twist in literature.

All in all this relic of the 1970's has been adapted into a palatable 2020's film.

[conon394]

but the clarity and adherence to the pivotal Gom Jabbar scene and a few others show I think Villeneuve is committed to presenting the book as the book with its faults. That said some uncomfortable elements were removed or adapted

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

God I hated that scene the the book. Villeneuve kept the stupid trap analogy. The test is pointless as soon as you add the Gom Jabbar Aron Ralston would disagree with the Mother

[Gaidin]

Its doesn't always make complete sense. The empire is 10,000 years old, but the Harkonnen and Atriedes feud remains strong, and with the same names. There was a way to space travel before spice but is been forgotten and is too dangerous because 10,000 years is to short to research a safe alternative. There's plenty of holes to pick in the story if you wan to, and the quality gets worse as the series goes on (and with Brian Herbert it all goes to ****).

What the story gives you is sci fi but with a stab at realistic human religion economics and politics rather than Ming the Merciless/Sheev grade political fairy tales ("its an empire, it must be bad, its a republic it must be hurr durr"), based on interesting past examples (above all the Ottoman Empire). Pauls drug induced messiahship is a newish twist in literature.

All in all this relic of the 1970's has been adapted into a palatable 2020's film.

There's a blue million ways they could figure out space travel at the speeds they need. If they want to invest in the computing technology. Which they fundamentally culturally don't.

So they need the fundamental prescience for their spaceliner pilots that the spice grants through the addiction. Herbert is hilariously, hideously vague about how the OC Bible's commandment came about(I care not about the KJA/BH trilogy), but with such a religiously important commandment in place and driven into their bones, and only one group willing to toy with it(as we see later in the books), and not to the extent that they're breaking commandment, as they still use Mentat trained BG to access their archives, this still puts the Spacing Guild in a hard place for over 10,000 years while House Atreides through Paul and Leto II basically has first them, and then the Known Universe in a vise grip.

They're not afraid of electronics. I can point you to at least a dozen ways they use basic electronics in highly advanced ways. They're afraid of computing. And to deal with FTL travel and not running through a star, they need computing to deal with pathing.

All in all, this 1970's book is something you should understand before you criticize it.

[Cyclops]

There's a blue million ways they could figure out space travel at the speeds they need. If they want to invest in the computing technology. Which they fundamentally culturally don't.

They got to Arrakis without spice, but I think its implied they used drugs as well as computers. In 10,000 years they might improve the former methods?

So they need the fundamental prescience for their spaceliner pilots that the spice grants through the addiction. Herbert is hilariously, hideously vague about how the OC Bible's commandment came about(I care not about the KJA/BH trilogy), but with such a religiously important commandment in place and driven into their bones, and only one group willing to toy with it(as we see later in the books), and not to the extent that they're breaking commandment, as they still use Mentat trained BG to access their archives, this still puts the Spacing Guild in a hard place for over 10,000 years while House Atreides through Paul and Leto II basically has first them, and then the Known Universe in a vise grip.

Yes the Brian Herbert stuff is trash.

I think elements like "10,000years" (Moorcock likes that number too), "Orange Catholic Bible" "Butlerian Jihad" etc are flavour text to justify a momentary plot nexus and I doubt the author had a fully fleshed back story: not every author is Tolkien and even Tolkien's legendarium collapsed under the weight of its internal illogic.

I always wondered how the Harkonnens managed a planet for eight decades without counting Fremen corpses. "Geez boss we killed another 5,000, this suggests the replacement rate of..." "Shaddupa you face, the Spice-a must flow!". Its strongly implied no one except the Fremen understand the connection between worms and spice. Was no one vaguely interested?

This makes for interesting stages of revelation (the chief theme of the book IMHO, human understanding and the use of drugs): the idea seers cannot see one another makes for an interesting poker match between the sightless, the semi-sighted and the true enlightened. However its bizarre to think an advanced spacefaring culture would harvest a drug for 10,000 years (or even hold the licence for 80 years) and not investigate the source.

