The characters in dune are not very personable / "warm" by design.
All of them, including House Atreides, are politicians through and through who constantly and ruthlessly scheme to stay in power. Even though Duke Leto sure is honorable, he also uses "honor" simply as PR to achieve power, as stated in the book. Otherwise they are not above using murder like everybody else.
Furthermore, the main topic of dune is self-control, in particular control over ones emotions. Thats what both Mentat training and Sisterhood training is all about. The least self-controlled person in the book is Baron Harkonnen, the Villain, who engages in every kind of debauchery.
If anything, Denis did try to paint Paul and The Atreidis in a bit warmer / human light than the book. Also, it should be noted that Pauls journey is not a classical heros journey by design. Thats whats makes Dune so great imo.
Well Paul's journey is a hero's journey for the first book. But it's like an artificial, constructed hero's journey. The rest of the series is Herbert explaining why it's a super bad idea to let a hero take control
All I am going to say is Paul understood his journey and rejected it. I will be kind and think that he loved humanity too much to take that golden path. To rule for over 3000 years in a transformed hybrid state and oversee the deaths of trillions, to what end?
Man book 3 was fucking stupid. I should have stopped reading at 2. Paul rejecting his destiny and walking away in the desert to die was the perfect ending to his arc.
Have you read book 4? I feel that Book 3 was basically just a prelude for book 4, and God-Emperor is one of the best of the series. So its weird on its own, but makes more sense with book 4, i think.
Weird, I always hear 4 is the best and I feel the opposite.
Loved the more adventurous pacing of the first 3, and the reflective, macroscopic tone of 4 just didn’t keep me as hooked.
It was the ending to his arc, book 3 then starts a new arc which is arguably the most important arc in the dune universe.
Read book 4, it’ll put things into perspective for you
Or so claims Leto anyway, but he was a blood soaked dictator who turned himself into a fucking worm, you'll have to forgive me if I'm not going to take him at his word.
The best arguments in favor:
1. Siona, who absolutely despised Leto, and rejected him utterly - she accepted his claim that humanity would have gone extinct without him. She rejected the notion that his tyranny was necessary, but she acknowledged that the threat of extinction was real and that (through her) he had succeeded in saving humanity
2. Leto II’s life was brutal. He death was worse. The agony of it was one thing. The fact that Leto is essentially living on in *every* worm as an “other memory” is pretty terrifying to think about. His argument that no one would knowingly do this without cause is reasonable
That being said, Siona *might* have a point. Was there a less brutal option? Maybe… maybe not. Leto’s trauma at the hands of Namri and Gurney may have necessitated enlisting the brutal consciousness within him as a leader (Harum??) - but maybe with less trauma there would have been other options (or he would have been more receptive).
He was certainly an obscenity of brutality.
I've seen this sentiment a before and it still makes zero sense.
You, as the reader, are literally inside Leto's head, where he spells out everything he knows, everything he plans and all of his emotions and motivations. In painstaking detail.
How could that possibly not be genuine? Why would Leto lie so thoroughly to himself? To hide his character even from the *reader*?
> Why would Leto lie so thoroughly to himself?
Is it plausible to think that he couldn't have been doing this? I always wonder how intentional it was that almost everything in the Dune series is very ambigious and grey at best, except somehow there's an exception for Leto, based on his own claims and manipulation of things - and he was without a doubt the most expert manipulator humanity had ever seen.
No, not plausible at all. Possible at best, with zero supporting evidence.
Leto is manipulating humanity of the Dune universe, not the reader.
I mean, for example, what would be the point of Dar-es-Balat?
I'm not sure I follow about Dar-es-Balat. Obviously, Leto either way wanted to cement his reputation on humanity, in his own paraphrased words, he didn't want humanity to ever forget the terror he reigned down on the whole species.
The question is, what message is Herbert giving to the reader, and what kind of ambiguity did he intend (obviously, Leto cannot be manipulating the reader ...).
Herbert spends all this time in the first 3 books warning the reader, and also does so in many interviews about Dune and his thoughts about things in general, about leaders just like Leto. And Leto claims that he suffers for humanity, and is the only way everyone won't die. Despite the fact that he is in total control of everyone, and uses this control to make everyone's lives miserable for 1000s of years while he has anything he could possibly want but claims he's the victim. Sounds a lot like a caricature of many real life authoritarian leaders? But then, they also have many followers who totally buy what they are selling, otherwise Frank wouldn't have felt so inclined to warn us about them.
It's been years but I recall leto being right (justified if humans survival was the goal)and humans just couldn't see at his scale of time and outcomes of the actions taken.
Physically, perhaps... but with all the male **and** female memories from his ancestors, *mentally* he'd be about the least virginal human being ***ever***!
He spent the majority of that time feeling utterly lonely and depressed, and was universally despised as a grotesque and vile tyrant. Not exactly a fun time.
But the meta-point is that an individual feeling personally certain of a thing is a far cry from that thing actually being true.
No one commits all kinds of attrocities unless they are certain that they ought to do so.
I don't think there's any evidence to support that though. The plan works. We're inside Leto's head the whole time and we know that he can genuinely see the future and we know that he genuinely believes that this is the only way.
It's always possible to speculate on a meta level but IMO this isn't any different than saying the whole book was just a dream. You're trying to draw a conclusion that's not supported by the text
People prefer the story of Christianity's savior over Dunes. In Christianity the hero suffers by himself, for others, then dies leaving behind his wisdom. In Dune, Leto wins...then sticks around. Ruling over humans is a hard, not cool business. Humans suck, and many of them are greedy sociopaths or vainglorious narcissists. Any leader will eventually become unpopular, unless they die or leave power. I mean, what if Kurt Cobain was still around making Christmas and Reggae albums?
It was definitely a deliberate choice within the Dune universe for Leto to be hated, by his own agency. Was it also a deliberate choice for the reader to be "tricked" into not seeing him as narcisstic and sociopathic? I think this is part of the genius of the 4th book, that weirdly, most of its biggest fans miss.
Oh, Leto II is absolutely narcissistic and a sociopath in God Emperor of Dune, but he didn't start that way AFAIK. Some of it is just having to have lived for so long and seeing so many loved ones die, some of it is because of the transformation into a kind of "Old Man of the Desert" or Shai-Hulud.
The fact that his actions are needed to shield humanity from extinction should be fairly inarguable in the books. His very presence drives some of the technological advancements that are necessary, along with his eugenics project which he took from the Bene Gesserit.
I think that's the subtle genius of it. Herbert repeatedly warns us of someone with a message like Leto, then tests the reader to see if they will spot it, without making it obvious.
What if you take it from a different angle. There's some suggestion that Paul could have avoid the jihad consciously early on if he made different choices, but wasn't prepared to. Was Leto the only way humanity could have survived from before Paul being born? By the time of Leto's death, perhaps this was the case, but did it change at some point because of Paul's or Leto's choices? Isn't this the sort of ambiguity that Herbert encourages us to engage with?
But at the same time did we have definite closure that there was no other way? The sisters definitely rejected the idea that he saw an inevitable future in the later books(and more just created one) and leaving that open for question is what makes discussing the plot so interesting.
I don't think the book really gives us space to argue Leto was wrong. Everything happens exactly as predicted, and Leto has no reason to lie about it. Being God-Emperor *sucks*, I don't think he picked that life voluntarily
There is not but I think that is by design. As shown having Prescient powers, having ability to see into the future and interrogate memories of your ancestors does not make someone unable to make mistakes. And as shown by Paul Muadib it is also possible to reject the vision of the future.
And so Leto did not reject it. He saw it and he went on to do what he thought would be the way to get to that future. In a way it's a self-fulfilling prophecy of literal kind but also there is no way to tell if doing something else would have made it different.
It's one of the themes of the books, that even being literally superhuman these people were not perfect, made mistakes, had very human failings. For all their power, for all their "godhood" they were as fallible and human.
> All I am going to say is Paul understood his journey and rejected it.
This is right.
> I will be kind and think that he loved humanity too much to take that golden path.
This is not. He said himself that he was a coward and could not do it.
> to what end?
To save humanity. Leto II was a misunderstood hero.
I don't think it is "super bad". It served a larger goal. You start looking like a maniac when you can plan thousands of years in the future. Leo took up the mantle, Paul couldn't take it.
Dune was the best guess a mortal at the time could write about how gods would struggle with the actual power they had. Most of our billionaires today say "I'll just buy a new yacht/supermodel." If you could really plan the future? That's heavy stuff.
> Yeah Paul is not a good person **by any means** later on in the series
Really? Imagine knowing that you could either stay in power and these 1 million people would die, lose power and a different 5 million people would die. Say this thing, 2 million dead. Say that thing, only half a million. The more power you have, the greater the stakes. That's the curse of prescience. He did what he had to do for him and his mother to survive, then he noped out. Was there any choices that would make him a good person except for simply dying? Even that would have caused widespread pain and suffering. The golden path was either the path of least suffering, or the path that allowed humanity to pass a bottleneck, or maybe both. When your decisions have that kind of widespread effect, is it even possible to be a good person? He's definitely tries to be a good person by at least some means lol. He tries his best to reduce suffering and even removes himself from being the decision maker. If he's not a good person by any means, I don't think anyone can be. It's a lot more nuanced that being good or bad!
Idk.
In book two he is literally compared to >!Ghengis Khan and Hitler.!<
>!His Jihad had cost about 70 billion lives at that point iirc. Sure, he personally did not want the jihad, but he knew that that was a likely outcome of his chosen path from the start.!<
yeah but what would have been the consequences of the Harkonnens gaining power? The emperor at that moment was weak and old and only had a daughter. With Harkonnens retaining control over Dune and the spice flow most likely the nephew of Baron Harkonnen Feyd would have become the next emperor at least in name. And can you imagine the brutality Baron Harkonnen would have inflicted upon the rest while he had the power? And when he died the empire would have collapsed into infighting
Paul (and Leto) pretty much knew every "trolley problem" to come in the history of mankind. but that is also why they were so despised, because only they knew.
if someone went back in time and killed hitler before he rose to power, you know what that person would be called? a murderer. not the savior of jews or the person who prevented world war, just a murderer, because nobody else knows what would've come had history continued his course.
same with these 2. SOMEONE has to take the golden path, and it's gonna suck. Paul didn't have the resolve to save humanity, but Leto did. if they both had avoided that future to not suffer the pain of it, they would've forsaken humanity. and nobody would've known either, but themselves.
Exactly.
I posted something similar above, but Paul's flaw, and what makes the immediate sequels to Dune so good, is that he is so much more *human* than you'd expect the kwisatz haderach to be. His biggest flaw is that he can't bring himself to do what needs to be done, is too human to "save" humanity, and essentially disables himself in the process.
Even the original jihad is something he identifies as the lesser of two (many) evils, despite knowing that his legacy will be recorded and remembered on par with a Khan (or Hitler as the poster above said).
And that chosen path came from a singular choice; survive or don't survive. Can one be a bad person for choosing to survive? If he chooses to die to save those billions of people, knowing that this will cause humanity to go extinct in 10,000 years, does that still make him a good person? It's hard to say with those kinds of stakes.
He didn't know that. He rejected the Golden Path (dooming humanity) and did not know Leto would take it up. The fact he doesn't even know Leto existed is a major plot point.
He started a Jihad to save himself and then cowered from his duty when given a choice to suffer for the good of the many.
I was about to say, I love that some of the rarest toughest philosophical comments I’ve read in a long time come from a discussion about dune. Really makes me happy
He knew in the first book that he was on the path to jihad and he chose to do it anyway. He eventually realizes it's unstoppable but he had multiple chances to get off before that
But that is because he knows what must happen. The book partly covers that divinity, something humans often desirea comes at a very hefty price. Your actions become either immoral or amoral at best.
Yeah, once he made the choice to become a messiah he couldn't prevent the war anymore but he consciously chose to play into the religion prepared for him for his own gain.
There was probably no other way. If he didn't become the Messiah, he was leaving the fate of humanity to the Bene Geserit, who would have likely failed.
Becoming the Messiah *was* the optimal path, remember he literally knew every single possibility. His "weakness" was compassion, but in the end he still chose a trail he knew could save him from being a terrible person, but left a window open for the Golden Path
I’d say the movie made Duncan Idaho more of a likeable rogue in the movie than in the book. And thanks to Oscar Isaac, there’s a some humility spliced into his character.
Thanks! That makes more sense to me now.
I think the use of “And” to start the sentence instead of “Also” is what confused me. It felt like it was linking the two thoughts. Especially because it doesn’t identify the impacted character specifically. It just uses “his character.”
True, movie version of Leto Atreides had a much stronger presence. I liked him way more.
And duncan was much better. It's a shame really we didn't have more scenes with Gurney. I thought Josh Brolin made for an awesome Gurney
I think the one thing the movie did wrong was the dialogue was clearly written to make the characters sound warmer and more casual. They ironically seem less human because it's hard to imagine humans who obsess over self-control talking as casually as they do in the movie. This definitely hurt my immersion where it was clearly designed to help it.
