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In the movies I swear they mention there’s a guild and that they need spice for space travel in the opening narration in the first film. I think it’s Chani’s voiceover explaining why the Harkonnen are on the planet extracting the stuff, and that it’s made them even richer than the emperor.Anonymous Zebra posted:She's a much better character in the movie than the books. Sure sounds like it! 
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Mar 13, 2024 07:14
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kaom posted:In the movies I swear they mention there’s a guild and that they need spice for space travel in the opening narration in the first film. I think it’s Chani’s voiceover explaining why the Harkonnen are on the planet extracting the stuff, and that it’s made them even richer than the emperor. Every adaptation of the first book mentions that Spice is needed for space travel very early on. It's the one change they all make from the book. For the rare person who actually reads the book without ever seeing any of the movies or talking about it with someone, then the entire "spice is essential for space travel" reveal is a big one.
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Mar 13, 2024 07:18
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Yeah, in this movie the use of spice for space travel is common knowledge, the fact that it’s the prescience it gives would be the secret part. Because no one outside of secret groups knows it gives prescience to individuals that can handle it. Everyone else shrugs Paul’s spice visions off as hallucinations.
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Mar 13, 2024 07:28
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Huh I kind of thought people knew the witch guild’s powers since they gagged Paul’s mom in the first movie, but not him. And they must have some future visions because that’s how they’re running their operations right? And why the emperor would have the Reverend Mother working for him? I took it Paul as the end game (kwisatz haderach thanks google) just has more accuracy, or that he has the ability to see multiple futures. Actually “what’s unique about Paul other than being a man” is one thing the movies haven’t really explained, but I’ve been willing to roll with it since I get the sense they’re playing around with things they don’t fully understand. I might have to read the book eventually because the movies are so interesting, and it sounds like they changed a lot in adaptation so there should still be surprises. Although I’m glad to be forewarned about Chani lol. Also I’m really glad they put some of the weirder names on screen in subtitles because I wouldn’t know where to start trying to look up the spelling otherwise. (I love weird sci-fi names though, this isn’t a dig.)
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Mar 13, 2024 07:45
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Anonymous Zebra posted:Chani isn't mad about anything in the books because she is an incredibly flat and shallow character that just does whatever Paul tells her after they meet up. A lot of people in this thread think that the movie including Paul telling her, "Don't worry babe, you're still the only girl for me." somehow would have changed her decision in the movie, when the real issue was that he broke every promise he made to her over the course of the whole film. He promised her he wasn't the Messiah, that he had no interest being a Duke anymore, and that he just wanted to be her equal. He constantly was asking her to just trust him slowly wiping away her lingering doubts, and then in the end he not only rejected all of that, fooled the Fremen into following a false prophecy, and proclaimed himself Emperor, but he couldn't even keep the simple promise of staying with her. She's a much better character in the movie than the books. Yes, thank you. I adore the books but whenever I read about people preferring book Chani I wonder whether we read the same thing. This movie really made me like her.
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Mar 13, 2024 08:02
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kaom posted:Actually “what’s unique about Paul other than being a man” is one thing the movies haven’t really explained I haven't read the books so maybe it's explained there better and the movies don't explicitly connect the dots, but they're there. Paul is basically the end product of a millenia long eugenics project. He has the Atreides and Harkonnen bloodlines, is trained as a Bene Gesserit and has BG blood, and eventually trained as a Fremen. All of this (somehow) lets him survive drinking the Water of Life, which is otherwise fatal to men, and gives him access to all the ancestral memories of all the above bloodlines and also super prescience. The other thing about Chani is that Paul also promised to keep being Paul, iirc. So when he drank the Water, he also changed enough that he was no longer the Paul she knew. There are echoes of this theme of identity in the heart to heart Leto has with him on Caladan as well, where all he ever wanted was for Paul to also keep being Paul. GrandpaPants fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Mar 13, 2024 |
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Mar 13, 2024 08:06
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I watched Part One again tonight and I noticed that the fight between Gurney and Paul at the beginning ends almost the same way as the fight between Paul and Feyd in Part Two, just with Paul being the smarter one in that fight, rather than him almost getting killed by Gurney. Considering that final fight doesn't quite follow the book, it is a very neat little plot thing from Denis that I think works well in the context of the film. Thinking back I think almost every change the film made to the book is for the better, at least in terms of a watchable movie.
