A little confused - a scene in the trailer shows Paul practicing knife-fighting with, I presume, Gurney Halleck. It’s a cool scene, with lightning-fast blows and parries. But if I remember the book correctly, their shields protect them by slowing down fast-moving projectiles so they can be dodged or blocked. Knife-fighting was therefore built around slowly pushing the blade through the shield, presumably while distracting the opponent with attacks from the other limbs. Maybe all the high-speed blows we see in the scene are merely feints?
I suspect so.
Who’s the guy who takes a knee before Paul and says, “My lord Duke”?
Good point there – in the novel, Paul is 15 when the story begins.
And yes, per the books House Atreides counts among its major followers people they liberated from opression in several other worlds, plus of course the imperial government would necessarily be staffed by people of vastly different origins, and one of those was Kynes’ father, sent to Arrakis by the Empire.
But in the end everyone has got to wrap our minds around that no major book is likely to be adapted for screen literally word for word page by page faithful to the text and never ever fully the way all of us saw it in our heads.
IIRC, shields actively block and turn aside fast-moving objects, and only allow slow-moving objects to pass through. I always visualized it a bit like wet sand; hit it hard and you won’t make any progress - move slowly and you can push your fingers in some.
Which will, obviously, inform fighting styles. I assume that it’s relative motion that makes a shield work, so if you see a slow strike coming, moving quickly into the strike would turn it away. They probably won’t spend a ton of time on it in the film, but if they’ve really thought things through it could create some fascinating combat choreography.
Jason Momoa - Duncan Idaho.
I think that’s Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa) sans facial hair.
Ah, thanks. I didn’t recognize him.
In the Lynch version at the start they explained who was on which planet 2 or 3 times. That was really dumb. Or maybe that was only in the TV version AKA Alan Smithee version
The technique is fast defence, slow attack. But only through the shield, so fast movements up to that point is part of the technique - not just feints, but also a quick thrust with a slow finish.
I’m…hopeful. Going to be tough to really adapt it well, but I hope they learned some lessons from less successful adaptations.
I’m a little uneasy about them not filming both movies in one go. If the first one bombs, due to the pandemic, bad reviews, public apathy or whatever, the studio could cut the budget for the second one badly enough that it would suck no matter how hard DV tries, or just not make it at all.
Make sense. I chalked it up to Rule of Cool.
If memory serves, David Lynch did play with something like that in the earlier movie. There was a scene of Paul fighting Gurney Halleck, that showed Halleck slowly slipping a knife through Paul’s shield. The shield fighting, I thought, was one of the few really well-done aspects of the film.
Wait until they get to the Bene Gesserit, or Maud’dib, or the Jihad (provided they keep that language in there). I can’t wait for the this movie ruined Dune, it’s all about women and Muslims!
Completely random fact: the Hebrew translation of the book changed “Bene Gesserit” to “Benot Gesserit”, because “Bene” means “sons of”, while “Benot” means “daughters of”.
And the Orange Catholic Bible.
Oh, they are already posting “why does he say ‘Crusade’?? They’re taking jihad out to be PC!!” You’ll hear it from both directions…
And you’ll know that they just want to bitch. Dune IS about strong women as much as it is about anything else, maybe more.
I think it’s pretty obvious that Jessica is the book’s main character, not Paul.
I was referring to the series as a whole not just the first book.
Rankin-Bass could come along and save the day!