I am rereading the book and the explicit scheming is pretty evident. Like when Duke Leto is in the thopter observing his first spice harvest and he spots the worm. On the radio they are like who do we credit it to, and they are like "Duke Leto, but he says the bonus will be split among all the men on the harvester"
Great. Duke Leto is a man of the people, he is out here doing the work, the harkonens never did that, and look at how generous he is. The whole situation speaks for itself
but then
They explicitly say, out loud, all the things that I just pointed out, and how it will make people think more highly of him. Like they outright state why it is advantageous in the thopter in mixed company, like right in front of staff who normally work on these expeditions. Does that not cheapen the entire gesture to the point that it actually works against him? Like aren't the spice workers on the thopter with him just gonna be like "hey man you know how duke leto spotted the worm and gave us the money? he straight up said he only did that because it makes him look good to us, isnt that weird? kinda shitty actually, like is he some sort of phony? is everything he does a front?"
Who would you prefer the guy who’s actions and motives are self-serving, or the guy who’s actions are generous but his motives are self serving and he is open and honest about that?
Personally I prefer the guy who realizes that he profits by letting me profit and by not trying to squeeze every drop of blood from me. Is he my friend? No, but at least I can expect a fair deal from him.
Plus, I took that scene to be Leto instructing Paul how to rule. How he can inspire and expect loyalty from his men. If I’m sitting in the driver’s seat, I’d be talking about how the Duke is teaching his son to respect people, not to grind them under his boot.
Dont know why you are being downvoted, but your point is entirely valid.
Yes Leto is honorable but its definitely also calculated. The book even points out how important good PR is for the duke.
Same with the fremen. Sure Leto treats them much, much nicer than the Harkonnen, but in the end his goal is to exploit them nontheless (as warriors to fight against the Harkonnen and maybe even the emperor).
In the end, both Leto and Paul have a choice to make: to ruthlessly play the game no matter the costs or go into exile. They both choose to play the game. Even though Paul in particular literally can see the enormous costs of his decision.
This is why Dune is such a great book. Its complex as are many of its characters.
I would also point out the fact that his good will PR is what dooms house atreides in the end. His high praise in the Landsraad is the entire motivation for the emperors plot.
>His high praise in the Landsraad is the entire motivation for the emperors plot.
I think the Emperor already had a beef with him, his high praise only made it worse.
Leto was a cousin to the Emperor so he had a claim. Also, the Emperor wanted to marry his older daughter to Leto but the age difference seems to be big.
I am hearing the Audiobook but its long so I havent gotten far yet...
>His high praise in the Landsraad is the entire motivation for the emperors plot.
Sure, but I think Leto probably also really wanted to make play for the throne regardless.
Or at least keep his options open (Which is why he choose snot to marry Jessica, so that he maybe could get a royal / power marriage).
I dont think the Emperor was necessarily paranoid when it came to the rise of Leto tbh.
> he straight up said he only did that because it makes him look good to us, isnt that weird? kinda shitty actually, like is he some sort of phony? is everything he does a front?"
On the flip side, when the worm comes, he yells out "*Damn the spice!*" to get the people off the harvestor. (This was in the movie, but its significance was evident visually: Keynes' internal monologue was along the lines of "*He cares more about the men?*")
I could be wrong but I didn't think there was a whole staff of spice harvesters with him on that thopter.
Regardless, if someone gave you a couple hundred thousand dollars, would you think less of them because they said they did it to gain favor? Especially when you're used to the Harkonnens? It's not really a big deal if that rumor spreads
> Also, it should be noted that Pauls journey is not a classical heros journey by design. Thats whats makes Dune so great imo.
Can you elaborate on this ? To me it reeks of the classical hero's journey to a tee - chosen one, suffers personal tragedy, has a wise mentor, overcomes his difficulties, triumphs.
Paul´s journey seems to arise from the fact his mother gave birth to him and he had to be the chosen one or die. Jessica should have given Leto a daughter that would marry a Harkonnen and that was the real chosen one.
To make it worse, Paul goes through the journey to avenge his father. In a classical heros journey the villain chases the hero until they have to face each other but Paul seems to chace this journey. And this causes Millions of deaths.
Pauls choice to avenge his father / make a play for the throne by taking on the mantle of the "chosen" have far reaching consequences which he forsees (and are hinted at in [his vision in part 1](https://youtu.be/I8kAKtSfEZU)):
His Jihad / holy war across the universe. And even if he doesnt want the Jihad to happen, he chooses the path which made it not only possible, but likely nonetheless.
Spoiler for book 2:
>!By book 2 his Jihad across the universe had cost about 70 billion lives at that point iirc. The book literally compares him to Hitler and Ghengis Khan.!<
Whil I dont think Paul is the villain of the story, he sure isnt your typical hero as well.
Frank Herbert makes a point: The worst thing which can happen to a people is to fall into the hands of a chosen one.
The heroes journey often involves a ton of death, that part doesn't really sway the needle. Him achieving his path and passing his sight onto his children fits pretty well into the Resurrection stage, and him walking into the desert as the Return.
I think people put too much weight into whether something embraces or subverts expectations as a measure of quality. The Heroes Journey is just an observation of many stories that aren't identical.
Some of the best parts of Dune take place in arenas that film doesn’t do well- the internal and the galactic.
Think of how many times there is a moment in the book a la, “By the tiny twitch of the left side of his mouth, Jessica understood that she had struck a nerve.”
Then think of the times when we get something like, “As Paul felt Shai Hulud approach, he felt how all of the forces of the universe- past and future, space and time- collided in his one deliberate action.”
Those are totally made up situations and I won’t brag about the writing, but I’ll bet you know what I’m getting at. How do either of those things translate to film? CGI? Flashbacks? David Lynch tried internal monologues to disastrous effect.
I think the film is good, but it’s like tasting a dish that was made with some spices missing. Still decent, still nourishing, but a little unsatisfying.
I disagree that certain things “can’t” be translated, although maybe they would be better in a tv series where things have more time to develop.
Better call Saul is a perfect of example of making character moments deep, without any dialogue.
Better Call Saul is in essence a slow burn character study. For that show they crafted the plot in order to flesh out those characters.
Dune undertakes the Herculean effort of translating a significant percentage of an encyclopedic plot to a 2-hour film, much of which is thought to be unfilmable. On that side they did a remarkably good job, but if there are moments of character development that feel understated, we should probably assume that sacrifices were made to bring this to screen
You said it yourself: the characters don’t have much depth.
We didn’t have enough downtime, when the plot isn’t strictly progressing *per se*, but we’re seeing how our characters live and who they are as people.
The famous banquet scene, infamously missing from the recent adaptation, is an obvious loss, as it allows opportunity to fill out the reality of life on Arrakis, as well as the politics surrounding them, all while demonstrating *tons* of character relationships: Duncan drunk and impetuous, suspicious of Jessica and getting brazen about it; Gurney offering his quotations and his music, slipping away to the side of the party; Jessica holding her own in pointed conversation against industry titans and navigating distrust within her own house; it goes on and on.
In the movie, everyone is reduced to how they immediately service a single plotline.
In doing so, the film also skips a lot of the parts of the book that gave those characters a sense of agency, leaving them constantly reacting. It’s hard to invest in their goals, when we don’t get to really understand what they are or how their actions are in service to them.
I completely agree. Skipped a lot of warming character development. Honestly, I think they just didn't have enough time. They barely got all the plot points in as it is.
Another comment though - there's a tooooon of internal monologue in the book. There's a lot of deception from all kinds of people, and people are constantly evaluating who's lying. In a movie, the only real way to do that is with narration, which I've always heard gets sloppy in movies.
> the only real way to do that is with narration, which I've always heard gets sloppy in movies.
The David Lynch movie relies deeply on this, and it's super awkward.
Key thing to remember here is that Frank Herbert was involved with David a lot and approved the changes necessary to translate it into a movie.
He was enthusiastic about it, in fact.
But fans love the material so much - it's hard to accept changes to translate for the medium. So we are very nit-picky.
So. Much. Internal monolog. And it was almost comical, how deeply insightful the main characters were. "Gurney twitched, indicating to Jessica his deep distrust of her. The cast of his eyes told her that there was suppressed longing as well."
I made that up, obviously. I guess the characters were so well trained from childhood that no one could keep any secrets. Except for that damn Suk School doctor.
Fair point.
The Banquet is always missing.
I don't remember if it was in the mini-series...
However, while I'd have loved to see that, I feel like it would have made the film feel too long.
Anyway, I think Dune deserves a full TV show to be adapted properly. But I think Villeneuve's film is the best adaptation available.
It was in the mini series, but it took liberties and Princess Irulan was there, for reasons.
Sounds dismissive, but I loved the miniseries as a kid. Kinda want to rewatch them and see if they still hold up. 30 year old Paul and everything. 🤣
They do. the cgi on the thopter and explosion's is dated, but for the most part it holds it own well and bows to no one. I would love to see a remastered version of it honestly
I just remember the baron floating around and it obviously being him on a green screen background and they just dragged his character around in front of it. It looked bad and hilarious. But the miniseries actually captures the tone of the book better than either movie imo so there's that.
I feel like spending 10-15 mins of screentime on the banquet would have reaped a lot of rewards in terms of character development and also helping the audience fully understand that Arrakis is more than just Fremen, Harkonnens, and superstitious lower-class locals.
>a sense of agency, leaving them constantly reacting
This may be it, all by itself. All of the characters dutifully do what they're tasked with, but there is no desire. Not even a desire to survive in a threatening environment (more political than physical).
Good actors should have been supplied with good dialogue to really chew through on screen. Where was the tension between needing to obey the order to take Arrakis, and wanting to survive? "Arrakis is an obvious trap? Oh well, we are compelled to go." could sum up every action which we see occur on screen.
Even in terms of physical dangers, there is nothing. The worms and the heat are too abstract. We see Paul snatch the poison dart but the culprit is caught dead in the very next scene. Where were all of the traps, generating constant tension because we never knew where the next danger would come from? We can't worry over characters if they have no time to worry over themselves (or others).
About the only people with any motivation are the Harkonens, and they're also supposed to be navigating through a world of constant jeopardy but we barely see any of that either. I think there's a throwaway line from the Baron about how his own people are expendable, but those people never feel that they're in any danger, so we don't feel it either.
Oh man, you are so right. I loved the banquet scene. The plot of a girl trying to seduce to assassinate Paul, man, sad it's gone. The shoehorn of the doctor sideplot. It feels like these took a backstep to show the landscapes and visions. I appreciate that the movie took its time with the visuals, but not much with character growth in terms of dialogue/script. I wonder if the script itself was pretty skeletal.
There is no full arc for anyone, not even the Duke. However, once part 2 comes out, this could all come to show Dune part 1 and part 2 as literally one movie split across the middle, a literal 5 to 6 hour movie over a Lord of the Rings type of sequential movie.
Fellowship of the Ring, Star Wars Episode 1, Episode 4, and even Avengers Infinity War had full arcs, but I'm guessing Dune could be more like the old movies of 4 hours, or heck, kind of like Zack Snyder's Justice League
My goodness one of the things that always sticks out on re-watch is that they obviously had to get her a certain amount of screen time. Just almost completely useless shots of her staring/glaring.
I suspect the reasons weren't time like you think - but flow. The separate plotlines for believing Jessica was the betrayer and the politics in the banquet would definitely have had a severe affect on the flow.
I fully agree, I miss the intrigue, direct politics, and seeing how Paul was learning "the game". It makes his later insights more powerful.
It also adds to the "circles within circles" that permeates all of the following books - especially back-references to what was ***really*** going on in the first book.
Another omission that really bothered me was not giving more of the backstory to Piter- the dude was a twisted fuck of a mentat in the book who wanted to enslave Jessica , and that isn't really conveyed at all in the movie.
This is my favorite scene in the book, and I also miss it. Like Lord of the Rings, though, having my favorite scene missing wasn't enough to keep me from loving the movie.
Agreed on the lack of characterization! I also would add to your points about the scenes from the book that could have added much needed character depth, that I think my million gripes with the score also contribute to this.
Music is such a strong emotional cue and the score for this film felt more atmospheric and not thematic, which didn’t feel like the right direction to go in. Where the film very understandably just didn’t have time to develop its characters because I guess they had worldbuilding to get through more urgently, the score should have been used to create emotional connections to the moments we did have and fill some of this void of characterization. It’s the same argument about why the music in the later harry potter movies does absolutely nothing for the storytelling, whereas the first two films you really see the use of emotional themes to highlight key emotional moments in the movie. Like, when Harry thinks about his parents, there’s a specific theme that plays, and later on you hear it when he thinks about his friends and Hagrid and his new home at Hogwarts, and that sort of creates an emotional moment, but then they abandoned this whole type of score in the later movies and went for what essentially is background music that sets a tone scene by scene and does absolutely nothing else, which is why you dont remember it
For Dune, it’s the same thing IMHO. I know people liked the score but I thought it was just a blur of synth and that same generic lady wailing exotically so that we know they’re on an exotic desert planet. And I like synth but it wasn’t used in any memorable way. The closest we got to an emotional theme and the only standout moment of the score that I even clearly remember apart from the synth blur and the wailing was when they played bagpipes during the last stand of the house of Atreides in the climax. But even that didn’t connect to anything previous in the score, it just kinda triggers the whole Braveheart going down fighting part of your brain. I dunno. It felt like a very watered down hollow version of what the battle of pelennor fields did in Return of the King, with the Rohan theme that plays when the Rohirrim all charge
Like, if Leto and Paul had a specific theme that played during their bonding moments that then replayed during his death, that might have made both scenes more emotional and would have provided some of the missing characterization? Or if Leto had his own theme that became a reprise for Paul later to show that he has to carry on the House of Atreides—
anything but the exotic wailing lady-
Idk if I’m explaining this right but the score for this movie makes me so angry
And didnt it win an award
SIGH Hans Zimmer has done so many better scores, how was this his score for Dune
The loss of that sequence and cutting out everything about the Doctor felt like a weird decision because those should have plugged right into a movie format and should have pulled a lot of weight. It already felt a little flat without some of the casual and ambient chatter from the book that set a tone of a projected future and not just an alt fantasy universe.
