Dune (2020) - Denis Villeneuve

I think this is one of those rare films where I'd actually prefer to see it on the "Big Screen" even though there's a "small screen" version just appeared online. I just hope thats it's too "sci-fi" for the "phones left on, group chatting, throwing food" group of idiot cinema goers who usually ruin films for me.
 
ianh said:
I think this is one of those rare films where I'd actually prefer to see it on the "Big Screen" even though there's a "small screen" version just appeared online. I just hope thats it's too "sci-fi" for the "phones left on, group chatting, throwing food" group of idiot cinema goers who usually ruin films for me.
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I find Sunday night or during the day are best to avoid this crowd.
 
MissChief said:
I find Sunday night or during the day are best to avoid this crowd.
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Yeap, last viewing Sunday (usually ending around 11pm-midnight) has been a staple of my cinema viewing times for years but I'm booking the first viewing Thursday at noon as I don't want to have to avoid the web for 4 days to avoid "spoilers" (despite knowing the story anyway :D).
 
Watched the new dune, thought it was ok but after i went and watched the 80s one and tbh the actors and acting is better in the old one, the scenes look more lived in, bit more spacy bits in. The new dune, looks nice in some of the open shots but the characters i dont feel theres any seriousness in the way they speak compared to the more passion the old film does. Hard to explain that but thats how im seeing it. The women in the 80s version were amazing and serious and had the voice and speeches but in the new one, they just look like normal women and dont feel the lines of dialogue compared to the 80s women.

I mean in the 80s one there was this massive alien slug thingy and talking about the plot they arranged, im pretty sure that isnt in this new one. But also the new one has a few bits not in the 80s. Not sure why, maybe to stretch the story or creative differences i dunno.

For the new generation of young ppl i guess the new dune will be good but for us that saw the 80s one and 80s films in general i think i have to say id prefer the old one, even tho a few bits are bit iffy like the personal shields but u gotta think at the time that was pretty cool effects, still is kinda tho they totally block the actors out but still its cool. The new shield effects are skin tight and dont show much except when hit, kinda meh.

Plus i kinda like the narrating in the old one, there isnt a lot if any in the new one.
 
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Just saw it :D

6/10 (5 being average).

Better than the trailer would have you believe. Detailed but the characters seemed a little flat. Possibly like the director simply had too much material to bring together. Lost the plot and characters in favour of the cinematics.

I wasn't bored watching it, I didn't sit there and poke holes in the plot but something didn't quite grab me - the Rev Mother with the box could have been a little horror anxious and relief for example. Instead we're left with a few cut scenes and poor Rebecca having to act like she's worried .. yet it missed the right nerves. There are some good points - the fliers and the sandstorm piece was good, I thought the poison tooth/baron was better and so was the hunter scene - visually and that worked nicely. I kept hearing the old film thought narration over the top of the scene as it unfolded.
However perhaps the film was a little too slow to bring the emotion along for the ride.. instead favouring the epic cinema scenery.
 
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My only disappointment...

No feyd

Otherwise rock solid, a few other minor quibbles but overall great stuff.

I've got a lot of love for Lynch Dune, must have watched 20+ times over the years, but realistically it verges b movie at times, sign of the times though. They did what they could when it was made.

Zimmers soundtrack was pleasantly understated I thought, much of the visuals felt quite far future with ship designs.

I could say loads more, good and bad but knackered, will revisit this when I'm more alert.

Oh yeah, felt a lot more book faithful than Lynch, a lot of smaller touches straight from the book that DL ignored. Only picked up on them as read it very recently.
 
A difficult one this. If I where to grade the film on competency of production and craft alone it would score higher then any Blockbuster I've seen in years. It really is stunning to look at and the production design feels second to none. That really cannot be overstated (though I do have some minor quibbles about color grading and effects work).

The film falls completely short however when it comes to the fundamentals. It just spreads itself too thin for any aspect of the narrative to really take hold and so much of the minutia that makes Herbert's novel so beloved is set to one side.
It's frustrating. The film is so concerned with hitting every important plot milestone of the book that it almost forgets about the soul of the material itself. It comes across as being a little under studied if anything.

