Outside Topic Dune - Printable Version

Outside Topic Dune - Printable Version

+- The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board)
+-- Forum: C-House! (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-4.html)
+--- Forum: The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-5.html)
+--- Thread: Outside Topic Dune (/thread-22556.html)

Pages: 1 2

Dune - BostonCard - 11-09-2021

Anyone watch the movie? If so, I have questions.

BC

RE: Dune - Giants - 11-09-2021

(11-09-2021, 10:16 PM)BostonCard Wrote: Anyone watch the movie? If so, I have questions.

BC

Not sure I can answer your questions but I did watch it…

RE: Dune - Canalejas - 11-09-2021

I saw it. It was actually my first time at the movies since Covid.

RE: Dune - dabigv13 - 11-09-2021

It was good. Very pretty. I prefer Lynch Dune TBH even with all its flaws, more interesting and strange.

RE: Dune - cctop - 11-09-2021

I thought it was beautiful.

But I was checking my watch after about two hours. Could be related to the fact that I saw it in an old theater with uncomfortable seats and the guy sitting in front of me had a large head.

My favorite tweet: “Why was Dune interrupted every 15 minutes by Zendaya doing a perfume commercial?”

RE: Dune - Griffins78 - 11-09-2021

It was my first time going anywhere. Saw it at the Metreon IMAX. Was worried I’d be disappointed because the book was so special and I did not like previous versions but did like this one.

RE: Dune - Canalejas - 11-10-2021

I read the book for the first time in the weeks leading up to watching the movie with my brother. We both love comparing movies/shows to their source material. He warned me that the film wouldn't cover everything in the first book and, despite the length, I was left wanting to see more.

Without having just read the book I think I would have missed some of the dialogue.

Oscar Isaac did a great job with Leto, given the slimmed down role.

Rebecca Ferguson as Jessica was awesome too.

I only wish we could have gotten to see some back-and-forth between the Baron Harkonnen and his mentat, Piter. And both of the Harkonnen nephews.

And I'm not sure there was a better way to convey Paul's visions of jihad, but it didn't seem big enough to me.

My favorite visual was how the Fremen fight, emerging from beneath the desert sand. Badass.

RE: Dune - Phogge - 11-10-2021

Villeneuve needs to get off the sand planet and back to making Sicario 3. Outdoor have used Deakins on this one.

The sand princess, Zendaya, has as much charisma as Wlat.

Movie could have been an hour shorter if they cut out all the off speed (slow motion dream crap).

Chalomet can’t handle sharing the screen with pros like Bardem. I did like Skarsgard. Always compelling.

Will pass on the sequel unless they bring back Sting to fight the kid.

RE: Dune - winflop - 11-10-2021

I enjoyed it quite a bit. Light years better than the Lynch disaster. Saw it at IMAX in Daly City. The curved screen didn't do much but the sound was light year's better than the regular screens.

RE: Dune - BostonCard - 11-10-2021

Ok, my Dune questions.

To those who really enjoyed it after reading the books, do you think the books provided the additional context that helped the movie make more sense? Were you just happy that Villanueve made a movie that was reasonably faithful to the book (as far as I understood it)? Something else?

The reason I ask is that from my vantage point as someone who didn’t read the book, I thought it was a visually stunning movie with shallow characters, a pretty stayed plot, and a pressured story telling that at once seemed overly ambitious and at the same time didn’t advance the story well.

[warning, spoilers ahead]

The biggest disappointment were the characters. With the exception of Jessica and Yueh, the characters were boring. Atreides, good; Harkonnen, bad; Fremen, victims. I mean, they couldn’t even give Paul an overbearing father or some other thing. I kept expecting a twist, and beyond awell-advertised betreyal, there just wasn’t anything. That’s why I’m wondering if the books give you a little bit more to latch onto.

Then there are the plot holes, which based on a bit of googling, the books do explain a bit better. For example, in the year 10,000 there is interstellar travel but it requires people to “fold space” (my googling tells me that thinking computers are taboo because of a fight between humanity and AI millennia earlier, which, fine, but it didn’t make sense watching only the movie). Then, Spice is this magical substance only available on a desert planet, and “he who controls spice, controls the universe” but in the year 10,000 where interstellar space travel is the norm, nobody has figured out how to make the stuff?

I also don’t get why the Emperor and the Harkonnen had to go through the trouble of withdrawing from Arrakis and giving it as a “trap” to Atreides that everyone knew was a trap. And if everyone knew it was a trap, you’d think that you would want your shields vulnerable to a single inside traitor, no? Honestly, the whole palace intrigue first half of the movie could have just been done away with and the movie started with the Harkonnen and the empire attacking Atreides on Arraken. Also, if you know you are walking into a trap, why take your entire bloodline into it? It seems like it was all a cumbersome plot device to have Paul wind up on Arakkis with the Fremen, which I’m going to guess is The whole point of part 2, where I’m going to go out on a limb and say Paul and the Fremen rebel against the Harkonnen, kill the Baron, and destroy the empire, plus or minus? Oh, and guessing he marries Zendaya along the way? Or will the plot twists will come in Part 2?