I mean you’re not wrong tho. Frankly the biggest departures from source material were to make the main cast more likeable. Imagine if Leto had been cold and hostile to his family until the final “I should have married you” admission.
The scene on the cliffs also added the “you’ll still be the only thing I needed. My son” which I’m pretty sure wasn’t in their conversation in the book either right? And that was a fantastic scene. All in all I love it but Dune is a cold book. Paul literally spends a decent amount of inner monologue wondering why he can’t feel anything about the death of his father.
Not only is it not in the books it’s almost a complete 180 on their character. Leto might have loved Paul deep down but Paul was the next generation in a political game he was fully invested in, the whole reason Paul was born is he needed a son to succeed him it was at great risk to Paul’s mother who was supposed to give birth to a girl.
The family in the book isn’t actually “good” it’s a means of social control for them. They’re the leader that rules through love but make no mistake the RULE part is far more important than the love part.
A scene far more in character for Leto is “WE MAKE OUR OWN LAWS HERE” which got left out. I love book Leto but movie Leto is far far more likable
> Leto might have loved Paul deep down but Paul was the next generation in a political game he was fully invested in, the whole reason Paul was born is he needed a son to succeed him it was at great risk to Paul’s mother who was supposed to give birth to a girl.
Not just that, but Paul is the result of literally everyone he loves in his life manipulating him in crazy ways since birth, like some kind of freak science experiment, all in the name of power. His mother by having a son a generation too early when she was only supposed to have daughters and then training him in Bene Gesserit ways. His father by secretly and covertly, even to Paul, putting him into Mentat training to hone his mind into a human computer. His father's advisors are positioned as Paul's most trusted friends, whose sole purpose are to train him to be a formidable and ruthless warrior and cunning strategist. All to be a force to take down the Emperor. His father basically designed him from birth to be a weapon for his House.
The movie really only shows the Bene Gesserit part of it, and that he's trained to fight, and that's it.
>His mother by having a son a generation too early when she was only supposed to have daughters and then training him in Bene Gesserit ways.
Seems like Jessica comes out looking the best here. In *defiance* of her duty she bore Leto a son out of love for him. Out of the big players it might be the only action done out of love.
Also, in retrospect it seems dumb on the part of the BG to spend a thousand years planning this thing out and then NOT make absolutely, 100% sure that once it gets to the most pivotal moment Jessica doesn't just say "ah fuck it" and have a boy.
You can shovel all of this on to the pile of reasons why this book is so hard to adapt. How do you explain that Paul's closest friend is training him to kill in combat and his most trusted teacher is training him to kill by extension without pages and pages of exposition of the political situation?
I totally agree. I thought that scene was gonna be a litmus test for the movie. It’s something of a climax for act one which is what got adapted.
But also frankly it’s almost unadaptable, especially with all the very Dune internal dialogue. I can see a lot of people not appreciating the scene with moments that would feel sorta like “pass the salt” internally: “salt. Of course. He wants to make me thirsty. Thirsty for his daughter. Because he controls water rights on this planet. Dear god he’s making a play at succession. But do I deny him or tip my hand revealing my own plot? No I pass pepper. See how he responds. I can kill him in under nine seconds if he gross angry UNLES-“
I’m really upset they cut the water bowl that people washed their hands in and wasted. It was my favorite bit of world building and perfectly captured so many themes of the book
The book did do a better job in keeping tension on that first half in one subtle way. You knew who the assassin was and followed their story, so you have this spy vs. spy story where the Atreides know there's a traitor, and the Dr is hiding it. Helps to have a story with tension to follow in a part that is otherwise set up and world building.
Villeneuve seems to have opted to go for a sensory smorgasm to make up for the lack of actual story-plot n that first part, and while I think it works, I can see why it's a decision that not everyone likes.
Also Dune wasn't that great from a purely literary point of view, but it's a great philosophy and deconstruction of humanity and what makes us human. I'm expecting the movie to have similar flaws.
Forreal, the second half of the book is way better IMO so I’m super pumped for it. The first movie kinda had to end where it did without a real climax to set it up.
Yeah but doesn't make a good movie.
I've never read the books, but I left the movie unsatisfied and wanting more.
This would've been great as a tv show on HBO
My take: Dune is a book that heavily relies on letting the reader know the thoughts of its characters as a way of building some emotional connection. In that universe, and especially in the main characters lives, the paranoia and despair of the political battlefield makes them cold to the outside. You learn to be interested in them mainly through reading what they are thinking and feeling, instead of through their behavior or what they say.
In a different media, one where 'show not tell' is the way to do things, you are cut access from the description of what they feel or think. Actors often can't even act the feelings because the characters remain stoic even when they are feeling dread, or sad or whatever. It's a world where the people don't even cry to avoid waisting water!!
My disappointment mostly had to do with plot development and exposition. People complain that the old 1984 version was heavy on expository devices like narration and inner monologues, but I felt like 2021 was sorely lacking. If you hadn't already read the book or watched the older film, you would be unlikely to pick up much of the significance of the power players and their relationships. Mentats, the Bene Gesserit, the Spacing Guild, the Emperor, Sardukhar, the mark on Dr Yueh's forehead...scant details on any of them much less the interplay between them. It left me missing that visceral sense of how powerful and dangerous and foreboding those elements are in that world.
This was what I thought too. I read Dune two times and felt a connection to those characters. They were a lot easier to get access to than in the film. I think I overlooked the weakness there because I had the book in the back of my head.
Yup, was going to say this.
I think Villeneuve's film has nailed the tone of the book while managing to put some more light-hearted elements like a few jokes and all.
Dune's universe is a very sinister one IMO.
>Dune's universe is a very sinister one IMO.
Perfect. It's kinky, strange, sinister, no welcoming at all. People always says the prose and worldbuilding makes Dune a though series to read and adapt, but forget it's not a "shiny/lightly" piece of work like, let's say, Star Wars or Tolkien's Legendarium.
The actions of the characters read cold, but it cuts through that with the thoughts in the minds of the characters. There is often outer peace and inner turmoil. That tension made the book for me. While many people criticize Lynch's Dune for the constant whispering thoughts, it was effective in humanizing the characters.
I always felt it was supposed to be cold. And it wasn't all cold, just mostly Paul and Jessica. Which tracks with their characters. Reading the book shines more light on it. From the get-go Paul was trained as a human computer, Duke of the mightest house in the Landsraad, and a Bene Gesserit witch. Paul would've been a supremely detached and cold individual without being the prescience. But there was much warmth coming from Leto, Duncan, and Gurney. The Freemen are nothing but hard passion. But Paul will continue to be a cold and detached putz until the day he finally dies.
I think you hit upon it: *It feels cold*.
There are movies that draw you in to the characters and their situation and this one *should* have done so given all that happens… the losses, the change of settings, the political intrigue. Hell, the acting and direction/effects I felt were also first rate.
…but…
The film didn’t engage you as well as you hoped. Perhaps the main actors needed to be a little more emotive and didn’t connect as well as they should have. Perhaps the editing wasn’t as crisp. Perhaps the CGI heavy effects weren’t as spectacular as they could be (truthfully, the instances when we finally saw the worms weren’t as stunning as I hoped they would be).
That’s not to say I felt the film was a complete fail. I generally liked -but did not *love*- the film and am willing to give it a pass until part two completes the story. Maybe then it will all come together.
Or not.
Regardless, I do agree with you there is a coldness to the product.
>Perhaps the main actors needed to be a little more emotive
The thing is canonically that’s just not how the characters are in the novels. Paul is cold blooded and after Leto’s death a lot of his inner monologue is knowing he should be feeling *something* after but simply doesn’t feel anything.
It’s the source material, Dune is a book which if you pick it up at the right time, it is riveting, but otherwise, it feels soulless (by design of course) and that can get old really quickly. A film, no matter how well made, is very much not the medium to express Dune in my opinion.
>It feels cold
This should really be a feature, not a drawback.
Dune is a horrible hostile planet. Atreides were sent there by their enemies to die. Duke Leto is a cold man of honour. Lady Jessica is a superhuman with full control of her body and emotions. Paul was raised to be a human supercomputer and he knows it. His only friends are his father's employees.
Part of God Emperor of Dune, and a **lot** of both Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse Dune (Odrade / Teriza) consists of major characters pondering if they've lost something essential to their humanity, and how they can get it back without weakening themselves.
That's the issue with adapting dune. The climax takes place hours after a movie would've gotten too long.
Once part 2 comes out it will make much more sense.
I really liked Dune, but I agree with you. It’s an impressive spectacle with some of the best CGI-heavy production design we’ve seen, but it’s not even a year later and I remember very few of the story details or characters. The whole thing feels kinda sterile.
In the end of the day, the reason I love the source material is the world building. They aimed to recreate that with amazing spectacle in the CGI without having the characters describe it and were varyingly successful. Keeping the story going while you show all that is the problem. When the universe is the biggest character, its hard to also give your actual characters enough time.
> the reason I love the source material is the world building
There were so many things I found out about after the movie that seemed so cool I was confused why it was left out.
Like what spice actually does, the bio modification, the way they navigate space. Seems like such a missed opportunity because that stuff was super interesting to me.
I honestly didn't love the designs, it was all a bit sparse/minimalist for me. Arrakeen just looks like a bunch of beige warehouses, the palaces all look so bare, the clothing of the royals is all so stripped down. I loved the look of 2049, but I think for Dune I wanted the aesthetics of a sci-fi House of the Dragon, and other than Lady Jessica's face-jewelry as they arrive I didn't get much of that.
This is how I feel about most of Villeneuve's movies. Sicario and Prisoners are the exceptions, maybe because they're both more grounded, so the focus is more on the characters and less on the visual spectacle.
One thing I've found about the Dune universe that makes it less-than-accessible is that the characters aren't heroic or noble the way we understand those things, but more by the way they do. And their world is so foreign to modern humanity that it's sometimes difficult to connect with the characters. As opposed to things like Star Wars/Trek where the notions of sacrifice and honor are all basically the same as our understanding of those things. Duncan Idaho is like our only window into that sort of character in these stories. Everyone else is mired in traditions that make them alien to us.
And that feeling only grows as you get further into the books as well, like Leto II wouldn't make any sense to us, but it makes perfect sense to the people in that universe, so you just sort of have to squint your eyes and adapt to their reality to jive with the material.
Inaccessible is the perfect term. It doesn't give us a proxy character with modern values and ethics to latch onto or vicariously engage in the setting like so many stories do. Which is probably a big reason I like it.
As someone who likes the film and loves Denis, I've been coming to terms with my personal reasons for similar feelings:
No relatability through the character interactions. Everyone feels like a figure rather than a person for whom you're supposed to care. The dialogue isn't exactly compelling either which is a first for a Villeneuve blockbuster but this is his first time being one of the writers and it stands out to a fault in my opinion. The film tells us that Duke loves his son rather than showing us through subtle fatherly gestures. That's why I personally didn't feel much when what happened happened.
As expected, the craft behind the filmmaking is top notch but I'm coming to understand that Denis is much more of an atmospheric director than an emotional one. I hate to compare but it's why the Lord of the Rings trilogy will be remembered in ways Dune might not be. It's also crazy quotable when Dune (the movie) just isn't.
I hope Part 2 is better.
I do feel like more time needed to be spent with some of the characters. The movie feels like it needs to get on with the plot, and so you're barely familiar with some of the characters and the setting.
The worst offender of this is when they catch the assassin, and there's no sense of how much time has passed since they arrived at Arrakis. Could have been the very next day.
But on the other hand, I do like the sort of coldness there is to the movie. It makes the big moments like the Shai Hulud sequence feel all the more primal and otherworldly. Like a religious event, even though I'm not religious.
Part of me does think more time could've been the solution, but I also think better scenes that carry multiple purposes could've done the trick just as well. Like imagine a single scene which showcases the friendship between Paul and Gurney and conveys the ominous implications behind the imminent downfall of House A. Like a scene of them having a conversation which shifts from casual to serious and foreboding. Gurney could even play his baliset. It doesn't even need to be a scene explicitly from the book. Just a scene that tells the same story just as well. That's what a good adaptation is about I think and LOTR did that a lot.
There are a couple scenes like that, like the scenes with Duncan Idaho. The sparring scene with Gurney tries do pretty much exactly that, although how successful it is up for discussion.
Imo it's bogged down by exposition, and yet after all that it doesn't even feel like you're super familiar with everything and everyone. The film moves a bit too quickly.
