7 ms·

Dune: Part Two – First Look

41 points by alexcason 3y ago

no_wizard 3y ago
A fair question I have, I think, is are these new Dune movies any good? I always felt it would be best as a limited series so there was more time to expand on the characters / story / world and that movie runtimes - even though they're getting longer - just aren't a good medium for complex stories like this that rely on heavy background and backstory HBO paved the way for high value high production series, seems like a more natural fit to a complex story like Dune
- xwdv 3y ago
  I love the movie, but I didn’t go in expecting a complete work. I expected something that would cut off abruptly at some point. There’s just too much to fit in. So perhaps with that framing in mind, I enjoyed what I watched and would have gladly sat hours to watch more. Very immersive world.
- poulpy123 3y ago
  I liked the first one. It was a breath of fresh air in an ocean of marvel and all remakes/reboots movies
  - dylan604 3y ago
    You realize that the movie being discussed is essentially a reboot/remake as well, right?
    - poulpy123 3y ago
      Yes I know. However it was a failure from 40 years ago, the story deserved another try in this case
      - dylan604 3y ago
        Failure?
        xboxnolifes 3y ago
        Movies that box office for less than their budget are typically considered failures, yes.
- dmreedy 3y ago
  I think the one we've seen so far had to pick and choose which pieces of the broader tangle of themes to engage with, by necessity of the constraints of the medium. But it did a very, very good job taking a movie-formattable slice out of the thing and presenting it with the honesty and scope of the source material. > HBO paved the way for high value high production series, HBO also paved the way to the superficialization of the stories of those series, the loss of themes and the reversion to sort of base storytelling patterns.
  - AmericanChopper 3y ago
    Other than turning Paul into a crusader, what did they really leave out of the book? The dinner scene, and some of the more minor Leto scheming was all I could remember. Did they have the Jessica finding the conservatory scene? I can’t remember…
    - dmreedy 3y ago
      They left out pretty much the entirety of the Butlerian Jihad and Orange Catholicism as themes motivating the world. Mentats are barely discussed even though they are present. And yeah, no dinner scene, and no conservatory, as far as story telling beats
      - AmericanChopper 3y ago
        Oh yeah, I guess they did… I imagine they’ll have to expand on that a little bit more in the part 2 for the rest of Thufir’s story to make sense though. Now that I think about it they didn’t put much effort into Piter de Vries either.
        dmreedy 3y ago
        Honestly I'm not even sure they're going to do more than unceremoniously kill Thufir off in the background. But it's possible that they took the first movie as a chance to explore Arrakis, and will take the second to explore the broader galaxy and its politics, players, and philosophies. We still haven't met the Emperor or his Daughter, the Imperial Court (beyond an emissary. No dinner party means no Fenrig and Margot), the Guild (as political players) CHOAM? (I forget if it's even mentioned). All of these could be worked in (and it seems like they will be given we see casting of Irulan at the very least), but you can imagine a version of the story that is less concerned with the broader politicking than it is with the action on Arrakis. They also fundamentally changed the nature of Kynes' death. So it is possible they are not even interested in (or, to be kinder, that they feel they don't have time for) the planetological lifecycle of the worms and the spice. That it will serve only as a mcguffin. But that's pure speculation.
- mikequinlan 3y ago
  A limited series could be good, or it could be like the Foundation series where the creators decided the book(s) were too hard and are using the series to tell their own story instead (which isn't a bad story, but also isn't the story Asimov told in his books).
- gurchik 3y ago
  If you’ve already read the book, you might enjoy the movie. If you haven’t, I’m reminded of this article: https://www.theonion.com/dune-part-two-to-pick-up-right-where-viewers-fell-as-1850378546 https://www.theonion.com/dune-part-two-to-pick-up-right-wher...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - lapcat 3y ago
    I've read the book, and I quickly found the movie to be unwatchable because of dumb, pointless changes to the story. Not quite as bad as David Lynch's "Dune Velvet", but still bad. One thing that really bothered me is that the movie had Gurney Hallack warn Paul not to sit with his back to the door rather than Thufir Hawat. In the book, this was an important early scene because it's a setup for Thufir's death scene at the end, when he says, "The universe is full of doors." Of course Thufir's death hasn't been shown yet in the movies, but they already degraded it somewhat. There were other changes that bothered me too. IIRC there was something crucial missing from the gom jabbar scene that left out a big part of the motivation for it. I don't remember all the details now. (Edit: Now I remember. The Reverend Mother explained that an animal would gnaw off its own leg to escape the trap. In the book, she explains that a human would fake death and kill the trapper to eliminate a threat to its kind. Whereas in the movie, she just says "What will you do?" WTF?!?) I stopped the movie after a half hour or so. I didn't see the point, when the book is so much better.
    - flopsamjetsam 3y ago
      I loved the build-up of the pain in Lynch's version ("Dune Velvet", I'll have to remember that one :). Somehow it seemed more suspenseful than the new version.
- tweezy 3y ago
