Dune (Film) Post-release thread (open spoilers from film)

[Marvin_the_Martian]

In the Book the Sardaukar are recruited from Salusa Secundus but live lives of luxury when not fighting:

“I would take them in small groups, not larger than platoon strength,” Hawat said. “I’d remove them from their oppressive situation and isolate them with a training cadre of people who understood their background, preferably people who had preceded them from the same oppressive situation. Then I’d fill them with the mystique that their planet had really been a secret training ground to produce just such superior beings as themselves. And all the while, I’d show them what such superior beings could earn: rich living, beautiful women, fine mansions…whatever they desired.”

The Baron began to nod. “The way the Sardaukar live at home.”

“The recruits come to believe in time that such a place as Salusa Secundus is justified because it produced them—the elite. The commonest Sardaukar trooper lives a life, in many respects, as exalted as that of any member of a Great House.”

[Omniscient]

I’m late to the thread and and didn’t read past the OP. Sorry for the drive-by, but wanted to toss in my own mini-review which I suspect includes ideas already thoroughly bludgeoned to death in the preceding 340-odd posts.

I saw this a couple weeks ago in IMAX with the wife (on a random Thursday afternoon when we had the nanny at home, such is “date night” with a newborn). We subsequently watched it the following Saturday at home with captions turned on. I really liked it in the theater. The wife, not knowing the book at all and generally being slow to grok fantasy world building stuff, enjoyed it a lot more at home with captions on and the ability to pause and ask questions. I mention this to highlight what I think is my main criticism of the movie, a lot of the dialogue is mumbled/whispered and delivered and utterly crushed by the film score. The score was magnificent, but it’s also overbearing. This problem utterly ruined Tenet, which was a bad movie. Dune is a very good movie that was made harder to watch because of this. That said, the sound WAS spectacular in IMAX so I get why they do it, but directors have to figure out how to communicate the story. In movies set in the real world, you don’t need to lean on dialogue as much, but in fantasy that tends to be how you build the world. This isn’t the first and won’t be the last to screw this up.

My second criticism is pacing. Villeneuve is a slow-burn filmmaker. I know this and it’s what a lot of people like about his movies. I usually like it. But I think he goes a little to far here. Part of this is simply a result of the story having no natural break point to end a multi-part movie, but it’s not only that. Everything leading up to the attack on Arrakeen was riveting, the initial assault was intense, but then the attack sort of fizzles out into nothing. Duncan and Gurney each sort of get absorbed into the chaos. Paul and Jessica end up on the 'thopter off screen. Leto is unconscious and wakes in his birthday suit. So much happens off screen. Then for the most part, Duncan, Leto and Paul get a coda…but that coda takes almost an hour.

Leto’s gas attack was cool, but very brief. Duncan has a couple really fun fight sequences but they don’t really change anything. Paul and Jessica eventually meet the Fremen and the Amtal scene simultaneously feels rushed and tacked on. The entire fracturing of the Atreides seemed like a unsatisfying end to the first installment. It’s important but I don’t think it was done justice…but it also can’t possibly be the crescendo that the attack was, so from a pacing standpoint the movie felt unnaturally truncated in spite of feeling over-long.

Had I been in charge, I think I would have ended the movie right after the attack. The final scene would either be Paul and Jessica flying off to certain doom in the 'thopter with the Harkonnens or Leto poisoning the Baron and Piter. From there you’re left with the cliffhanger, is the Baron dead? Will Paul and Jessica survive? Of course, you know they have plot armor and will be back, but it works better narratively. And you can extend the fight scenes for Duncan and Gurney, you can show how fearsome the Sardukar are supposed to be, you can give Thufir something to do at the finale. Then the next film picks up with Paul and Jessica making their escape and starting their integration into the Fremen. I think it all works better (but I know that you need to give Zendaya and Javier Bardem screen time).

The last criticism I have is with way the executed Paul’s visions. Honestly, it just didn’t work that well. They seemed to slow down the movie during what should have been it’s most exciting moments. I first noticed the issue with the Gom Jabbar scene…Paul’s experiencing intense pain and believes his hand is being burnt down to bone. But the presentation here doesn’t really communicate this message that well. Timothee’s acting is fine, but the visuals don’t really explain the horror of it. In this one small area I think the Lynch version is more effective. Similarly Paul’s various visions were just confusing. I know that’s sort of part of the point, Paul’s confused by them at first, but they were scattered and misleading. I don’t know exactly what the best way to handle this is in a movie, but Denis’ solution didn’t work for me. That these visions occurred during the action sequences I think killed some of the energy and drama of those sequences. The rescue from the sandworm I thought especially was adversely effected.

So, those are the criticisms. That said, I really really liked the movie and will probably rewatch it a few more times. I’m excited for the next installment. But, my praise isn’t going to be that interested to read at this point (he says pretending the previous paragraphs are interesting, heh).

