We had quite a long thread for the discussion of Dune, but there was no thread for the discussion of the second film and we’re late to creating this since it came out a week ago.
I would like to start out talking about the film, but I actually haven’t had time to see it yet and won’t for another week or so, but it definitely deserves its own thread, so here it is. It has a 9.0 rating on IMDB currently - that will probably come down a bit over time but over 133k reviews that’s not a fluke. 94% critic score and 95% audience score on rottentomatoes, which is actually a bit low compared to the 9.0.
If you need to refresh on the original before seeing the second one, you can stream it on Max.
Open spoilers for the content of the movie. I suppose if you were going to comment on further plot points which may be in the third movie (which is under consideration to make) it may be a good idea to box those.
I appreciate a dedicated thread for a movie that will generate significant conversation, so thanks for creating this thread. I’ll post as soon as I see it tomorrow.
I enjoyed it a great deal, although it takes far more liberties than Part 1. Mostly, it tones down (but doesn’t eliminate) the Great White Savior elements (which were often semi-subverted in the original text, but were still noticeable), greatly enhances Chani’s self-actualization and role, and provides a spoken statement against … shall we say tradtional attitudes of colonizing powers deciding the path of native cultures.
Not all of which were fully successful alterations, so yeah, I’d go with about 90/100. But the visuals, the sound, and the overal performance quality was very good. I don’t think I’d have cast Christopher Walken as the Emperor though - he didn’t add anything to the character, and if anything detracted from it, but again, his role is very minor, and it’s a quibble at worst.
Disclaimer: Never read any of the books so all opinions are based solely on seeing the first film several times and Pt.2 once.
Going into this film I really, really wanted to love it but it just didn’t give me the “feels”. I think there was only one moment where I felt some emotional high and that was when Chani took down the thropter and had the “ha!” line as it crashed into the ground.
They sold the movie on it going to expand and dig into the story more but I thought the storyline stayed minimal. Whether that was to make it more accessible to a wider audience I don’t know but it was pretty easy to follow. Any new elements added to the plot seemed to be kind of unnecessary or didn’t really lead anywhere. The Baron is actually grandpa? That could be interesting… or not. A hidden stash of atomic weapons? I guess it made one nice big explosion. Walken and Pugh were introduced and then didn’t really do much of anything. Fey-Rautha had some nice fight scenes but didn’t have a lot to say, just be the epitome of psychotic.
The other observation I had was that some of the devices or rules in the universe seemed selectively important. The shields introduced in Pt.1 were really cool and the slow penetration of them with hand held weapons interesting but in Pt.2 they kind of dismissed it and some people used them. some didn’t, a lot of modern weaponry used without discretion.
Same with the breathing on the planet. Some had full head gear, some breathing tubes, some nothing at all, all at various times. And the special non-rhythmatic walk that took a back seat in the heat of battle?
So I guess I was kind of meh on the experience. Which was too bad since BladeRunner 2049 is one of my favorite films.
All the elements you go on from here to cite are all in the original, but it cutting the movie down you lose the nuance as to why those things matter. A lot of it is part of the world building, or the WHYs of how/why the Great Houses aren’t to be messed with (in the past, multiple houses have gone “Rogue” and used the Family Atomics to make sure their feelings were FELT), Paul’s disgust at being what he hates as a Harkonnen combined with other issues with his Mother flowing from the issues in their relationship, Feyd serving as foil to Paul, etc.
This is also from the books, but again most of the significance is cut out. Shields are EXPENSIVE and thus the property of the nobles and well armed and equipped house troups. Fremen don’t have them, largely don’t need them, especially when their vibrations tend to summon sandworms. So yeah, in universe reasons, not discussed for the movie. This is actually one of the things missing in the Feyd fight - he often fights his duels with half-shields, so he’s a MUCH better fighter than most of Paul’s enemies who find themselves with their reflexes out of tune in fights on Arrakis without their accustomed shields.
Not to mention, if you use a shield, and the enemy uses a lasgun (used a few times in the movie) you get a near atomic level blast which can happen either at the shield, or the lasgun, although depending on the range, the difference to those involved is moot.