  I've found a barbell shape to the response. People either seem to really like or hate it. Not too many people I know that are in the middle. I will say I'm one of the people that really like it. I'm a big fan of the first Dune book and I think it does a great job of being true to the story. It's visually stunning and the score is perfect. My only gripe (and it's a big one) is that the cut the dinner scene. I don't understand that choice at all, but it wasn't enough to ruin the whole movie for me. People that I know who don't like it think it's slow and that nothing really happens. And they're right. It also just awkwardly cuts off in the middle, so it doesn't feel like a complete movie. As a fan of the book, that didn't bother me too much because I realize it's just half the story and they can't make a 6 hour movie. But it is jarring, especially if you aren't already familiar with the plot. And you are 100% correct that this would be better suited as an HBO miniseries. There's just way too much to cram into a movie. If you haven't checked out SyFy's miniseries and the Children of Dune miniseries, they are surprising good given the low budget SyFy had for it (compared to Villeneuve's budget at least).
  - arp242 3y ago
    I'm "in the middle"; it's certainly not a bad movie, but it also failed to really capture me. I still prefer David Lynch's Dune – yes, it has its issues[1] but it's so much more creative and bewildering than the almost sterile "Villeneuve look". I certainly don't begrudge Villeneuve for following his own creative vision, but I wish it was more Lynch-esque, minus the problems of course. [1]: The DVD copy of Dune I bought at the store many years ago has a cover with visible JPEG artefacts. It's a perfect cover.
  - Moissanite 3y ago
    Interesting - having read the book several times I don't get the reference to the dinner scene; will have to look it up. The parts which bothered me were the Zendaya slow-mo flash-forwards being too long and too frequent with no substance, and Lady Jessica crying far more than reasonable for the character I remember.
    - throw0101a 3y ago
      > Interesting - having read the book several times I don't get the reference to the dinner scene; will have to look it up. Chapter 16: * https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/dune/summary/book-i-chapter-16 https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/dune/summary/...
- dylan604 3y ago
  >that movie runtimes - even though they're getting longer - just aren't a good medium for complex stories like this that rely on heavy background and backstory Peter Jackson would disagree. If you can't get it done in a single "getting longer" movie runtime, just make it into 3. Harry Potter did it in 2, Twilight did it in 2, etc. So the precedent of using multiple movies is there.
  - throw0101a 3y ago
    > Peter Jackson would disagree. If you can't get it done in a single "getting longer" movie runtime, just make it into 3. That's how we got The Hobbit series, which were getting a bit too thin/stretched IMHO. LoTR as three worked, maybe Hobbit as two could have been better (was a love triangle really needed?)
    - arethuza 3y ago
      "...thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread."
      - dylan604 3y ago
        Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett?
        jemmyw 3y ago
        https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/3875-i-feel-thin-sort-of-stretched-like-butter-scraped-over https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/3875-i-feel-thin-sort-of-st... Tolkien apparently, although I definitely remember a similar Pratchett quote.
- viraptor 3y ago
  That comment seems like 3 independent thoughts. In my opinion: yes the first part was great, yes it could cover more details as a series, yes a HBO style high value production would be cool to see. The possibility of having something better does not make this movie bad. If you can go into it accepting that: not everything will be covered, the book has lots of internal thoughts and little action which doesn't work well on a screen, the politics part was not skipped but wasn't given lots of time either - I think you'll have a good time. Edit: Visually - it's amazing.
  - stevenwoo 3y ago
    HBO started production on a prequel, Dune: the Sisterhood, based on the Brian Hebert books, I haven't read them, only read the first six by Frank Hebert, but just based on the twist in book five, the origin story of the Bene Gesserit could be bonkers.
    - throw0101a 3y ago
      > HBO started production on a prequel, Dune: the Sisterhood, based on the Brian Hebert books I read the first Brian Herbert book when it came out. Didn't bother with any since (life is too short).
    - dsr_ 3y ago
      The problem is that Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson have turned out 20ish volumes of bad fanfic. (I have nothing against good fanfic.)
      - mercutio2 3y ago
        Brian Herbert has done more violence to the Dune universe than I ever would’ve thought possible. Kevin Anderson is a mediocre sci-fi writer, but those books are so much worse than his worse non-Dune books.
- MikusR 3y ago
  No it is not. There was Sci-Fi channel miniseries Dune and Children of Dune. Those, despite the lower budget, are much better than than the movie.
  - antisthenes 3y ago
    I agree. I think these are the best interpretations of the book that I've seen. However I've also done a complete 180 on the book itself. I think there are just too many holes in the logistics of the Dune world for me to keep up the suspension of disbelief as an adult. Given that, I'm pretty neutral towards the movies as the book adaptations. I hope they don't take the source material too seriously actually, because the source is honestly not as captivating to me as an adult as it used to be as a teenager.
- carapace 3y ago
  This seems as good an opening as any... No. (the first one, haven't seen the second) This "Dune" is not good. It's pretty, but stupid. For one thing, just one little thing, what's the Baron's guy's name? Not the Feyd-Ruatha/Raban amalgam. The mentat. No one says Piter's name!? If you haven't read the book you wouldn't know WhoTF that character is. - - - - I could go on and on, but what I really want to say, what I want future filmmakers to hear, is just this: Just film the book. Don't change the dialog, don't change the characters, don't add scenes and for fuck's sake don't delete any! Just film the book. Don't second guess Frank Herbert. He lucked out, made a masterpiece, and a whole Universe so real you can taste it. (the rest of the series not so much, but "Dune" itself is a window onto an alternate Universe.) You wouldn't hack up Shakespeare, you're not going to improve on Dune. Just film the book. Whew! That was bottled up for a while.
