Dune

[saxitoxin]

I saw Dune II ... thoughts follow with spoilers (not sure how you spoil a 60 year-old story but whatever) ...

(1) WOW ... absolutely epic. That said, I don't understand how anyone who hasn't read the book or books would find it entertaining as it would be difficult to follow if you had not, I think, particularly with all the psychedelic flash-forwards.

(2) Christopher Walken did a good job as the Padishah Emperor in the sense that everything Walken does is good. However, I sort-of feel like this wasn't a role that only he could play and there were probably other actors who may have done an as-good or better job.

(3) A subtle moment of wokeness: We never have an appearance of Baron Harkonnen's gay sex slaves. (They can't have a homosexual be a villain, I'm assuming.) On the other hand, I was expecting they would cut out the concept of the forced marriage of the Princess Irulan to Paul Atreides but they didn't.

(4) The costuming didn't hit it out of the park like it did in the first film. The baroque elements were gone and it became a little sci-fi'ish. Princess Irulan was dressed like Lady Gaga in her prime.

(5) The music was as-good or better than in the first film.

I'll keep political observations for the Israel thread.

I saw it yesterday. Overall I thought it was great, although on point 1) I definitely thought parts of the story felt very accelerated. Some of the relationships and dynamics that developed felt like they could have been given a bit more time (the main guy and Johnny getting into a relationship seemed to happen out of nowhere, the badass new Harkonnen nephew went from new character to dead without much development in between etc). It feels like they tried to cram a bit too much in and therefore couldn't give everything the time it deserved.

There was also that weird comment about how men would die if they tried taking on the sorrow of the planet, which there may be more context to if you read the book but in the film it felt like a slightly on-the-nose attempt at being girl power (your point number 3).

The first movie was almost entirely about the politics and power dynamics between the houses and characters, whereas the second felt a lot more like a straight action movie.

Yeah, they chopped a lot of the politics out of this part (apart from the obvious parallels to the Israel-Palestinian conflict: the greedy, conniving Harkonnens who came from far away are the Zionists; the oppressed, indigenous Freymen are the Palestinians; the resource extraction colony of Arrakis represents the resource extraction colony of Israel; the Padishah Emperor and the Landsraad are the West, manipulating everything behind the scenes). Notably, the CHOAM Corporation (oil companies) and the Guild Navigators (military industrial complex) never make an appearance, and they never explain why there are no computers in either film. May have needed to make it a trilogy otherwise, I'm guessing.

[saxitoxin]

great 1969 interview with Frank Herbert

[bigtoughralf]

Apparently there's likely to be a Part Three, which from the sounds of it means they're going to do a movie for whatever book immediately follows the original.

The more I think about it the more the movie didn't do a great job of explaining. The blue gunk they feed to Paul makes him flip from wanting to avoid war, to selling out Johnny and launching his mega jihad, but the film didn't really explain why the blue gunk would trigger such a major personality shift (as it does for his mum as well). What was that all about?

[saxitoxin]

Apparently there's likely to be a Part Three, which from the sounds of it means they're going to do a movie for whatever book immediately follows the original.

The more I think about it the more the movie didn't do a great job of explaining. The blue gunk they feed to Paul makes him flip from wanting to avoid war, to selling out Johnny and launching his mega jihad, but the film didn't really explain why the blue gunk would trigger such a major personality shift (as it does for his mum as well). What was that all about?

It starts to unlock his cellular memory, or the DNA-stored memories of all of his ancestors back to Alexander the Great. With this perspective he realizes that no single human life is worth much, only the survival of the entire species. He also is able to see that there's an unspecified danger from the ancient past of Earth that will return to cause its extinction and he needs to consolidate all of the settled planets under his dictatorial rule and then drive humans out of the galaxy but this process may take thousands of years so being emperor won't be enough and he has to be worshipped as a god in order for his plan -- what he calls "The Golden Path" to his worshippers - to unfold on that timescale.

in the last chapter of the last book, Book 7, set 20,000 years after Dune, we learn this was all a giant error in judgment.

[mookiemcgee]

I tried listening to that interview but sell asleep a few times.

[saxitoxin]

but sell asleep a few times.

were you listening to the interview or trying to have sex with it

[saxitoxin]

Frank Herbert's real voice narrates the last two minutes of Lynch's Dune!

[bigtoughralf]

Apparently there's likely to be a Part Three, which from the sounds of it means they're going to do a movie for whatever book immediately follows the original.