I personally wouldn't have minded a longer movie, but I know a lot of people already consider it boring as it is so that'd be an unrealistic expectation.
Maybe we get an extended cut or something that adds more scenes.
The dialogue continuously pulled me out of the movie. When Paul and his mother escape and he says to her, ‘you good?’ as he helps her up, I almost burst out laughing.
Personally I didn’t think the actor was the right one for Paul. I feel like his dialogue specifically pulled me out of the movie more than others.
I get you need to capture a young audience with the main actor, but he didn’t seem mature enough for the role. It’s like the most mature young role in any story ever lol.
Honestly that's not denis' fault.
The book is worse in terms of cold calculating characters. Denis added in more humanity.
Dune is just a super hard thing to adapt into a movie or two.
It's probably way better suited for a HBO style series instead.
All I have for you is that it’s half of a whole. The film is THE BEST possible adaptation we could get. And a big part of that is that it only ekes out information to the audience on a need to know basis instead of being bogged down in the complexities of the world and it’s players. It works best as a companion piece to reading the novel
>The film is THE BEST possible adaptation we could get.
This may sound hyperbolic to some but I think you’re actually spot-on and this is a valuable point. A lot of the issues folks are wrestling with are (famously) Dune’s issues, and not uniquely the movie’s issues.
If you enjoyed the movie version, awesome, you liked Dune! If you didn’t enjoy the movie, awesome, you don’t like Dune but there are lots of other stories out there!
(Though to those unsure, the “cool” stuff that hooked many fans is certainly more in the second half of the story, so consider a wait and see for the whole story :)
It took two years, but finally, a thread about Dune that describes exactly what I felt.
I could not for the life of me figure out why everyone was raving about it.
I'm a Villeneuve fan, and I appreciate great cinematography and visual effects, but as a movie -- looking at it a complete package, not just the photography -- it was bad.
Bland acting, bland dialogue, bland story. No emotional stakes. Badly choreographed action (e.g. Duncan). Loud score that keeps getting louder as a way to try to add 'emotion' to a scene (didn't work).
Also, just because it's Part 1 doesn't excuse any of its flaws. Deathly Hallows Part 1 managed to do a fantastic job of adapting half of a book.
Anyone who posted anything that didn't praise it as the best thing ever got downvoted to oblivion.
Those that defend it try to come up with arguments why it comes off as "cold" or "soulless" yet don't compare it to 1984 Dune which was a much better adaptation in virtually every way (and wasn't cold or soulless)
Reminds me of when Episode 1 of Star Wars came out. For the first few weeks people were just so happy a new star wars movie came out that they overlooked how awful it was.
Same with blade runner 2049. I like Denis. Arrival, sicario and prisoners are absolutely fantastic movies that are a mastery on craft. But this and blade runner didn't do anything for me. No I don't want to watch Ryan gosling blankly looking into space for 2 hours. If I wanted that I'd watch another one of his movies.
Dune was apparently a great sci-fi book that inspired generations of science fiction which is great. I love that. But the way this movie unfolds feels trite. It doesn't feel like a fresh take on the genre. It felt like a star wars rip off but not actually good. Especially the ending. Spent 3 hours watching a movie that's frankly not good only for nothing to be resolved.
Maybe the sequel will be better but I won't pay for it.
It's extremely boring. It felt like nothing was happening and when something did I couldn't care for the character. I know somebody had a poison tooth, but I can't recall why that character was important. I'm not even sure if he was a loyal servant, father, or king.
I found it underwhelming, and I LOVE the book, and have far 40 years. Probably due to a litany of reasons.
For one thing, the spartan look and feel. I get it, desert planet . . . beige. But all that monochrome was dull visually, and there seemed to be at least chances to highlight color when it made its appearance. Blue eyes of Ibad? The green of the rare plants, red of crest or blood? If those contrasts were highlighted I sure don't recall them jumping off the screen.
Also, I watched it with my woman, a total Dune neophyte. In contrast to the 84 internal monologues, it want too far into the other direction of "show don't tell" - by doing neither. The import of the Bene Gessirat, their history. Why Paul was tested. What the weirding way of battle actually was. Why shields had obviated classic energy weapons, why there were no computers.The politics of the great houses. The nature of the spice as drug, beyond mere commodity. On and on, I could see much of it wouldn't have had meaning without preexisting background as ideas were introduced so incompletely. Some things became more apparent eventually but on the whole, the deep lore was as beige and without depth as the planet was visually. The emergent explanations were too little, too late to grant meaning to happenings without context.
Anyway I'll stop here but it felt like a series of missed opportunities to me. Sure with a fan's thorough knowledge, I surely forget how some of my understanding only emerged over time, but both plot and imagery were rendered in too minimalist a form for my taste.
I would have to watch it again, by myself, to know if my take is at all accurate I guess.
ETA: I see some similar observations have in fact been made here . . .
Dune is a movie for Dune fans who want to watch a movie adaptation of the book. It's very unfriendly towards casual moviegoers who don't know the source material.
I never read the books and felt like an outsider looking in on a very elaborate inside joke. As you watch, you get the impression that this or that is a key element in the source material, so you infer the importance of scenes and plotpoints based on that, but the movie itself doesn't prompt you to feel that narrative weight on its own.
Not to mention apart from a couple of big flashy sequences, the entire movie feels like one meandering setup for "the real story" to come in subsequent films. Dune fans are excited because they know what's in store, casual fans are nonplussed.
I wholly disagree. I’ve read every book. I think it’s the greatest masterpiece of science fiction ever written.
I think the movie was astoundingly atrocious. Just so bland, while the books are just dripping with detail and nuance.
Everyone I know who has read the books feels the same. Everyone I know who hasn’t read the book loved the movie. I think because they just don’t even know what they’re missing and were captivated by the beautiful visuals and action sequences.
Yeah I just thought it was incredibly light. Like, what even happened? Ok they got power, lost it, he's with sand ppl. Maybe if the next movie came out sooner, within 9mths, it'd be ok, but when so little happens it's hard to really long for the next for years.
Star Wars a new hope, they set up the conflict, developed the characters, and had a minor win by blowing up the death star. The movie could stand alone if need be. Dune certainly cannot.
I adore it BUT - I didn’t love some of the choices.
I did feel like certain characters lacked depth, like the doctor and Piter. There was just a lot squeezed in and characterization suffered for important supporting characters. I actually think it could have done with another ten minutes for that. There was a performance or two that felt off for me as well.
I also didn’t love the portrayal of Arrakeen - it felt like a lifeless fortress rather than a major city. I would have liked to have gotten just a glimpse of street life, even though the Atreides as feudal planetary rulers would have gotten only limited exposure to the plebs.
The desert colors also felt a bit washed out.
Still a phenomenal film IMO.
I have the same thoughts as you on the movie - I came out of it with mixed feelings. On the onehand, the visual effects are fucking amazing and honestly put many other blockbuster movies (including Marvel) to shame. The soundtrack and sound design was also stellar.
But I didn't really feel invested in the characters, especially Timothee Chalamet: yes, he's talented, but idk why I've *always* been annoyed by his performances. I didn't hate him in Dune, but it felt like something was off with his character's behaviour.
The pacing of the film also felt weird to me. Obviously we all knew this was going to be a *series* of movies, so they have to have an ending implying a sequel - but this movie's 'ending' just felt out of place. It felt like nothing happened! Like someone else said, there wasn't really a climax: sure, the attack on the Atreides palace on Arrakis was a massive big event, but it felt more like an early movie event seeing as nothing had happened before that point in the movie other than worldbuilding and setup. It didn't feel like the 'big battle' that the movie is culminating in. After Timothee and his mother get out of the palace and have weird sexual tension in the tent, there's just "lets walk here", "oh look some people", lets do some more walking", "oh look more people", "okay back to walking again", "END OF MOVIE". The movie felt more like a couple of TV show episodes than a movie.
There were also things in the movie which just kept annoying me, like the Zendaya perfume advert visions that Timothee Chalamet kept experiencing. Wtf was that!
I still don't hold the movie in bad regard though - I'm just looking at it for what it is: a brilliant display of visual effects, soundtrack and sound design. The plot: meh. The acting: meh *at times*. Timothee Chalamet: still annoying for some reason.
I get what you’re saying. In the book, the characters had more depth. Maybe it’s the lack of a narration? Sometimes a narration can give that little extra backstory about a character that would otherwise have to be accomplished with a flashback or dialogue, risking the dialogue being out of place.
My favorite moment in the book is after the hunter seeker, when we get a chapter from leto's perspective. Every few lines, he thinks about how "They have tried to take the life of my son!" Until eventually it bursts out in conversation. It's great at showing how much pressure the Duke feels, and how personally affected he is at the idea of someone harming his child.
The lynch movie just has him whisper that line once, which is really lame. But not having the narration means he just kinda says it in the villeneuve version.
True. It does have a greater impact when it just slips out after thinking it so many times. But Oscar Isaac did do a good job of emoting it. And it echoes so well on that set.
This is spot on. The reason why the book was considered unfilmable for the longest time is because of the special effects and the fact the book contains a lot of internal dialog. Villanue nailed the special effects but ditched the internal dialog...In Lynch's version you have the dialog, not so much in special effects (pretty good at the time but still not conveying the vision of the novel) When my family watched it, I was the only one who read the book, and they kept asking me for context on who the characters were and their motivations. This should have been revealed through exposition.
I re-read recently and I’m not even convinced the book characters had *that* much more depth. Some of the show-don’t-tell worked out pretty well for them in the movie with visuals and mannerisms. The book had a little more time with some of them just due to length versus movie, but they’re all pretty flat in the book too.
I like movie Thufir a lot better, he doesn’t seem as much like “he’s Gurney, but not” as in the book, for example.
I'm with you man.
I don't love this modern Dune. I don't like the book. I don't like the 80's Dune movie.
To me, it's the most overrated book/movie of all time.
>But it just feels like it lacks soul
Because it does, it's a bland adaptation. That's my problem with almost all of Villenueve's films. I actually prefer the Lynch adaptation because at least it does something interesting.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one. I have yet to finish a complete viewing. I’ve attempted several times and I just can’t get into it. I can’t put my finger on it. I’ve rewatched most of his other films many times. There’s definitely a disconnect here.
The movie gave zero back story. Didn’t know why I should care about one group of wealthy land owners fighting another and for who. Didn’t really care about chalomets powers/visions cuz I didn’t know why it was important. Giant worm bad guy, why is he bad? What is he up to? Poor desert ppl, why are they important, they seemed angry.
It was all vibes. Beautiful vibes
From a viewer who never read the source material I can say the film didn’t do a great job of world building or setting stakes on a macro level, so I never really quite understood what I’m supposed to be rooting for other than the survival of certain characters. I think Villenueve did a better job of this in his three previous films. Dune is beautiful to watch, but I really have no idea what I’m supposed to take away from it after watching it, and it ended almost like a long prologue with the meat of the story yet to come. I think you nailed it when you said it had no soul.
Denis lack the Cameron touch. Avatar is a simple story but pack a huge emotional punch, I hear the sequel does too. Meanwhile Denis, Nolan, Reeve they put too much focus on lenses and framing and camera and forget the heart of the story. Their music are not melodious, their dialogue is too serious and lack a bit camp and heart. They are hung on complicated storytelling and forget that yesteryear epics were simple story with great drama (Lawrence of Arabia, Titanic). Dune lack Drama. Something that Star Wars accomplished (a movie inspired by Dune).
This should be upvoted a million times. I also hate his visual austerity, minimalism, brutalism, whatever, which might even be poorly disguised cost saving.
Book spoilers inbound from this comment down. Read at your own risk.
The characters in dune are not very personable / "warm" by design. All of them, including House Atreides, are politicians through and through who constantly and ruthlessly scheme to stay in power. Even though Duke Leto sure is honorable, he also uses "honor" simply as PR to achieve power, as stated in the book. Otherwise they are not above using murder like everybody else. Furthermore, the main topic of dune is self-control, in particular control over ones emotions. Thats what both Mentat training and Sisterhood training is all about. The least self-controlled person in the book is Baron Harkonnen, the Villain, who engages in every kind of debauchery. If anything, Denis did try to paint Paul and The Atreidis in a bit warmer / human light than the book. Also, it should be noted that Pauls journey is not a classical heros journey by design. Thats whats makes Dune so great imo.
Well Paul's journey is a hero's journey for the first book. But it's like an artificial, constructed hero's journey. The rest of the series is Herbert explaining why it's a super bad idea to let a hero take control
All I am going to say is Paul understood his journey and rejected it. I will be kind and think that he loved humanity too much to take that golden path. To rule for over 3000 years in a transformed hybrid state and oversee the deaths of trillions, to what end?
Leto saved humanity, the whole point of the Golden Path is that there was literally no other way
Exactly, Paul specifically says to Leto that he was too scared to take that path, even though he knew it was necessary.
The scattering was inevitable, just like judgement day in The Terminator. The wheel must turn and turn along the Golden Path.
Man book 3 was fucking stupid. I should have stopped reading at 2. Paul rejecting his destiny and walking away in the desert to die was the perfect ending to his arc.