Again, lots of stuff in for reasons that it’s in the book, but makes less sense without the explanations.
And yet more. Rythmic patterns and impacts brings worms, thus the thumpers and sand pounding you see all the time. So if your’e in the open dessert, you walk in such a way as to NOT attract a worm. In Arakeen and other ‘secure’ areas, it doesn’t matter.
The headgear though, that’s just Hollywood. If you’re in open desert you always wear a breath recover mask and gear to prevent water losss. But it’s Hollywood, you have to see the faces of your highly paid actors and see them emote when you aren’t being given their thoughts and emotions through text.
So yeah, it’s almost all (not 100%) the difficulties of bringing a very complicated, very detailed, often to the point of frustration text to the screen and keeping the book nerds like me happy while trying not to exposition dump the way the 80’s version did - which still wasn’t enough for it to make sense on it’s own.
In the theater, I enjoyed it. Thinking about it afterward, I found some nits to pick.
Jessica is pregnant before the beginning of the film, and still pregnant after the end of the film. That compresses the timeline rather substantially.
I am deeply skeptical that one can learn to ride a sandworm in 9 months.
I do not for one moment believe that one can organize a globe-spanning political or religious movement in 9 months. The movie implies that the Bene Gesserit had a much more active role on Arrakis than in the books, but I am still skeptical. Religious zealots may yearn for a messiah, but they are also extremely wary of false prophets.
Even if — no, especially if — the Fremen had a war machine assembled, equipped, and ready to go on short notice, there is no way they would give command over to Paul that quickly. Armies are composed of relationships, and it takes years to cultivate those relationships.
I didn’t really care for the depiction of the Harkonnens. Too much Lynch-esque weirdness for the sake of weirdness. Stellan Skarsgard was good as the baron, but I hated the depiction of Feyd-Rautha. One of the plot points of the novel is that the baron is cultivating his nephew to be less psychotic than his relatives. His plan was to let Rabban terrorize Arrakis for a while, then send in Feyd. “Oppression is relative.” If Feyd was slightly less overtly brutal than Rabban, the baron expected the people to consider him a vast improvement, and hail him as a savior. I don’t know if the Feyd of the book had the finesse to pull that off; the Feyd of the movie definitely did not.
The Harkonnens should not be bald. They should be redheads. And their livery colors are blue and orange, not black and white.
At least we did not see Austin Butler in a winged metal Speedo. One thing that I appreciated in the 2000 SyFy Channel miniseries was that, due to the limited budget, the Harkonnens were not visually coded as Yep, He’s Evil – they were morally, not physically, inhuman.
The book version is substantially more fleshed out, and he does indeed have some ability to plan and conspire (albeit there’s the implication there are others doing the deep thinking and planning). There’s a lot more going on (hinted in the movie along the line of “plans within plans” for the birthday duel sequence) than was actually shown. And Feyd has attempted to have his uncle assasinated although with no success of course. But no, if the Baron had put Feyd in position as a (Puppet?) Emperor after crushing the Fremen on Dune Feyd would likely have failed once the Baron passed either on his own or with Feyd’s help.
Unless, of course, he was propped up by the unseen hand of the BG, in much the same way that the BG kept Shaddam’s Empire balanced between the factions to make sure that their breeding lines were preserved and that when the time was right, they could put a BG controlled Kwisatz Haderach on the throne before Jessica trashed their plans.
Of course, in the book, it was Feyd who planned the whole “un-drugged slave” plot in order to get his own guy into being in charge of the slave quarters. His guy is later killed as punishment for the failed assassination attempt you mentioned.
You know that, and I knew that, but now everyone knows that! Open spoilers indeed!
Seriously, if you -like- the movie, and want to dig in, read the book. There is just so much more going on on every single level. But it can be a slog at times to read. Not bad, and certainly less tedious in most areas than, say, Tolkien, but you end up being the sort of nerd who keeps complaining about each little omission.
Note, I’ll repeat the advice I give most new readers: Read Dune, then skip Messiah and Children, and then read the rest of the OG books - God Emperor, Heretics, and Chapterhouse. If you still enjoy it, go back and read Messiah and Children, but those two are something of a slog IMHO.
