Dune (2020) - Denis Villeneuve

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Corridor crew did a VFX comparison of 84 vs new Dune and one thing that shocked me was that the shields in the old one are hand drawn and took 9 months just for the Paul/Gurney fight at the beginning.

 
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Corridor crew did a VFX comparison of 84 vs new Dune and one thing that shocked me was that the shields in the old one are hand drawn and took 9 months just for the Paul/Gurney fight at the beginning.
lol it looks like someone with a semi transparent robot costume made from cardboard boxes though
 
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lol it looks like someone with a semi transparent robot costume made from cardboard boxes though

No disagreement but for the time, even as a kid watching it over and over early 90's - it looked kinda cool :D

Just amazed at the time spent on it, it's staggering. Also the effort for the atreides landing at Arakeen, Lynch really had a lot of passion for that movie.
 
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Binged all 6 books over a week and a bit. Not quite at Mastermind level but I’m now a Dune expert again.

The only bittersweet pill is it reminded me Chapterhouse feels like there’s way too many unresolved story threads to pack the series up at, yet we’ll never know where Frank was going to go with it. It also reinforced just how nonsensical and unrelated to his ideas pretty much everything that Brian and Kevin penned afterwards is. They are truly hateful powindah. Whatever he wanted to write, it would have been completely different to what the steaming pile they’ve left us with.
 
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@Somnambulist +1 on the Kev and Brian stuff. I'd read Anderson's first Star Wars Trilogy and it was utter crap compared to Zahn's. I only read the first new Dune novel and it immediately started destroying the canon. Hated it and never touched anymore.


Also I think the shield suits in the original are cool, I think they represent the technology suggested in the book more fittingly than the new Dune. The Jamis scene in the new film didn't deal with the complexity of the book of which the shields were an underlying theme.
 
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Binged all 6 books over a week and a bit. Not quite at Mastermind level but I’m now a Dune expert again.

The only bittersweet pill is it reminded me Chapterhouse feels like there’s way too many unresolved story threads to pack the series up at, yet we’ll never know where Frank was going to go with it. It also reinforced just how nonsensical and unrelated to his ideas pretty much everything that Brian and Kevin penned afterwards is. They are truly hateful powindah. Whatever he wanted to write, it would have been completely different to what the steaming pile they’ve left us with.

Ah yes, Kev and Bri, the worst thing to happen Dune ever. the prequels were bad enough and could be avoided, but the sequels were a pair of the worst books I ever had the misfortune to rehash.
By the end everyone was a genetic 'god', despite never changing, and being the same doing the same things, awful....
 
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Frank was going somewhere with jazzing up the Atreides genetic line potential a bit with Teg and new space-time abilities beyond prescience. He was going somewhere in even higher dimensions with Duncan and his Tleilaxu-tinkered many-Duncans genes that took him to the infancy of the god-like power that Marty and Daniel seem to possess as evolved FDs. He had the BG evolving and questioning their MO after 20-25k years.

I don’t think he had a concrete outline for where he was going in the same way he did for the first 3 books and might well have just made it up as he went along, but with all the books fresh in my mind it’s just a shame it ends where it does. And there definitely wouldn’t have been any killer robots, past or future, or any undoing of the Golden Path either.

Now I want to go through all 6 again but this time extract a ton of quotes and epigraphs at the starts of chapters, because the books are subtle and in GEOD’s case overt musings to the reader about the human condition, politics, economics, sociology etc. RIP free time.
 
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Just watched this with no knowledge of anything previous.

The initial story was confusing because I did not have a clue what was going on. However I feel like the slow pace helped me follow the plot. The whole film was beautiful and some scenes breathtaking in 4k.

Can anyone explain the scene where he has to our v his hand intov the box and the scenes after where they discuss his mother was supposed to bare a daughter??
 

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Just watched this with no knowledge of anything previous.

The initial story was confusing because I did not have a clue what was going on. However I feel like the slow pace helped me follow the plot. The whole film was beautiful and some scenes breathtaking in 4k.

Can anyone explain the scene where he has to our v his hand intov the box and the scenes after where they discuss his mother was supposed to bare a daughter??
I havent read the books, only going by the Lynch movie and this. The box was a test, if he removed his hand she would have killed him. The test was to do with self control - I don't know if it was just a general test for all their kind, or a test to determine his self control as a male. The female child thing is because their order is all female. Whenever a male adopts their power, he is supposed to be a new messiah of sorts, so they control who bears males and teaches them their ways, and his mother was told to bear a female for teaching, not a male
 
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Thanks it clears that up abit, I got really lost at the beginning not having a clue about anything. The Baron?? How come.be is so tall and has that exo skeletal looking spine? I don't really understand what he is in comparison to whoever they call the emperor. I also could help to relate the voice with the force. Seemed to have a few SW comparisons.

I am actually looking forward to part II.

Would you guys recommend the books, I feel like I would potentially enjoy them.
 
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Just watched this with no knowledge of anything previous.

The initial story was confusing because I did not have a clue what was going on. However I feel like the slow pace helped me follow the plot. The whole film was beautiful and some scenes breathtaking in 4k.

Can anyone explain the scene where he has to our v his hand into the box and the scenes after where they discuss his mother was supposed to bare a daughter??

