And because of that same thing he did not have the sort of juice to pull a Peter Jackson and just shoot the whole megillah at once and then edit it into manageable parts. OTOH the expectation was to not have to wait this long to see if it worked.
But yeah, I’d known for a year that it was only half of the first book.
Yup. I enjoyed Blade Runner 2049 well enough. It was stylistically great, but I wouldn’t put it high on the rewatchability meter. In some ways it lacked substance and in others was almost too opaque. If Dune suffers from the same problem, with an infinitely more complicated and weird story, we could be in for a rough time.
Lynch’s Baron is one of the reasons I hate, hate, hate his movie. Heartplugs. Boils. Ranting and spittle. Crushed bug juice.
That and the stupid rain. And the “weirding module”, Gods was that stupid.
The catch is that in The Mandalorian, it’s ONE character, and the helmet is kind of his thing.
Doing the stillsuits “right” would mean that for large parts of the movie, Paul, most of the Fremen, and various other characters would be nearly indistinguishable from each other. As accurate as that might be, it doesn’t make for good filmmaking.
I suppose you could mark out different people with different stillsuit markings of some kind- kind of how the Fedaykin were marked with red shoulders in the Lynch Dune, or how the various Mandalorians have unique armor in The Mandalorian.
Nothing says stillsuits have to be black or grey. I can’t recall how they’re described in the books, actually. But that’s irrelevant. Have them be all kinds of funky colours with personalized heraldic markings. Have Paul’s be particolour black-and-chartreuse with a metallic-red Atreides hawk on the chest. Have Stilgar rock a gold stillsuit with black polka-dots…
The mini-series had camo stillsuits. Which was silly, that’s what the jubba cloak is for.
And anyway, while I appreciate the stillsuits are the iconic look for this universe for most people, there’s a lot that happens in the sietches, where the Fremen wear ordinary clothes.
Sure- I was just getting at the idea that there would be enough scenes with people out in the desert, that the audience would need some way of telling people apart relatively easily without them having to figure out who’s taller, or bigger or whatever, because they’re hooded and cloaked.
Yes, I agree some way of distinguishing various stillsuited people apart is needed.
Bright signature colours for main characters, it works for the Super Sentai and Voltron.
And the Teletubbies.
Sure, but we know they’re just going to skip the hoods, because why hire Josh Brolin or Jason Momoa, if only to keep them hooded for a good chunk of the movie?
Why hire Jason Momoa if you’re going to make him put a top on at all, is a better question…
Not unprecedented. Karl Urban starred in Dredd without ever removing the helmet, and it was still a well-received performance. Hugo Weaving/James Purefoy starred in V for Vendetta without ever showing their face(s). (Purefoy, uncredited, initially played the role before Weaving replaced him)
And, as mentioned upthread, Pedro Pascal as/in The Mandalorian, who’s face we only see, I think, in two episodes. And Ryan Reynolds in so far two Deadpool movies - we do get some scenes with his face, but he spends much of both both movies masked.
As super-hero movies increasingly dominate the box office, I think general audiences are becoming increasingly comfortable with having leads without faces. And/or Hollywood execs are becoming increasingly comfortable with audience comfort levels for such.
And that’s not even mentioning all of the movies where a well-known actor was rendered unrecognizable by make-up and prosthetics.
Sure, but those are examples of ONE character with a mask, not nearly the entire cast. That’s the issue here, not that Timothee Chalamet would have a mask on, it’s that in some scenes, everyone would.
Sure, but as others have mentioned, as long as the characters are otherwise identifiable (markings, colors, crests, etc.), I think it’s workable.
Half the characters in the big airport fight scene in Captain America: Civil War were in masks and/or full-body suits, and I don’t remember any complaints from viewers that it was confusing or distancing. Of course, the still-suits aren’t going to be as distinctive as a super-hero costume and power set, but as long as they do some establishing shots of characters in still-suits with some distinguishing features and then masking up, I don’t think it will be any more of an issue than distinguishing Iron Man from War Machine (they can even borrow Iron Man’s cinematic trick of showing the character’s disembodied face inside the suit for close ups and dialogue).
And now they’ve gone back on that decision. The latest is that it will be released exclusively in theaters on October 1, and won’t be available on HBO Max until 45 days later.
I could wait, but this looks like the kind of movie that will be much better on the big screen.
That pissed me off more than anything else in a movie where a lot of things pissed me off.
That said, there is a bit of nostalgia and cult classic vibe for it with me now.
Were the weirding modules any dumber than the Atreides developing a more powerful version of Kung-Fu than everyone else?
It’s been like a decade or three since I read the novel, but wasn’t the idea that the kung fu was the result of the bene gesserit training that Paul’s mom gave him, against official orders?
I mean it’s still super kung fu, but at least there’s an in universe reason for there being rare super kung fu.
Also, as I recall, wasn’t the reason that the Emperor wanted House Atradies taken down a peg that they had a large standing army and was popular with the nobles?
Sure. I just don’t find it inherently less silly than the weirding modules.
Yeah. The emperor’s fear was that the Atreides new fighting style made their forces the equal of the Sardaukar. When combined with the popularity of House Atreides this was a threat the emperor couldn’t ignore. When the Freeman were trained they ended up the superior of the Sardaukar. In the first book, the Sardaukar take heavy losses against women, old men, and children when they invade a Freeman sietch.
They aren’t inherently dumber, they’re dumber in the context of a Dune movie
It’s my reading that the Fremen were already the superior of the Sardaukar before Paul came to them.