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Mar 13, 2024 08:12
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GrandpaPants posted:I haven't read the books so maybe it's explained there better and the movies don't explicitly connect the dots, but they're there. Paul is basically the end product of a millenia long eugenics project. He has the Atreides and Harkonnen bloodlines, is trained as a Bene Gesserit and has BG blood, and eventually trained as a Fremen. All of this (somehow) lets him survive drinking the Water of Life, which is otherwise fatal to men, and gives him access to all the ancestral memories of all the above bloodlines and also super prescience. He's also trained to be the heir of a Great House, and though it's not referenced in the film, Book Paul is additionally trained as a Mentat. He's a total confluence of all the systems of power in the Duniverse
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Mar 13, 2024 08:12
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kaom posted:Huh I kind of thought people knew the witch guild’s powers since they gagged Paul’s mom in the first movie, but not him. And they must have some future visions because that’s how they’re running their operations right? And why the emperor would have the Reverend Mother working for him? I took it Paul as the end game (kwisatz haderach thanks google) just has more accuracy, or that he has the ability to see multiple futures. Everyone knows the sisterhood have "witch" powers and can manipulate people. I think some people regard it more as superstition, but it's a known thing. The prescience, breeding program, and their connection to spice are the secretive bits. In both the film and the book, the purpose of the breeding program is to create someone who is capable of connecting to the full genetic memory of humanity after surviving the full spice/water of life dose. Prior to Paul, only the trained sisterhood members could survive it and doing so only gave them a partial connection. In the book, they specifically only have access to the female half of genetic memory and the Kwisatch Haderach will have access to both... I don't think the movie specifies that bit. The movie doesn't dive too much into the gendered reasons for things at all. In the films, you could probably assume no men could survive the water of life because no men were taught how (Before Jessica broke the rules and taught the Bene Gesserit ways to Paul) and maybe the Kwisatch Haderach could have been a woman. In the book it had to be a man because of... a whole lot of odd ideas about gender that the movie was probably best off avoiding. Herbert was better than most of his contemporaries with gender just because being so horny for dominant women (There's a whole faction of dominatrixes later on) saved him from generic misogyny, but his ideas in that area were still odd nonetheless. Bugblatter fucked around with this message at 08:20 on Mar 13, 2024 |
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Mar 13, 2024 08:15
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Bugblatter posted:saved him from generic misogyny, but his ideas in that area were still odd nonetheless. Read this as "genetic misogyny" and loled at the irony
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Mar 13, 2024 08:22
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Genetic memory: carried on the X and Y chromosomes.
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Mar 13, 2024 08:31
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Bet they would have felt pretty silly if the KH could only access the memories of his male ancestors.
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Mar 13, 2024 09:19
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https://x.com/tomsthevoice/status/1767663937871368606?s=46
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Mar 13, 2024 09:21
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YaketySass posted:Bet they would have felt pretty silly if the KH could only access the memories of his male ancestors. Hi, Gazing Into The Place You Dare Not Look, I'm Dad
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Mar 13, 2024 09:36
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I loved how they expanded Chani's character and gave her some real agency in the film, and also made as the mechanism of how Paul becomes Fremen, so it was still learned, even if prescience predicted it. Ending the last shot of the film with her seemingly abandoning Paul / disappearing to the desert was quite strange. It read to me like they are setting her up to be the antagonist (or protagonist) of the next film. Especially since it's the literal cut to credits. Since they had footage of Anya Taylor Joy playing and adult Aria makes me think there'll be a 20+ year time gap to the next film, so it seems strange that they focus on that here. But then again I didn't think they'd be making the sequel books, and that I don't remember Chani being in Dune Messiah much (though it's been an awful long time.
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Mar 13, 2024 11:03
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Speculation that Chani will be leading the fremen who appose Paul in Denis' Messiah seems on point. It makes her a lot more interesting than just being victim to Irulan's birth control for a whole book.
