I glanced to see if there was a thread on this already and I didn’t see one. I didn’t do a detailed search or anything so I appologize if it has been done.
First off I want to say that I am a big fan of the books. The whole “series” in fact, well those that Frank Herbert wrote anyhow. My fandom sure didn’t help with this movie though. Talk about a turtle in molassas! This mini-series is so slow it is almost boring. The movie medium does it no justice either.
What is with Alia anyhow? She was way too hot for how I imagined her, and she seemed to give the whole series a “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” feel. That and she was just way to whiny and pouty. Nowhere near what she seemed in the book.
The kids were way too old- Weren’t they like 9 in the books? They seem like 15-20 somewhere in the movie.
I haven’t seen the third installment, though I have pre-ordered it on DVD in case I missed it. These are just a few things among many that bugged me about this movie/mini-series. Way too many subtle machinations and reading of bodylanguage was left unshown. I still don’t see much of the ancestrial memory the twins are supposed to have. A couple references is all.
I’ve been a fan of the Dune series since 1974, when there were only two books!
I disagree with some of your criticisms:
I thought the miniseries was faster-paced than the books. (It didn’t slow down for the inner monologues.)
I was pleasently surprised that most of Herbert’s ideas seemed to come through intact. (E.g., messiahs and heroes are bad.)
How could Alia be “way too hot”–she was an Atreides! Whiny and pouty? She was fighting her inner voices–that would make anyone cranky.
The production design was wonderful–especially the palace sets and the aerial shots of Arakeen.
I do have a bunch of minor quibbles about the casting and appearances of some characters, and the proununciation of some of the names and words, but overall I was very satisfied with this adaptation.
9 out of 10.
I liked the COD mini-series except for the ending:
Alia should have jumped through the window screaming and falling to her death. Instead we have the melodramatic scene between mother and daughter that harkens back to the first Dune mini-series. Bleh.
Also, the movie made it seem like Leto’s reclaiming of the imperial throne was a happy event, and that everything would be well from now on (a Hollywood ending). I think they could’ve done more to push the ominous side of what was about to happen to humanity.
Also, they could have pushed the god-hood angle a little more.
Why was Leto the only one able to get the sandtrout to become part of him? Why couldn’t anyone just dip their hand into a litterbox of sandtrout and become a symbiote?
I agree about the production shots. They did a great job.
Alia was way too… I dunno, Buffyesque. A bit older or mature looking woman would have been better. They portraied Alia as a whiny brat is what I felt. Where in the book, I was under the impression that she was brilliant leader and a woman very in control.(outwardly anyhow) I just didn’t get that from the movie. Cranky I would understand. She was too immature for somebody with so many memories inside her.
In the book it mentions that using the sandtrout as a living glove is a childs game. They do not bond to normal people.
Leto developed the ability to control his body much better than anybody else before him and he was supersaturated with spice at the time. His billions of memories helped guide him in the right ways without dying in the process.
I thought that it was very well done. Great scenes, script, and acting. Also, Alice Krige was easily the best Jessica. She was beautiful, strong (the other two were kind of wimpy and submissive), and confident. Alice isn’t interesting because she’s beautiful. She’s beautiful, because she’s interesting.
I’ve only read the first two books, so I’m not really a fan. And I thought the mini-series was pretty damn good. A lot better than the first one, although they didn’t have nearly as high a standard to live up to. I haven’t read Children of Dune, but I’m glad they didn’t make Leto his sister nine year olds. Most child actors can’t believably portray children, yet alone fourth-dimensional meta-humans.
I have more questions about Children of Dune, mostly about the book and what I saw in the miniseries.
What is the golden path? Having an unpredictable future completely beyond the ken of the prescient and prescience afforded by melange? Something greater than that?
About the book, I read some spoilers which hinted that Leto and Ghanima were a bit closer than brother and sister should be. True or just someone being scandalous to entice others to read CoD?
[quote[ What is the golden path? Having an unpredictable future completely beyond the ken of the prescient and prescience afforded by melange? Something greater than that? [/quote]
You’ve pretty much got it. I agree with the other poster about the lack of gravity in the ending: Leto is about to become the most controlling tyrant the galaxy has ever seen, doling out everything from food to spice in furtherance of his goal. By putting humanity through this crucible, dispersing them onto new planets, and breeding a gene of immunity to prescience, he hopes to avoid the possibility of the species ever being destroyed.
I, too, was surprised that the twins seemed to be in their late-teens or adults, but decided it was probably a good move. Being pre-born, the children in the books could think and feel as though they were full grown- 9 year old child actors probably would have botched this terribly.
I haven’t read any book beyond “Children of Dune,” but I felt the series did manage to convey a great feeling of foreboding in the last moments of the series, wherein Leto’s sister (I can never remember her name!) tells the Corrino prince of how Leto comes to her every night in tears, crying about the sacrifices he’s going to have to make. I’m hyped.
To be fair, you cannot judge Leto and Ghanima as normal nine year olds. Or normal siblings. Leto expressed several times his real age and what type of person he really is. He is millions of years old, with billions of personalities. Him and Ghanima avoided abomination by searching the personalities, where Alia hid from them, which gave em strength. They were an amalgam of all the billions or trillions of lives that they were. Most of which were in love with other of their personalities. They were Paul and Chani, they were Jessica and Leto. How could a normal relationship exist between such people? They were to mary, strangely, but Ghamina said way before hand that she would not bear him a child. (i.e have sex with him) That struck too much discord with the thousands or more lifetimes of Fremen in their memories. (it was punishable by death, incest that is) Twins are known to be extremely close anyhow, even normal humans, imagine that combined with the fact that they share the exact same billions of lives, and all the memories it entails.
As for the Golden path- The golden path was more than just one goal I think. Freedom from the bondage of precience was one of the main goals. Leto’s breeding program in the next 3000 years seemed to show that.
Leto also was one of humanities greatest tyrants for a reason as well. He wished to stifle humanity, to restrict movement and cause them to long the stars. Humanity had not expanded much at all (perhaps several hundred star systems) in all the 25,000+ years or so since our time. His goal was to cause humanity to want to expand, to want to get away from the yoke, and move outward. Keep all of humanities eggs out of one basket if you will.
The third part I noticed of the Golden path (or what I felt was a signifigant portion of it), was to break humanities dependency upon the spice. I believe Leto forsaw that the path ahead would cause humans to find an alternative. By backing them in the corner, Leto allowed humans no other alternative but try as desperately as possible to find an alternative. Something they did not need to do before then. As they said, the spice will flow.
That is what struck me as being the golden path anyhow.
Great summation. One other point (related to the “all the eggs in one basket”)–Leto foresaw the consequences of what the technocrats on Ix were pursuing: eventually, someone on that planet would develop self-replicating, self-improving robot hunter-seekers that would track down and kill every last human being. By forcing humans into their explosion of scattering and self-improvement, he negated that future.