Some other question…

How does the Baron survive? Because he can float up? If the poison was as deadly as it is made out to be, and the guy literally gets a bunch of it blown in his face at close range, no amount of being able to float is going to do anything.
By the way, why does the Baron float?
What’s with Duncan Idaho? He seems to have an uncommon bond with Paul. What’s the backstory there? Also, other than “the movie was already too long”, why didn’t we get to see Duncan Idaho finding the Fremen? Seems like watching him fight the Fremen and then befriend them would have been more interesting for the movie than a lot of the stuff in the first half that was left in.
What’s the deal with the Bene Gesserit? Like, they have this generations-long plan to breed a super-being, but it’s spoiled because Jessica falls in love and has a son? Like, if it was that important, wouldn’t they have found a way to kill Paul when he was a baby? And was Jessica really the first Bene Gesserit to screw up because she fell in love? None of that aspect of the story makes any sense, and it really didn’t seem to add much.
Why does all the combat have to happen at close range (I googled that one too, and I guess the shields can stop fast moving projectiles, but not knives, but it doesn’t explain why the laser that can cut through a steel door and that everyone on the other side is keen to avoid, can’t be used as a ranged weapon.)

As I said, I have questions. And normally I wouldn’t post a rant like that, but people really seeemed to like the movie, a lot, and I just don’t get it.

BC

RE: Dune - Canalejas - 11-10-2021

I'm not sure I'd be able to answer your questions well. But just having quickly read the first book (and only the first book) I find it funny that two of the major plot points (those concerning Leto and Yueh) aren't twists at all. In fact, the book tells you from the opening chapters exactly what's going to happen to them. And also gives major hints about other characters that I won't reference here because that's being left to the second movie.

RE: Dune - cctop - 11-11-2021

(11-10-2021, 11:05 PM)BostonCard Wrote: Also, other than “the movie was already too long”, why didn’t we get to see Duncan Idaho finding the Fremen? Seems like watching him fight the Fremen and then befriend them would have been more interesting for the movie than a lot of the stuff in the first half that was left in.

To this point, here's an image that was cut from the film of Duncan Idaho arriving on Arrakis:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dune/comments/qor7v1/duncan_idaho_freefalling_from_space_to_arrakis/

RE: Dune - Canalejas - 11-11-2021

Ok, circling back to some of your questions now.

Yes, I do think that the Atreides are generally the "good" faction and the Harkonnen the "bad." But there is supposed to be more internal conflict within House Harkonnen that makes it more interesting, even if still cartoonishly evil. Though I'm glad the movie leaves out all the parts where the Baron is a child rapist. And there's also more conflict within House Atreides beyond just the traitor, with Jessica still thought of by some as a Bene Gesserit witch.

As for the Fremen, I didn't see them as merely victims. They are just people, outside the power structure of the Great Houses, who have developed all manner of norms based on their hellish environment.

Whether Paul marries Zendaya is an interesting question. I actually don't know the answer to that yet for certain, but much is made of the Duke never marrying Jessica. Though they loved each other, she was his concubine and not his wife. I think that decision got just one line in the movie but it was constantly in the thoughts of a few characters in the book and carries great importance. So, I think Paul's future relationship formalities will be of great importance too.

The Imperium going to the trouble of turning Arrakis into a trap is supposed to be for plausible deniability that the Emperor had any hand in House Atreides' demise. The Sardaukar forces sent to aid the Harkonnen attack were supposed to be disguised as Harkonnen troops. Apparently other Great Houses generally stayed out of war between two houses. But an attack by the Imperium on a House is supposed to rally all Great Houses to oppose such a move by the Emperor. But, apparently Duke Leto was getting too popular and the Emperor was convinced to have him taken out. I mean, that's supposed to be the power-balance background story. But in a universe with human supercomputers of various kinds, including the mentats, surely plenty of factions would have figured out the real moves going on. And, of course, they did to an extent. But House Atreides miscalculated the scale of Baron Harkonnen's attack. The Baron is said to have spent 50 years worth of spice revenue to carry out the attack.

The Baron floats because one of his many flaws is gluttony. He has transformed himself into a creature that can't walk without embedded floatation tech. And in the book he doesn't survive by floating to the ceiling, but by luckily making it out of the room before the poison gas reaches him and the doors seal.