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Mar 13, 2024 11:11
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“You must have wondered,” continued Stilgar, “how the Sietches stay in communication?” Jessica acknowledged the question and its unspoken assumptions with a half-nod. “Of course,” she said. Stilgar gave a faint smile and waved at the far end of the cavern. “You are about to see a thing that few among even our own people have seen. It allows us to remain in contact with one another across the breadth of Arrakis itself. It is called the Zum Meeting.” Jessica felt her pulse quicken- stilled it. A rectangle of light sprang into being in the cavern, throwing silver-edged shadows across Stilgar’s face. Is this it? thought Jessica. Could this oblong of light be the secret means by which sietch speaks with sietch? “Commence the Zum Meeting,” commanded Stilgar. And then- Madness! Jessica recoiled. The light flared, fractured- a mosaic of lights. Distorted fragments of faces seen from strange angles. A nose, an eye, mouths- moving, slipping. A babble of sounds and voices; breathing and the oceanlike roar of fabric shifting, amplified hugely. Jessica writhed before the Zum, her mind a child’s toy boat tossed upon huge cold waves of light and noise. “Calm yourself,” came the voice of Stilgar. “While you watch, you also are watched.” The axiomatic truth of this statement brought Jessica back to a state of full awareness. She shook her head. Slowed her breathing. Forced relaxants down nerve pathways ragged with panic hormones. Her training exerted itself; she shed the animal desire for comprehension and simply let her senses absorb. Hadn’t they taught her that, all those years ago? Any perceptual framework could become a cage. Her haste to understand stood in the way of understanding. As her body calmed, Jessica allowed herself to perceive the Zum. A rectangle made of smaller rectangular images, generally of faces, though a few showed blank swathes of colour. The largest rectangle by far held the visage of a particularly old and distinguished-looking Fremen male. As Jessica beheld the face, she felt the animal panic of the Zum give way to a deeper, unfolding terror- a black-edged flower of dread blooming within her mind. “No,” she whispered, as understanding ratcheted outwards in merciless concatenating waves of cognition. For she had looked at the older man in the Zum meeting confidently expecting to analyse voice, glance, movement- and had found her skills instantly thwarted. She had stepped out on to a foot that was suddenly no longer there, perhaps had never been there. The man’s visage had been passed through some kind of filter that alternately froze and unfroze the recording- stuttering, rhythmless. The implications were inescapable. Somehow, the Fremen had gained knowledge of the Bene Gesserit's most advanced nerve-reading techniques- and developed this Zum meeting whereby they could be countered. The Zum was a weapon in a war against understanding. The older man spoke on, but his voice couldn’t be heard, to the evident discomfort of the other younger Zum participants. He speaks without speaking, thought Jessica. Great Mother! He is a parable from the old tales made flesh! And her mind raced to her son, Paul, and to the emrbyonic foetal baby zygote within her uterine wombplace. As the Zum meeting continued, and others spoke, Jessica realised with immense and shameful relief that the abilities granted her by the sisterhood were still of some use: The Zum participant Grobdar, for instance, was either in the profound meditative trance of a fourth-level bistar, or his camera had frozen. Somarra’s sound recording apparatus had been activated, even though it was not her turn to speak, amplifying the sound of her breathing hugely and causing ripples of alarm through the other Fremen. Subtle twitches of the eye and tendons told Jessica that Kevn had his attention on another screen none of them could see; and Ohnlifanz, the youngest and most desirable of the Fremen females present, possessed a surprisingly high-quality camera and lighting rig for some reason.
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Mar 13, 2024 12:14
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loving lmao 
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Mar 13, 2024 12:18
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the doon exchange parodying Herbert's "hm," "ah!" "oh?" "hmph." "but...?" "ah-ahh!" "heh heh" "indeed..." style of dialogue, except it's two fremen talking past each other over Zum due to insane lag
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Mar 13, 2024 12:24
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Bugblatter posted:Something that probably doesn’t come across in the films that makes exposition a bit difficult is that humanity is in a sort of a dark age where most people are ignorant, yet don’t even know they’re ignorant. A handful of people within secretive groups have a lot of knowledge, and those groups aren’t even sharing with each other. Although Paul and the reader will eventually have the full picture, most of the cast wouldn’t really know to question some things, let alone be able to deliver exposition. Spice and space travel is a big part of it. While everyone knows the guild needs spice for space travel, few outside of the guild could guess that they need the prescience it provides to plot routes through space without advanced computers. The book doesn’t even give the clues for that until surprisingly far in and even then it’s somewhat left to the reader to connect the dots. Yeah, one thing that Warhammer 40k (and also Battletech, for that matter) overtly takes from Dune is the theme of a space dark age, where despite people clearly being intelligent and cunning, and living in a spacefaring civilization with immense material wealth and power, they've lost so much knowledge and understanding they don't even know they've lost, and culture and technology have stagnated and regressed to the point of a feudal system. This is actually a pretty major theme as the books go, like Leto II's whole thing is that seeing the present through the eyes of the past he realises how ridiculous it looks and how the deeply culturally ingrained prohibitions on technology have backfired so badly.
