Well, the first one ran tonight. What did you guys think? I haven’t read the book, but I really liked the first episode. I can see that Sci Fi put a tremendous amount of money into this production. What did you guys think?
I missed it, but I will have to catch it in rerun. I loved Dune, though the movie was pretty flawed.
Well…i enjoyed the 1st part immensly. Although i miss the Lynch cinematic style, the costumes and set design in the original DUne were better, IMHO. Escpecially the Harkonnen planet, and the Baron’s and nephew’s costumes, they just seemed so much more vile in Lynch’s interpretation. But aside from that, the New version does tend to follow the book a lot more, although it also misses some parts, but not as many as the 1st. Oh…and did anyone else notice the uncanny resemblane of the Lady Jessica actress to Councelor Troy…or was it just me?
I loved the way a lot of it looked (except the dress covered in buterflies - what the hell was that?), but had problems with several things:
The gratuitous added scenes with Irulan
Duke Leto on Prozac
The “Batman” camera angles whenever they were shooting the Harkonnens
The frequently awkward direction - parts of it looked like a student film with $$
Paul was way too whiny & snot-nosed
Gurney didn’t come across dangerous at all
Duncan McIdaho’s Scot’s burr you could cut haggis with
Way silly Sardaukar hats
All these, and much, much more!
Pretty sets though, and I liked the sand worm. Ian McNiece had some good moments, although the director clearly wanted him to come across as a silly “Batman”-style villain. Nice soundtrack. Some of the costumes were very nice.
Gonna have to be a lot better tomorrow to keep me from switching channels.
I liked it. sure, there were some problems, but most of them came from over-ambition (and an overabundance of German accents. BTW, of course Duncan speaks with a Scottish burr - his name is Duncan, for crissakes!)
The producrion design and costumes were dead perfect, in my opinion, far better than those in the Lynch pic. The costumes, especially, were a perfect merging of Baroque and Bizzare, reminding me of Roger Corman’s version of Masque of the Red Death.
Incidentally, the Sardaukar uniforms were obviously based on those of the Vatican Swiss Guard. Very nice touch.
The absence of the movie’s overbearing music soundtrack is most welcome.
And unlike the movie, every other line isn’t an “hit the audience over the head” voiceover internalization.
“and an overabundance of German accents”
I acutally thought they sounded more Slavic then anything…but what do i know,i’m just a stupid slav.
There’s another thread on this:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=49258
Much of the filming was done in Prague, and some of the speaking parts used local actors…
Actually, the broad selection of accents works for me. I’m always annoyed by sci-fi epics where supposedly vastly different cultures all end up speaking with the exactly the same accents.
It’s like a too-long bad episode of Farscape so far.
Whoever put in that scene with Irulan coming to the party should be flayed alive. I’ll say no more there.
Most of the scenes that establish Jessica early on are gone - her getting the crysknife, the escape from the Harkonnens using the Voice, most of the we-suspect-her plot. As a result most of her character has vanished.
Ditto Thufir. I almost missed the poor guy.
William Hurt is an emasculated version of the Duke. Leto is a firebrand - this guy is seeing a shrink.
Paul’s ok but being this is SciFi, he reminds me way to much of Crichton. Moody, slumps in chairs, acts crazy at random moments - he’s been getting lessons from somewhere…
The Baron isn’t scary. All that red and too much light, I think.
Good points are mostly visual. The 'copters are right on. The worm looked fantastic. The fellow playing Liet is excellent, and Gurney doesn’t look too bad for not being Patrick Stewart.
However, all the death and dreck in the Lynch version has been replaced by a digital antiseptic atmosphere. Most frighteningly, I’m beginning to think Sting as Feyd was a brilliant move. Time to shoot myself, I think.
Hopefully tomorrow night some more Lynch-mistakes will be corrected (the missing knife fight in particular) and I’ll feel better, but the whole thing is disappointing so far. I’d better see Count Fenring - or this is war.
I’ll say upfront that I’ve never read the book.
But, I thought the Lynch film, while a bit dated and heavy-handed in retrospect, had way more style, mood and self-confidence than this first episode. In the Lynch film, things that were potentially silly came off as extremely cool or important (like the Guild navigator, which was laughable last night, I thought); in last night’s episode, I found myself thinking “this is dumb”. The whole thing lacks mood, pace and style.
Having said that, I’m quite sure that I will keep watching. I want to see where they go with it tonight.
Okay, two disclaimers.
I’ve never gotten through the book. However, last time I tried was back when I was a teenager. I might be able to stick with it now.
I sorta liked the Lynch version, although again, the last time I saw it was many moons ago, and even then I thought it was way over the top.
Having said that and establishing myself as something other than a total “Dune” junkie, I’m really liking the miniseries and taping it for future viewings. I liked William Hurt; I thought he had a very regal bearing. From what I remember of the book, I thought Jessica was a little weak, but I liked Paul being torn. I am having a slightly difficult time following because I’ve not read the book, but I find the production very rich and more realistic than the Lynch version. I’ll be interested to see if that holds up.
As for the costuming, being a Star Trek fan for a long time has lowered my standards. 