  - arethuza 3y ago
    Nitpick - the "Feyd-Ruatha/Raban" is just Raban, Feyd-Ruatha doesn't appear until part 2.
    - carapace 3y ago
      Ah, cheers!
  - viraptor 3y ago
    > Don't change the dialog That would be one weird movie given how much the characters in Dune think about things rather than talk about them. There are important conversations of course, but... there would be a lot of "Paul thinking about the future" voiceover.
    - arethuza 3y ago
      Weren't those internal monologues one of the weaknesses of the Lynch movie?
    - yamtaddle 3y ago
      Exactly, Dune is practically unfilmable without heavy adaptation. There's a bunch of that inner-thought voiceover stuff in David Lynch's Dune, but still only a tiny fraction as much as is in the book, and it's frankly really damn goofy (full disclosure: I'm waiting to see how Part II turns out before I decide whether this version, or the Alan Smithee cut of 1984 Dune, is the one I'd be more excited about if someone proposed a re-watch—I love that glorious mess)
- pdntspa 3y ago
  I watched it baked off my tits and it was fucking AWESOME Fantastic stoner movie
- Maursault 3y ago
  It won 6 Oscars, deservedly, though all technical, but should have won Best Picture, which went to CODA. CODA had a budget of $10M and a box office take of $1.9M, while Dune had a budget of $165M and a box office take of $402M, if that tells you anything. Chalamet should have won Best Actor, he did quite well, but he is too young. He'll get one later when he's older, undoubtedly. Best Actor went to Will Smith for King Richard, and Smith is certainly talented, but Chalemet is in a class by himself. Smith probably should have forfeit his Oscar for his violent outburst at the ceremonies. The acting in Dune is simply excellent. Everyone brought their A-game. The cinematography, special effects and soundtrack are all excellent. The screenplay is surprisingly very similar to the 1984 film.
  - arethuza 3y ago
    "but he is too young" He is currently 27 - which is a lot older than Paul is supposed to be?
    - Maursault 3y ago
      Academy convention is to award older, more accomplished actors for previous work that was not awarded. Chalemet's age compared to Paul's is irrelevant. IRL, Chalemet is too young (compared to his competition in 2022) to be awarded an Oscar. Not technically, but in practice, Oscars are more like lifetime achievement awards. For example, Jamie Lee Curtis did not give an Oscar winning performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once, but they had to give it to her for her lifetime achievement and the fact that they awarded Oscars to two other actors in the film. That movie was terrible, but Michelle Yeoh deserves an Oscar for lifetime achievement. Ke Huy Kuan, 51, was certainly adequate, but the roll was nothing special. Hong Chau, 41, should have gotten his Oscar for her work in The Whale, which was a notably amazing performance. Kuan got it because of his age, even if his lifetime achievement is limited. Someone decided Everything Everywhere would sweep the Oscars, and it had everything to do with Michelle Yeoh's and Jamie Lee Curtis' lifetime achievements. The Whale was a far better film with more difficult acting that was nailed. It was just too controversial. Frasier got the Oscar even though his supporting actor Chau out-acted him, and pretty much everyone in all other movies. Her performance there was one of the best I have ever seen, and I had never heard of her. She'll be back.
- m3kw9 3y ago
  It was good, not great but between good and great
- Supermancho 3y ago
  > A fair question I have, I think, is are these new Dune movies any good? This particular iteration is trying to be far smarter than necessary or useful. If you watch the some Youtube breakdowns (not sure why you would - eg Why Dune's Editing Feels Different), you'll see that there are attempts to artfully inform the audience about things from the book through indirect means. Does it work? No. As a movie, it's pretty at times, but middling as an adaptation.
- lubujackson 3y ago
  I think it is on the LOTR level of translating the source material - the jom gabar scene is about as perfect as it could be. There is also a lot of confidence given to the audience, i.e. Paul's visions are shown but not explained, so seeing multiple possible futures is definitely confusing, but it mirrors Paul's confusion as he grapples with his ability.
- _ph_ 3y ago
  I would strongly say: yes. I was very skeptic, I am a big fan of the book and actually liked the first movie. All newer productions ever failed to excite me - until the new movie. That in my eyes is really well made. Looking forward to the second part!
- MilStdJunkie 3y ago
  You're asking a movie question in a forum that's probably very resistant or even actively hostile to visual storytelling[0]. Weight answers accordingly. For my $.02, it's a great film. I loved it; we have a cheap IMAX in our city and I must have seen it there a dozen times, and then a few times at home later. Greig Fraser was a fine stand in for Deakins, which was a relief. I love the look of the Lynch film, expected to remember it better than the DenVil designs, but then the new movie surprised me by topping even Tony Masters' fantastic Lynchian fever dream. As the film tells a story, however, it has some weaknesses[1] that it inherits from the text, and doesn't really completely dig itself out from those. Which is bad - that's an adaptation's only job - and it might explain the sort of empty feeling the movie leaves you with. The worst of this is the choice of ending point: probably the vision in the tent would have been the latest possible moment to do a solid ending, IMO. That single change would have made the movie 10-20% better, and is the lowest hanging fruit. It still baffles me, because Dennis is no idiot, and I wonder if the payoff is