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Mar 13, 2024 12:45
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Yeah, one thing that Warhammer 40k (and also Battletech, for that matter) overtly takes from Dune is the theme of a space dark age, where despite people clearly being intelligent and cunning, and living in a spacefaring civilization with immense material wealth and power, they've lost so much knowledge and understanding they don't even know they've lost, and culture and technology have stagnated and regressed to the point of a feudal system. This is actually a pretty major theme as the books go, like Leto II's whole thing is that seeing the present through the eyes of the past he realises how ridiculous it looks and how the deeply culturally ingrained prohibitions on technology have backfired so badly. To be fair, Dune takes this from Foundation because the former is very much a response to and critique of the latter. Prescience leading to disaster is a direct refutation of Hari Seldon's psychohistory.
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Mar 13, 2024 14:44
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Eason the Fifth posted:Thinking about it now I'd put Dune 1/2 in a league with The Shining, in that the movie interpretation hyper-focuses on a single theme and removes much of the story irrelevant to serving that theme. Kubrick's Shining takes out the Torrances' complexity to serve the horror of the Overlook. Villeneuve's Dune cuts out a lot of the incidental characterization between e.g. Jessica/Gurney/Duncan to focus on the horror of a messiah. In poorer hands, reducing character to cliffs notes absolutely kills stories (like the back half of Game of Thrones), and I think the back part of Dune 2 flirts with that, but like The Shining, the vibe of the movie is enough to carry it through the worst of the changes. Great post.
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Mar 13, 2024 15:01
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He's not the Messiah, he's a very prescient boy.
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Mar 13, 2024 15:07
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Shageletic posted:Great post. 
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Mar 13, 2024 15:08
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100 unironically, dv is the closest anyone's come to reaching stanley kubrick's level, down to the same exact criticisms about grand themes yielding inert characters. except he seems to be a pleasant guy and not a complete rear end in a top hat
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Mar 13, 2024 15:12
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It's too bad Frank Herbert is dead, I'd love to see him pull a Stephen King (hating Denis' adaptation and writing a boring and cheap TV miniseries adaptation purely out of spite).
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Mar 13, 2024 15:23
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Failed Imagineer posted:loving lmao
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Mar 13, 2024 15:27
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Cognac McCarthy posted:It's too bad Frank Herbert is dead, I'd love to see him pull a Stephen King (hating Denis' adaptation and writing a boring and cheap TV miniseries adaptation purely out of spite). He did like David Lynch’s movie
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Mar 13, 2024 15:37
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He especially liked Lynch's take on Dune Navigators.
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Mar 13, 2024 15:42
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I have seen DUNC 2. It is better than DUNC. With all due respect to David Lynch, history has vindicated Kung Fu On Sand Dunes.
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Mar 13, 2024 15:47
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PeterWeller posted:To be fair, Dune takes this from Foundation because the former is very much a response to and critique of the latter. Prescience leading to disaster is a direct refutation of Hari Seldon's psychohistory. It's interesting reading Foundation in light of Dune because Foundation ain't exactly bloodless either. There's a lot of bloody war and starvation and misery happening just outside its anodyne viewpoint. To the extent Hari Seldon was able to predict/manipulate/profit from that, it ain't hard to view him as a monster. Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Mar 13, 2024 |
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Mar 13, 2024 16:13
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frank herbert should have called the second book Dunes
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Mar 13, 2024 16:38
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Looking up the dune books on Wikipedia was wild man. What do you mean his son took over the mantle and they’re STILL dropping books. Holy poo poo
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Mar 13, 2024 16:41
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Admiral Bosch posted:frank herbert should have called the second book Dunes Dune$
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Mar 13, 2024 16:44
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The REAL Goobusters posted:Looking up the dune books on Wikipedia was wild man. What do you mean his son took over the mantle and they’re STILL dropping books. Holy poo poo Co-authored by a guy best known otherwise for his Star Wars Expanded Universe books, which should tell you about their quality.
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Mar 13, 2024 16:45
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The REAL Goobusters posted:Looking up the dune books on Wikipedia was wild man. What do you mean his son took over the mantle and they’re STILL dropping books. Holy poo poo And incredibly every single one of his son's books suck rear end.
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Mar 13, 2024 17:19
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It's funny because KJA wrote at least one Star Wars book where Han gets enslaved on Kessel, the planet where they mine the "spice," a drug that gives you psychic powers.
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Mar 13, 2024 17:30
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Hell yeah KJA wrote the novelization of the terrible "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" movie, and now I'm thinking about Sean Connery as Leto II
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Mar 13, 2024 17:36
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The “J” in his name stands for “I’m a lovely Hack”
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Mar 13, 2024 17:50
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Cognac McCarthy posted:Hell yeah KJA wrote the novelization of the terrible "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" movie, yeah that tracks
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Mar 13, 2024 18:18
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