You’re getting into definite spoiler territory here. You might want to ask a mod to spoiler that.
So sorry! Just reported myself.
I saw it on Saturday and really enjoyed it. My only 2 nitpicks:
I’ve always pronounced it “Har-KO-nnen” like they did in the 1984 movie, but they went with “HARK-o-nnen”.
As already said - Jessica spent way too much time in tears.
I realize they had to cut a lot out to get it to fit into a pair of 150 minute movies, but the one scene I think they should have worked in was the dinner banquet. It’s a really good part of the book, and I think does an even better job of setting up the tragedy of Leto. I wonder if they filmed but cut it - Leto’s “Here I am, here I remain!” line at his death doesn’t make a ton of sense if you hadn’t heard him say it earlier at the banquet.
We saw it last night. I enjoyed it very much. My wife: less so, but she still liked it. Her only reference point was the David Lynch movie, so I had to fill in the blanks, having read the books countless times in High School and College.
Things I liked:
- Skarsgård’s Baron was pure malevolence. He was not the over the top, campy villain from the DL movie or the Sci-fi series.
- They captured the spirit of Duncan Idaho perfectly. He really felt like the protective older brother that Paul never had. That gave his death impact.
- It was gorgeous to look at.
- No voice-overs. Lord that was annoying.
- The sandworms.
Things that could have been improved on:
- I had fill in the blanks. That’s never a good thing. I’m hoping they do an expanded cut home release like they had done for LOtR.
- No Feyd Rautha. There was a Sting-shaped hole on Geidi Prime, but as mentioned upthread, he doesn’t do much in the first half of the book.
- The mentats were underused.
I’m sure there’s more, but is what leaps to mind.
If I am not mistaken they never even said the word Mentat and the only hint it was even a thing was when the one character’s eyes went white. 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.
Yeah, when the Emperor’s representative showed up, Leto asked Thufir how much that trip must have cost. Thufir’s eyes went white then he rattled off the cost 16 million something or others. 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.
Haven’t read the whole thread, don’t intend to. Saw this Thursday night with the missus, was not overly impressed, found myself wanting to know when it would end. This film took way too long, dragged at times, and never really explained anything that would be comprehensible by someone who had not read the books. By contrast, the first film, with Kyle McLachlan, etc., was complete in the same amount of screen time, and I was able to grasp ideas and meanings pretty well, even though I had not read the books at that time. My wife was utterly lost at this showing, we’re going to have to watch the original for her to understand the review I gave on the way home (her fault, she asked 
)
I saw it in the theatre yesterday. I might re-watch it on streaming, but I’m not sure.
Background: I read the novel a long time ago and I also watched the David Lynch movie, again, a long time ago. It’s been long enough that I don’t recall many of the plot turns, but just have a general impression of what the story is about.
Having not read the above comments, here are my thoughts:
- The visual designs are just wonderful. Gorgeous. Really transported me into a different world and a different time. I don’t think I have ever seen spacecraft and aircraft like that before. The costumes were fantastic.
That’s probably the most positive comment I have.
-
The adaptation does make me interested in the characters and seeing what happens to them.
-
Timothée fucking Chalamet sucks balls. Big time. I’ve recently seen him now in I think three movies. I hate him. He cannot act his way out of a paper bag. He mumbles every goddamn line like he is my distracted nephew refusing to look up from his World of Warcraft game. He never once makes me believe he is a person from a strange time and place. Put him next to someone acting es heart out and it’s a fucking insult to everyone’s hard work. This is Keanu-Reeves-ruined-the-best-Dracula-movie-ever-made level of tragic. Putting that mush-mouth motherfucker in the starring role was an insult to every person who sweated to make the movie happen. There are so many thousands of people who want to be actors. Probably 70 percent of them would be better at this role.
-
Two and a half fucking hours? Too long. Too damn long. And it’s made worse by the fact that every damn thing that happened on screen took so damn long to happen. Every scene should have been shortened by something like 50 to 75 percent (in terms of running time). Jesus fuck. It was like they were swimming in molasses.