[SenorBeef]

I agree about the visions. I tend to hate visions as a narrative device, so I’m biased, but they didn’t flow well in the movie, they weren’t explained very well, and it’s one of those elements that works for the people who read the books but not for anyone else. I can’t remember Paul discussing the visions with anyone that might’ve put them in a better context, and there were definitely moments where they broke the narrative of the story. They could’ve been done better.

[DPRK]

Perhaps the parallel/contrast with the Fremen is deliberate. Not only are the Sardaukar essentially a branch of Fremen themselves

Jessica recoiled, fearing she would become lost in an ocean of oneness. Still, the corridor remained, revealing to Jessica that the Fremen culture was far older than she had suspected.

There had been Fremen on Poritrin, she saw, a people grown soft with an easy planet, fair game for Imperial raiders to harvest and plant human colonies on Bela Tegeuse and Salusa Secundus.

the Fremen of Arrakis also believe they are superior beings and so forth. The differences are, they do not enjoy lives of luxury (which should make them stronger, according to Julius Caesar’s reasoning). They enjoy a vision of paradise, fanatically stirred up not by Paul, but by Kynes:

Kynes wound up two days later in a sietch that looked down on Wind Pass. To him, it was all very natural. He talked to the Fremen about water, about dunes anchored by grass, about palmaries filled with date palms, about open qanats flowing across the desert. He talked and talked and talked. All around him raged a debate that Kynes never saw. What to do with this madman? He knew the location of a major sietch. What to do? What of his words, this mad talk about a paradise on Arrakis?
[…]
It became apparent to the Fremen that Kynes was not a madman totally, just mad enough to be holy. He was one of the umma, the brotherhood of prophets.

[sohvan]

As an aside to the whole “hard times create strong men, good times create weak men” theme, I ran into an interesting series of articles by a historian arguing the opposite is actually true in history. It’s a very common trope in both fiction and history, but a vast majority of the time in history the wealthy state societies living in “good times” have been stronger militarily, and tended to out annihilate, engulf or drive off the “Fremen” style societies.

Collections: The Fremen Mirage, Part I: War at the Dawn of Civilization

[muldoonthief]

@DPRK

They enjoy a vision of paradise, fanatically stirred up not by Paul, but by Kynes:

Kynes wound up two days later in a sietch that looked down on Wind Pass. To him, it was all very natural. He talked to the Fremen about water, about dunes anchored by grass, about palmaries filled with date palms, about open qanats flowing across the desert. He talked and talked and talked. All around him raged a debate that Kynes never saw. What to do with this madman? He knew the location of a major sietch. What to do? What of his words, this mad talk about a paradise on Arrakis?

[…]
It became apparent to the Fremen that Kynes was not a madman totally, just mad enough to be holy. He was one of the umma, the brotherhood of prophets.

To be clear- that’s from the section about Pardot Kynes, who was Liet Kynes father.

[Cardigan]

As reviews go, that was pretty insightful.

[Omniscient]

I never got around to rereading the book. Does the book have Paul having visions of the future that directly contradict what actually happens? He had a vision that he is killed by Jamis, but of course Jamis doesn’t lay a hand on him. In another, Zendaya stabs him but of course she doesn’t in reality.

I can probably fanwank an explanation that Jamis “kills” the boy Paul so that the man Paul can emerge, and the vision symbolically shows him dying because him winning the Amtal is the death of innocence or something. I can also say Chani symbolically “stabs” him with her love or somesuch, maybe getting stabbed with the Crysknife is him being indoctrinated into them Fremen culture or something. But if I have to fanwank something to prominent in the movie, it’s not doing it’s job telling the story.

[DPRK]

It’s up for interpretation, of course, but e.g. what I quoted earlier:

Paul swallowed. He felt that he played a part already played over countless times in his mind… yet… there were differences. He could see himself perched on a dizzying summit, having experienced much and possessed of a profound store of knowledge, but all around him was abyss.

And again he remembered the vision of fanatic legions following the green and black banner of the Atreides, pillaging and burning across the universe in the name of their prophet Muad’Dib.

That must not happen, he told himself.

“Is that the name you wish, Muad’Dib?” Stilgar asked.

“I am an Atreides,” Paul whispered, and then louder: “It’s not right that I give up entirely the name my father gave me. Could I be known among you as Paul-Muad’Dib?”

“You are Paul-Muad’Dib,” Stilgar said.

And Paul thought: That was in no vision of mine. I did a different thing.

Also the visions of himself dead under Jamis’s knife, and things like

And he paused, shaken by the remembered high relief imagery of a prescient vision he had experienced on Caladan. He had seen this desert. But the set of the vision had been subtly different, like an optical image that had disappeared into his consciousness…

[Omniscient]

Thanks. The movie included a couple lines of dialogue from Paul that his visions were “different” but certainly not enough of an explanation to clarify it to watchers who didn’t read the book.