Both Messiah and Children are pretty short. Which is IIRC one of the reasons why they were combined into a single series on SciFi. To me Messiah reads as a post-script to Dune and Prequel to Children, it doesn’t really quite work as a novel in it’s own right. They’re both more of bridging/set up novels. But that’s me.
FRom my March 3 post in the Movies I’ve sen recentlythread:
I saw Dune part two in the theater yesterday. It’s interesting the way they’ve changed it to be more politically correct. Seriously.
They’ve gone out of their way to play down the religious part – the “oracular vision” sort of thing – even though religion and religious fanaticism are a big part of the book. They worked to play down the Great White Savior aspect, too. And, while they couldn’t avoid the sexist implications of Paul being the Kumquat Haagendazs (being the only male who could drink the Water of Life and survive, having capabilities women couldn’t have), they soft-pedaled it.
The sandworm-riding scenes were much better than in the David Lynch or the SciFi versions. I liked the Harkonnen physical feature of baldness and weirdly-shaped heads better than having them all red-headed.
Villeneuve worked hard to tone down the more fantastic elements as much as he could – no grotesquely mutated Guild Steersmen, minimizing the effects of protective fields, and so on. His ornithopters look like the ones in John Schoernherr’s illustration, rather than the way they did in the previous versions. I knda miss the three-loved sandworm mouths – the sandworms actually look the way I’d pictured them when I first read the original book (I hadn’t seen the Analog illustrations at the time).
Having Baron Vladimir Harkonnen being eaten by ants rather than swallowed by a sandworm seems much more appropriate and believable.
When I first read Dune, I did exactly that, skipping from the first book to the fourth. I was incredibly confused. God Emperor makes no sense without at least Children of Dune.
Oh, that’s on me for not being clear. When I say I reccomend new readers to Dune, then skipping, it’s with the assumption (this is me not being clear, duh) that having introduced them I’ll give a summary of 2 and 3 so they’re not going into it blind. Or, in the modern age, of having them go to a Dune Wiki, Goodreads, or other online summary for those two books for a solid synopsis, without the actual slog of going through the books themselves.
In 10-15 minutes I can give enough information to someone to understand how to get from Dune to God-Emperor, and almost all the little details in the book (the conspiracy, the slowish reveal on the Preacher’s identity, and the like) aren’t really ever going to be important later. But yes, Hayt/Idaho, the ‘awakening’ of gholas, the risks of an abomination, Alia’s corruption (internal and external) along with the evolution of the God Emperor, and the new Leto-derived breeding program with his sister as the genesis are all worthy of a few minutes time.
Now, having been unclear prior to this, I don’t hate those two books. But, as I indicated above, almost all the details of those stories play more to the resolution of Dune, rather than to moving forward the God-Emperors evolution and the expanding nature of the Golden Path in the next books. They’re fine novels, and if you get through Chapterhouse and still like the universe, I’d absolutely tell someone to go back and read them.
But the same people who hard a real hard time getting through the first third of Dune before it gets more “action-y” tend to have a complete stall with Messiah.
ETA - in a certain sense Dune and Messiah are a duology, as are Children and God-Emperor, and then Heretics and Chapterhouse. But to me, those pairings feel like Main-story + postscript, Intro + Main novel, and a somewhat more balanced pair respectively.
Getting a summary would definitely have helped me. I was so completely lost. I would say that’s why God Emperor is my least favorite Dune, but I dislike it on its own merits. But that’s a hijack for another day.
It was actually Thufir who planned the undrugged slave plot, or at least came up with a plan at Feyd’s request:
The plan Thufir Hawat had devised was admirably simple and direct, Feyd-Rautha thought. The slave would not be drugged - that was the danger. Instead, a key word had been drummed into the man’s unconscious to immobilize his muscles at a critical instant.
And Thufir himself probably had plans of his own:
It’s one of Duke Leto’s fighting men we took on Arrakis! Feyd-Rautha thought. No simple gladiator this! A chill ran through him, and he wondered if Hawat had another plan for this arena - a feint within a feint within a feint. And only the slavemaster prepared to take the blame!
In Arakeen and other ‘secure’ areas, it doesn’t matter.