4a. This is a disease of every movie these days, but, please, stop dwelling on the action scenes. Just get in and out of them. It’s just something that has to happen. Show one amazing thing and move the story along.
-
For someone who knows nothing about this story, I suspect it wouldn’t make any sense. Cut the fat out of every scene like I suggest above and take some time to explain the setting and the story background.
-
Okay, on a higher level, Herbert’s creation of a conflict between a subsistence desert nomad culture and colonial powers extracting a resource essential to transportation is … really … uncomfortable… these days. I would have been in favor of modifications to scrub features that made the Fremen look too much like Middle Eastern Islamic people.
-
Herbert’s glossary often sucks. Fremen? Duncan Idaho? Gurney Halleck? They just sound like names made up by some kid playing with action figures.
Caught this on HBOmax. I’d say OK, not great. Husband liked it a lot more than me. I heard that its ‘better’ in the theater since it was filmed very pretty, but honestly, I don’t think I could have endured it. We had to rewind several times to understand the mumbling. Without that, I’d have been even more lost. We even tried to turn on our subtitles, but failed.
I’ve never read the books or seen the previous movie versions. My only exposure to Dune is a video game that my friend had on his computer in the 1990’s. I remember the ornithopters in that game as being very cool and ultimately useless. In the movie, I kept wondering why an ornithoper would look like a dragonfly instead of a bird. (Not a valid criticism)
There are a lot of characters and I had a hard time following who is who. I was especially confused when they used non-standard English words. Is that a place? A person? Something else? I have no idea. The main guy’s name is Paul and that was wonderful because I could understand that and track it decently.
Ultimately it looked dated to me even though it is a new movie. The theme seemed to be: white guy is the chosen one and is going to make everything better and many loyal good guys and gals happily die to make that happen – except the Asian dude because he is exceptionally dim.
IMO, that’s one of the whole points of Dune. The universe depends on Spice- especially the Spacing Guild. Without the SG travel is impossible. You can only get Spice from Arakis which is a very stikcy mess of a planet for a place with no water. It’s no accident that it looks like Murica and the Commies fighting over oil in the Middle East. It’s very much on purpose.
I have one specific criticism of the Paul actor. He didn’t sell me on the Gom Jabbar scene; instead of portraying someone in utter steadily increasing agony seemed like he just ate a bad nacho or something.
Yueh in the novel was under no illusions about his wife’s fate, so to see him begging the Baron was very lame, and of course just got him perfunctorily killed.
Chani just telling Paul to accept his fate vs. giving him a tip was a bit disappointing.
In all, the characterizations seemed rather shallow.
Yes, I know. That’s exactly why they should have changed it.
Then it wouldn’t be Dune. It would be a movie inspired by Dune, which nobody would pay money to see.
Sure it would be Dune. It would be exactly Sune. Every adaptation makes changes, especially changes to suit the contemporary ethos. I’m saying scrub the obvious characterizations of the Fremen that overtly connect them to cultural features of Middle Eastern Islamic people and the Imperium as Anglo-American-Europeans. It would not change the story at all, just some of the superficial artifacts. Make the analogy subtle rather than so blatantly groan-worthy.
IIRC The Fremen are actually some variety of Christian. The Tleilaxu are eventually revealed to be Muslims.
Since the personal shield is a velocity filter, it makes sense it would tend to be suffocating. The normal max velocity was stated to be set to 0.6 to 1.0 m/s. An air molecule at room temperature travels greater that 500 m/s, so it’s going to be rejected.
The question is how there’s any air exchange at all.
Can we really just talk more about how bad Chalamet is?
The Fremen were descended from the Zensunni Wanderers, who originated from Sunni Muslims. They even still used terms like jihad and hajj.
That feels like white-washing to me. We have one of the greatest sci-fi novels, which happens to have brown-skinned good guys, and I want to keep it that way.
Okay it wasn’t just me. I just thought maybe I was pronouncing it wrong for decades.