[DPRK]

Possibly related, I guess it is by now not a spoiler that near the very end of the book

…Paul saw how futile were any efforts of his to change any smallest bit of this. He had thought to oppose the jihad within himself, but the jihad would be. His legions would rage out from Arrakis even without him. He had shown them the way, given them mastery even over the Guild which must have the spice to exist.

[Omniscient]

@Whack-a-Mole

This is also why I am mystified there is no Feyd-Rautha. Feyd was supposed to marry Jessica’s daughter and that union would produce the Kwisatz Haderach. When Jessica produced a son instead that scuttled that plan for the Bene Gesserit and pretty much sealed the deal that Feyd and Paul were on a collision course.

I forgot about this plotline. Really a poor choice by the director to not include this I think. This kind of arranged marriage thing and the personal grudge from a spurned mate is highly relatable for the average moviegoer. It really helps clarify the Machiavellian agenda of the Bene Gesserit and it shows how big a betrayal Jessica’s having a son was. Plus pitting setting Feyd-Rautha as Paul’s nemesis is completely familiar and compelling.

Dune’s a really tough story to tell. It’s a famous book, but still it’s old and it’s pretty niche in comparison to GoT, LotR and other successful on-screen IP. It was always gonna be an uphill battle to make this relatable and interesting to non-book nerds. But this detail is human, you don’t need to be steeped in fantasy lore to get it. And it really drives home the eugenics angle from the Bene Gesserit which feels a bit like a throwaway bit of exposition in the film.

[Omniscient]

@Quimby

The concept that Dune’s setting is after there was an AI revolution and computers are verboten is one of the most interesting things about it to me.

I know it’s a bit of a rip-off, but this kind of information would have been totally appropriate in a opening crawl ala Star Wars or in a Princess Irulan-as-Galadriel voice-over. It’s the future, but there’s no computers, no internet, no robots, no AI and very few guns is a essential bit of world building that really doesn’t get done justice here.

@muldoonthief

I also wonder why he wore what looked like it was meant to be a uniform, even though it didn’t match what anyone else was wearing.

I imagine it to be something like the Maesters in GoT. They dress the way the rest of the order dresses, regardless of House association. Uniforms instead of robes because the Bene Gesserit already staked that claim.

[muldoonthief]

@Omniscient

I imagine it to be something like the Maesters in GoT. They dress the way the rest of the order dresses, regardless of House association. Uniforms instead of robes because the Bene Gesserit already staked that claim.

Except the Baron’s Mentat Piter wasn’t dressed that way. They both had the dark spot on their lower lip, presumably to represent the sapho juice that Mentats use to increase their mental prowess.

[JRDelirious]

Or maybe it’s a matter of the Atreides Mentats being a distinct corps from their other troops. Hard to tell if Piter’s outfit had distinguishing characteristics from other Harkonnens’ due to the general darkness of every scene he was in.

[TroutMan]

@Omniscient

I know it’s a bit of a rip-off, but this kind of information would have been totally appropriate in a opening crawl ala Star Wars or in a Princess Irulan-as-Galadriel voice-over. It’s the future, but there’s no computers, no internet, no robots, no AI and very few guns is a essential bit of world building that really doesn’t get done justice here.

I’m kind of with you, but as a counterpoint, I watched this movie with someone who loves SF but hadn’t read the book. I explained to him after about mentats, computers, and guns, and got a big “meh” in return.

We miss it because we know the background, but it’s absence didn’t detract from the story for him at all. It certainly wasn’t essential for his enjoyment. There’s something to be said for a tighter focus in a movie versus a sprawling novel.

[DPRK]

@JRDelirious

Or maybe it’s a matter of the Atreides Mentats being a distinct corps from their other troops. Hard to tell if Piter’s outfit had distinguishing characteristics from other Harkonnens’ due to the general darkness of every scene he was in.

Did they have “corps” of Mentats? I had the impression (from the book) that mentats were a rare and valuable resource. After Piter is killed, the Baron laments that now he has to send off to Tleielax for a new one. And he makes use of Hawat rather than waste him.

[muldoonthief]

Yes, Mentats are hard to come by - you have to be suited from birth to be one. Paul was in fact undergoing Mentat training in the novel. “A Mentat Duke would be formidable indeed.”

[Slow_Moving_Vehicle]

@JRDelirious

Or maybe it’s a matter of the Atreides Mentats being a distinct corps from their other troops. Hard to tell if Piter’s outfit had distinguishing characteristics from other Harkonnens’ due to the general darkness of every scene he was in

Yeah, this could be fanwanked that Gurney wears the same uniform as the Duke and other Atreides troopers because he’s Security/ Combat Operations, while Thufir is Intelligence. It looked like to me that Thufir’s uniform was similar to the other Atreides, in accessories and decorations; it was just a different color.

[JRDelirious]

You can have a corps of one, or of four, if the Duke so proclaims? Maybe the Atreides just like everyone at court ceremonies being in some kind of dress uniform and Thufir is not a regular line officer so he gets a different one.