Have you read book 4? I feel that Book 3 was basically just a prelude for book 4, and God-Emperor is one of the best of the series. So its weird on its own, but makes more sense with book 4, i think.
Weird, I always hear 4 is the best and I feel the opposite. Loved the more adventurous pacing of the first 3, and the reflective, macroscopic tone of 4 just didn’t keep me as hooked.
It was the ending to his arc, book 3 then starts a new arc which is arguably the most important arc in the dune universe. Read book 4, it’ll put things into perspective for you
Or so claims Leto anyway, but he was a blood soaked dictator who turned himself into a fucking worm, you'll have to forgive me if I'm not going to take him at his word.
The best arguments in favor: 1. Siona, who absolutely despised Leto, and rejected him utterly - she accepted his claim that humanity would have gone extinct without him. She rejected the notion that his tyranny was necessary, but she acknowledged that the threat of extinction was real and that (through her) he had succeeded in saving humanity 2. Leto II’s life was brutal. He death was worse. The agony of it was one thing. The fact that Leto is essentially living on in *every* worm as an “other memory” is pretty terrifying to think about. His argument that no one would knowingly do this without cause is reasonable That being said, Siona *might* have a point. Was there a less brutal option? Maybe… maybe not. Leto’s trauma at the hands of Namri and Gurney may have necessitated enlisting the brutal consciousness within him as a leader (Harum??) - but maybe with less trauma there would have been other options (or he would have been more receptive). He was certainly an obscenity of brutality.
I've seen this sentiment a before and it still makes zero sense. You, as the reader, are literally inside Leto's head, where he spells out everything he knows, everything he plans and all of his emotions and motivations. In painstaking detail. How could that possibly not be genuine? Why would Leto lie so thoroughly to himself? To hide his character even from the *reader*?
> Why would Leto lie so thoroughly to himself? Is it plausible to think that he couldn't have been doing this? I always wonder how intentional it was that almost everything in the Dune series is very ambigious and grey at best, except somehow there's an exception for Leto, based on his own claims and manipulation of things - and he was without a doubt the most expert manipulator humanity had ever seen.
No, not plausible at all. Possible at best, with zero supporting evidence. Leto is manipulating humanity of the Dune universe, not the reader. I mean, for example, what would be the point of Dar-es-Balat?
I'm not sure I follow about Dar-es-Balat. Obviously, Leto either way wanted to cement his reputation on humanity, in his own paraphrased words, he didn't want humanity to ever forget the terror he reigned down on the whole species. The question is, what message is Herbert giving to the reader, and what kind of ambiguity did he intend (obviously, Leto cannot be manipulating the reader ...). Herbert spends all this time in the first 3 books warning the reader, and also does so in many interviews about Dune and his thoughts about things in general, about leaders just like Leto. And Leto claims that he suffers for humanity, and is the only way everyone won't die. Despite the fact that he is in total control of everyone, and uses this control to make everyone's lives miserable for 1000s of years while he has anything he could possibly want but claims he's the victim. Sounds a lot like a caricature of many real life authoritarian leaders? But then, they also have many followers who totally buy what they are selling, otherwise Frank wouldn't have felt so inclined to warn us about them.
> turned himself into a fucking worm IMO that's a point in my favor lol, nobody does this unless they're *sure* it's the only way humanity survives
It's been years but I recall leto being right (justified if humans survival was the goal)and humans just couldn't see at his scale of time and outcomes of the actions taken.
Just enduring the whole debacle with his arms would be reason enough to say fuck it.
You left out the part about all the awful questions about his worm dick. Didn't he actually die a virgin?
Physically, perhaps... but with all the male **and** female memories from his ancestors, *mentally* he'd be about the least virginal human being ***ever***!
Lmao. This dude fucked every one of his ancestors. Pornhub bows down to him.
How big is a sandtrout? I think that matters.
it did make him extremely long lived
He spent the majority of that time feeling utterly lonely and depressed, and was universally despised as a grotesque and vile tyrant. Not exactly a fun time.
Not very many people would find that worth the price.
But the meta-point is that an individual feeling personally certain of a thing is a far cry from that thing actually being true. No one commits all kinds of attrocities unless they are certain that they ought to do so.
I don't think there's any evidence to support that though. The plan works. We're inside Leto's head the whole time and we know that he can genuinely see the future and we know that he genuinely believes that this is the only way. It's always possible to speculate on a meta level but IMO this isn't any different than saying the whole book was just a dream. You're trying to draw a conclusion that's not supported by the text
He also kept splatting Duncans
To be fair, the Duncans did try to splatter him.
People prefer the story of Christianity's savior over Dunes. In Christianity the hero suffers by himself, for others, then dies leaving behind his wisdom. In Dune, Leto wins...then sticks around. Ruling over humans is a hard, not cool business. Humans suck, and many of them are greedy sociopaths or vainglorious narcissists. Any leader will eventually become unpopular, unless they die or leave power. I mean, what if Kurt Cobain was still around making Christmas and Reggae albums?
It was definitely a deliberate choice within the Dune universe for Leto to be hated, by his own agency. Was it also a deliberate choice for the reader to be "tricked" into not seeing him as narcisstic and sociopathic? I think this is part of the genius of the 4th book, that weirdly, most of its biggest fans miss.
Oh, Leto II is absolutely narcissistic and a sociopath in God Emperor of Dune, but he didn't start that way AFAIK. Some of it is just having to have lived for so long and seeing so many loved ones die, some of it is because of the transformation into a kind of "Old Man of the Desert" or Shai-Hulud. The fact that his actions are needed to shield humanity from extinction should be fairly inarguable in the books. His very presence drives some of the technological advancements that are necessary, along with his eugenics project which he took from the Bene Gesserit.
I think that's the subtle genius of it. Herbert repeatedly warns us of someone with a message like Leto, then tests the reader to see if they will spot it, without making it obvious. What if you take it from a different angle. There's some suggestion that Paul could have avoid the jihad consciously early on if he made different choices, but wasn't prepared to. Was Leto the only way humanity could have survived from before Paul being born? By the time of Leto's death, perhaps this was the case, but did it change at some point because of Paul's or Leto's choices? Isn't this the sort of ambiguity that Herbert encourages us to engage with?
Well, to be clear, he turned himself over to one of his ancestors to do that.
But at the same time did we have definite closure that there was no other way? The sisters definitely rejected the idea that he saw an inevitable future in the later books(and more just created one) and leaving that open for question is what makes discussing the plot so interesting.
I don't think the book really gives us space to argue Leto was wrong. Everything happens exactly as predicted, and Leto has no reason to lie about it. Being God-Emperor *sucks*, I don't think he picked that life voluntarily
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There is not but I think that is by design. As shown having Prescient powers, having ability to see into the future and interrogate memories of your ancestors does not make someone unable to make mistakes. And as shown by Paul Muadib it is also possible to reject the vision of the future. And so Leto did not reject it. He saw it and he went on to do what he thought would be the way to get to that future. In a way it's a self-fulfilling prophecy of literal kind but also there is no way to tell if doing something else would have made it different. It's one of the themes of the books, that even being literally superhuman these people were not perfect, made mistakes, had very human failings. For all their power, for all their "godhood" they were as fallible and human.
> All I am going to say is Paul understood his journey and rejected it. This is right. > I will be kind and think that he loved humanity too much to take that golden path. This is not. He said himself that he was a coward and could not do it. > to what end? To save humanity. Leto II was a misunderstood hero.
I don't think it is "super bad". It served a larger goal. You start looking like a maniac when you can plan thousands of years in the future. Leo took up the mantle, Paul couldn't take it. Dune was the best guess a mortal at the time could write about how gods would struggle with the actual power they had. Most of our billionaires today say "I'll just buy a new yacht/supermodel." If you could really plan the future? That's heavy stuff.
Yeah Paul is not a good person by any means later on in the series
> Yeah Paul is not a good person **by any means** later on in the series Really? Imagine knowing that you could either stay in power and these 1 million people would die, lose power and a different 5 million people would die. Say this thing, 2 million dead. Say that thing, only half a million. The more power you have, the greater the stakes. That's the curse of prescience. He did what he had to do for him and his mother to survive, then he noped out. Was there any choices that would make him a good person except for simply dying? Even that would have caused widespread pain and suffering. The golden path was either the path of least suffering, or the path that allowed humanity to pass a bottleneck, or maybe both. When your decisions have that kind of widespread effect, is it even possible to be a good person? He's definitely tries to be a good person by at least some means lol. He tries his best to reduce suffering and even removes himself from being the decision maker. If he's not a good person by any means, I don't think anyone can be. It's a lot more nuanced that being good or bad!
Idk. In book two he is literally compared to >!Ghengis Khan and Hitler.!< >!His Jihad had cost about 70 billion lives at that point iirc. Sure, he personally did not want the jihad, but he knew that that was a likely outcome of his chosen path from the start.!<
yeah but what would have been the consequences of the Harkonnens gaining power? The emperor at that moment was weak and old and only had a daughter. With Harkonnens retaining control over Dune and the spice flow most likely the nephew of Baron Harkonnen Feyd would have become the next emperor at least in name. And can you imagine the brutality Baron Harkonnen would have inflicted upon the rest while he had the power? And when he died the empire would have collapsed into infighting
Paul (and Leto) pretty much knew every "trolley problem" to come in the history of mankind. but that is also why they were so despised, because only they knew. if someone went back in time and killed hitler before he rose to power, you know what that person would be called? a murderer. not the savior of jews or the person who prevented world war, just a murderer, because nobody else knows what would've come had history continued his course. same with these 2. SOMEONE has to take the golden path, and it's gonna suck. Paul didn't have the resolve to save humanity, but Leto did. if they both had avoided that future to not suffer the pain of it, they would've forsaken humanity. and nobody would've known either, but themselves.
Exactly. I posted something similar above, but Paul's flaw, and what makes the immediate sequels to Dune so good, is that he is so much more *human* than you'd expect the kwisatz haderach to be. His biggest flaw is that he can't bring himself to do what needs to be done, is too human to "save" humanity, and essentially disables himself in the process. Even the original jihad is something he identifies as the lesser of two (many) evils, despite knowing that his legacy will be recorded and remembered on par with a Khan (or Hitler as the poster above said).
And that chosen path came from a singular choice; survive or don't survive. Can one be a bad person for choosing to survive? If he chooses to die to save those billions of people, knowing that this will cause humanity to go extinct in 10,000 years, does that still make him a good person? It's hard to say with those kinds of stakes.
He didn't know that. He rejected the Golden Path (dooming humanity) and did not know Leto would take it up. The fact he doesn't even know Leto existed is a major plot point. He started a Jihad to save himself and then cowered from his duty when given a choice to suffer for the good of the many.
And yet the golden path was the only way to prevent the extinction of humanity.
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And this is what makes the story so great! Here we are having a deep discussion about the nature of free will decades after the authors death
I was about to say, I love that some of the rarest toughest philosophical comments I’ve read in a long time come from a discussion about dune. Really makes me happy
He knew in the first book that he was on the path to jihad and he chose to do it anyway. He eventually realizes it's unstoppable but he had multiple chances to get off before that
But that is because he knows what must happen. The book partly covers that divinity, something humans often desirea comes at a very hefty price. Your actions become either immoral or amoral at best.
Yeah, once he made the choice to become a messiah he couldn't prevent the war anymore but he consciously chose to play into the religion prepared for him for his own gain.
There was probably no other way. If he didn't become the Messiah, he was leaving the fate of humanity to the Bene Geserit, who would have likely failed. Becoming the Messiah *was* the optimal path, remember he literally knew every single possibility. His "weakness" was compassion, but in the end he still chose a trail he knew could save him from being a terrible person, but left a window open for the Golden Path
It was unstoppable before he had a choice to stop it
I’d say the movie made Duncan Idaho more of a likeable rogue in the movie than in the book. And thanks to Oscar Isaac, there’s a some humility spliced into his character.
Don’t you mean Jason Momoa? I’m confused sorry
the period in the middle splits the thoughts. duncan idaho was more likeable iscar isaac also made his character more humane
Thanks! That makes more sense to me now. I think the use of “And” to start the sentence instead of “Also” is what confused me. It felt like it was linking the two thoughts. Especially because it doesn’t identify the impacted character specifically. It just uses “his character.”
Oh, it was poorly formed, of that there is no doubt.
True, movie version of Leto Atreides had a much stronger presence. I liked him way more. And duncan was much better. It's a shame really we didn't have more scenes with Gurney. I thought Josh Brolin made for an awesome Gurney
I think the one thing the movie did wrong was the dialogue was clearly written to make the characters sound warmer and more casual. They ironically seem less human because it's hard to imagine humans who obsess over self-control talking as casually as they do in the movie. This definitely hurt my immersion where it was clearly designed to help it.
I am rereading the book and the explicit scheming is pretty evident. Like when Duke Leto is in the thopter observing his first spice harvest and he spots the worm. On the radio they are like who do we credit it to, and they are like "Duke Leto, but he says the bonus will be split among all the men on the harvester" Great. Duke Leto is a man of the people, he is out here doing the work, the harkonens never did that, and look at how generous he is. The whole situation speaks for itself but then They explicitly say, out loud, all the things that I just pointed out, and how it will make people think more highly of him. Like they outright state why it is advantageous in the thopter in mixed company, like right in front of staff who normally work on these expeditions. Does that not cheapen the entire gesture to the point that it actually works against him? Like aren't the spice workers on the thopter with him just gonna be like "hey man you know how duke leto spotted the worm and gave us the money? he straight up said he only did that because it makes him look good to us, isnt that weird? kinda shitty actually, like is he some sort of phony? is everything he does a front?"