next movie. Another is the character count from the books. I'm going to say some bad things now, so get ready: the characters of Gurney and Duncan should probably have been amalgamated into a Duncan Halleck. There's zillions of other places to do things like this, because Dune is littered with characters who don't appreciably advance the story and disappear after Book 1; Shadout Mapes and Chani could, I think, be realistically amalgamated, and it would be a kick in the pants when you learn the housekeeper is daughter of Liet. Yeah, the book fans are gonna be pissed, but they were going to be pissed no matter what you did, because unlike LotR the novel is a young adult / coming of age story and people get weird about those. I've had friends screaming about the "missing dinner scene" for a year now. Something more abstract, too, is the lack of an object - metaphorical or physical - that the danger revolves around. Lynch's film dealt with this via several devices: the signet ring, the weirding modules. Dennis' film does not. Now, disclaimer. Dune as a giant metaphor rejects, in its own way, narrative as a generic concept, or at least the heroic narrative, so you have to bite your lip and wonder if this lack is intentional, and Dennis chose to push that absence forward as a metaphor. But metaphor tricks in storytelling only work if they leave the movie's skeleton to function; push them too hard (like, IMO, The Lobster did, critic tonguebaths notwithstanding) and a film can fall apart, like a sloppy abstraction. [0] This is "Hacker News", after all, and if there's one thing that's core to the word "hacker" it's "text". [1] "Weaknesses" from a movie perspective, where time is the most critical resource. Vs a book or video game, which can - and does! - stay engaging even when the main character is going to the bathroom, or climbing a mountain, or chopping garlic.
dmreedy 3y ago
> To become a full-fledged Fremen, and lead them in a counterattack that will avenge his fallen family and defeat the powers corrupting the galaxy (Emphasis mine.) This is a very funny summary. I of course understand the nature of media reporting and the constraints of a piece like this. And so far Villeneuve has shown himself to be as trustworthy as they come with themes more complex than base moral plays. But, still funny.
- AmericanChopper 3y ago
  They compromised on complexity a bit when they de-islamified the Fremen and decided they would be better off as crusaders rather than jihadis, which kinda turns some of the central themes of the story on its head.
  - dmreedy 3y ago
    I don't necessarily disagree with the position that compromises were made, but > better off as crusaders rather than jihadis At the risk of sounding edgy, I'm not sure I see the distinction between these two things? My impression of Herbert is that the pseduo-arabism that he draped over his themes didn't serve as a moral judgement or a stand-in for motivation, but to provide some remove for his immediate audience (lot of assumptions in that phrase I realize) so that they can examine morality without getting immediately defensive? He seemed interested in discussing Religion, the phenomenon. Not the phenomenon of a particular real instantiation. Or is that what you meant, too?
    - AmericanChopper 3y ago
      Some of the main themes of the book revolve around anti-colonialism, with the book drawing very obvious parallels to western interference in the Middle East after the discovery of spice, sorry I mean oil. Jihadis fighting against colonial forces fits into this theme perfectly. Crusaders on the other hand were just a different group of colonisers who had previously sought to conquer the Arabs. This doesn’t fit into the main themes at all, it completely subverts them.
brink 3y ago
This and Oppenheimer are the only two movies I'm excited for this year.
- xenophonf 3y ago
  Bruh, we're getting a Venture Bros. movie _AND_ a Metalocalypse movie, too! It's a good year for movies.
- throw0101a 3y ago
  The counter-programming for Oppenheimer's opening day is Barbie. :)
  - Doxin 3y ago
    And for anyone who hasn't seen the trailer for Barbie yet, go find it on youtube. It's... weird.
JKCalhoun 3y ago
https://archive.is/xTw6V https://archive.is/xTw6V
dicroce 3y ago
You know, it was probably super smart not showing Emperor Shaddam IV in the first film. The audience has enough to learn and see that is mandatory it was probably wise leaving out some things that weren't mandatory for the first film.
vermilingua 3y ago
The only press shot I wanted to see out of this was of Padishah Emperor Walken IV. Has to be the most exciting casting of the whole ensemble in my opinion.
mothsonasloth 3y ago
Really appreciated Villeneuve adding small scenes to the movie like the gardener watering the date palms and the ecology outpost. It rewards people who read the book and also helps people who are just watching the movie with understanding the world. Curious to see what other tid-bits from the book they will keep in part 2. Hopefully we can see some Fremen Sietches. On another note, I've always wanted to write a load tester library, I would call it Gom Jabbar. If the service falls over it fails the test.
- gaws 3y ago
  > Really appreciated Villeneuve adding small scenes to the movie like the gardener watering the date palms and the ecology outpost. It rewards people who read the book and also helps people who are just watching the movie with understanding the world. The biggest miss was Villeneuve not including Dr. Yueh's conversation with Lady Jessica that provides more context to why he did what he did.
ydnaclementine 3y ago
epic """""conclusion""""" (of just the first book)
- gaws 3y ago
  > of just the first book The sequel is also allegedly including parts of Dune: Messiah
  - fjfaase 3y ago
    I have not seen anything in this trailer hinting at that.
    - gaws 3y ago
      Emphasis on allegedly.
david38 3y ago
I wanted to love this, but damn, it’s sterile
uslic001 3y ago
I liked part One but not as much as the David Lynch version of Dune. I liked Part One better than the prior TV miniseries. The casting was better in the David Lynch version as the current Paul is weak.

