Geez – here it is 8:30 on Monday morning, and not a single thread on the SciFi miniseries. Did anyone watch this thing?
Pepper Mill and I caught the first part last night. Some notes:
1.) Despite Pepper’s fervent hopes, they decided to keep the tradition of ludicrous hats in this movie.
2.) I liked the TV version of Guild Steersman much better than Lynch’s – it looks the way I pictured it when I read Dune Messiah 33 years ago.
3.) It’s been a while since I read the book (I’ve read it a couple of times since), and Pepper just read it last year, but there were a lot of times when we just turned to each other and said “Was that in the book?” There seemed to be a lot of changes that weren’t strictly necessary.
4.) The director must’ve seen Gosfather II recently. Near the end, when all the Atreides opponents were getting whacked, I expected Paul to put cotton balls in his cheeks and say “Well, all of my enemies are dead…:”
I only saw bits and pieces last night, but I had a couple of thoughts –
The costuming needs work. Susan Sarandon looked like Eezma from ‘The Emperor’s New Groove’.
Pretty visuals – very sweeping.
The women who play Irulan, Chani and Alia are hot hot hot. Yowza.
They should have switched the actresses playing Irulan and Alia – Alia was too tall and aristocratic, and Irulan had that very innocent-with-too-knowing-eyes look going.
I liked it. Didn’t read the books past Dune, so I didn’t really have more than a smattering of ideas going into it.
The guildsmen look much cooler here, as do the ships. I watched the Dune showing first (yeah, all of it) and thought it was soooo much better than the original film.
There were some innacuracies, but whatever. Also, I think the music was better in Children than in Dune. More sweeping and caught the attention better.
I’m still waiting for the show to get to Children of Dune–last night’s installment was from Dune Messiah, which sets up CoD.
Costumes: I really don’t care for any of the designs. The costume design was way too (witness the poufy hats for the Swiss Guard, oops, the Sardaukar). It was as if the designers had said, “Screw thinking through what clothes someone living 10, 000 years from now might wear and let’s just go for the wacky!”
Acting: Well done, especially Susan Sarandon’s regal bitch performance. Duncan Idaho is yowza hot!
Overall, I enjoyed it and will be watching tonight’s installment.
Ditto on the goofy costumes.
Ditto on gobear’s Duncan Idaho comment. I dreamt about him last night, he was so fine. Strong but silent types make my knees quake!
I’m also glad they didn’t go so nuts with the blue eye tint thing like they did in part one.
I thought I had read Children, but I haven’t.
My favorite part was the last five minutes. Exciting!
I liked it considerably more than the first Dune miniseries. It actually followed the plot of Dune Messiah much better than I expected - they changed a few things but not in a way that hurt the story - the part where Alia is fighting the flying blades was slightly different in the book, it’s been a while since I read it but the training device she is using in the book was more simulation-ish, though still dangerous, and the way they do it in the movie probably made better visual sense.
The acting was better, too. I was impressed with the actress who played Alia - though probably a little too old for the part, she managed to capture the character pretty well. It’s easy to excuse having her look older than she should because she has to play the same character ten years later, people are used to seeing 30 year olds play 18 year olds but not vice-versa. I think Chani could have been done better, though - in the book she was a much more interesting character, and you got the impression her devotion to Paul was a defense mechanism against the stress and internal conflict she was feeling, which was barely touched upon in the movie.
BTW, I did not like the birthing scene montage. Too many images (the hands clenching the sheets, the repeated shots of Chani throwing her hair back) reminded me of soft-core porn, not an extremely traumatic and ultimately fatal double birth.
Count me in as another who was pleasantly suprised by CoD, I think my pessimistic attitude has served me well.
I would outright disagree with you there, I thought they did an excellent job of staying on track with the book. The things that did change were not done in a way as to disrupt the real story. I thought the acting was much, much better than the original miniseries (though that isn’t saying much). My main issue would be that Duncan is supposed to be a Zensunni philosopher as well as a mentat, but that’s relatively minor. The cynical part in me knows that Dune Messiah was a lesser work and therefore the miniseries had less to live up to, I think there will be much more room for disappointment in Children of Dune.
I can’t imagine watching this miniseries without having read the books first though, there is a lot of depth behind everyone’s actions that the miniseries could never do justice to. I’m happy as long as I can fill in those blanks myself, it’s only when inconsistencies are introduced that I start to whine.
Good stuff so far. I’ve read all the (original) books, but my memory is fuzzy on the first 3 or so. So it was nice to have my memories come back a bit at a time. And I didn’t notice any inconsistencies for the same reason. Although I couldn’t figure out who Susan Sarandon was, so I started flipping thorugh the book and saw that her scenes were originally Irulan’s, mostly. I guess she’s a character from Children that got morphed into Irulan’s parts of Messiah.
Can’t wait for the next installments. Leto’s probably my favorite character from the books.
I’ve got the opposite opinion to Gazelle, though. It was confusing to not have the blue eyes as prominent. In some places I couldn’t tell if they were there at all. It’s probably the most memorable part of the whole series, so I think it should have stayed as prominent.
They could’ve done Paul’s blindness better. It just looked like he had black contacts. And the guild navigator’s CGI looked really fake, but those are nitpicks…
Overall, I’m liking this installment even better than the last, and I like that one quite a lot. This one seems even more exciting and engaging.
I enjoyed it. The sets weren’t as irritating as the sets in the first one. The desert shots in the first miniseries were very hokey looking–I didn’t notice any here.
Alia, Chani, etc, are extraordinarily hot. I hope there’s some nudity to be added back in during the dvd release.
I didn’t like the soundtrack much, though. It feels like I’m being subjected to 6 solid hours of Enya…
I’m still with-holding judgement, but if it continues like this, I’m probably going to like it as much the first installment (which I loved). Can’t wait until I can see the dvd release of this–the dts audio track on the first was amazing…
It’s been far too long since I’ve read Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, so I can’t really attest for the fidelity.
Until I started paying attention to the close-ups, I assumed the toned down blueness of the eyes was to signify that the Fremen were moving away from the desert and becoming water fat. Now I’m not so sure.
I wasn’t really expecting them to finish off Dune Messiah in one installment, and then go on, but I guess if I had looked around on the web ahead of time I could have found that out.
There were a few things left out I would like to have seen. In the way of characterization, I think they were light on Hayt’s characterization (ie, Duncan Idaho before he remembers his past). The fact that they didn’t use the name “Hayt” in the movie is not a big deal, but the fact that they didn’t show his character being very different, and then remembering the past, could have been done better.
I would also have liked them to point out the role that the guild navigator and the dune tarot play in blocking the visions from detecting the conspirators. At the end, too, was missing the parts that Paul felt like he had accomplished in breaking the conspiracy in the way he did.
I did like Bijaz - the actor playing him did a good job, and he was well scripted, especially the scenes with the pool table and when he is planting the instructions in the ghola’s mind in Alia’s room. The training with the discs, while not the same as in the book, is probably better this way for a visual presentation, but loses something by not having Paul be the one that turns it off. Alia was well portrayed as well.
I think the sets and visuals were well done, save for the stillsuits (about which, the less said the better) or lack thereof.
They could have taken out some of the scenes with Paul wandering through the stone tunnels (was that supposed to be a sietch?), and the music montage with everyone sitting around doing nothing. That would have left many minutes in the movie to put in these other things.
I’m in the interesting position of having read Dune Messiah but not Children of Dune.
I thought that the first part was pretty good. The story didn’t impress me very much when I read the book, and from what I can tell, many people consider Dune Messiah to be one of the weakest books in the series. Still, the first part was fairly accurate to the text and enjoyable.