The more I think about it the more the movie didn't do a great job of explaining. The blue gunk they feed to Paul makes him flip from wanting to avoid war, to selling out Johnny and launching his mega jihad, but the film didn't really explain why the blue gunk would trigger such a major personality shift (as it does for his mum as well). What was that all about?

It starts to unlock his cellular memory, or the DNA-stored memories of all of his ancestors back to Alexander the Great. With this perspective he realizes that no single human life is worth much, only the survival of the entire species. He also is able to see that there's an unspecified danger from the ancient past of Earth that will return to cause its extinction and he needs to consolidate all of the settled planets under his dictatorial rule and then drive humans out of the galaxy but this process may take thousands of years so being emperor won't be enough and he has to be worshipped as a god in order for his plan -- what he calls "The Golden Path" to his worshippers - to unfold on that timescale.

in the last chapter of the last book, Book 7, set 20,000 years after Dune, we learn this was all a giant error in judgment.

Shame that only the first sentence is actually included in the movie. From the flash forwards he has both before and after drinking the goop, it seemed pretty clear that if he launches his holy war he'll cause lots of suffering with no apparent upside. So there's no real explanation for why he'd go ahead launch his mega jihad anyway.

When he talks about a 'narrow way forward' in the movie it sounds like he's talking about a way forward that would avoid great bloodshed, but from looking around on Google it would appear that in the books he's actually talking about a way forward that avoids human extinction - and he thinks that way forward involves war. Which makes more sense, but isn't covered by the movie.

Sounds like there are a lot of interesting concepts and ideas in the book that got referenced by the film, but in a way that was too superficial to actually land with anyone who hasn't already read the book.

[Dukasaur]

Yeah, they chopped a lot of the politics out of this part (apart from the obvious parallels to the Israel-Palestinian conflict: the greedy, conniving Harkonnens who came from far away are the Zionists; the oppressed, indigenous Freymen are the Palestinians; the resource extraction colony of Arrakis represents the resource extraction colony of Israel; the Padishah Emperor and the Landsraad are the West, manipulating everything behind the scenes). Notably, the CHOAM Corporation (oil companies) and the Guild Navigators (military industrial complex) never make an appearance, and they never explain why there are no computers in either film. May have needed to make it a trilogy otherwise, I'm guessing.

This attempt to shoehorn Dune into some corner of your 20th century political propaganda is all nonsense.

Dune is about religious mania, not political mania. To find the inspirations you need to look to medieval and renaissance religious wars.

Yes, the Fremen are clearly Arabs and Paul is Mohammed. That was never really hidden; not just the culture but the language gives obvious clues. The rest of your "parallels" completely miss the point.

The Bene Gesserit are kind of a composite between Freemasons and Jesuits. "Gesserit" even sounds a bit like "Jesuit" -- Herbert never tried very hard to hide his inspirations.

The Harkonnens are mostly Viking-inspired. The come, they take what they want, they may rule or they may just raid and leave, depending on the whim of the day. They don't have a coherent religion but what pronouncements they make are fatalistic and seem blasé about death.

The Emperor is the Byzantine Emperor, and the Sardaukar are the Varangian Guard.

The Navigators are the Venetians, and CHOAM are the merchants of Europe, keeping their eye on the ball while the religious nuts go out and kill each other.

[bigtoughralf]

I thought it seemed like an analogy to 20th century Western colonialism in the Middle East. The Empire is the imperialist powers, spice is oil, the Fremen are the locals. I didn't think they were trying to replicate exact people or countries, just the general power dynamics and interests.

The Empire is there to exploit the planet's resources and the Fremen's main concern is to drive the Empire out. All the religious stuff gets tied into that but it isn't really the main driver for the uprising.

[Dukasaur]

I thought it seemed like an analogy to 20th century Western colonialism in the Middle East. The Empire is the imperialist powers, spice is oil, the Fremen are the locals. I didn't think they were trying to replicate exact people or countries, just the general power dynamics and interests.

The Empire is there to exploit the planet's resources and the Fremen's main concern is to drive the Empire out. All the religious stuff gets tied into that but it isn't really the main driver for the uprising.

Yeah, they're definitely not trying to replicate any exact situation. But the power dynamics are strongly inspired by forces in our world.

It's funny, I've read a few different accounts of Herbert's inspiration and they're not all consistent. But what it seems is that when he first started writing Dune, he was intending to write a book about ecology, and some of that is still in there. But along the way, he got interested in man's obsession with following charlatans and messiahs, and as the series goes on there's more and more of that. In the later books it becomes more and more clear that it's about finding a path forward without our primitive addiction to leaders and masters.

[bigtoughralf]

A leaderless society? I didn't realise Dune was written by a communist.