41 points by alexcason 3y ago

A fair question I have, I think, is are these new Dune movies any good? I always felt it would be best as a limited series so there was more time to expand on the characters / story / world and that movie runtimes - even though they're getting longer - just aren't a good medium for complex stories like this that rely on heavy background and backstory HBO paved the way for high value high production series, seems like a more natural fit to a complex story like Dune

xwdv 3y ago
I love the movie, but I didn’t go in expecting a complete work. I expected something that would cut off abruptly at some point. There’s just too much to fit in. So perhaps with that framing in mind, I enjoyed what I watched and would have gladly sat hours to watch more. Very immersive world.
poulpy123 3y ago
I liked the first one. It was a breath of fresh air in an ocean of marvel and all remakes/reboots movies
- dylan604 3y ago
  You realize that the movie being discussed is essentially a reboot/remake as well, right?
  - poulpy123 3y ago
    Yes I know. However it was a failure from 40 years ago, the story deserved another try in this case
    - dylan604 3y ago
      Failure?
      - xboxnolifes 3y ago
        Movies that box office for less than their budget are typically considered failures, yes.
dmreedy 3y ago
I think the one we've seen so far had to pick and choose which pieces of the broader tangle of themes to engage with, by necessity of the constraints of the medium. But it did a very, very good job taking a movie-formattable slice out of the thing and presenting it with the honesty and scope of the source material. > HBO paved the way for high value high production series, HBO also paved the way to the superficialization of the stories of those series, the loss of themes and the reversion to sort of base storytelling patterns.
- AmericanChopper 3y ago
  Other than turning Paul into a crusader, what did they really leave out of the book? The dinner scene, and some of the more minor Leto scheming was all I could remember. Did they have the Jessica finding the conservatory scene? I can’t remember…
  - dmreedy 3y ago
    They left out pretty much the entirety of the Butlerian Jihad and Orange Catholicism as themes motivating the world. Mentats are barely discussed even though they are present. And yeah, no dinner scene, and no conservatory, as far as story telling beats
    - AmericanChopper 3y ago
      Oh yeah, I guess they did… I imagine they’ll have to expand on that a little bit more in the part 2 for the rest of Thufir’s story to make sense though. Now that I think about it they didn’t put much effort into Piter de Vries either.
      - dmreedy 3y ago
        Honestly I'm not even sure they're going to do more than unceremoniously kill Thufir off in the background. But it's possible that they took the first movie as a chance to explore Arrakis, and will take the second to explore the broader galaxy and its politics, players, and philosophies. We still haven't met the Emperor or his Daughter, the Imperial Court (beyond an emissary. No dinner party means no Fenrig and Margot), the Guild (as political players) CHOAM? (I forget if it's even mentioned). All of these could be worked in (and it seems like they will be given we see casting of Irulan at the very least), but you can imagine a version of the story that is less concerned with the broader politicking than it is with the action on Arrakis. They also fundamentally changed the nature of Kynes' death. So it is possible they are not even interested in (or, to be kinder, that they feel they don't have time for) the planetological lifecycle of the worms and the spice. That it will serve only as a mcguffin. But that's pure speculation.
mikequinlan 3y ago
A limited series could be good, or it could be like the Foundation series where the creators decided the book(s) were too hard and are using the series to tell their own story instead (which isn't a bad story, but also isn't the story Asimov told in his books).
gurchik 3y ago
If you’ve already read the book, you might enjoy the movie. If you haven’t, I’m reminded of this article: https://www.theonion.com/dune-part-two-to-pick-up-right-where-viewers-fell-as-1850378546 https://www.theonion.com/dune-part-two-to-pick-up-right-wher...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lapcat 3y ago
  I've read the book, and I quickly found the movie to be unwatchable because of dumb, pointless changes to the story. Not quite as bad as David Lynch's "Dune Velvet", but still bad. One thing that really bothered me is that the movie had Gurney Hallack warn Paul not to sit with his back to the door rather than Thufir Hawat. In the book, this was an important early scene because it's a setup for Thufir's death scene at the end, when he says, "The universe is full of doors." Of course Thufir's death hasn't been shown yet in the movies, but they already degraded it somewhat. There were other changes that bothered me too. IIRC there was something crucial missing from the gom jabbar scene that left out a big part of the motivation for it. I don't remember all the details now. (Edit: Now I remember. The Reverend Mother explained that an animal would gnaw off its own leg to escape the trap. In the book, she explains that a human would fake death and kill the trapper to eliminate a threat to its kind. Whereas in the movie, she just says "What will you do?" WTF?!?) I stopped the movie after a half hour or so. I didn't see the point, when the book is so much better.
  - flopsamjetsam 3y ago
    I loved the build-up of the pain in Lynch's version ("Dune Velvet", I'll have to remember that one :). Somehow it seemed more suspenseful than the new version.
tweezy 3y ago
I've found a barbell shape to the response. People either seem to really like or hate it. Not too many people I know that are in the middle. I will say I'm one of the people that really like it. I'm a big fan of the first Dune book and I think it does a great job of being true to the story. It's visually stunning and the score is perfect. My only gripe (and it's a big one) is that the cut the dinner scene. I don't understand that choice at all, but it wasn't enough to ruin the whole movie for me. People that I know who don't like it think it's slow and that nothing really happens. And they're right. It also just awkwardly cuts off in the middle, so it doesn't feel like a complete movie. As a fan of the book, that didn't bother me too much because I realize it's just half the story and they can't make a 6 hour movie. But it is jarring, especially if you aren't already familiar with the plot. And you are 100% correct that this would be better suited as an HBO miniseries. There's just way too much to cram into a movie. If you haven't checked out SyFy's miniseries and the Children of Dune miniseries, they are surprising good given the low budget SyFy had for it (compared to Villeneuve's budget at least).