The box is a pain inducer. It's to test if Paul can overcome his animal instincts to remove his hand, even though he thinks it's being burned away. Is Paul just a normal human animal, or a more rational, higher thinking person capable of commanding his own body ie, not a sheep. If Paul pulls his hand out, then the Mother Superior will kill him, as he's just an animal not worthy of being the Kwizats Haderach, and dangerous to be let loose with the potential for such power. If Paul can't control himself, then he's not capable of changing the Waters Of Life and becoming the Kwizats Haderach anyway.

Lady Jessica was supposed to bear only daughters to Duke Leto. She is unknowingly part of a vast genetics project by the Bene Gesserit to create the Kiwzats Haderach, a superbeing under their control. Jessica's daughter was supposed to be born and eventually married to one of Baron Harkonnen's nephews, and their offspring would be the Kwizats Haderach under Bene Gesserit control. Out of love for Leto, Jessica gives him a son and heir that he longs for. The Bene Gesserit can control their bodies to such an extent that that can chose if, when, and with what gender they get pregnant. This early birthing of a possible Kwizats Haderach is why the Mother Superior performs the nerve induction/pain test on Paul, to see if he's worth saving in the coming destruction of House Atredies by the secret alliance between the Harkonnens and Emperor Corrino.


Thanks it clears that up abit, I got really lost at the beginning not having a clue about anything. The Baron?? How come.be is so tall and has that exo skeletal looking spine? I don't really understand what he is in comparison to whoever they call the emperor. I also could help to relate the voice with the force. Seemed to have a few SW comparisons.

I am actually looking forward to part II.

Would you guys recommend the books, I feel like I would potentially enjoy them.
The Baron is hugely fat, living a corpulent, decadent, and perverse life. He wears a suit of anti-gravity suspensors so he can move around, be comfortable, and not die under his own gigantic weight.

The Baron is the head of House Harkonnen, one of the many noble Houses that sit in the Landsraad, the defacto government of the galaxy. They are governed over by an Emperor, Shaddam Corrino IV, from the House Corrino. This creates a balance of power, along with other interests such as the Bene Gesserit, CHOAM (the business arm of galactic rule), and the Spacing League (the intergalactic travel and commerce faction). All the various factions work together to keep money and power, but they also jockey against each other for advantage. House Harkonnen and House Atredies hate each other due to a long, generational vendetta between their families.

The Bene Gesserit voice is one of their many "witch" powers. They have very fine, nearly total control over their bodies, and are trained to use the pitch and tone of their voices to reach beyond the conscious mind, and deep into the subconscious where their commands bypass normal human thinking and are obeyed without question or even being thought about. Any individual not trained to resist such mental and physiological control simply does what they are told to do by a trained Bene Gesserit wielding the voice power.

As for Star Wars comparisons, Dune was one of the first, and you can find it's influence over so many things. In the same way that JRR Tolkein affected (and created) so many fantasy staples with Lord Of The Rings, Frank Herbert did the same for science fiction with Dune.

I would certainly recommend the first three books. This is the story of Paul Atredies, and the start of his son's story (Leto II). The fourth book I'd also recommend (end of Leto II's story) as this finishes that story started in the first three books, but it's quite distinct, in a very different setting, and far in the future. The books after that get progressively more bonkers, and I think most people see diminishing returns after that point. The further books written by Brian Herbert after the death of his father are not very good in comparison to Frank Herbert's seminal first three/four books.
 
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Well, I had a free day and lousy weather so ended up going to the cinema to catch it.

10/10 film for me....really done the world justice, the definitive Dune without a doubt. Nothing to criticise really, apart from Jessica being a bit of a wet lettuce at first.

Last time I go to a cinema though. I spent a fair few scenes thinking that I can't wait to watch this at home where I can see what's going on in the dark scenes. Ok the sound is good...but honestly...the whole experience is just a bit crap these days. I'd much rather watch on a superior display in the comfort of my own home.

Will probably be my one and only 4k BluRay purchase.....well, until part 2 :p
 
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Would you guys recommend the books, I feel like I would potentially enjoy them.

The film I think is more enjoyable if you've read the books and know the backstory for some stuff.

The one thing I think Lynch's Dune does better is Princess Irulan's monologue at the beginning. Her voice is a big element of the books, that DV had barely mentioned in part 1.
 
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The epigraphs by her in the book mirror being trapped by prescience - they’re an in-universe recollection of events before they occur in the book - so you know the outcome already, it’s just the particular intricacies of the path things take to get there. Works better on page than film I think.

I seem to recall here was talk early versions of the leaked early version of the script (which I never saw) that had a kind of prologue in a Bene Gesserit school or something that set up the universe in a similar way to the opening of the Lynch film, but I think once DV got his hands on it he went firmly with his ‘show and assume the audience get the inference rather than tell’ style, an Information Dump jihad or sorts.
 
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I liked the DV film a lot but it's a very spare thing. There is very little beyond the main Paul plot the other characters are there but aren't deep. It's been pared down to the essential elements. He shows the World beautifully you are in no doubt as to the nature of it but I do miss the depth and complexity of both Lynch's vision and the book. I'm looking forward to the second part I hope it does the book equal justice.
 
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To be fair....the first part is just setting the scene, of the more run of the mill politics and betrayal. The more interesting themes should come to the fore in the second.

DV has actually made something of Paul's dread of the 'jihad in my name' which is an aspect of the book that Lynch never really got to grips with imo.
 
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I see it's on Apple TV already....might be rewatching at the weekend.

Annoying it's rental only....and I finally caved and went to the cinema last week!

Looking forward to seeing it on a decent display this time....
 
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