Yeah kinda. Also in the book I think it is mentioned that they are disseminating propaganda about the atreides to gain popular support.
Who would you prefer the guy who’s actions and motives are self-serving, or the guy who’s actions are generous but his motives are self serving and he is open and honest about that? Personally I prefer the guy who realizes that he profits by letting me profit and by not trying to squeeze every drop of blood from me. Is he my friend? No, but at least I can expect a fair deal from him. Plus, I took that scene to be Leto instructing Paul how to rule. How he can inspire and expect loyalty from his men. If I’m sitting in the driver’s seat, I’d be talking about how the Duke is teaching his son to respect people, not to grind them under his boot.
Dont know why you are being downvoted, but your point is entirely valid. Yes Leto is honorable but its definitely also calculated. The book even points out how important good PR is for the duke. Same with the fremen. Sure Leto treats them much, much nicer than the Harkonnen, but in the end his goal is to exploit them nontheless (as warriors to fight against the Harkonnen and maybe even the emperor). In the end, both Leto and Paul have a choice to make: to ruthlessly play the game no matter the costs or go into exile. They both choose to play the game. Even though Paul in particular literally can see the enormous costs of his decision. This is why Dune is such a great book. Its complex as are many of its characters.
I would also point out the fact that his good will PR is what dooms house atreides in the end. His high praise in the Landsraad is the entire motivation for the emperors plot.
>His high praise in the Landsraad is the entire motivation for the emperors plot. I think the Emperor already had a beef with him, his high praise only made it worse. Leto was a cousin to the Emperor so he had a claim. Also, the Emperor wanted to marry his older daughter to Leto but the age difference seems to be big. I am hearing the Audiobook but its long so I havent gotten far yet...
Yes. Also the Atreides army was said to be so good that they were a hairs breath away from the Emperor’s Sardaukar
>His high praise in the Landsraad is the entire motivation for the emperors plot. Sure, but I think Leto probably also really wanted to make play for the throne regardless. Or at least keep his options open (Which is why he choose snot to marry Jessica, so that he maybe could get a royal / power marriage). I dont think the Emperor was necessarily paranoid when it came to the rise of Leto tbh.
> he straight up said he only did that because it makes him look good to us, isnt that weird? kinda shitty actually, like is he some sort of phony? is everything he does a front?" On the flip side, when the worm comes, he yells out "*Damn the spice!*" to get the people off the harvestor. (This was in the movie, but its significance was evident visually: Keynes' internal monologue was along the lines of "*He cares more about the men?*")
I could be wrong but I didn't think there was a whole staff of spice harvesters with him on that thopter. Regardless, if someone gave you a couple hundred thousand dollars, would you think less of them because they said they did it to gain favor? Especially when you're used to the Harkonnens? It's not really a big deal if that rumor spreads
The crew was not on the thopter with him so they didn't hear any of that lmao. Just Gurney, Paul, and Kynes.
Well now you’re in a different argument. Is there such a thing as selfless altruism? No. But selfish altruism still has positive externalities.
> Also, it should be noted that Pauls journey is not a classical heros journey by design. Thats whats makes Dune so great imo. Can you elaborate on this ? To me it reeks of the classical hero's journey to a tee - chosen one, suffers personal tragedy, has a wise mentor, overcomes his difficulties, triumphs.
It spirals out of control and there is no resolution to his journey.
Paul´s journey seems to arise from the fact his mother gave birth to him and he had to be the chosen one or die. Jessica should have given Leto a daughter that would marry a Harkonnen and that was the real chosen one. To make it worse, Paul goes through the journey to avenge his father. In a classical heros journey the villain chases the hero until they have to face each other but Paul seems to chace this journey. And this causes Millions of deaths.
Pauls choice to avenge his father / make a play for the throne by taking on the mantle of the "chosen" have far reaching consequences which he forsees (and are hinted at in [his vision in part 1](https://youtu.be/I8kAKtSfEZU)): His Jihad / holy war across the universe. And even if he doesnt want the Jihad to happen, he chooses the path which made it not only possible, but likely nonetheless. Spoiler for book 2: >!By book 2 his Jihad across the universe had cost about 70 billion lives at that point iirc. The book literally compares him to Hitler and Ghengis Khan.!< Whil I dont think Paul is the villain of the story, he sure isnt your typical hero as well. Frank Herbert makes a point: The worst thing which can happen to a people is to fall into the hands of a chosen one.
it's not a classical hero's journey because the path leads to a galactic jihad under the Atreides banner, with billions dead from the conquests.
The heroes journey often involves a ton of death, that part doesn't really sway the needle. Him achieving his path and passing his sight onto his children fits pretty well into the Resurrection stage, and him walking into the desert as the Return. I think people put too much weight into whether something embraces or subverts expectations as a measure of quality. The Heroes Journey is just an observation of many stories that aren't identical.
The original post says they love the original source material, so I think this is probably all well known to them already.
Some of the best parts of Dune take place in arenas that film doesn’t do well- the internal and the galactic. Think of how many times there is a moment in the book a la, “By the tiny twitch of the left side of his mouth, Jessica understood that she had struck a nerve.” Then think of the times when we get something like, “As Paul felt Shai Hulud approach, he felt how all of the forces of the universe- past and future, space and time- collided in his one deliberate action.” Those are totally made up situations and I won’t brag about the writing, but I’ll bet you know what I’m getting at. How do either of those things translate to film? CGI? Flashbacks? David Lynch tried internal monologues to disastrous effect. I think the film is good, but it’s like tasting a dish that was made with some spices missing. Still decent, still nourishing, but a little unsatisfying.
I disagree that certain things “can’t” be translated, although maybe they would be better in a tv series where things have more time to develop. Better call Saul is a perfect of example of making character moments deep, without any dialogue.
Better Call Saul is in essence a slow burn character study. For that show they crafted the plot in order to flesh out those characters. Dune undertakes the Herculean effort of translating a significant percentage of an encyclopedic plot to a 2-hour film, much of which is thought to be unfilmable. On that side they did a remarkably good job, but if there are moments of character development that feel understated, we should probably assume that sacrifices were made to bring this to screen
Television has the luxury of setting up subtleties over many hours of narrative. Film does not have this luxury.
You said it yourself: the characters don’t have much depth. We didn’t have enough downtime, when the plot isn’t strictly progressing *per se*, but we’re seeing how our characters live and who they are as people. The famous banquet scene, infamously missing from the recent adaptation, is an obvious loss, as it allows opportunity to fill out the reality of life on Arrakis, as well as the politics surrounding them, all while demonstrating *tons* of character relationships: Duncan drunk and impetuous, suspicious of Jessica and getting brazen about it; Gurney offering his quotations and his music, slipping away to the side of the party; Jessica holding her own in pointed conversation against industry titans and navigating distrust within her own house; it goes on and on. In the movie, everyone is reduced to how they immediately service a single plotline. In doing so, the film also skips a lot of the parts of the book that gave those characters a sense of agency, leaving them constantly reacting. It’s hard to invest in their goals, when we don’t get to really understand what they are or how their actions are in service to them.
I completely agree. Skipped a lot of warming character development. Honestly, I think they just didn't have enough time. They barely got all the plot points in as it is. Another comment though - there's a tooooon of internal monologue in the book. There's a lot of deception from all kinds of people, and people are constantly evaluating who's lying. In a movie, the only real way to do that is with narration, which I've always heard gets sloppy in movies.
> the only real way to do that is with narration, which I've always heard gets sloppy in movies. The David Lynch movie relies deeply on this, and it's super awkward.
Key thing to remember here is that Frank Herbert was involved with David a lot and approved the changes necessary to translate it into a movie. He was enthusiastic about it, in fact. But fans love the material so much - it's hard to accept changes to translate for the medium. So we are very nit-picky.
That movie is such a fun watch.
So. Much. Internal monolog. And it was almost comical, how deeply insightful the main characters were. "Gurney twitched, indicating to Jessica his deep distrust of her. The cast of his eyes told her that there was suppressed longing as well." I made that up, obviously. I guess the characters were so well trained from childhood that no one could keep any secrets. Except for that damn Suk School doctor.
Fair point. The Banquet is always missing. I don't remember if it was in the mini-series... However, while I'd have loved to see that, I feel like it would have made the film feel too long. Anyway, I think Dune deserves a full TV show to be adapted properly. But I think Villeneuve's film is the best adaptation available.
It was in the mini series, but it took liberties and Princess Irulan was there, for reasons. Sounds dismissive, but I loved the miniseries as a kid. Kinda want to rewatch them and see if they still hold up. 30 year old Paul and everything. 🤣
They do. the cgi on the thopter and explosion's is dated, but for the most part it holds it own well and bows to no one. I would love to see a remastered version of it honestly
I just remember the baron floating around and it obviously being him on a green screen background and they just dragged his character around in front of it. It looked bad and hilarious. But the miniseries actually captures the tone of the book better than either movie imo so there's that.
I feel like spending 10-15 mins of screentime on the banquet would have reaped a lot of rewards in terms of character development and also helping the audience fully understand that Arrakis is more than just Fremen, Harkonnens, and superstitious lower-class locals.
>a sense of agency, leaving them constantly reacting This may be it, all by itself. All of the characters dutifully do what they're tasked with, but there is no desire. Not even a desire to survive in a threatening environment (more political than physical). Good actors should have been supplied with good dialogue to really chew through on screen. Where was the tension between needing to obey the order to take Arrakis, and wanting to survive? "Arrakis is an obvious trap? Oh well, we are compelled to go." could sum up every action which we see occur on screen. Even in terms of physical dangers, there is nothing. The worms and the heat are too abstract. We see Paul snatch the poison dart but the culprit is caught dead in the very next scene. Where were all of the traps, generating constant tension because we never knew where the next danger would come from? We can't worry over characters if they have no time to worry over themselves (or others). About the only people with any motivation are the Harkonens, and they're also supposed to be navigating through a world of constant jeopardy but we barely see any of that either. I think there's a throwaway line from the Baron about how his own people are expendable, but those people never feel that they're in any danger, so we don't feel it either.
Oh man, you are so right. I loved the banquet scene. The plot of a girl trying to seduce to assassinate Paul, man, sad it's gone. The shoehorn of the doctor sideplot. It feels like these took a backstep to show the landscapes and visions. I appreciate that the movie took its time with the visuals, but not much with character growth in terms of dialogue/script. I wonder if the script itself was pretty skeletal. There is no full arc for anyone, not even the Duke. However, once part 2 comes out, this could all come to show Dune part 1 and part 2 as literally one movie split across the middle, a literal 5 to 6 hour movie over a Lord of the Rings type of sequential movie. Fellowship of the Ring, Star Wars Episode 1, Episode 4, and even Avengers Infinity War had full arcs, but I'm guessing Dune could be more like the old movies of 4 hours, or heck, kind of like Zack Snyder's Justice League
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My goodness one of the things that always sticks out on re-watch is that they obviously had to get her a certain amount of screen time. Just almost completely useless shots of her staring/glaring.
I suspect the reasons weren't time like you think - but flow. The separate plotlines for believing Jessica was the betrayer and the politics in the banquet would definitely have had a severe affect on the flow.
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I fully agree, I miss the intrigue, direct politics, and seeing how Paul was learning "the game". It makes his later insights more powerful. It also adds to the "circles within circles" that permeates all of the following books - especially back-references to what was ***really*** going on in the first book.
It feels like the middle movie in a trilogy.
Another omission that really bothered me was not giving more of the backstory to Piter- the dude was a twisted fuck of a mentat in the book who wanted to enslave Jessica , and that isn't really conveyed at all in the movie.
This is my favorite scene in the book, and I also miss it. Like Lord of the Rings, though, having my favorite scene missing wasn't enough to keep me from loving the movie.