- arp242 3y ago
  I'm "in the middle"; it's certainly not a bad movie, but it also failed to really capture me. I still prefer David Lynch's Dune – yes, it has its issues[1] but it's so much more creative and bewildering than the almost sterile "Villeneuve look". I certainly don't begrudge Villeneuve for following his own creative vision, but I wish it was more Lynch-esque, minus the problems of course. [1]: The DVD copy of Dune I bought at the store many years ago has a cover with visible JPEG artefacts. It's a perfect cover.
- Moissanite 3y ago
  Interesting - having read the book several times I don't get the reference to the dinner scene; will have to look it up. The parts which bothered me were the Zendaya slow-mo flash-forwards being too long and too frequent with no substance, and Lady Jessica crying far more than reasonable for the character I remember.
  - throw0101a 3y ago
    > Interesting - having read the book several times I don't get the reference to the dinner scene; will have to look it up. Chapter 16: * https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/dune/summary/book-i-chapter-16 https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/dune/summary/...
dylan604 3y ago
>that movie runtimes - even though they're getting longer - just aren't a good medium for complex stories like this that rely on heavy background and backstory Peter Jackson would disagree. If you can't get it done in a single "getting longer" movie runtime, just make it into 3. Harry Potter did it in 2, Twilight did it in 2, etc. So the precedent of using multiple movies is there.
- throw0101a 3y ago
  > Peter Jackson would disagree. If you can't get it done in a single "getting longer" movie runtime, just make it into 3. That's how we got The Hobbit series, which were getting a bit too thin/stretched IMHO. LoTR as three worked, maybe Hobbit as two could have been better (was a love triangle really needed?)
  - arethuza 3y ago
    "...thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread."
    - dylan604 3y ago
      Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett?
      - jemmyw 3y ago
        https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/3875-i-feel-thin-sort-of-stretched-like-butter-scraped-over https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/3875-i-feel-thin-sort-of-st... Tolkien apparently, although I definitely remember a similar Pratchett quote.
viraptor 3y ago
That comment seems like 3 independent thoughts. In my opinion: yes the first part was great, yes it could cover more details as a series, yes a HBO style high value production would be cool to see. The possibility of having something better does not make this movie bad. If you can go into it accepting that: not everything will be covered, the book has lots of internal thoughts and little action which doesn't work well on a screen, the politics part was not skipped but wasn't given lots of time either - I think you'll have a good time. Edit: Visually - it's amazing.
- stevenwoo 3y ago
  HBO started production on a prequel, Dune: the Sisterhood, based on the Brian Hebert books, I haven't read them, only read the first six by Frank Hebert, but just based on the twist in book five, the origin story of the Bene Gesserit could be bonkers.
  - throw0101a 3y ago
    > HBO started production on a prequel, Dune: the Sisterhood, based on the Brian Hebert books I read the first Brian Herbert book when it came out. Didn't bother with any since (life is too short).
  - dsr_ 3y ago
    The problem is that Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson have turned out 20ish volumes of bad fanfic. (I have nothing against good fanfic.)
    - mercutio2 3y ago
      Brian Herbert has done more violence to the Dune universe than I ever would’ve thought possible. Kevin Anderson is a mediocre sci-fi writer, but those books are so much worse than his worse non-Dune books.
MikusR 3y ago
No it is not. There was Sci-Fi channel miniseries Dune and Children of Dune. Those, despite the lower budget, are much better than than the movie.
- antisthenes 3y ago
  I agree. I think these are the best interpretations of the book that I've seen. However I've also done a complete 180 on the book itself. I think there are just too many holes in the logistics of the Dune world for me to keep up the suspension of disbelief as an adult. Given that, I'm pretty neutral towards the movies as the book adaptations. I hope they don't take the source material too seriously actually, because the source is honestly not as captivating to me as an adult as it used to be as a teenager.
carapace 3y ago
This seems as good an opening as any... No. (the first one, haven't seen the second) This "Dune" is not good. It's pretty, but stupid. For one thing, just one little thing, what's the Baron's guy's name? Not the Feyd-Ruatha/Raban amalgam. The mentat. No one says Piter's name!? If you haven't read the book you wouldn't know WhoTF that character is. - - - - I could go on and on, but what I really want to say, what I want future filmmakers to hear, is just this: Just film the book. Don't change the dialog, don't change the characters, don't add scenes and for fuck's sake don't delete any! Just film the book. Don't second guess Frank Herbert. He lucked out, made a masterpiece, and a whole Universe so real you can taste it. (the rest of the series not so much, but "Dune" itself is a window onto an alternate Universe.) You wouldn't hack up Shakespeare, you're not going to improve on Dune. Just film the book. Whew! That was bottled up for a while.
- arethuza 3y ago
  Nitpick - the "Feyd-Ruatha/Raban" is just Raban, Feyd-Ruatha doesn't appear until part 2.
  - carapace 3y ago
    Ah, cheers!
- viraptor 3y ago
  > Don't change the dialog That would be one weird movie given how much the characters in Dune think about things rather than talk about them. There are important conversations of course, but... there would be a lot of "Paul thinking about the future" voiceover.
  - arethuza 3y ago
    Weren't those internal monologues one of the weaknesses of the Lynch movie?
  - yamtaddle 3y ago
    Exactly, Dune is practically unfilmable without heavy adaptation. There's a bunch of that inner-thought voiceover stuff in David Lynch's Dune, but still only a tiny fraction as much as is in the book, and it's frankly really damn goofy (full disclosure: I'm waiting to see how Part II turns out before I decide whether this version, or the Alan Smithee cut of 1984 Dune, is the one I'd be more excited about if someone proposed a re-watch—I love that glorious mess)