Too me it's a screenplay problem. No scene or character is ever given the space to expand past the confines of the time they're given and it all rings a little hollow by the end. The reason people say that the novel is unfilmable is because there's too much pov material to translate to film without excessive exposition. Instead of making the difficult decision to cull material to make space for the central characters and themes to expand naturally, the film instead decides to keep almost every story beat whilst unfairly over characterizing certain personalities that ironically end up working AGAINST the narrative itself (see Jessica).

I'm being overly negative because I love DVs work as much as I do the original novel. He is a Director of exceptional talent who works best when he can play off a writer that can expand with him as he goes, not set limits from the start. Many aspects of the film I greatly enjoyed and I'd happily pay to watch it again. But none of the trademark humanism that DV and indeed FH are somewhat renowned for can be found here. It is essentially just a stunning visual companion to the original book rather then an interesting or even thematically faithful reproduction.
 
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Maybe peter jackson shoulda done it as he did well with a big book like lotr and spread it to 3 films that most ppl enjoyed.

Tho if another 2 films are due, i guess id wait to see the whole picture to see if all 3 work together instead of judging the 1.
 
Thekwango said:
He didn't do quite so well with the big book of The Hobbit!
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LOTR was cut down from the original material to make it three films. The Hobbit was expanded massively to stretch it to three films. As Jackson has said many times of LOTR, Tolkien knew what he was doing, and every time they tried to deviate from the book, what they did was worse. Where they had to make up new stuff for the Hobbit, it came up worse, where they stuck to source material in LOTR it was great.

We saw the same thing with the last two seasons of Game of Thrones (worse when they ran out of Martin's books to follow). Look at Ridley Scott. Great with Alien (Dan O'Bannen and Geiger to follow), and The Martian (copied directly from the book), Bladerunner (Dick's book), but terrible with Prometheus and Covenant where he did his own thing. JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson terrible at everything they write themselves.

There's too many directors who think that they are writers, and that the story is the least important thing of the movie. They want the credits, the residuals, the control of the projects, but they don't know as much as they think they do about writing narratives and characters. As we've seen in so many recent movie failures, directors are great at the actual filming and visuals, the translation to a film medium, but often quite bad at creating the source of that material in the first place.

Something like Dune doesn't need every single little thing as per the book. Just like LOTR, you can leave some things out. Dune only needs a core cast of characters against the massive backdrop of the setting. In the books, some of the main characters are sidelined quite early. Some are important to begin with, and fade to almost nothing as the other characters take over. The central story is all about Paul Atredies, and everyone else orbits him and his manifest destiny. Trying to give equity to all the other characters is the wrong approach, because quite a few of them just don't have a lot of story to back them up. While these characters do have key moments, and are fleshed out in the book, I don't think a film has that luxury if it's going to be at the expense of the characters that drive the story.
 
chroniclard said:
We need a hero to save the galaxy!........what shall we call him?......er.....Paul?
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One of the definitions of the name is "A Small Whisper That Propagates Into A Roaring Multitude", which is something Herbert might have chosen deliberately. When Saul has his Damascene conversion in the Bible that leads to being one of the founders of the Christian church, you can see the parallels with Paul Atredies messianic destiny. It also matches the "small" meaning with his chosen Fremen name of Mua'dib (the small but clever desert mouse).

I think Herbert put massive amounts of thought into every little aspect of those first four Dune books.
 
Steampunk said:
One of the definitions of the name is "A Small Whisper That Propagates Into A Roaring Multitude", which is something Herbert might have chosen deliberately. When Saul has his Damascene conversion in the Bible that leads to being one of the founders of the Christian church, you can see the parallels with Paul Atredies messianic destiny. It also matches the "small" meaning with his chosen Fremen name of Mua'dib (the small but clever desert mouse).

I think Herbert put massive amounts of thought into every little aspect of those first four Dune books.
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Probably, its just 20,000 years in the future and .....Paul. :D
 
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