As for the Bene Gesserit, one cool background move of theirs is to seed inhabited worlds everywhere with legends that develop into religions, complete with prophecies, which they can then take advantage of someday by fulfilling them should the need arise. But, the arrival of Paul and Jessica on Arrakis is kind of a funny instance of that. At what point does a planted religion become something all too real?

For the ASOIF/Game of Thrones fans out there, I'm going to repeat the following joke about Paul and his fate: He was positioned to be the Prince That Was Promised, but instead might turn out to be the Stallion Who Mounts The World.

RE: Dune - dabigv13 - 11-11-2021

It's been a long long time since I read the books, but I'm pretty sure that the Dune universe takes place many years after some sort of apocalyptic war, the end result of which is computers/AI are banned. So interstellar travel in Dune is only possible through use of the spice by guild navigators to fold spacetime. In later books I think there is a sort of race of aliens (Tleilaxu, of whom the mentats such as Piter come from) who use forbidden technology and do manufacture a spice type analogue.

Also highly recommend the documentary Jodorowsky's Dune, what surely would have been an even more outlandish and bizarre movie than the Lynch version. Salvador Dali as the Emperor, Orson Welles as the Baron, Mick Jagger as Feyd. Pre-Alien HR Giger and Dan O'Bannon....would have been rad. Documentary is stellar, and maybe will also help flesh out some plot points for you as well, though Jodorowsky's treatment took a lot of liberties with the story.

RE: Dune - Mick - 11-11-2021

I don't have a lot to add to it, but I'll just mention that Dune is my son's favorite book. I read it when I was in high school, I gave it to him to read, he's read it four times since. He hasn't seen the Lynch version, but he really liked the current movie, as did I. The book probably merits 3-5 movies to capture everything, but I suspect they'll limit it to this and a sequel. Would have been an interesting mini-series.

I liked the actors, the characters were a bit limited so the actors could only work with what the script gives them. Except for Zendaya (who I just can't stomach), I thought the rest were strong, and faithful to the book's characters. Some were certainly more interesting than others. I thought Skarsgaard was superb, the actor who played Paul was a B+ (I didn't care for Kyle MacLachlan in Lynch's vision way back when), the rest were A- or better.

Way too many dream sequences. And yes, I know they're a part of the book. Fight scenes were great. The firm and book in general have an odd relationship with technology, sort of a non-technologist's view of technology -- some of it incredibly advanced, some of it virtually nonexistent. CGI was excellent.

RE: Dune - CrazedZooChimp - 11-11-2021

I was also confused by a lot since I've never read the books. But worse, when I saw it the projector was somehow off, and so basically all the dark scenes were completely impossible to see (luckily my friends also said this, so I know it wasn't just my eyesight).

Imagine not knowing what's happening AND not being able to see 30-50% of the movie. I didn't even get the benefit of enjoying how it looked...

RE: Dune - FarmBoy - 11-11-2021

I'm a big fan of Dune. It was one of my favorite books in high school and my son and I read it leading up to the movie. It's not as good as I remembered it from my youth, but it still does a great job of creating a world that feels complete, with history, and culture, that is quite immersive.

I thought the movie was good, but not as good as I'd hoped. I didn't care about the Zendaya perfume commercials, but the long looks at handsome Paul standing on an outlook in some fancy costume got to be a bit much. They also missed out on the Gurney Hallek character who's supposed to be a bard of sorts. But the visuals were amazing and I thought it did a good job with the story as someone who knew it, but I wondered if those who hadn't read the book would understand what was going on.

I'm glad Part 2 was greenlit.

RE: Dune - BostonCard - 11-11-2021

Mick, not having read the books, I’m perhaps not the best person to comment, but it definitely felt like something that would have been better as a Game of Thrones like series. The movie, especially the beginning, had a staccato-like pacing. It seemed like the director felt like he needed to get every major plot point in, and thus many of them came out half-baked.

Thanks to everyone who answered.

The other movie I watched recently was Bond, and let’s just say that I’m glad Daniel Craig is moving on and the franchise will reboot with a new storyline. As usual, great action sequences, but the Rube Goldberg machine of a plot had me forgetting why they went to Cuba in the first half of the movie. Shame that the Cuban CIA agent was introduced and never seen again.

BC

RE: Dune - dabigv13 - 11-11-2021

I had a really good time at the theater....thinking of checking out the new Ridley Scott movie.

RE: Dune - Phogge - 11-11-2021

Next Bond may be of the female persuasion. Jessica Chastain would make a great killer.

I like Craig but Sean Connery is Bond, James Bond. I still like the old pictures, especially "From Russia with Love." Nothing like having Kurt Weill's woman as the villain and a very scary blond Robert Shaw as her henchman.