pdntspa 3y ago
I watched it baked off my tits and it was fucking AWESOME Fantastic stoner movie
Maursault 3y ago
It won 6 Oscars, deservedly, though all technical, but should have won Best Picture, which went to CODA. CODA had a budget of $10M and a box office take of $1.9M, while Dune had a budget of $165M and a box office take of $402M, if that tells you anything. Chalamet should have won Best Actor, he did quite well, but he is too young. He'll get one later when he's older, undoubtedly. Best Actor went to Will Smith for King Richard, and Smith is certainly talented, but Chalemet is in a class by himself. Smith probably should have forfeit his Oscar for his violent outburst at the ceremonies. The acting in Dune is simply excellent. Everyone brought their A-game. The cinematography, special effects and soundtrack are all excellent. The screenplay is surprisingly very similar to the 1984 film.
- arethuza 3y ago
  "but he is too young" He is currently 27 - which is a lot older than Paul is supposed to be?
  - Maursault 3y ago
    Academy convention is to award older, more accomplished actors for previous work that was not awarded. Chalemet's age compared to Paul's is irrelevant. IRL, Chalemet is too young (compared to his competition in 2022) to be awarded an Oscar. Not technically, but in practice, Oscars are more like lifetime achievement awards. For example, Jamie Lee Curtis did not give an Oscar winning performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once, but they had to give it to her for her lifetime achievement and the fact that they awarded Oscars to two other actors in the film. That movie was terrible, but Michelle Yeoh deserves an Oscar for lifetime achievement. Ke Huy Kuan, 51, was certainly adequate, but the roll was nothing special. Hong Chau, 41, should have gotten his Oscar for her work in The Whale, which was a notably amazing performance. Kuan got it because of his age, even if his lifetime achievement is limited. Someone decided Everything Everywhere would sweep the Oscars, and it had everything to do with Michelle Yeoh's and Jamie Lee Curtis' lifetime achievements. The Whale was a far better film with more difficult acting that was nailed. It was just too controversial. Frasier got the Oscar even though his supporting actor Chau out-acted him, and pretty much everyone in all other movies. Her performance there was one of the best I have ever seen, and I had never heard of her. She'll be back.
m3kw9 3y ago
It was good, not great but between good and great
Supermancho 3y ago
> A fair question I have, I think, is are these new Dune movies any good? This particular iteration is trying to be far smarter than necessary or useful. If you watch the some Youtube breakdowns (not sure why you would - eg Why Dune's Editing Feels Different), you'll see that there are attempts to artfully inform the audience about things from the book through indirect means. Does it work? No. As a movie, it's pretty at times, but middling as an adaptation.
lubujackson 3y ago
I think it is on the LOTR level of translating the source material - the jom gabar scene is about as perfect as it could be. There is also a lot of confidence given to the audience, i.e. Paul's visions are shown but not explained, so seeing multiple possible futures is definitely confusing, but it mirrors Paul's confusion as he grapples with his ability.
_ph_ 3y ago
I would strongly say: yes. I was very skeptic, I am a big fan of the book and actually liked the first movie. All newer productions ever failed to excite me - until the new movie. That in my eyes is really well made. Looking forward to the second part!
MilStdJunkie 3y ago
You're asking a movie question in a forum that's probably very resistant or even actively hostile to visual storytelling[0]. Weight answers accordingly. For my $.02, it's a great film. I loved it; we have a cheap IMAX in our city and I must have seen it there a dozen times, and then a few times at home later. Greig Fraser was a fine stand in for Deakins, which was a relief. I love the look of the Lynch film, expected to remember it better than the DenVil designs, but then the new movie surprised me by topping even Tony Masters' fantastic Lynchian fever dream. As the film tells a story, however, it has some weaknesses[1] that it inherits from the text, and doesn't really completely dig itself out from those. Which is bad - that's an adaptation's only job - and it might explain the sort of empty feeling the movie leaves you with. The worst of this is the choice of ending point: probably the vision in the tent would have been the latest possible moment to do a solid ending, IMO. That single change would have made the movie 10-20% better, and is the lowest hanging fruit. It still baffles me, because Dennis is no idiot, and I wonder if the payoff is next movie. Another is the character count from the books. I'm going to say some bad things now, so get ready: the characters of Gurney and Duncan should probably have been amalgamated into a Duncan Halleck. There's zillions of other places to do things like this, because Dune is littered with characters who don't appreciably advance the story and disappear after Book 1; Shadout Mapes and Chani could, I think, be realistically amalgamated, and it would be a kick in the pants when you learn the housekeeper is daughter of Liet. Yeah, the book fans are gonna be pissed, but they were going to be pissed no matter what you did, because unlike LotR the novel is a young adult / coming of age story and people get weird about those. I've had friends screaming about the "missing dinner scene" for a year now. Something more abstract, too, is the lack of an object - metaphorical or physical - that the danger revolves around. Lynch's film dealt with this via several devices: the signet ring, the weirding modules. Dennis' film does not. Now, disclaimer. Dune as a giant metaphor rejects, in its own way, narrative as a generic concept, or at least the heroic narrative, so you have to bite your lip and wonder if this lack is intentional, and Dennis chose to push that absence forward as a metaphor. But metaphor tricks in storytelling only work if they leave the movie's skeleton to function; push them too hard (like, IMO, The Lobster did, critic tonguebaths notwithstanding) and a film can fall apart, like a sloppy abstraction. [0] This is "Hacker News", after all, and if there's one thing that's core to the word "hacker" it's "text". [1] "Weaknesses" from a movie perspective, where time is the most critical resource. Vs a book or video game, which can - and does! - stay engaging even when the main character is going to the bathroom, or climbing a mountain, or chopping garlic.

