They are making another Dune movie, this time directed by Arrival director Denis Villeneuve.
:sigh:
I guess Dune could be a decent movie. I think the Scifi channel 4 1/2 hour movie was pretty good, especially on a tight budget. Good music, good acting. They made an even superior sequel movie covering Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. Children of Dune was exceptional and is still where I know James Mcavoy from primarily.
Anyway, I really think with the new rights purchased, they should attempt to make the Dune universe into a Game of Thrones style adaptation. There are enough twists, enough world developed that they could make a few seasons. I think 3-4 seasons would be needed just to get through Children of Dune. Things get insane after Children of Dune, but it would make for some odd and gripping TV if they ever had the guts to do it.
I see no reason to adapt such a vast book as Dune into a 3-hour or less film. I think there would be room to expand the universe some in a TV Show as well.
Am I alone in thinking this? I’d watch the Dune tv-show in an instant.
It’s been a while since I read these, but my thinking would be to do a 3 or 4 movie set. Not as a TV series.
I think Dune covers “too much” to try to cram into a single (overly long) movie. But I think if you did part 1: 1/2 - 2/3 Dune, part 2: remainder of Dune into Dune Messiah, part 3: Dune Messiah into Children of Dune, part 4: remainder of Children of Dune.
But do NOT go past Children of Dune.
I would not want to see Dune as a TV series because 1. stretched over too long a period, people would lose track of who is who. This happens in GOT to a certain extent, but I remember even the books of Dune were tough to follow who was who, and 2. If popular, there would be too much temptation to veer away from the books, and start spinning off story lines on their own. GOT is “at” that point now, so it will be interesting to see how they proceed.
The problem with many TV shows is that TPTB milk it for all they’re worth. They have no ‘exit plan’; they just keep going and going and going. If they were to release Dune as a series, say a dozen episodes, with a clear ending point, it might be OK for TV. Or do a LOTR thing, and make three movies for theatrical release. But don’t make it a ‘franchise’ like Star Wars.
That was exactly my thought when I read the thread title. If Dune were taken seriously as a TV show, like Game of Thrones is, it could be really good. You could squeeze a season out of the first book, no problem.
I thought the mini-series was vastly superior to the Lynch abomination. But it wasn’t mini-series vs feature film that was the biggest problem there. It was the actual adaptation.
Something like LotRs level of film might work. Break up Dune into two or three films. Maybe break it at the point the Harkonnens take over Arrakis, and Jessica and Paul are abandoned in the desert.
The trouble is, the book just does not fit into a basic movie format. There’s too much going on and not enough “action”. Long discussions of the guild dominance of trade, and how the houses balance each other against the emperor, and how the BG have been secretly manipulating things for thousands of years are interesting and work good in a GoT format, but not in a feature film.
Plus, there’s the whole problem that, in this post-911 era, it is much more obvious that the Fremen are not the good guys. It’s hard to make a feature film for the western market where Al-qaida are the ostensible heroes. But in a long format, the grey areas can be explored and the implications discussed.
There’s more entertainment to be mined from the sands of Dune, but feature films might not be the best format. Any condensation of the complicated subtleties of the Dune universe tend to make a film that either is unwatchable or ununderstandable.
If one wants to make a feature film of Dune, just ignore all the political stuff and make a Star Wars-like actioner set in a variation of the Dune universe. Oh, and call it something else.
I have not read Chapterhouse Dune or Heretics of Dune, actually. I would certainly not include the Brian Herbert books, though some side material may come out of those. I’ve not read them either.
The first three books that feature Paul really were the core books to me. I think 4-5 seasons or so could be done out of those. God Emperor is so weird and such a change, I’m not sure what HBO or any network would make of it.
I’m not sure any Dune movie is every going to be all that great as a movie or TV show. So much of the action, plot explanations etc. takes place in people heads. Plus while Dune was a great literary work at the time it’s definitely (IMO) not aged all that well. The conceit of the entire human universe shunning computers for …reasons… now that they are so more usefully and critically embedded in our lives than when book was written in 1965 seems kind of silly bordering on stupid from today’s perspective.