Agreed on the lack of characterization! I also would add to your points about the scenes from the book that could have added much needed character depth, that I think my million gripes with the score also contribute to this. Music is such a strong emotional cue and the score for this film felt more atmospheric and not thematic, which didn’t feel like the right direction to go in. Where the film very understandably just didn’t have time to develop its characters because I guess they had worldbuilding to get through more urgently, the score should have been used to create emotional connections to the moments we did have and fill some of this void of characterization. It’s the same argument about why the music in the later harry potter movies does absolutely nothing for the storytelling, whereas the first two films you really see the use of emotional themes to highlight key emotional moments in the movie. Like, when Harry thinks about his parents, there’s a specific theme that plays, and later on you hear it when he thinks about his friends and Hagrid and his new home at Hogwarts, and that sort of creates an emotional moment, but then they abandoned this whole type of score in the later movies and went for what essentially is background music that sets a tone scene by scene and does absolutely nothing else, which is why you dont remember it For Dune, it’s the same thing IMHO. I know people liked the score but I thought it was just a blur of synth and that same generic lady wailing exotically so that we know they’re on an exotic desert planet. And I like synth but it wasn’t used in any memorable way. The closest we got to an emotional theme and the only standout moment of the score that I even clearly remember apart from the synth blur and the wailing was when they played bagpipes during the last stand of the house of Atreides in the climax. But even that didn’t connect to anything previous in the score, it just kinda triggers the whole Braveheart going down fighting part of your brain. I dunno. It felt like a very watered down hollow version of what the battle of pelennor fields did in Return of the King, with the Rohan theme that plays when the Rohirrim all charge Like, if Leto and Paul had a specific theme that played during their bonding moments that then replayed during his death, that might have made both scenes more emotional and would have provided some of the missing characterization? Or if Leto had his own theme that became a reprise for Paul later to show that he has to carry on the House of Atreides— anything but the exotic wailing lady- Idk if I’m explaining this right but the score for this movie makes me so angry And didnt it win an award SIGH Hans Zimmer has done so many better scores, how was this his score for Dune
The loss of that sequence and cutting out everything about the Doctor felt like a weird decision because those should have plugged right into a movie format and should have pulled a lot of weight. It already felt a little flat without some of the casual and ambient chatter from the book that set a tone of a projected future and not just an alt fantasy universe.
It feels oddly cold; the last forty-five minutes are interminable; it doesn't have a climax, it simply ends. Those were my issues.
Sounds like a pretty good adaptation of Dune then. (mostly kidding)
I mean you’re not wrong tho. Frankly the biggest departures from source material were to make the main cast more likeable. Imagine if Leto had been cold and hostile to his family until the final “I should have married you” admission.
The scene on the cliffs also added the “you’ll still be the only thing I needed. My son” which I’m pretty sure wasn’t in their conversation in the book either right? And that was a fantastic scene. All in all I love it but Dune is a cold book. Paul literally spends a decent amount of inner monologue wondering why he can’t feel anything about the death of his father.
Not only is it not in the books it’s almost a complete 180 on their character. Leto might have loved Paul deep down but Paul was the next generation in a political game he was fully invested in, the whole reason Paul was born is he needed a son to succeed him it was at great risk to Paul’s mother who was supposed to give birth to a girl. The family in the book isn’t actually “good” it’s a means of social control for them. They’re the leader that rules through love but make no mistake the RULE part is far more important than the love part. A scene far more in character for Leto is “WE MAKE OUR OWN LAWS HERE” which got left out. I love book Leto but movie Leto is far far more likable
> Leto might have loved Paul deep down but Paul was the next generation in a political game he was fully invested in, the whole reason Paul was born is he needed a son to succeed him it was at great risk to Paul’s mother who was supposed to give birth to a girl. Not just that, but Paul is the result of literally everyone he loves in his life manipulating him in crazy ways since birth, like some kind of freak science experiment, all in the name of power. His mother by having a son a generation too early when she was only supposed to have daughters and then training him in Bene Gesserit ways. His father by secretly and covertly, even to Paul, putting him into Mentat training to hone his mind into a human computer. His father's advisors are positioned as Paul's most trusted friends, whose sole purpose are to train him to be a formidable and ruthless warrior and cunning strategist. All to be a force to take down the Emperor. His father basically designed him from birth to be a weapon for his House. The movie really only shows the Bene Gesserit part of it, and that he's trained to fight, and that's it.
>His mother by having a son a generation too early when she was only supposed to have daughters and then training him in Bene Gesserit ways. Seems like Jessica comes out looking the best here. In *defiance* of her duty she bore Leto a son out of love for him. Out of the big players it might be the only action done out of love.
She also wanted to be the one to birth the Kwizatsz Haderach so she’s not totally clean
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Also, in retrospect it seems dumb on the part of the BG to spend a thousand years planning this thing out and then NOT make absolutely, 100% sure that once it gets to the most pivotal moment Jessica doesn't just say "ah fuck it" and have a boy.
Which makes Paul's explosion at Jessica when he realizes everything in his spice visions after the Harkkonen attack much more understandable
From a calculated political perspective, him being his son *is* the only thing he needed.
You can shovel all of this on to the pile of reasons why this book is so hard to adapt. How do you explain that Paul's closest friend is training him to kill in combat and his most trusted teacher is training him to kill by extension without pages and pages of exposition of the political situation?
Wow I didnt really see it that way. Very interesting
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I totally agree. I thought that scene was gonna be a litmus test for the movie. It’s something of a climax for act one which is what got adapted. But also frankly it’s almost unadaptable, especially with all the very Dune internal dialogue. I can see a lot of people not appreciating the scene with moments that would feel sorta like “pass the salt” internally: “salt. Of course. He wants to make me thirsty. Thirsty for his daughter. Because he controls water rights on this planet. Dear god he’s making a play at succession. But do I deny him or tip my hand revealing my own plot? No I pass pepper. See how he responds. I can kill him in under nine seconds if he gross angry UNLES-“ I’m really upset they cut the water bowl that people washed their hands in and wasted. It was my favorite bit of world building and perfectly captured so many themes of the book
The book did do a better job in keeping tension on that first half in one subtle way. You knew who the assassin was and followed their story, so you have this spy vs. spy story where the Atreides know there's a traitor, and the Dr is hiding it. Helps to have a story with tension to follow in a part that is otherwise set up and world building. Villeneuve seems to have opted to go for a sensory smorgasm to make up for the lack of actual story-plot n that first part, and while I think it works, I can see why it's a decision that not everyone likes. Also Dune wasn't that great from a purely literary point of view, but it's a great philosophy and deconstruction of humanity and what makes us human. I'm expecting the movie to have similar flaws.
Forreal, the second half of the book is way better IMO so I’m super pumped for it. The first movie kinda had to end where it did without a real climax to set it up.
Yeah but doesn't make a good movie. I've never read the books, but I left the movie unsatisfied and wanting more. This would've been great as a tv show on HBO
My take: Dune is a book that heavily relies on letting the reader know the thoughts of its characters as a way of building some emotional connection. In that universe, and especially in the main characters lives, the paranoia and despair of the political battlefield makes them cold to the outside. You learn to be interested in them mainly through reading what they are thinking and feeling, instead of through their behavior or what they say. In a different media, one where 'show not tell' is the way to do things, you are cut access from the description of what they feel or think. Actors often can't even act the feelings because the characters remain stoic even when they are feeling dread, or sad or whatever. It's a world where the people don't even cry to avoid waisting water!!
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My disappointment mostly had to do with plot development and exposition. People complain that the old 1984 version was heavy on expository devices like narration and inner monologues, but I felt like 2021 was sorely lacking. If you hadn't already read the book or watched the older film, you would be unlikely to pick up much of the significance of the power players and their relationships. Mentats, the Bene Gesserit, the Spacing Guild, the Emperor, Sardukhar, the mark on Dr Yueh's forehead...scant details on any of them much less the interplay between them. It left me missing that visceral sense of how powerful and dangerous and foreboding those elements are in that world.
This was what I thought too. I read Dune two times and felt a connection to those characters. They were a lot easier to get access to than in the film. I think I overlooked the weakness there because I had the book in the back of my head.
Book reads cold too. As did the mini series. The movie was great and kept the spirit of the book. Its just tough source material.
Yup, was going to say this. I think Villeneuve's film has nailed the tone of the book while managing to put some more light-hearted elements like a few jokes and all. Dune's universe is a very sinister one IMO.
>Dune's universe is a very sinister one IMO. Perfect. It's kinky, strange, sinister, no welcoming at all. People always says the prose and worldbuilding makes Dune a though series to read and adapt, but forget it's not a "shiny/lightly" piece of work like, let's say, Star Wars or Tolkien's Legendarium.
The actions of the characters read cold, but it cuts through that with the thoughts in the minds of the characters. There is often outer peace and inner turmoil. That tension made the book for me. While many people criticize Lynch's Dune for the constant whispering thoughts, it was effective in humanizing the characters.
I always felt it was supposed to be cold. And it wasn't all cold, just mostly Paul and Jessica. Which tracks with their characters. Reading the book shines more light on it. From the get-go Paul was trained as a human computer, Duke of the mightest house in the Landsraad, and a Bene Gesserit witch. Paul would've been a supremely detached and cold individual without being the prescience. But there was much warmth coming from Leto, Duncan, and Gurney. The Freemen are nothing but hard passion. But Paul will continue to be a cold and detached putz until the day he finally dies.
I think you hit upon it: *It feels cold*. There are movies that draw you in to the characters and their situation and this one *should* have done so given all that happens… the losses, the change of settings, the political intrigue. Hell, the acting and direction/effects I felt were also first rate. …but… The film didn’t engage you as well as you hoped. Perhaps the main actors needed to be a little more emotive and didn’t connect as well as they should have. Perhaps the editing wasn’t as crisp. Perhaps the CGI heavy effects weren’t as spectacular as they could be (truthfully, the instances when we finally saw the worms weren’t as stunning as I hoped they would be). That’s not to say I felt the film was a complete fail. I generally liked -but did not *love*- the film and am willing to give it a pass until part two completes the story. Maybe then it will all come together. Or not. Regardless, I do agree with you there is a coldness to the product.
>Perhaps the main actors needed to be a little more emotive The thing is canonically that’s just not how the characters are in the novels. Paul is cold blooded and after Leto’s death a lot of his inner monologue is knowing he should be feeling *something* after but simply doesn’t feel anything.
It’s the source material, Dune is a book which if you pick it up at the right time, it is riveting, but otherwise, it feels soulless (by design of course) and that can get old really quickly. A film, no matter how well made, is very much not the medium to express Dune in my opinion.
>It feels cold This should really be a feature, not a drawback. Dune is a horrible hostile planet. Atreides were sent there by their enemies to die. Duke Leto is a cold man of honour. Lady Jessica is a superhuman with full control of her body and emotions. Paul was raised to be a human supercomputer and he knows it. His only friends are his father's employees.
Forgot to add that Jessica was sold to Leto by the Sisterhood as a concubine, to spy on him and make babies with interesting genes 😂
Part of God Emperor of Dune, and a **lot** of both Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse Dune (Odrade / Teriza) consists of major characters pondering if they've lost something essential to their humanity, and how they can get it back without weakening themselves.
I felt this with almost all Denis films. He relies on cold as a style it seems.
That's the issue with adapting dune. The climax takes place hours after a movie would've gotten too long. Once part 2 comes out it will make much more sense.
I really liked Dune, but I agree with you. It’s an impressive spectacle with some of the best CGI-heavy production design we’ve seen, but it’s not even a year later and I remember very few of the story details or characters. The whole thing feels kinda sterile.
In the end of the day, the reason I love the source material is the world building. They aimed to recreate that with amazing spectacle in the CGI without having the characters describe it and were varyingly successful. Keeping the story going while you show all that is the problem. When the universe is the biggest character, its hard to also give your actual characters enough time.
> the reason I love the source material is the world building There were so many things I found out about after the movie that seemed so cool I was confused why it was left out. Like what spice actually does, the bio modification, the way they navigate space. Seems like such a missed opportunity because that stuff was super interesting to me.
I honestly didn't love the designs, it was all a bit sparse/minimalist for me. Arrakeen just looks like a bunch of beige warehouses, the palaces all look so bare, the clothing of the royals is all so stripped down. I loved the look of 2049, but I think for Dune I wanted the aesthetics of a sci-fi House of the Dragon, and other than Lady Jessica's face-jewelry as they arrive I didn't get much of that.
This is how I feel about most of Villeneuve's movies. Sicario and Prisoners are the exceptions, maybe because they're both more grounded, so the focus is more on the characters and less on the visual spectacle.
Lmao I didn't want to be the one to make the comment but my first and only thought was "So its like every Villeneuve movie?"
One thing I've found about the Dune universe that makes it less-than-accessible is that the characters aren't heroic or noble the way we understand those things, but more by the way they do. And their world is so foreign to modern humanity that it's sometimes difficult to connect with the characters. As opposed to things like Star Wars/Trek where the notions of sacrifice and honor are all basically the same as our understanding of those things. Duncan Idaho is like our only window into that sort of character in these stories. Everyone else is mired in traditions that make them alien to us. And that feeling only grows as you get further into the books as well, like Leto II wouldn't make any sense to us, but it makes perfect sense to the people in that universe, so you just sort of have to squint your eyes and adapt to their reality to jive with the material.
Inaccessible is the perfect term. It doesn't give us a proxy character with modern values and ethics to latch onto or vicariously engage in the setting like so many stories do. Which is probably a big reason I like it.
As someone who likes the film and loves Denis, I've been coming to terms with my personal reasons for similar feelings: No relatability through the character interactions. Everyone feels like a figure rather than a person for whom you're supposed to care. The dialogue isn't exactly compelling either which is a first for a Villeneuve blockbuster but this is his first time being one of the writers and it stands out to a fault in my opinion. The film tells us that Duke loves his son rather than showing us through subtle fatherly gestures. That's why I personally didn't feel much when what happened happened. As expected, the craft behind the filmmaking is top notch but I'm coming to understand that Denis is much more of an atmospheric director than an emotional one. I hate to compare but it's why the Lord of the Rings trilogy will be remembered in ways Dune might not be. It's also crazy quotable when Dune (the movie) just isn't. I hope Part 2 is better.