dmreedy 3y ago

> To become a full-fledged Fremen, and lead them in a counterattack that will avenge his fallen family and defeat the powers corrupting the galaxy (Emphasis mine.) This is a very funny summary. I of course understand the nature of media reporting and the constraints of a piece like this. And so far Villeneuve has shown himself to be as trustworthy as they come with themes more complex than base moral plays. But, still funny.

AmericanChopper 3y ago
They compromised on complexity a bit when they de-islamified the Fremen and decided they would be better off as crusaders rather than jihadis, which kinda turns some of the central themes of the story on its head.
- dmreedy 3y ago
  I don't necessarily disagree with the position that compromises were made, but > better off as crusaders rather than jihadis At the risk of sounding edgy, I'm not sure I see the distinction between these two things? My impression of Herbert is that the pseduo-arabism that he draped over his themes didn't serve as a moral judgement or a stand-in for motivation, but to provide some remove for his immediate audience (lot of assumptions in that phrase I realize) so that they can examine morality without getting immediately defensive? He seemed interested in discussing Religion, the phenomenon. Not the phenomenon of a particular real instantiation. Or is that what you meant, too?
  - AmericanChopper 3y ago
    Some of the main themes of the book revolve around anti-colonialism, with the book drawing very obvious parallels to western interference in the Middle East after the discovery of spice, sorry I mean oil. Jihadis fighting against colonial forces fits into this theme perfectly. Crusaders on the other hand were just a different group of colonisers who had previously sought to conquer the Arabs. This doesn’t fit into the main themes at all, it completely subverts them.

brink 3y ago

This and Oppenheimer are the only two movies I'm excited for this year.

xenophonf 3y ago
Bruh, we're getting a Venture Bros. movie _AND_ a Metalocalypse movie, too! It's a good year for movies.
throw0101a 3y ago
The counter-programming for Oppenheimer's opening day is Barbie. :)
- Doxin 3y ago
  And for anyone who hasn't seen the trailer for Barbie yet, go find it on youtube. It's... weird.

JKCalhoun 3y ago

https://archive.is/xTw6V https://archive.is/xTw6V

dicroce 3y ago

You know, it was probably super smart not showing Emperor Shaddam IV in the first film. The audience has enough to learn and see that is mandatory it was probably wise leaving out some things that weren't mandatory for the first film.

vermilingua 3y ago

The only press shot I wanted to see out of this was of Padishah Emperor Walken IV. Has to be the most exciting casting of the whole ensemble in my opinion.

mothsonasloth 3y ago

Really appreciated Villeneuve adding small scenes to the movie like the gardener watering the date palms and the ecology outpost. It rewards people who read the book and also helps people who are just watching the movie with understanding the world. Curious to see what other tid-bits from the book they will keep in part 2. Hopefully we can see some Fremen Sietches. On another note, I've always wanted to write a load tester library, I would call it Gom Jabbar. If the service falls over it fails the test.

gaws 3y ago
> Really appreciated Villeneuve adding small scenes to the movie like the gardener watering the date palms and the ecology outpost. It rewards people who read the book and also helps people who are just watching the movie with understanding the world. The biggest miss was Villeneuve not including Dr. Yueh's conversation with Lady Jessica that provides more context to why he did what he did.

ydnaclementine 3y ago

epic """""conclusion""""" (of just the first book)

gaws 3y ago
> of just the first book The sequel is also allegedly including parts of Dune: Messiah
- fjfaase 3y ago
  I have not seen anything in this trailer hinting at that.
  - gaws 3y ago
    Emphasis on allegedly.

david38 3y ago

I wanted to love this, but damn, it’s sterile

uslic001 3y ago

I liked part One but not as much as the David Lynch version of Dune. I liked Part One better than the prior TV miniseries. The casting was better in the David Lynch version as the current Paul is weak.