I think it has aged fine. I hadn’t even heard that anyone thought otherwise. Isn’t the ideas that computers caused a great war(the Butlerian Jihad or something?) and we shunned them after that? I can see that idea still being relevant. With the development of mentats, they were able to achieve much of the same results.
My Dad always told me that he thought the book was pandering to the druggie/hippie culture of the day, with the Spice, hallucinations, etc. He didn’t think that it would have lasting appeal outside that. Wrong again, I guess.
Yea, actually I thought the idea of shunning thinking machines was one of the most realistic aspects. If something like Skynet trying to destroy humanity, or Colossus actually happened, I could see a reluctance to ever let that possibility come up again.
I don’t recall Herbert going to much detail about everything that occurred during the Butlerian Jihad but it was the period (and I’d assume the major purpose of the BJ) when “Thinking Machines” were abandoned.
I disagree. The notion that competing political entities on a planetary scale would eschew the use of AI technologies that would give them a huge advantage over people trying to crush them economically or militarily is simply not credible. Someone would use AI tech and they would rule.
I get that’s it’s a fictional universe but the notion of mankind in toto eschewing AI today is 100X more ridiculous today than it wasin 1965 when computers looked like this.
In my read of the Dune books (at least up through God-Emperor), the Butlerian Jihad backstory was quietly the central motivator for everything.
The prohibition of AI was not merely a law to be enforced, or even a social taboo, it was a fundamental principle of society and underpinned the entire political structure. Everyone, everywhere, knew that any use of AI would inevitably spiral into an existential threat to humanity, because it had already happened and extinction was only narrowly averted. Thus, no single organization could be allowed to become powerful enough that they could not be destroyed by the others, else it would allow someone to open Pandora’s box again.
No ruler would pursue the use of AI because it is a madman’s gambit. If such a ruler were not quietly removed by their own people, their house would surely be obliterated once the slightest suspicion got out and the galactic witch hunt began.
I always figured that was why Paul even went down the path he did, despite all its atrocities: he saw all other things leading to an inevitable AI apocalypse. The only way to avert it was to flip the table and permanently change the species as a whole.
Sounds like Brian Herbert agrees about the Butlerian Jihad. From Wikipedia:
“Eventually the Titan Xerxes lazily grants too much access and power to the AI program Omnius, which usurps control from the Titans themselves.[5] Seeing no value in human life, the thinking machines – now including armies of robot soldiers and other aggressive machines, with the Titans as their commanders – dominate and enslave nearly all of humanity in the universe for 900 years, until a jihad is ignited by the independent robot Erasmus’s murder of Manion Butler, the young son of Serena Butler.[5] This crusade against the machines lasts for nearly a century, with much loss of human life, ending in human victory at the Battle of Corrin. The Jihad also gives rise to the Bene Gesserit, the Spacing Guild, the Sardaukar army, the Landsraad, and even House Corrino, whose Padishah Emperors rule the universe for the next 10,000 years, until the events of Dune and the accession of Paul Atreides.[17]”
The key to Dune’s world of “Humans who don’t need Thinking Machines” is the spice.
I have assumed that what happened during the Butlerian Jihad (without paying too much attention to Brian Herbert) was that Humans fought the TM’s and that the discovery of the spice and its uses, coupled with extreme disciplines like Bene Gesserit and Navigators, is what enabled Humans to perform feats equivalent to what Thinking Machines do (in their own way) and ultimately defeat them.
By the time of the defeat, the spice-infused capabilities had already demonstrated their ability to enable Humans to colonize and control a galaxy, so Thinking Machines lost their necessity.
???
Given that POV, I also argue for the currency of the initial novel and first few sequels. Humanity’s quest for ways to transcend limitations is around us every day. The Dune story puts Humanity on its last legs, until a truly transcending substance is found. An extreme depiction of something that we see.