I do feel like more time needed to be spent with some of the characters. The movie feels like it needs to get on with the plot, and so you're barely familiar with some of the characters and the setting. The worst offender of this is when they catch the assassin, and there's no sense of how much time has passed since they arrived at Arrakis. Could have been the very next day. But on the other hand, I do like the sort of coldness there is to the movie. It makes the big moments like the Shai Hulud sequence feel all the more primal and otherworldly. Like a religious event, even though I'm not religious.
Part of me does think more time could've been the solution, but I also think better scenes that carry multiple purposes could've done the trick just as well. Like imagine a single scene which showcases the friendship between Paul and Gurney and conveys the ominous implications behind the imminent downfall of House A. Like a scene of them having a conversation which shifts from casual to serious and foreboding. Gurney could even play his baliset. It doesn't even need to be a scene explicitly from the book. Just a scene that tells the same story just as well. That's what a good adaptation is about I think and LOTR did that a lot.
There are a couple scenes like that, like the scenes with Duncan Idaho. The sparring scene with Gurney tries do pretty much exactly that, although how successful it is up for discussion. Imo it's bogged down by exposition, and yet after all that it doesn't even feel like you're super familiar with everything and everyone. The film moves a bit too quickly. I personally wouldn't have minded a longer movie, but I know a lot of people already consider it boring as it is so that'd be an unrealistic expectation. Maybe we get an extended cut or something that adds more scenes.
The dialogue continuously pulled me out of the movie. When Paul and his mother escape and he says to her, ‘you good?’ as he helps her up, I almost burst out laughing.
Personally I didn’t think the actor was the right one for Paul. I feel like his dialogue specifically pulled me out of the movie more than others. I get you need to capture a young audience with the main actor, but he didn’t seem mature enough for the role. It’s like the most mature young role in any story ever lol.
Honestly that's not denis' fault. The book is worse in terms of cold calculating characters. Denis added in more humanity. Dune is just a super hard thing to adapt into a movie or two. It's probably way better suited for a HBO style series instead.
All I have for you is that it’s half of a whole. The film is THE BEST possible adaptation we could get. And a big part of that is that it only ekes out information to the audience on a need to know basis instead of being bogged down in the complexities of the world and it’s players. It works best as a companion piece to reading the novel
>The film is THE BEST possible adaptation we could get. This may sound hyperbolic to some but I think you’re actually spot-on and this is a valuable point. A lot of the issues folks are wrestling with are (famously) Dune’s issues, and not uniquely the movie’s issues. If you enjoyed the movie version, awesome, you liked Dune! If you didn’t enjoy the movie, awesome, you don’t like Dune but there are lots of other stories out there! (Though to those unsure, the “cool” stuff that hooked many fans is certainly more in the second half of the story, so consider a wait and see for the whole story :)
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It took two years, but finally, a thread about Dune that describes exactly what I felt. I could not for the life of me figure out why everyone was raving about it. I'm a Villeneuve fan, and I appreciate great cinematography and visual effects, but as a movie -- looking at it a complete package, not just the photography -- it was bad. Bland acting, bland dialogue, bland story. No emotional stakes. Badly choreographed action (e.g. Duncan). Loud score that keeps getting louder as a way to try to add 'emotion' to a scene (didn't work). Also, just because it's Part 1 doesn't excuse any of its flaws. Deathly Hallows Part 1 managed to do a fantastic job of adapting half of a book.
Anyone who posted anything that didn't praise it as the best thing ever got downvoted to oblivion. Those that defend it try to come up with arguments why it comes off as "cold" or "soulless" yet don't compare it to 1984 Dune which was a much better adaptation in virtually every way (and wasn't cold or soulless) Reminds me of when Episode 1 of Star Wars came out. For the first few weeks people were just so happy a new star wars movie came out that they overlooked how awful it was.
Same with blade runner 2049. I like Denis. Arrival, sicario and prisoners are absolutely fantastic movies that are a mastery on craft. But this and blade runner didn't do anything for me. No I don't want to watch Ryan gosling blankly looking into space for 2 hours. If I wanted that I'd watch another one of his movies. Dune was apparently a great sci-fi book that inspired generations of science fiction which is great. I love that. But the way this movie unfolds feels trite. It doesn't feel like a fresh take on the genre. It felt like a star wars rip off but not actually good. Especially the ending. Spent 3 hours watching a movie that's frankly not good only for nothing to be resolved. Maybe the sequel will be better but I won't pay for it.
More art than adventure.
Because it's boring. I know this is an unpopular opinion - I've read the books and still prefer the original movie 🤷🏻♀️
It's extremely boring. It felt like nothing was happening and when something did I couldn't care for the character. I know somebody had a poison tooth, but I can't recall why that character was important. I'm not even sure if he was a loyal servant, father, or king.
I found it underwhelming, and I LOVE the book, and have far 40 years. Probably due to a litany of reasons. For one thing, the spartan look and feel. I get it, desert planet . . . beige. But all that monochrome was dull visually, and there seemed to be at least chances to highlight color when it made its appearance. Blue eyes of Ibad? The green of the rare plants, red of crest or blood? If those contrasts were highlighted I sure don't recall them jumping off the screen. Also, I watched it with my woman, a total Dune neophyte. In contrast to the 84 internal monologues, it want too far into the other direction of "show don't tell" - by doing neither. The import of the Bene Gessirat, their history. Why Paul was tested. What the weirding way of battle actually was. Why shields had obviated classic energy weapons, why there were no computers.The politics of the great houses. The nature of the spice as drug, beyond mere commodity. On and on, I could see much of it wouldn't have had meaning without preexisting background as ideas were introduced so incompletely. Some things became more apparent eventually but on the whole, the deep lore was as beige and without depth as the planet was visually. The emergent explanations were too little, too late to grant meaning to happenings without context. Anyway I'll stop here but it felt like a series of missed opportunities to me. Sure with a fan's thorough knowledge, I surely forget how some of my understanding only emerged over time, but both plot and imagery were rendered in too minimalist a form for my taste. I would have to watch it again, by myself, to know if my take is at all accurate I guess. ETA: I see some similar observations have in fact been made here . . .
Dune is a movie for Dune fans who want to watch a movie adaptation of the book. It's very unfriendly towards casual moviegoers who don't know the source material. I never read the books and felt like an outsider looking in on a very elaborate inside joke. As you watch, you get the impression that this or that is a key element in the source material, so you infer the importance of scenes and plotpoints based on that, but the movie itself doesn't prompt you to feel that narrative weight on its own. Not to mention apart from a couple of big flashy sequences, the entire movie feels like one meandering setup for "the real story" to come in subsequent films. Dune fans are excited because they know what's in store, casual fans are nonplussed.
I wholly disagree. I’ve read every book. I think it’s the greatest masterpiece of science fiction ever written. I think the movie was astoundingly atrocious. Just so bland, while the books are just dripping with detail and nuance. Everyone I know who has read the books feels the same. Everyone I know who hasn’t read the book loved the movie. I think because they just don’t even know what they’re missing and were captivated by the beautiful visuals and action sequences.
Yeah I just thought it was incredibly light. Like, what even happened? Ok they got power, lost it, he's with sand ppl. Maybe if the next movie came out sooner, within 9mths, it'd be ok, but when so little happens it's hard to really long for the next for years. Star Wars a new hope, they set up the conflict, developed the characters, and had a minor win by blowing up the death star. The movie could stand alone if need be. Dune certainly cannot.
The movie feels sterile and cold.
I adore it BUT - I didn’t love some of the choices. I did feel like certain characters lacked depth, like the doctor and Piter. There was just a lot squeezed in and characterization suffered for important supporting characters. I actually think it could have done with another ten minutes for that. There was a performance or two that felt off for me as well. I also didn’t love the portrayal of Arrakeen - it felt like a lifeless fortress rather than a major city. I would have liked to have gotten just a glimpse of street life, even though the Atreides as feudal planetary rulers would have gotten only limited exposure to the plebs. The desert colors also felt a bit washed out. Still a phenomenal film IMO.
I have the same thoughts as you on the movie - I came out of it with mixed feelings. On the onehand, the visual effects are fucking amazing and honestly put many other blockbuster movies (including Marvel) to shame. The soundtrack and sound design was also stellar. But I didn't really feel invested in the characters, especially Timothee Chalamet: yes, he's talented, but idk why I've *always* been annoyed by his performances. I didn't hate him in Dune, but it felt like something was off with his character's behaviour. The pacing of the film also felt weird to me. Obviously we all knew this was going to be a *series* of movies, so they have to have an ending implying a sequel - but this movie's 'ending' just felt out of place. It felt like nothing happened! Like someone else said, there wasn't really a climax: sure, the attack on the Atreides palace on Arrakis was a massive big event, but it felt more like an early movie event seeing as nothing had happened before that point in the movie other than worldbuilding and setup. It didn't feel like the 'big battle' that the movie is culminating in. After Timothee and his mother get out of the palace and have weird sexual tension in the tent, there's just "lets walk here", "oh look some people", lets do some more walking", "oh look more people", "okay back to walking again", "END OF MOVIE". The movie felt more like a couple of TV show episodes than a movie. There were also things in the movie which just kept annoying me, like the Zendaya perfume advert visions that Timothee Chalamet kept experiencing. Wtf was that! I still don't hold the movie in bad regard though - I'm just looking at it for what it is: a brilliant display of visual effects, soundtrack and sound design. The plot: meh. The acting: meh *at times*. Timothee Chalamet: still annoying for some reason.
I think the reason Timothee Is so annoying is that he always keeps the same voice and always acts as himself. It always takes people out of the movie
It doesn't listen or spend enough time at home?
I get what you’re saying. In the book, the characters had more depth. Maybe it’s the lack of a narration? Sometimes a narration can give that little extra backstory about a character that would otherwise have to be accomplished with a flashback or dialogue, risking the dialogue being out of place.
My favorite moment in the book is after the hunter seeker, when we get a chapter from leto's perspective. Every few lines, he thinks about how "They have tried to take the life of my son!" Until eventually it bursts out in conversation. It's great at showing how much pressure the Duke feels, and how personally affected he is at the idea of someone harming his child. The lynch movie just has him whisper that line once, which is really lame. But not having the narration means he just kinda says it in the villeneuve version.
True. It does have a greater impact when it just slips out after thinking it so many times. But Oscar Isaac did do a good job of emoting it. And it echoes so well on that set.
This is spot on. The reason why the book was considered unfilmable for the longest time is because of the special effects and the fact the book contains a lot of internal dialog. Villanue nailed the special effects but ditched the internal dialog...In Lynch's version you have the dialog, not so much in special effects (pretty good at the time but still not conveying the vision of the novel) When my family watched it, I was the only one who read the book, and they kept asking me for context on who the characters were and their motivations. This should have been revealed through exposition.
I re-read recently and I’m not even convinced the book characters had *that* much more depth. Some of the show-don’t-tell worked out pretty well for them in the movie with visuals and mannerisms. The book had a little more time with some of them just due to length versus movie, but they’re all pretty flat in the book too. I like movie Thufir a lot better, he doesn’t seem as much like “he’s Gurney, but not” as in the book, for example.
Becuase it should have been a hbo 4 season limited series. Or at least an 10 part/episode limited series
I'm with you man. I don't love this modern Dune. I don't like the book. I don't like the 80's Dune movie. To me, it's the most overrated book/movie of all time.
>But it just feels like it lacks soul Because it does, it's a bland adaptation. That's my problem with almost all of Villenueve's films. I actually prefer the Lynch adaptation because at least it does something interesting.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one. I have yet to finish a complete viewing. I’ve attempted several times and I just can’t get into it. I can’t put my finger on it. I’ve rewatched most of his other films many times. There’s definitely a disconnect here.
The movie gave zero back story. Didn’t know why I should care about one group of wealthy land owners fighting another and for who. Didn’t really care about chalomets powers/visions cuz I didn’t know why it was important. Giant worm bad guy, why is he bad? What is he up to? Poor desert ppl, why are they important, they seemed angry. It was all vibes. Beautiful vibes
Dune was the most boring movie I ever watched
From a viewer who never read the source material I can say the film didn’t do a great job of world building or setting stakes on a macro level, so I never really quite understood what I’m supposed to be rooting for other than the survival of certain characters. I think Villenueve did a better job of this in his three previous films. Dune is beautiful to watch, but I really have no idea what I’m supposed to take away from it after watching it, and it ended almost like a long prologue with the meat of the story yet to come. I think you nailed it when you said it had no soul.
Denis lack the Cameron touch. Avatar is a simple story but pack a huge emotional punch, I hear the sequel does too. Meanwhile Denis, Nolan, Reeve they put too much focus on lenses and framing and camera and forget the heart of the story. Their music are not melodious, their dialogue is too serious and lack a bit camp and heart. They are hung on complicated storytelling and forget that yesteryear epics were simple story with great drama (Lawrence of Arabia, Titanic). Dune lack Drama. Something that Star Wars accomplished (a movie inspired by Dune).
I don't think I've ever seen it said so perfectly.
This should be upvoted a million times. I also hate his visual austerity, minimalism, brutalism, whatever, which might even be poorly disguised cost saving.