They’re not great, but I for one liked all the hats.
I’m glad the Sci-Fi Channel did this, because I know a lot of people were unsatisfied with the Lynch version. It’s too bad the new one isn’t meeting expectations either.
Still, sometimes it’s nice just to be a casual fan. You can just sit back and admire the eye-candy.
The baron is pretty bad. Admitadly, even in the book he was a weak cartoonish villan, but at least in the Lynch movie he was entertaining. The actor is playing him straight, which would have been ok had the script and direction not been playing him over the top.
And did we really need to see him in garters? I like the guys playing Fayd and Rabbat so far, though they guy playing Fayd is obviously playing Sting playing Fayd.
I don’t really get the point of adding the Princess scenes, either, unless they wanted to give Paul some characterization time.
Which is understandable, as book-Paul really dosn’t have any personality to speak of. While the direction they’re going with him isn’t really true to the book, it’s understandable, I think.
Hope they’re not upping the Princesses part, in the book she’s a minor plot point.
I wanted more Thufir too, though. That was the only part of the book where I thought the Baron actually “worked,” I hope they don’t cut it.
Costuming is interesting, at least they’re trying something different. Though a few too many of those giant buhdist monk hats. And the wig that the Emporor’s truthsayer was wearking was downright laughable. Really liked the shields, though.
The glowing blue eyes looked kind of cheesy, though. I loved the way they did them in the movie.
Whatever it’s flaws may be, I really hope it does well. Miniseries are the right length for book conversions, and if this one takes off, they might make more, and other people might look into them. Which wouldn’t make up for cancelling MST3K, but it’d be a start.
–
“I WILL kill him!!”
I’d say the miniseries so far has only three advantages over the Lynch movie:
1.) More time to tell the story
2.) Better special effects
3.) Fewer annoying internal monologues
That said, I must say it just lacks the atmosphere of the Lynch version. Also, the costumer needs to be shot. It didn’t help Hurt’s less-than-macho portrayal of Leto when for his death scene, he appears to be wearing a maternity blouse!
I hope it gets better tonight. Sometimes it takes a bit to set the scene and introduce the characters. Maybe that’s the case here.
I (coincidently) just finished re-reading Dune about a month ago (and am now up to Heretics of Dune). I thought it was pretty good. If you had not read the book, I have no idea how you would follow the plot of this thing, as important people are seen and mentioned, but their role is not made clear. (For example, Thufir the mentant). I enjoyed the lack of voice-overs, and thought Calladan (sp.?) looked great. It seems to be sticking fairly close to the book, and the extra scenes are ok, as they help advance the plot and fill in some background without internalization. I am not a fan of William Hurt as an actor, as he ALWAYS seems deadpan to me. I liked the audio special effects, esp. the bene gesserit “voice”. For all the hype, I thought some of the visual special effects was not very good, esp. the space scenes. The actor portraying Dr. Yeuh was a great piece of casting, but why did they leave off the Suk diamond? Anyway, it was good enough to get me watching tonight, which is always the point of television anyway. One last thought, I can’t remember (maybe because I don’t watch a lot of tv) a show with some many commercials and commercial breaks. It seemed like there was a break about every 8 minutes or so.
So far I’m totally enjoying this. I was a bit disappointed with the cheesy obviously animated mouse though 
Anybody notice how the Baron always ends a scene on a rhyming couplet? Very Shakespearean. Cute.
Second night was slightly better. It was nice to see all the Fremen scenes, for example the fight with Janis, that Lynch passed over. That was the first movie’s biggest mistake - treating Paul’s gradual acceptance by the Fremen lightly.
Irulan’s sudden ascendence to a minor character continues to annoy the hell out of me, though. Irulan yammers at her dad. Irulan gets bitchy and plots. Irulan charms the baron. Irulan seduces Feyd?!? Whose rear end did they pull this out of? My best guess is they’re trying to make it a bit more female-friendly - but the way to do that is to give Jessica and Chani more screen time (which they have in abundance, especially in part 2), not Irulan, who has zero effect on the plot anyway. They seem to have chosen to give Irulan a weak subplot instead of following the book’s vastly more interesting Feyd vs. the Baron intrigue. Sigh.
Oh, and Count Fenring showed up - a very poor reading of a great minor character. He’s freakish instead of menacing and dangerous.
thoughts on part III?
Third night was a significant improvement if only for the Feyd-tries-to-kill-the-Baron scene, which I feared was going to be missing.
Watching Gurney carve up bad guys in a gratutious manner was also highly entertaining.
Count Fenring’s role in the ending was missing, though, to my great disappointment. Still, they kept Jessica’s last smug line, which ought to be in that ‘Best Last Lines in SF’ thread.
I have to revise my overall opinion somewhat. Paul effectively changed from a brat to a demigod over six hours. Everything after he takes the Water of Life is pretty much dead-on spooky. Chani, Jessica, Stilgar, and Gurney came to life from the book well.
My main beef is with all the unnecessary Irulan and Emperor scenes - they really don’t have to appear onscreen until the very end. All that wasted time could have been used to give Thufir his critical role, for example, and flesh out Feyd a bit more.