House Atreides makes meaningful contact with the Fremen in a matter of weeks, and its heir joins that culture in under a year, but no one thought to do this for a hundred centuries? The BG cover story was there for centuries (as stated in the book) and Duncan Idaho does not even need it to be somewhat accepted: ditto Liet Kynes who (in the books) gained a pretty clear idea of the water/sand trout/worm/spice cycle.

Its a childish plot hole worth ignoring because the story is a cracker. Its not worth pretending there's logical explanations for everything, I'd rather accept its a lovely saga, and (as with the far superior Tolkien, and the comparable Lovecraft and Moorcock) I happily let them slide because I really enjoy the ride.

They're not afraid of electronics. I can point you to at least a dozen ways they use basic electronics in highly advanced ways. They're afraid of computing. And to deal with FTL travel and not running through a star, they need computing to deal with pathing.

Not sure why you mention that? They use a bunch of electronic stuff, its scifi and Herbert observesmany of the formalities of the genre.

I think Herbert (very sensibly) writes computers out of the universe because its sort of apparent (as Azimov already explored in Foundation series) we become their pets pretty quickly. In a similar vein lasguns get diminished by the shield tech, but this opens another can of worms: what not not just lasgun shield everything? Atomics not needed really. Yet the unshielded Fremen (the sand interference is a nice touch) don't use lasguns, but why not?

Best not to worry about it too much, Herbert wanted cools space swordsmen and with a little effort (and suspension of disbelief) he delivers them. No space spearmen, and of course as TW adherents we know how much better they were...but this is not a book for analysing, its a book for enjoying.

Certainly computers were used in space, but I think they used drugs for space travel as well before they found spice: certainly the BG did for their powers (including Sight) as it stated explicitly in the showdown scene. This is hinted at with the BG (along with mentats) as successors to AI and robots, definitely using narcotics for their powers.

All in all, this 1970's book is something you should understand before you criticize it.

Are you gatekeeping young fella? I don't think Dune is that hard to understand, its the "the dispossessed hero returns" in space with drugs. The drug experience is central to this book (as with DADoES), with concomitant questions of identity prescience and destiny (Dick focuses more on the real and false self).

If you think its a deep multi-layered masterpiece good luck, I think its highly entertaining pulp fiction with a nice imaginative twist and (inspired by Tolkien) some appendices for chilling out after the trip.

Just a side note, I really love the use of chapter heading quotes. its a feature of 19th century novels (possibly derived from 18th century French histories? Not sure), eg Sir Walter Scott's works, giving a literary hors d'oeuvre as it were to each chapter-meal. it makes it seem almost like literature.

[Knight of Heaven]

non-white people have generally appeared in the roles of thugs, barbarians, and any other type of "negative" character.
white people have appeared in all kinds of roles (villains, heroes...) because until very recently the overwhelming majority of roles and actors were white.

You mean in countries where the majority of the population is white? either native or simply the biggest group? yes. Naturally. And it will continue to be that way generally at least.

You go to an Asian country and you will find majority of all of those roles are made by Asians. I think the west has a weird obsession with the ethnic aesthetics in modern entertainment.
I just seen squid game, and Hellbound, amazing south korean netflix series, a lot better then the usual western series nowadays. And they didn't had much diversity in its casting. didn't needed it in order to be good either.

alhoon comment is totally ridiculous and I don't see your logic anywhere. I cannot understand how it would not seem very problematic to you guys if in a current film a fictional faction or kingdom whose characteristics were all negative were composed of a group of people with a long history of having been attacked or oppressed. Maybe in your ideal world the Harkonen should have been described as a faction of gay people of color.

The way i see it that is the human race and not a specific group of people. The white guilt thing is getting ridiculous nowadays.

What i don't like on the Lynch movie and similar american books mostly, is the Messiah role for Paul Atreides.

Messiah plots are so boring.

Yeah. But the point of the story, is that he really isn't a messiah though. People just think he is. As much as i like David lynch, his Dune is a mess, and he misses that point. And im aware its not entirely his fault. Dino de laurentiis and his production company, have a lot to blame for Dune (1984).

This is a very nice retrospective on Lynch Dune

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: